Black London 05 - Soul Trade

flipping through numbers to find the only name from her days on the Met still in her directory. Though it was long after his shift ended, he answered on the second ring.
    “This better be theworld endin’, Pete.”
    “Isn’t it always, Ollie?” Pete said, steadied a bit at the sound of his thick Yorkshire accent. Ollie was from a time when none of it—ghosts, demons, the collateral damage of people like the children Treadwell had fed on—existed for her. Just the usual atrocities, wrought by and on plain old humans.
    Ollie Heath groused, and she heard bedsprings creak. “Why do I know you’reinterrupting my beauty sleep for some illegal errand that’ll probably get me sacked?” he said.
    “Because you know me too well,” Pete told him. “Look, Ollie, I don’t have a lot of time. I need you to track down a bloke for me. And then an address.”
    Ollie sighed. One day, Pete knew, she was going to run out of credit, and he’d shut her account. She hoped not soon, though. She genuinely liked Ollie.He was a good copper and a decent bloke. Asking him to do something that could get him sacked wasn’t exactly fun for Pete, but she needed real information, not the carefully edited load of shit Morwenna had fed her back in Manchester.
    “Right,” Ollie said. “Got a pen. Go ahead.”
    Pete rattled off Jeremy Crotherton’s name and the details of his last known sighting. “An accident report, a John Doeturning up in a couple of pieces—according to his, uh, friends, he just vanished.” She chewed on her lip, trying to keep the emotion out of her voice. Ollie wouldn’t help her if he thought anything was hinky about this request. “And I need to find an address for Margaret Smythe.”
    Ollie sucked in a breath. “That kid what you helped out back in the day? What d’you need her for?”
    “It’s important,Ollie,” Pete told him, her gut clenching with unease. If Margaret was in harm’s way, Pete had to do something. Warn her somehow.
    “’Course it is,” Ollie said. “Even if it wasn’t, you know I’d do it. Call you back when I find something.”
    He rang off, and Pete pressed her forehead against the cool train window as the twilight land sped by in a blur of fog, shadow and bursts of light. She wanteda fag, so badly she could already taste the harsh, dry filter paper on her tongue. Wanted a drink, wanted to scream. Wanted to go home.
    But none of those things would help in the moment. Nothing she could do until she knew what she was really getting into.
    “You know, I could throttle that bloody Wendy,” Jack said, snapping her out of the vast circle of rage and self pity in which she’d foundherself rotating. “Everything we’ve been through, and she flips on me for a few quid and pat on the head from some bitch in a nice suit.”
    “Old school friends are usually cunts,” Pete agreed. “I met with a girl I did A-levels with when I was engaged to Terry, and she spent the whole time trying to get me to invest in a pyramid scheme.”
    Jack shook his head, mouth forming a bitter line. “Wendyand me was more than that. I saved her life, you know.”
    Pete decided she was so glad they weren’t talking about where they were going, or the mess they were in, that she’d discuss Wendy until the cow came home, propped up its feet, and turned on the telly. “I didn’t,” she said. “She wasn’t exactly eager to chat with me, for obvious reasons.”
    “That you don’t look like you were hit with a lorryfull of bad decisions and aging poorly?” Jack snorted.
    Pete laughed and fetched him a soft punch on his arm. “You’re a terrible slag. She wasn’t that bad.”
    “She used to be me only real friend,” Jack said, abruptly sombering again. “After me da fucked off for the last time, Mum was in and out with a different man every week. Wendy used to make these fuck-awful beans on toast and steal lager fromthe downstairs neighbor, and we’d sit up in her room and have dinner because our parents were all too stoned to feed us.”
    Pete stayed quiet, glad that the vise grip of Manchester’s Black had eased a bit and she could feel the thrum of power again, rather than drowning in it, as the train raced into the country.
    “My da was a degenerate scum-coated wanker,” Jack said. “But Wendy’s was true horror.Put her head through a wall because he didn’t like her wearing makeup. Came for our usual beans and chatter, found her on the stoop looking like fucking Carrie. I took