The remaining towers stretched in a colonnade ahead of me, probably about a quarter of a mile long and two hundred feet wide. Over my head were the first of the walkways, linking the towers within a rigidly geometrical spiderweb. The floor was paved with blocks of faded rose-pink and yellow, between which weeds grew in stubborn profusion: everything else was poured concrete, forty years old now and well into its mid-life crisis. There was a shopping trolley abandoned at the foot of Cole Block, lying on its side like a dead wildebeest.
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I checked the address that Nicky Heath had given me, scribbled on a torn-out page of Notes for Persons in Police Custody, the Home Office pamphlet they give you these days in place of the old ‘You’ve been nicked, me laddie.
‘You’re forgetting one thing, Gary,’ I pointed out.
‘Which is?’
‘I’m also serious about being innocent. I didn’t take a straight razor to Kenny Seddon’s throat. The last time I wanted to do that, I hadn’t even started to shave.
Coldwood shook his head. ‘So?’
‘So I know Kenny wasn’t writing my name in blood because he wanted to tell you who’d attacked him. You’re still open-minded on that subject, which is more or less where you need to be, but I’m not. It was something else - some other kind of message, and I’ve got to assume it was meant for me. Not “It was Castor what done it” but “Castor, take a look at this.” You understand? I don’t know what it’s about or if it’s really any of my business, but I need to find out before I can let this drop.
‘I’ll tell you everything I think you need to know,’ Coldwood promised, and the stolid emphasis told me exactly how carefully he was choosing his words."
"‘And I’ll do the same for you,’ I assured him, with a straight face.