Jane and Teflon got out of the car and went through the ground-floor communal door into the lobby, which smelt like a sewer. The walls were covered in abusive graffiti, the lift door was stuck open and inside was a pool of urine. Jane had to put her hand over her mouth and nose to stop herself gagging.
‘Looks like it’s the stairs. After you, madam.’
Teflon opened the door, and another waft of stale urine assaulted them.
‘This place is worse than I imagined. How can people live in this filth?’ Jane remarked.
As they trudged up to the fifth floor, two young white men walked past them and Jane heard one say ‘white slag’ as he passed them on the stairs. She stopped to challenge him, and Teflon nudged her in the back with his hand.
‘Ignore them and keep going,’ he whispered.
‘He just called me a white slag!’
‘Only because you’re with me and he thinks we’re an item. It ain’t a good idea to start an argument in here — besides, I’ve clocked his face and won’t forget it next time I see him out on the street.’
‘The racist mentality of some people sickens me.’
‘Tell me about it,’ he said with a shrug. ‘If it had been two black guys passing they’d probably have paid me a compliment about you.’
‘What would they have said?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
They reached the fifth-floor landing and Jane knocked on the door of number 68, which was in good condition and had a clean brown coir mat in front of it. They waited, but there was no reply. She knocked again and still there was no answer.
‘Looks like there’s no one in.’
‘Put a note through the letterbox with your details on and ask Miss Wilson to contact you,’ Teflon suggested.
‘I should have thought to check the electoral register at Tottenham nick before coming here to see if Emma Wilson is listed as the occupant. Maybe we should knock on the neighbor’s door and ask if they know who lives here.’
Teflon agreed, and Jane knocked on the neighbor’s door. It had some boot marks on the front and a couple of crowbar marks on the door frame by the Yale lock.
‘Who is it?’ a female voice asked in a wheezy North London accent, which was overtaken by a bout of coughing.
‘It’s the police. We just wanted to have a quick word with you about your neighbor—’
‘I don’t know nothing about any of me neighbors, so clear off and leave me alone,’ she demanded.
‘We can show you our police warrant cards if you’re worried about who we are,’ Teflon said.
After a couple of seconds, they heard the Chubb and Yale locks being undone. The door opened a few inches and Jane could see it was on a chain guard. A short, grey-haired white woman in her late fifties, wearing thick-lensed black-framed glasses, peered through the gap with a lit cigarette in her mouth.
‘Let me see them cards close up.’ She coughed again as Teflon held up his warrant card. ‘That ain’t close enough.’
He moved his card closer and she peered at it.
‘How do I know that’s real?’
‘I can assure you it is, Mrs...?’
She coughed again and took a deep breath. ‘You don’t look like police to me.’ She glared at Teflon.
It was obvious to Jane that the woman’s distrust was based on the color of Teflon’s skin. She stepped forward and held her warrant card by the gap in the door.
‘I’m Detective Sergeant Tennison and this is DC Johnson. We were just wondering if a Miss Emma Wilson lives at number sixty-eight.’
‘She might do — why ya wanna know?’
‘She reported a crime and we’re investigating it, but we’re not sure if we have the right address for her,’ Teflon said.
The woman coughed a few times and looked at Jane. ‘He’s a bit grumpy, ain’t he?’
Jane smiled, saying nothing.
‘I don’t know her very well, but Emma lives at 68, and she’s probably at work if she ain’t in.’
‘Do you know when she’s likely to be home?’ Teflon asked.
‘When she gets back from work,’ the woman replied, deadpan.
‘And what time would that be?’
She ignored him and directed her answer to Jane. ‘How should I know...? I don’t watch her comings and goings.’
‘Do you by any chance know where she works?’ Jane asked.
‘I seen her at the Co-op department store in the High Street.’
‘Thank you,’ Jane said.
‘You found out who tried to break into my flat yet?’
The old woman pointed to the crowbar marks on the door frame.
Jane shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about that, but—’
‘Didn’t think so!’
She closed the door smartly and relocked it.
‘I thought the way she treated you was obnoxious,’ Jane remarked as they walked towards the stairwell.
‘She probably thinks it was a black person who tried to break into her flat. She’s not going to trust a black policeman to catch him, I guess. You just have to ignore it.’
‘But you shouldn’t have to ignore it.’
‘It depends on the situation — dealing with a witness and making an arrest are very different. If you want to keep a witness on side, you need to be nice to them whether you like it or not. When you’re nicking someone you control them — whether they like it or not.’ He grinned.
‘Well, at least we found out where Emma works and I can go to the Co-op this afternoon.’
He pointed to the damage on the old woman’s door.
‘Bit strange this flat and most of the others have boot and crowbar marks on them... but there’s not a mark on number sixty-eight.’
Jane hadn’t noticed. ‘Maybe it did and it’s a replacement door.’
‘From the lack of detail in the report the duty sergeant didn’t seem that enthusiastic about what Emma Wilson had to say. This whole thing about her hearing men in a cafe talking about a robbery is beginning to sound like a load of crap to me.’
‘It could be — but the only way I’m going to find out is by speaking to her face to face today, or Murphy will be on my back again,’ said Jane with a sigh.
Chapter Fourteen
Cam dropped Jane off by her car and left with Teflon to get the PCs’ statement. She was looking in her A-Z when she saw a woman pushing a pram along the pavement and asked her if she knew whereabouts in the High Road the Co-op department store was. The woman said it was at the north end, near Tottenham Hotspur’s football ground, which was about a mile away. Unsure what the parking restrictions in the High Road would be, and as it was a reasonably nice day and not too cold, she decided to walk.
The High Road Co-op was a three-storey art deco-style Edwardian department store with a white rendered facade and a prominent square corner tower with Tuscan-style pillars. On the base of the tower there was a square panel with the Co-op logo of intertwined letters: ‘LCS’ for the London Co-operative Society and ‘1930,’ signifying the year it opened.
Jane asked a female employee where the manager’s office was. She said he was on holiday and escorted her to the undermanager’s office on the ground floor. He was in his mid-thirties, tall, dark-haired and slim, with a neatly trimmed black moustache, and wore a dark shiny charcoal-colored two-piece suit, white shirt and black Windsor knot tie. He reminded Jane of someone out of a new wave pop band. He had a pleasant smile, was well spoken and said his name was Jeffery Dobbs. She introduced herself and he shook her hand with a firm grip.
‘Does a Miss Emma Wilson work here?’
‘Emma’s not in trouble, is she?’ he asked.
‘No, she reported an incident to Tottenham CID that I’m investigating.’
‘Is it those kids shouting abuse and throwing food again?’ he asked, frowning.