‘Did anyone else know her?’

‘Who?’

‘The lady with the hat?’

He didn’t reply. His dog sneezed again. A moment earlier I’d felt fond of his dog but I’d gone off them both now. Neither of them was listening.

I tried once more. ‘Did she have any friends here?’

‘Just Pam.’

‘Pam?’

‘You know Pam.’

‘I don’t know anyone.’

He wiped his nose. ‘She had this little kid too.’

‘Where does she live?’

‘She’s gone now.’ He jerked his head at his house. ‘She lived on the top floor but they’re not getting rid of me.’

‘You don’t know how I could find her?’

He looked at me. ‘You from the council?’

I shook my head.

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘You drive them hooligans.’

‘You don’t know where Pam’s gone?’

He shook his head. There was a smell of exhaust and a surge of pop music; a lorry was inching past my coach. It was carrying a skip, for one of the houses being done up.

‘She was a dentist, see,’ he said.

‘A dentist?’

‘Pint-sized little thing, but then she was Australian.’

‘She’s gone to Australia?’

‘Oh no,’ he said testily. ‘Tottenham.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She’s a dentist. She had all these letters after her name.’

‘What letters?’

‘It’s on her card.’

‘What card?’

‘What do you mean, what card?’ He glared at me. ‘The card in the hall.’

I’ve always wanted to be a private detective. A moment later there I was, pencil at the ready, standing in his hallway inspecting the cards pinned up for mini-cabs and emergency plumbers, and amongst them one for P.K. Johnson, BDS, LCS, Dental Surgeon, and an address just a mile away, in N.17.

Five

It wasn’t a dentist’s, it was a sex shop. I thought: what a mug I am.

It was a modern row of shops next to a housing estate. Most of the shops had grilles over the windows; this one, Private Shop, had knickers displayed and things on boxes that I didn’t look at too closely. I glimpsed a label saying Swedish Tickler. I thought: what a wally. I suppose I am a bit dozy; in pubs I don’t always get the jokes. Pam’s card was for another sort of service altogether. Women were always putting those cards up, I saw them in phone boxes—Strict French Lessons, they said, and Mahogany Polishing. What worried me was what BDS, LDS stood for. A man of forty-two, I should know. In my experience there wasn’t a lot you could do with teeth, but I was obviously wrong. No wonder I hadn’t been able to keep a wife.

A woman passed, pushing a pram, and glared at me. I moved away and then I saw the door, and the Surgery bell, and I looked up and on the first-floor window it said Dental Surgeon.

I rang the bell and a disembodied voice let me in. Upstairs was a waiting room. There was only one person in it, a boy who was crying.