Vicious Circle

Начало книги

The usual suspects helped out even more this time around. Darren, Meg, George, Gabby, Nick, Bella – thank you so much. Thanks to Ade, too, for introducing me to so many bits and pieces of London I barely knew, as well as for providing so much of this novel’s soundtrack. And thanks always to Lin for being there whenever I needed her, and managing to keep me on the tracks without letting me turn into a train.

The incense stick burned with an orange flame and smelled of Cannabis sativa. In Southern Africa it grows wild: you can walk through fields of it, waist-high, the five-fronded leaves caressing you like little hands. But in London, where I live, it’s mostly encountered in the form of compacted black lumps of soft, flaky resin. A lot of the magic’s gone by then.

Detective Sergeant Gary Coldwood gave me a downright hostile look through the tendrils of the smoke, which curled lazily up through the cavernous interior of the warehouse, the sweet smell dissipating along the aisles of sour dust. The warehouse was on the Edgware Road, on the ragged hinterlands of an old industrial estate: judging from the smashed windows outside and the rows and rows of empty shelves inside, it had been abandoned for a good few years – but Coldwood had invited me to join him and a few uniformed friends for a legally authorised search, so it was a fair bet that appearances were deceptive.

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