Page 104 of Crave

I went straight to my room, crawled into bed with a bottle of wine and my laptop. Never a good mix, but it was routine now. Because that’s where I reread case files, scanning for any trace of him. Razor. Richie. Richard. Anything that might prove he existed somewhere in the system. But there wasn’t anything. He’d wiped his line clean. Like I’d told him to.

Erased himself.

From there and from my life.

I drifted my gaze to the open window. The same one he’d climbed out of.

It hadn’t been touched since.

Sighing, I took a long swallow from the bottle and set it down beside me. Then, because I couldn’t help myself, because I never can, I opened a new tab. Tried a new search term. One that made me heart thud painfully.

Levi. Drug death. Hackney. Lennon.

I hit search.

The results loaded slowly, the spinning wheel mocking my impatience. Then most of it was noise. Police reports behind paywalls, drug forums full of speculation, dated Hackney news about raids and overdoses. Then one headline stopped me.

Man, 20, found dead in suspected overdose. Police link death to contaminated batch circulating in East London.

The name hit like a punch.

Levi Foster.

I clicked. The article was short. Almost careless. Another casualty in a line of many. The price of being poor. Local man, twenty, pronounced dead at the scene. Survived by older brother, Lennon Foster. There were a few photos. One of him, Levi, grinning for the camera, tongue out, peace sign raised, tight locs glinting under summer light. Then another: two boys, maybe sixteen. Arms slung around each other. One grinning wide, the other half-turned, shy, caught mid-laugh. Levi. The one who hadn’t made it.

I stared for a long time, unable to look away from that smile. The one that had once meant something to Razor. To Richie.

Then something else drew my eye.

The background.

A café sign, sun-faded but clear enough: Smokey Joe’s Café, Hackney High Street.

I leant back, biting my lip. The odds of it being the same place I’d heard Razor mention on the phone were slim to none. And even if it was, considering going there to scope it out was stupid. Reckless. Obsessive. Bordering on insane.

But I knew I would.

I had to know if he was still alive.

That was all.

I didn’t sleep.

* * * *

By dawn, I was up. Coat on, phone and wallet shoved into my pocket, and as London began to stir, I left Clerkenwell behind. I walked to Farringdon, caught the Overground east. The carriage smelt of metal and rain, of people heading to early shifts and last trains home. I’d tried to look the café up, but it wasn’t the sort of place that had a website or took bookings. It was a proper greasy spoon. Plastic menus. Formica tables. Tea served so strong it could strip paint. But I’d pieced together enough from social media posts to know roughly where it sat. Between a bookies and a Londis. Maybe a barber next door.

Hackney was a split creature, though.

One side gleamed. Hackney Wick had its warehouses turned art studios, canal side cafés, brunch spots with prices making even me arch a brow. The other side was older. Traditional. Tower blocks. Social housing estates. The remnants of East London before the Olympics had given it a facelift.

It looked different in daylight.

The last few times I’d been here, it had been at night where the streetlights hid the cracks, neon softening the edges. But in the cold morning light, Hackney didn’t pretend. It was all brick and concrete, corner shops opening, pigeons fighting over chips on the pavement. Real life waking up, unfiltered.

Eventually, I found the place. Its faded sign half-obscured by scaffolding where the market was waking up. Stalls creaked open, metal poles clanging, voices carrying through the cold air. I stood across the road for a while, coat zipped, hood up, watching the door open and close as people came and went.

I hadn’t come all this way to stare.