untraceable; and his belt was still round his waist this evening, even if it did feel a little tighter than it had in the old days. Wasn’t it time to let it all go?
They were over the river now, driving south towards Netherton Street. Carver looked at his watch. He was going to get there a few minutes early. On a whim he tapped on the glass that divided the passenger compartment from the driver and said, ‘Stop here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’
The cabbie looked up and caught his eye in the driver’s mirror. ‘You sure you want to do that, guv? Not a good idea round here.’
‘I’ll manage.’
The driver shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Just hope the next bloke that picks you up isn’t driving an ambulance.’
Carver paid him off and started walking. Within a couple of minutes he’d begun to wonder whether he’d made a stupid decision. It had less to do with the run-down drabness of so much of the cityscape around him than the steady drizzle in the air, which seemed to be seeping down past the collar of his jacket and up through the soles of his shoes, chilling him to the bone. Carver looked around. He couldn’t be too far from Netherton Street now. There was an old council estate up ahead: the pub should be just the far side of that.
He turned down a road that led through the estate. One entire side of it, at least two hundred metres long, was taken up with a single, gigantic concrete chunk of brutal sixties architecture. It was seven storeys high, and walkways ran the full length of each level, like streets in the sky, one above the other. Carver could hear children’s shouts and mocking laughter echoing from somewhere high among the walkways, but when he looked up there hardly seemed to be any lights on anywhere – half a dozen at most across the oppressive, Stalinist bulk of the place. Peering through the drizzle, he realized he’d made a mistake. You couldn’t cut straight through the estate. There was a dead end up ahead where another, smaller pile of concrete barred the way, looking even darker, more lifeless and yet more menacing than the one beside him.
The estate’s architects must have planned it like this specifically to prevent drivers using the road as a rat run. Instead they had created a rat trap, a dead-end community that had taken the hint and died. But even these architects had to have allowed the inhabitants of their oppressive schemes some way of walking out. A peeling, faded sign beside the pavement showed a map of the estate, and Carver saw that if he made his way to the right of the block at the end of the cul-de-sac there should be a path that would lead past a further set of buildings, arranged around an open central space, towards another road that would take him to Netherton Street.
With every step Carver took it became more obvious that the entire sprawling estate was virtually abandoned. He could imagine the drawings and scale models that had been produced when the place had first been proposed, with their sunny skies, green-leafed trees and happy families living, playing and working in a modernist utopia. Now it looked like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or the set of a zombie movie. Carver wasn’t given to shivers of apprehension, but even he prickled a little walking through the unlit shadows of the alley that led past the dead-end block to the promised open space beyond.
The first thing he saw when he came out the other side was a bonfire of old bits of furniture and building materials in front of yet another unlit building with glassless, dead-eyed windows. Three men – two black and one white – were sitting on a low brick wall just next to the fire, a scattering of empty beer cans at their feet, having themselves a party with the crack pipe that the white one had in his mouth. He was sucking hard, pulling his pitted, acne-ridden skin between his rotting teeth. His hands were cupped round the bowl of the pipe, making sure that the rain didn’t put it out. The
They were over the river now, driving south towards Netherton Street. Carver looked at his watch. He was going to get there a few minutes early. On a whim he tapped on the glass that divided the passenger compartment from the driver and said, ‘Stop here. I’ll walk the rest of the way.’
The cabbie looked up and caught his eye in the driver’s mirror. ‘You sure you want to do that, guv? Not a good idea round here.’
‘I’ll manage.’
The driver shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. Just hope the next bloke that picks you up isn’t driving an ambulance.’
Carver paid him off and started walking. Within a couple of minutes he’d begun to wonder whether he’d made a stupid decision. It had less to do with the run-down drabness of so much of the cityscape around him than the steady drizzle in the air, which seemed to be seeping down past the collar of his jacket and up through the soles of his shoes, chilling him to the bone. Carver looked around. He couldn’t be too far from Netherton Street now. There was an old council estate up ahead: the pub should be just the far side of that.
He turned down a road that led through the estate. One entire side of it, at least two hundred metres long, was taken up with a single, gigantic concrete chunk of brutal sixties architecture. It was seven storeys high, and walkways ran the full length of each level, like streets in the sky, one above the other. Carver could hear children’s shouts and mocking laughter echoing from somewhere high among the walkways, but when he looked up there hardly seemed to be any lights on anywhere – half a dozen at most across the oppressive, Stalinist bulk of the place. Peering through the drizzle, he realized he’d made a mistake. You couldn’t cut straight through the estate. There was a dead end up ahead where another, smaller pile of concrete barred the way, looking even darker, more lifeless and yet more menacing than the one beside him.
The estate’s architects must have planned it like this specifically to prevent drivers using the road as a rat run. Instead they had created a rat trap, a dead-end community that had taken the hint and died. But even these architects had to have allowed the inhabitants of their oppressive schemes some way of walking out. A peeling, faded sign beside the pavement showed a map of the estate, and Carver saw that if he made his way to the right of the block at the end of the cul-de-sac there should be a path that would lead past a further set of buildings, arranged around an open central space, towards another road that would take him to Netherton Street.
With every step Carver took it became more obvious that the entire sprawling estate was virtually abandoned. He could imagine the drawings and scale models that had been produced when the place had first been proposed, with their sunny skies, green-leafed trees and happy families living, playing and working in a modernist utopia. Now it looked like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, or the set of a zombie movie. Carver wasn’t given to shivers of apprehension, but even he prickled a little walking through the unlit shadows of the alley that led past the dead-end block to the promised open space beyond.
The first thing he saw when he came out the other side was a bonfire of old bits of furniture and building materials in front of yet another unlit building with glassless, dead-eyed windows. Three men – two black and one white – were sitting on a low brick wall just next to the fire, a scattering of empty beer cans at their feet, having themselves a party with the crack pipe that the white one had in his mouth. He was sucking hard, pulling his pitted, acne-ridden skin between his rotting teeth. His hands were cupped round the bowl of the pipe, making sure that the rain didn’t put it out. The
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