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where I can.’
    Jess watched him as he sucked hard on the cigarette then handed her the lighter again.
    ‘They’ll kill you, you know,’ she told him. ‘That’s what everyone tells me.’
    ‘At least they’re quiet,’ Hadley offered. He nodded in the direction of the Crystal Tower. ‘So what are you doing here?’
    ‘I got a call to say there’d been another accident in there,’ she told him, gesturing towards the tower. ‘I came down to check.’
    ‘Who told you, Spike?’
    She nodded.
    ‘Fucking hell, he must be the richest man in London,’ Hadley grunted. ‘Every newspaper and TV station around pays him for information.’
    ‘He’s reliable.’
    ‘He should be after all these years. It’s a wonder he’s not deaf by now listening to those police and emergency broadcasts every night of the fucking week.’
    ‘It was you who put me on to him in the first place.’
    Hadley raised his eyebrows.
    ‘Do you want to get a drink and we’ll have a chat about what’s going on in there?’ He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘There’s a place just up the road we can go.’
    ‘You don’t drink any more,’ Jess reminded him.
    ‘Come on.’
    Jess hesitated.
    ‘Are you coming?’ Hadley enquired.
    ‘I should get home,’ she insisted.
    He was already walking slowly up the road. Jess waited a moment longer then followed, hurrying along until she was walking next to him.
    ‘I’ll get them in,’ Hadley told her sucking on his cigarette.
    Jess nodded and walked on.

NINE
     
    Alex Hadley was approaching his fifty-third birthday but looked older. He was a thick set man with short greying hair and a thin face that made him look malnourished. There were bags beneath his eyes but the pupils themselves still carried a spark that seemed to have deserted the rest of his frame.
    He had the longest fingers Jess had ever seen and those fingers (pianist’s fingers Hadley liked to call them) were now clasped around a mug of tea that he was staring into as if the answers to all of life’s great mysteries lay at the bottom.
    The café where they sat smelled of strong coffee and fried food. There were two large metal urns perched on the counter one filled with tea the other with coffee. Above these hovered a veil of thick steam that hung there like some kind of toxic cloud over a recent nuclear accident. On the wall above was a chalk board menu with an array of fare on it guaranteed to give any health food fan a heart attack. Fried bacon, fried eggs, fried sausages, fried bread. Everything was fried it seemed. Jess was glad she hadn’t asked for cake to go with her tea in case that was fried too. There were pieces of cake rotating slowly in a cabinet in one corner of the café none of them looking very fresh. This place conceded nothing to modern fads where eating was concerned. There was no de-caffeinated coffee available. No vegetarian option. Some places offered a healthy option on their menu. The healthy option as far this café was concerned simply involved eating elsewhere. This eatery was twenty years behind the times Jess thought but that was probably why Hadley liked it because so was he.
    She’d known him for more than ten years, ever since she first joined the paper. He’d been one of the top dogs then. An important man within the paper itself and also within the industry but not any more. He’d had his day and looking at him now across the scratched and scored Formica tabletop Jess could see every disappointment and setback was etched into his features. It wasn’t pleasant to see and even less so because she remembered him for what he’d been. She didn’t like what he’d become. She felt sorry for him but she realised how much Hadley would have hated that reaction if he’d known. He needed a break not her pity.
    ‘You really know how to show a girl a good time,’ Jess said, smiling and motioning around the café.
    ‘My speciality,’ he said, sipping at his tea.
    ‘You know that asking a woman