Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [113]
* * *
‘Everything’s changed. I used to live around here, but I hardly recognize it.’
‘Maybe it looks different at night.’
‘No. I know how it looks at night. I spent most of my time wandering around here after dark.’
‘I’ll bet you did,’ said Creed.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘I imagine you were a wild child.’
‘There used to be a big hotel there, a Hilton I think. It’s gone now.’ Justine peered through the windscreen at the dark London streets. ‘The park’s still here, anyway. The flowers were always beautiful in there in the spring. I took a bath in the fountain once with some friends. Swimming in the fountain by moonlight.’
‘Like I said, wild child. Where are we now?’
‘Lancaster Gate, heading for Notting Hill.’
‘Sounds kind of sinister and old‐fashioned. I like it.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up. It’s mostly full of Japanese tourists. Or at least, it always used to be. I lived in a squat in Ladbroke Grove with twelve other people and a dog. They were all complete drop‐outs without a scrap of education but they could all beg for money in fluent Japanese.’
‘Including the dog?’
Justine rubbed her mouth and Creed realized she was hiding a smile. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The dog never could quite master the consonants.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘Can you hang a left here?’
Creed turned off the main road and into a side‐street full of brightly lit shops with hand‐lettered signs in Arabic in their windows. ‘Left again,’ said Justine, and they were suddenly in a broad avenue flanked with tall white Edwardian buildings.
‘A lot of money in this neighbourhood,’ said Creed. ‘What are these places? Rich people’s homes?’
‘That and embassies, hotels, knocking‐shops.’
‘Knocking what?’
‘Brothels,’ said Justine. ‘Take a right here.’ They took another turn and the street became seedier, more rundown. The same antique white buildings stood on either side of the road but the windows were boarded up, graffiti wrapped around the pillars by the doom and paint was peeling off the walls in big mouldering patches.
‘Nice.’ said Creed. They passed a whole city block where the decaying old buildings vanished and were replaced by a row of pristine modern structures. ‘What happened here? It looks like the place was bombed and rebuilt.’
‘Something like that. Can we stop along here, please?’
Creed pulled over by the side of a vacant lot. An empty piece of land on a street corner big enough to accommodate a fair‐sized building. He thought it was weird to find a patch of waste ground in a high‐density housing area like London.
As Creed got out of the car he peered into the darkness and saw that it wasn’t completely empty. In the middle of the long grass in the lot there was a block of concrete with some kind of statue on top of it.
Justine got out of the car and stared across at the statue but she made no move to go any closer.
‘Is this a nostalgic moment for you?’ said Creed. He didn’t look at Justine. He was keeping an eye on the street, checking it out. There was the occasional small group of pedestrians wandering past. They were mostly young, mostly male, and when they saw the Porsche they detoured around it at a healthy distance, obviously recognizing it as an unmarked police car. Creed got the impression that these weren’t model citizens.
‘There used to be a pub here,’ said Justine. ‘It was called The Moonchild.’
‘They told us a bit about that at our briefing. They had a big riot or something, huh?’
Justine ignored the question. ‘It used to be my local when I lived around here.’
‘You used to go there to score.’
Justine stared at him. ‘That’s right.’
‘From Mrs Woodcott.’
‘Right.’
‘What’s that statue? A memorial for the pub?’
‘No,’ said Justine. ‘For the people who died in it.’
Creed stepped away from the car and walked into the vacant lot. Long grass swiped at his legs as he walked towards the statue. It was an abstract shape made of metal bars, perched on a concrete