Back Dead Beat Save as PDF
Chapters (37)
  1. Dead Beat
  2. Dedication:
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. 1992–Part One
  5. Chapter   1
  6. Chapter   2
  7. Chapter   3
  8. Chapter   4
  9. Chapter   5
  10. Chapter   6
  11. Chapter   7
  12. Chapter   8
  13. Chapter   9
  14. Chapter   10
  15. Chapter   11
  16. Chapter   12
  17. Part Two
  18. Chapter   13
  19. Chapter   14
  20. Chapter   15
  21. Chapter   16
  22. Chapter   17
  23. Chapter   18
  24. Chapter   19
  25. Chapter   20
  26. Chapter   21
  27. Chapter   22
  28. Chapter   23
  29. Chapter   24
  30. Chapter   25
  31. Chapter   26
  32. Chapter   27
  33. Chapter   28
  34. Chapter   29
  35. Chapter   30
  36. Chapter   31
  37. About the Author

I stopped at a garage to buy a street directory. There were three Asian men standing around inside the shop, and another behind the counter. I felt like a piece of meat as they eyed me up and down and made comments to each other. I didn’t need to speak the language to catch their drift.

Back in the car, I looked up my destination in the map’s index and worked out the best way to get there. George’s information represented the worst value for money I’d had in a long time, but I wasn’t in any position to stick around and argue the toss. All he’d been able to tell me was that Moira had moved to Bradford and was working the streets of the red light district round Manningham Lane. He either didn’t know or wouldn’t tell the name of her pimp,

It was just after one when I parked in a quiet side street off Manningham Lane. As I got out of the car, the smell of curry spices hit me and I realized I was ravenous. It had been a long time since last night’s Chinese, and I had to start my inquiries somewhere. I went into the first eating place I came to, a small café on the corner. Three of the half dozen Formica-topped tables were occupied. The clientele was a mixture of Asian men, working girls and a couple of lads who looked like building laborers. I went up to the counter, where a teenager in a grubby chef’s jacket was standing behind a cluster of pans on a hotplate. On the wall was a whiteboard, which offered Lamb Rogan Josh, Chicken Madras, Mattar Panir and Chicken Jalfrezi. I ordered the lamb, and the youth ladled a generous helping into a bowl, opened a hot cupboard and handed me three chapatis. A couple of weeks before, their hygiene standards would have driven me out the door a lot faster than I’d come in. However, on the Smart surveillance, I’d learned that hunger has an interesting effect on the eyesight. After the greasy spoons I’d been forced to feed in up and down the country, I couldn’t claim the cleanliness standards of an Egon Ronay any longer. And this café was a long way from the bottom of my current list.