Whispers Under Ground

been left entirely up to me whether we charge you or not?’ I lied.
    Zach started absently tapping the window. ‘I was a mate of one of his mate’s mates,’ he said. ‘We just got on. He liked London but he was shy, he needed a guide and I needed to a place to crash.’
    This was close enough to the statements he’d given first to Guleed and then to Stephanopoulos for me to think it might even be the truth. Stephanopoulos had asked about drugs, but Zach had sworn blind and on his mother’s life that James Gallagher hadn’t partaken. Didn’t have any objections, mind, just wasn’t interested.
    ‘Guide to what?’ I asked as I negotiated the tricky corner at Notting Hill Gate. It had begun to snow again, not as heavy as the day before but enough to make the road surface slick and unforgiving.
    ‘Pubs, clubs,’ said Zach. ‘You know places, art galleries – London. He wanted to go places in London.’
    ‘Did you show him where to buy the fruit bowl?’ I asked.
    ‘I don’t know why you’re so interested in that fruit bowl. It’s just a bowl.’
    Amazingly, I didn’t tell him it was because I thought it was a magic fruit bowl. It’s the sort of thing that can open one up to ridicule.
    ‘It’s a police thing,’ I said.
    ‘I know where he got it,’ he said. ‘But we might have to have breakfast first.’
    Portobello Road is a long thin road that undulates from Notting Hill to the Westway and beyond. It’s been the front line in the gentrification war since the big money started arriving in Ladbroke Grove with the pop stars and the film directors in the swinging sixties. There’s been a market there since the time you could walk into fields at the north end and catch fish in Counter’s Creek. The antique market, the bit that sucks in tourists every Saturday, only got started in the 1940s but it’s what everyone thinks of when they hear the name. As the well-heeled bohemians were replaced by the really rich in the 1980s Portobello has been like a thermometer of social change. Starting at the Notting Hill end the neat little Victorian terraces have been snaffled up by people with six-figure salaries and the big high-street chains have been looking to spawn amongst the antique shops and Jamaican cafés. Only the red-brick council estates stand like bastions against the remorseless tide, glowering down on the City folk and the media professionals and lowering the house prices by their very presence.
    Portobello Court was a case in point, guarding the crossroads with Elgin Crescent and the transition between antique market and the fruit and veg. Holding the line so that a man could still find double sausage, eggs, beans, toast and chips for a fiver and at the same time keep an eye on the patch allocated to the market stall where, Zach swore, James Gallagher had bought his fruit bowl. He had the fry-up. I had a rather nice mushroom omelette and a cup of tea. Zach picked up a discarded copy of the Sun , glanced at the headline – London E. Coli Outbreak Confirmed – and turned to the back pages. I kept my eyes focused out the window where the space the patch occupied was vanishing under the fresh snow.
    I phoned Lesley. ‘How do I check on the owners of a market stall in Portobello?’ I asked.
    Zach paused mid-chew to look at me.
    ‘You call the Inside Inquiry Team,’ she said. ‘Who are actually paid to answer your stupid questions.’ I could hear street sounds behind her.
    ‘Where are you?’
    ‘Gower Street,’ she said. ‘I’ve got another consult.’
    I said goodbye and fished about in my address book for the Inside Inquiry Team’s number. Zach gave me an urgent little wave.
    ‘What?’
    ‘I’ve got a little confession to make,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t entirely honest.’
    ‘I’m shocked,’ I said.
    ‘The actual stall,’ he said. ‘The one you want is that one.’ He pointed to a stall further down the street. It was selling pots, pans and assorted dodgy kitchenware and had been when we’d stepped into the café half an hour earlier.
    ‘I’ve got a philosophical question,’ I said. ‘Do you realise that your continually lying to me is an erosion of trust that could have adverse consequences at a later date – for instance in about five minutes?’
    ‘Not really,’ said Zach around a mouthful of chips. ‘I’ve always been a live-in-the-moment kind of guy. A grasshopper not an ant. What happens in five minutes?’
    ‘I finish my tea,’ I said.
    If you live in