The Word on the Street

by John Bayliss

The phrase that inserted itself firmly into my brain was 'there but for the grace.' No more than fifty yards away, a hunched vagrant with grey hair and grey skin was cautiously investigating an accretion of litter in the gutter. I quickly turned my back on him - just by being there, he was spoiling my view of the derelict iron foundry and the concrete tower blocks beyond. Far better to look the other way, I thought; towards the stumps of brickwork that had once been a railway viaduct, now embellished by the graffiti of many hands. All right, so it's not much of a better view; but at least it didn't remind me of how my future might pan out if I didn't get my hands on some cash pretty soon.

It was Monday morning, about eleven o'clock, I think - I'm never entirely sure of the time these days, not since my watch broke and I had to rely upon the church clock to synchronise myself with the sentient world. Somewhere nearby - out of sight, though nowhere near far away enough for comfort - someone with a jackhammer was assisting in the demolition of another redundant building. It doesn't take an Einstein to understand why people wanted to run away from places like this, I thought to myself. The sun isn't shining, though there was no reason to suppose that it should be; but at least it isn't raining either, which makes something of a change.

So I stand there, still with my back to the vagrant, waiting for Oscar to make his assessment. He studied the photograph carefully, then turned it over, as if expecting to find the answer to the mystery of life on the back. It wasn't there, I know, because I'd already looked. 'Well?' I ask, hoping that I did sound too impatient. Oscar's six-foot four-inches tall and is, amongst other things, an amateur boxer. He's not the sort of person you'd want to annoy, I promise you; not unless you're contemplating a particularly messy suicide.

His long fingers passed the photograph back to me, with the air of a conjurer manipulating a playing card. 'No,' he said, gruffly. 'Never seen her before in my life.'

'You seem very sure.'

'Of course I'm sure. If there's one thing I've got an eye for, then it's the face of a woman. If I'd seen her, then I'd remember. Believe me.'

I wanted to believe him, but felt safer marking him down on my mental list as yet another 'doubtful'. For the past week I'd been traipsing around the neighbourhood searching for this one lost girl, and in that time not one single soul remembered seeing her or even admitted to knowing anything about her. I'd had little hope that Oscar would know anything about her either; but I was running out of ideas now and sheer desperation was knocking on the door.

I take another look at the photograph. Yep, it's just the same as the last time I looked. What I see is this frankly unremarkable teenage girl. She's about seventeen, I guess - but then I'm a hopeless judge of age, so maybe she's older, maybe younger, who knows? Her hair's in plaits, and around her neck she's wearing a tie from some fancy boarding school - Ackermann told me the name, not that it meant much to me. She's not smiling and quite frankly she's giving every impression that having her photograph taken is the biggest bore on earth. If I saw her in the street, then I probably wouldn't give her a second glance. That, so it seemed, was the problem: no one else was giving her a second glance, either.

'So the poor little mite has run away from home and you think I've put her out on the street,' Oscar said.

'Something like that. It was just a thought. Sorry.' I put the photograph back in my wallet. I was getting sick of the sight of it myself now.

'Don't apologise, Stringer. It was a good thought. Indeed, if she did turn up in my patch, homeless and in need of money, then I might very well have been tempted. But she didn't, so-' He shrugged. 'If she does turn up, would you like me to let you know?'

'If you could, yes.'

'Where else have you tried?'

'Everywhere you can think of.'

I had, too. Oscar really had been something of a last resort.

'Y'know, Stringer: I bet she's just run off with a boyfriend. Young love, you know the sort of thing.'

I nodded. Oscar was not the first person to make that suggestion.

The really annoying thing about this job is that it should have so easy. At the start I'd been feeling quite smug with myself, flashing her photo to those gangs of bored and morose kids that always seem to loiter on street corners - 'Have you seen this girl around? Her name's Joanne. She's about your age' - all that sort of thing. Track down said teenager's best friend, I thought, and I'll be home and dry. Best friend's bound to be in on the plot and be able (after a few kindly words about doing what's best for one's own health and all that bullshit) to take me straight to fugitive teenager. I then take fugitive teenager back to her increasingly anxious Daddy: case closed. Only: there was no best friend, or none that anyone would admit to knowing about. In fact, no one seemed to know anything about this poor kid at all.

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