The Girl in the Ice

22

Erika liked driving. It wasn’t so much the type of car – it didn’t have to be anything exotic. It just had to be secure and warm. As she drove through the empty streets of South London, the car felt like a cocoon around her, and more like home than the flat.

She turned her head away slightly as she drove past Brockley Cemetery, the headstones glimmering under the street lights. The car lurched to the right, and she realised she had to slow down. The snow had melted a little during the day, but at night a freeze had descended, making the roads dangerous.

She put her phone on hands-free and put a call in to the nick. Sergeant Woolf answered, and she asked him to give her a list of the dodgiest pubs in the area.

‘Can I ask why?’ he said, his voice tinny on the end of the line.

‘I fancy a drink.’

There was a pause. ‘Okay. There’s The Mermaid, The Bird In The Hand, The Stag, The Crown – not The Crown that’s a Wetherspoon’s, there’s another Crown on the brink of the brewery pulling the plug. It’s at the top of Gant Road. And of course, there’s The Glue Pot.’

‘Thanks.’

‘DCI Foster, keep me posted where you are. If you need backup . . .’

Erika hung up, cutting him off.

She spent the next three hours making her way round some of the roughest pubs she’d seen in her long career. It wasn’t the squalor, the dirt, or the drunken people that bothered her. It was the despair in people’s faces as they propped up the bar. The hopelessness as they sat slumped in a corner, or poured what little money they had into fruit machines.

What was even more disturbing was that the pubs weren’t miles from affluent suburbs. A horrible dive called The Mermaid was next to an Indian fusion restaurant, which was advertising it had recently been awarded a Michelin Star. The bright interior, on show for everyone to see, was filled with happy, well-dressed people dining in groups. The Bird In The Hand, where Erika gave a haunted-looking young girl begging with a baby twenty pounds, was next to a posh wine bar filled with glossy women and their rich husbands.

Was she the only one who noticed this?

At midnight, Erika arrived at The Crown in Gant Road. It was an old-fashioned looking public house with brass lamps over a red frontage. A lock-in was underway, but Erika managed to get in, giving a lad on the door a crisp twenty-pound note.

The inside was packed and the atmosphere rowdy. The windows were steamed up and there was a smell of beer, sweat and cheap perfume. Everyone seemed rather rough round the edges, but had made the effort and was dressed in their best. Erika was questioning exactly what the party was in aid of, when she spied who she’d been looking for.

Ivy sat on a small bar stool at the back, next to a flashing fruit machine. Beside her sat a large young woman who had long black roots in her blonde hair and her lip pierced. Erika slowly made her way over, squeezing through groups of people who looked pretty far-gone. When she reached Ivy, she could see her pupils were dilated. Her eyes were now hideous pools of black.

‘What the fuck are you doin’ here?’ asked Ivy, struggling to focus.

‘I just wanted a word,’ shouted Erika, over the noise.

‘I paid for all this,’ shouted Ivy, waving a finger around. Erika noticed that there were several bags of shopping pooled around the stools.

‘It’s not about that,’ said Erika.

The girl beside Ivy glowered. ‘Everything all right, Ive?’ she said, leaning in, not taking her eyes off Erika.

‘Yeah,’ said Ivy. ‘She’s buying the next round.’

Erika passed the girl a twenty, realising she’d parted with a lot of cash that evening. The girl heaved herself off the little stool and vanished into the crowd.

‘Where are the kids?’ asked Erika.

‘’Oo?’

‘Your grandkids?’

‘Upstairs. Asleep. Why, do you want to hit ’em?’

‘Ivy . . .’

‘Well you can get in the queue, love. They’ve bin fuckin’ me off today something proper.’

‘Ivy. I need to talk to you about The Glue Pot,’ said Erika, perching on the warm, vacated stool.

‘What?’ said Ivy, trying to focus.

‘You remember? The pub we talked about. The Glue Pot, on London Road.’

‘I don’t go there,’ slurred Ivy.

‘I know you don’t go there. Why don’t you go there?’

‘Cos . . .’

‘Please. I need more. Why not, Ivy?’

‘Fuck you!’

Erika held up yet another twenty. Ivy attempted to focus, and then grabbed it, tucking it under the waistband of her grotty jeans.

‘So, what you wanna talk about?’

‘The Glue Pot.’

‘Bad stuff there. Bad man . . . bad . . .’ said Ivy, shaking her head.

‘There’s a bad man?’

‘Yeah . . .’ Ivy’s eyes were now rolling in her head and she seemed to be seeing things – things that weren’t in the bar. Her head snapped to one side.

‘Ivy. The bad man. What’s his name?’

‘He’s bad, I tell you, love . . .’

‘Did you hear about the girl who died, Andrea?’ Erika pulled out her phone and found the picture of Andrea. ‘This is her, Ivy. Her name was Andrea. She was beautiful, with dark hair. Do you think Andrea knew this bad man?’

Ivy managed to focus on the phone picture for a moment. ‘Yeah, she was beautiful.’

‘You saw her?’

‘Few times.’

‘You saw this girl, a few times, in The Glue Pot?’ said Erika, holding the phone up to Ivy.

‘I was beautiful once . . .’ Ivy’s eyes rolled in her head and she started to slide off the barstool.

‘Come on, Ivy. Stay with me,’ said Erika, grabbing her and righting her on the stool. ‘Please look at this picture once more.’

Ivy stared at it. ‘The bad ones are always the worst, but the best, too. You let them do anything to you, even if it hurts, even if you don’t want to . . .’

Erika looked over at the bar and could see that the large girl with the pierced lip wasn’t buying any drinks. She was talking to a group of men, and they kept looking at Erika and Ivy.

‘Ivy, this is important. Are you talking about Andrea? Did she meet with this bad man at The Glue Pot? He had dark hair. Please. I need anything, a name . . .’

Ivy drooled, and blew out a bubble of saliva, which popped. She rolled her tongue over her chin and Erika caught sight of her rotten teeth.

‘I saw her, with him and some blonde bitch. Stupid girls, they both got in too deep with him.’ said Ivy.

‘What? Ivy? A dark man and a blonde woman?’

‘Is this an official visit?’ asked a voice. Erika looked up to see a large bear of a man with wispy strawberry-blond hair.

‘I didn’t invite her,’ said Ivy, adding, ‘she’s a fucking pig.’

‘No, it’s not an official visit,’ said Erika.

‘Then I’d like you to go,’ the man said, his voice menacingly calm and quiet.

‘Ivy, if you think of anything, see anything, here’s my number.’ Erika pulled out a pen and scrap of paper from her leather jacket, scribbled down her mobile number, and tucked the scrap of paper into the pocket of Ivy’s jeans. The man hooked his hand under Erika’s arm. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘what do you think you’re doing? Who do you think you are?’

‘The landlord. Everyone here is invited, and I’m giving away complimentary drinks. You are not invited, and therefore I have to tell you to leave or I’m breaking the law.’

‘I said I wasn’t here on an official visit, but my visit could become official at any moment,’ said Erika.

‘This is a wake,’ said the man, matter-of-factly. ‘And we have a no-pigs door policy.’

‘What did you just call me?’ asked Erika, trying to remain calm. A short guy with strange gnomic features joined them.

‘Did you know my muvver?’ he asked accusingly.

‘Your mother?’ asked Erika.

‘Yeah, that’s what I said. My muvver, Pearl.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Don’t fucking ask me who I am at my own fucking muvver’s wake! Who the fuck are you?’

‘So this is your mother Pearl’s wake, is it?’ asked Erika.

‘Yeah, and what you gonna fucking do about it?’

Erika looked around the room; people were starting to take notice.

‘Cool it, Michael,’ said the landlord.

‘I don’t like her attitude, stuck up lanky bitch,’ said Michael, looking her up and down.

‘You need to calm down, sir,’ said Erika.

‘Sir? Are you taking the piss?’

‘No, I’m a police officer,’ said Erika, pulling out her ID.

‘What’s a pig doing here? You told me you’d had a word . . .’

‘I did have a word, Michael. This police officer is just leaving.’

‘There’s a fucking pig ’ere!’ cried a weedy, red-haired woman who had tottered over, wearing only one pink slip-on shoe. There was a crack of glass, and then two blokes started to fight. The red-haired woman threw her pint over Erika and wiggled her fingers in a “come and get it” gesture. Erika felt herself being grabbed around the waist. At first she thought she was being attacked, but the landlord was carrying her, holding her up in the air as people swore and spat at her. Through the force of his sheer weight and height he pulled her through the throng and got her behind the bar.

‘Get the fuck out. Go through there, to the kitchens. The back door leads out to an alley behind,’ he said, putting out a hand to stop people from the crowd who were trying to squeeze through the small hatch to get behind the bar. A glass exploded above Erika’s head, shattering a vodka optic. At the far end of the bar, the woman who’d thrown the drink pulled up another hatch, and people poured behind the bar and began to rush at Erika.

‘Get out!’ said the landlord. He pushed her through a stinking pair of curtains. She stumbled down a dimly lit hallway, crashing into boxes of crisps, tripping over a crate of empty bottles. The music blared but barely drowned out the sound of the chaos and breaking glass from the bar behind. She could see that the landlord was being pushed and shoved as he tried to block the doorway. Erika found a door into a kitchen of filth and hellish grease, and at the back she pushed open a fire exit. The cold air hit her wet skin, which was already feeling sticky from the beer, and she saw she was in an alleyway.

Erika dashed back towards the road, past the steam and chaos emanating from the bar windows, and out to her car, which was thankfully still waiting on the road out front.

She got in and drove away with a squeal of rubber. She felt relieved, elated, adrenalin surging through her. And then she remembered that Ivy was still inside the pub. Ivy had seen Andrea, with the dark-haired man and the blonde-haired woman.

Had Ivy been in The Glue Pot the night Andrea vanished? Did this mean the barmaid at The Glue Pot was telling the truth?