by Fiona Mozley
“I did bad things,” says Robert.
“I’m sure,’ says Lorenzo. “It goes with the territory, I guess.” He picks up his glass and takes a long drink to give him an excuse not to have to say anything more for at least five seconds.
“I’m not … anymore,” says Robert. “And I never really was, you know, into it. Politically. It was just the people I was mixed up with at the time, when I came down to London. The firms and that.”
Lorenzo nods. “I once voted Liberal Democrat.”
“Eh?”
“Nothing,” says Lorenzo.
“You know Cheryl’s gone missing?”
“Who’s Cheryl?”
“You know, Debbie McGee. She goes round with that magician cunt.”
“Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee?”
“Aye. Cheryl is her real name. She’s gone missing.”
“I didn’t know that. I haven’t seen her for a while, I suppose. I didn’t really think anything of it.”
“Most people wouldn’t.”
At that moment, the barwoman comes to their part of the pub and busies herself arranging chairs and beermats and wiping the sticky parts of tables that have been missed by whoever was meant to be cleaning them the night before.
“I think she’s my daughter.”
“What, her?” Lorenzo beckons to the barwoman.
“No! Fucking hell. Debbie McGee. Cheryl, I mean. Cheryl’s my daughter.”
“Oh my god,” Lorenzo says, simply.
“I think,” says Robert. “I mean, I’m almost completely sure. I know it. I know it, here,” he says, gesturing to the place within his ribcage where his heart might be stored.
The two men meet each other’s eyes then look away. Robert rubs his face with his hands. Lorenzo glances out of the greasy window, notices that the sun’s reappeared.
Lorenzo doesn’t say anything more but looks closely at this strange friend, strange because of the fact of their friendship.
“I never did anything for her,” Robert says. “Not really. I never did anything for her or her mother. I told myself I did. I’d slip them bits of money here and there, sometimes do some odd jobs. I hung around a bit. But I never really did anything. Gloria—Cheryl’s mum—she was a girl I used to go to back in the day. I mean, lots of men did, she was a stunner. But when she got knocked up I knew it was mine. I knew it even if she didn’t. But did I do anything about it? Did I do anything to help? Did I fuck. I cared about her, that Gloria. I mean I cared about her as much as I’ve ever cared about a girl. You’d probably use the word ‘love’ but, well, what does it matter now? And I did fuck all for her. And after she passed away I did fuck all for her daughter. For our daughter. And now she’s fucking gone.”
“I’m sorry,” says Lorenzo.
“There’s no need to be sorry,” says Robert. “And there’s no call for me being sorry. It’s high time I fucking did something about it. Only I haven’t got a clue what I can do. And I’ve just spent the last three months sitting on my arse drinking myself half to death like the fucking useless waste of space I am.”
“Excuse me?” There’s a woman sitting at the table at the other side of the pub. Neither Lorenzo nor Robert saw her arrive nor take up her seat nor purchase the cup of black coffee on the table in front of her.
Lorenzo’s first thought: coffee in a pub? Robert’s first thought: fucking hell, I wouldn’t have sworn so much if I’d known there was a lady present.
“Excuse me?” The woman speaks again.
“Er, yes?” replies Lorenzo.
“Hi, my name is Mona. I’m a photographer.” She pulls out an expensive-looking camera. “Would you mind if I took your photo?” She’s speaking to Robert.
“My photo? Why my photo? He’s the star!” Robert points to Lorenzo who waves away his friend’s finger, embarrassed. “He’s a big-time actor, you know. He was in that show.”
“Stop, Rab.”
The photographer speaks again to Robert. “I just couldn’t help overhearing part of your conversation,” she said. “Can I take your photo? You know, of the tattoo.”
Robert stops smiling. “Oh, right. Well, that wasn’t the main point of the conversation. I’m not involved with any of that anymore. I had the tattoo removed. I don’t like to talk about it.”
The photographer, Mona, has already lifted the camera to her face and is taking pictures. The shutter clicks several times.
“No,” Robert insists. “I don’t want people to know about that.” There’s dismay in his voice and across his face. At least, Lorenzo knows it to be dismay. Another person might read it as anger. Robert has the sort of face that seems to project every emotion as a kind of anger.
Mona the photographer stops clicking. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize. No problem, I’ll just delete those. It just sounded like an interesting story, that’s all. And you have such a fascinating face.” She turns the camera over in her hands and presses some buttons on the back. Lorenzo and Robert hear a beeping sound and assume the photos have been deleted.
Robert says, “That’s okay, love. No harm done.”
Mona leaves the pub. Her coffee remains on the table, undrunk.
Lorenzo tells Robert he’s going outside for a smoke, even though Lorenzo quit years ago and Robert probably knows this. Robert nods, and tells him he’ll have another round waiting when he gets back. Lorenzo picks up his coat and puts it on. He swings open the door, closes it behind him and stands just beyond the threshold. Through the window he can see Robert moving towards the bar. He turns to face the street. Soho is busy but not unbearably so. Weekday business is different from weekend business. Pedestrians have clear destinations. They walk quickly in straight lines. Bikes and motor vehicles likewise move with purpose.
Lorenzo has known Robert all his life. He has never asked him much about his past, thinking it better to remain ignorant. His mum and aunts sometimes made comments about their neighbor, but must have thought he was safe enough latterly, otherwise they wouldn’t have let Lorenzo hang around with him. He guessed he was a bit dodgy and had done shady things. He knew he’d been to prison, years ago. But this.
Lorenzo has always given a certain type of man the benefit of the doubt. It is a type of man that, he now realizes, he is fundamentally terrified of, and always has been. And yet it is also a type of man that he finds himself bending over backwards to make excuses for.
Perhaps he is like that man in the Herzog film who went to live with grizzly bears in the Alaskan wilderness for several months each year, believing them to be good-natured, amicable, tame, or thinking they loved him enough to set aside their nature. He thought he was special to them; that they had a unique bond. But then, one day, they ate him.
Lorenzo looks back into the pub. Robert is sitting back down at the table, with a pint for himself and another for Lorenzo. Lorenzo turns away and heads down the street.
Nothing Like Harry Potter
The man they call Paul Daniels is sitting in the dark cellar with his back against the wall. He is slightly apart from the rest of the group. Shadows obscure his features, his expression and the direction of his gaze. If the others could see him clearly, or if they cared to look, they would see that he is scowling with intent, towards the Archbishop. The Archbishop is in his usual place—a chair, a throne, almost, constructed from wooden pallets set with ragged blankets and stained cushions. The Archbishop is asleep, and the crown on his head is aslant but firmly in position, as if it has been shoved down over his brow, down to his ears, with two forceful hands.
The Archbishop snores loudly as he snoozes. His leathery lips vibrate like a horse’s with each exhalation, and a mist of saliva falls onto the front of his dressing gown. Occasionally he twitches in response to an enervating dream and, more rarely, he calls out, sometimes something childish, sometimes nonsensical, sometimes obscene.
To those of the group sitting far from Paul Daniels, Paul Daniels would seem silent, static, but if any were to get any closer the
y would detect a low, almost but not quite imperceptible, muttering. He watches the Archbishop sleep, and he mutters to himself. The subject of Paul Daniels’s mutterings are the sleeping prelate and the crown upon his head.
When the crown was found, it was encrusted with dirt and, in places, rusted. It is now a little less dirty, having been rinsed in a bucket and worn, but it is far from immaculate.
Paul Daniels feels that if the crown were in his possession it would now be gleaming. He would take care of it properly, he would wear it properly and he would take it down to the jewelers in Piccadilly Arcade and obtain a correct valuation for it.
No. Not the poxy jewelry shop. Perhaps it would be better to take it to an antiquarian on the streets of Bloomsbury near the big museum. But they might be rascals too. More likely than not they are rascals. They wouldn’t give him a fair valuation. They would underestimate the value in the hope of driving the price down. They would want to buy it from him for well below what it was worth. They would take one look at him and think they could pull a fast one. They’d try and take it off him for a fraction of its real worth and sell it on at auction to some Russian oligarch or African warlord or Arab prince and they’d make millions—billions, probably—and Paul Daniels would never see any of it.
Bugger the antiquarians. He’ll take it directly to the museum. They will want it. They have all sorts in there. He’d been in once, years ago. They had statues and paintings and jewels and tombs and relics and swords and suits of armor. He especially liked the swords and suits of armor and imagined himself in them, riding off into battle and cutting off people’s heads.
He would take the crown to the museum and they’d be beside themselves. They’d fall about each other singing its praises and singing his praises for being the clever person who found it. And they would pay him millions—maybe billions—of pounds for it, and they would lock it up in a glass cabinet in pride of place.
Except, no. Something wasn’t right about that. The man they call Paul Daniels wasn’t sure he’d ever heard of a museum paying someone—anyone—billions of pounds for something.
And besides, if he went down those sorts of official channels, who was to say there wouldn’t be inconvenient legal obstacles? Who was to say there wouldn’t be some busybody old bag asking rude questions about where he found the crown, and when, and then there might be even more prying questions about who he was with and who owned the land where he found it. As far as Paul Daniels is concerned: Finders Keepers.
Paul Daniels will take it to someone in the know who can get it out of the country directly, to an Arab prince or African warlord or Russian oligarch or South American kingpin. Or better still, he’ll do it himself. He’ll scout for suitable buyers. All he needs to do now is take possession of the actual crown, but it is unfortunately still very firmly planted on another man’s head. The Archbishop has taken to wearing the crown wherever he goes, day or night.
“Damn you, Archbishop! God damn you!”
Paul Daniels is on his feet, shouting. He points a finger at the old man. “God damn you all the way to hell!”
The old man wakes with a start. He sees Paul Daniels standing over him, and instinctively raises a hand to the crown. Then he shows Paul Daniels his teeth and lets out a low growl.
Escalation is prevented by a knock at the door. Nobody ever knocks at the door. Either people live here, so they just come straight in, or they don’t have any reason or inclination to come here at all. Either way, there’s no knocking.
Someone gets up and climbs on a chair so they can peer through the grate between the cellar and the pavement. They look back to the Archbishop, stricken. “Police.”
“Fuck that,” says Paul Daniels. He collects his scant belongings and hurries away into the next room, or rather behind the old theatrical curtain that has been hung to divide the space into rooms.
The Archbishop slowly rises, the crown still on his head. He goes to the ladder that leads up to the hatch they call a door, opens it, and rises to the pavement, where he comes face to face with two policewomen.
They are looking for the man who has hidden himself behind the curtain.
“He’s not slept here for weeks,” the Archbishop offers. “If he comes back I’ll tell him you called.”
“It’s about the disappearance of Cheryl Lavery.”
“Yes, yes, we all know about that. That’s why he’s been away. Don’t you lot know anything?”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s gone searching for her, hasn’t he?”
“With any success?”
The Archbishop shrugs cartoonishly.
“According to our records, the absence was reported by a Richard Scarcroft who gave this as his address. Is he here?”
“Never heard of the man.”
As Policewoman Rose and Policewoman Granger leave the building they’re accosted by a man of medium build with long hair and a shaggy beard.
He introduces himself as Richard Scarcroft, then asks, “Is it about the woman? The Debbie McGee woman?”
“Cheryl Lavery. That’s right.”
“It’s taken you long enough. She’s been missing for months.”
“Additional resources have been allocated to the case. Can we ask you a few questions?”
“Yeah, but not here. Any excuse to get out of this dump.”
They take him to a police station, show him into an interview room and bring him some water and a cup of tea.
“I hardly knew her, to be honest with you. I try to keep myself to myself at that place. I’m only there because I’ve got no choice. They’re all nutters and follow that Archbishop round like he’s some sort of cult leader. And that Paul Daniels is the worst of the lot. Anyway, when his bird went missing nobody reported it or nothing, so I thought I would, even though I don’t think I ever spoke to her. It’s not right though, is it? Just because she’s a smackhead doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, does it? The poor girl’s had nobody to look out for her. Her fella’s gone mental since she’s been gone but hasn’t done nothing proper. He’s just gone round shouting blue murder. You got a cigarette?”
“I’m afraid you can’t smoke in here.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes, Mr. Scarcroft, I’m sorry. Tell me, did you notice anything suspicious in the days or weeks leading up to her disappearance? Did you see her speaking to anyone new? Did she have any visitors?”
“Like I say, I didn’t know her. I honestly can’t recall ever speaking to her. But in terms of contact with weirdos, well, they don’t come much weirder than that magician bloke. He’s a proper fruit loop. And well, that’s who she spent all her time with, isn’t it? If something bad has happened to her, he’s your man. Perhaps he was short on change. Honestly, that geezer would sell his own grandmother, let alone his bird.”
“Sell her how?”
“You know what I mean. It’s Soho, for Christ’s sake.”
“You mean Paul Daniels, sorry, Kevin Metcalfe, was her pimp?”
“Probably. There was blokes coming round all the time.”
“Tell me, of these men who were coming round, were there any who were particularly regular? Or were there any who stood out for any reason?”
“Not really,” he says. “Although, hmm, let me think …”
He gulps the last of the brown liquid, allows that which spills at the sides of his mouth to drip down his chin and through his beard. “Got any more tea? And some biscuits?”
They bring more tea and a tin of biscuits. He selects a couple of jammy dodgers and a custard cream and places them on the table in a pile next to his mug.
“There was only one that would come regular enough, like. And I remember him because he seemed like a decent bloke—not totally barking anyway—and he clearly had a fixed address and everything so I remember him because I always thought it was weird that he was coming to see her, know what I mean? She was proper manky. Maybe some fellas are into that. Takes all sorts.”
&nbs
p; “Do you remember his name?”
“Nope. Never knew it. Like I said, I share a cellar with that lot but I don’t stop to chat any more than I can help.”
“I understand. But do you remember what he looked like? Have you any idea where we might find him?”
“Try the pub around the corner. The Aphra Behn. Used to see him in there a lot. As for appearance: I don’t know. Mid-sixties. Big bloke, but strong, you know, not fat. He just looks like he could handle himself. No hair. And he had a weird scar on his forehead. Like Harry Potter. Only, nothing like Harry Potter.”
A short while later, two police officers turn up at the Aphra Behn. They find a man who fits the description sitting at the bar. It’s easy to convince him he needs to come to the police station. It’s as if part of him was expecting them to arrive. On the way out the door, he begins to confess.
“It’s my fault, it’s my fault,” he wails. Once inside the police station, his misery turns to anger. “It’s my fault, it’s my fault,” he yells, though what is his fault he won”t say. He overturns a table and is wrestled to the ground by three constables, then arrested, and put into a cell to sober up.
Jackie does background research into the man they’ve picked up. It’s easy enough to extract a name. Robert Kerr. Aggravated Assault. Grievous Bodily Harm. Robbery. Five years in Wormwood Scrubs. Nothing on his record since he’d been out of prison, and that was thirty years ago, but there’s enough to work with.
Paper Thin
Agatha doesn’t know why she agrees to meet her lawyer in the tepid dregs of British imperial power. Tobias has invited her to his club, which is an organization for men of his class. He chooses these locations to humiliate her; in all other respects he is required to be subservient to the point of obsequious.
Agatha considers Tobias Elton to be an idiot and often tells him so, but there’s nobody else who knows so much about her holdings, or who’s so personally invested in her interests. Except Roster.
Donald Howard’s fortune was placed in trust for Agatha until her twenty-first birthday. The trust was administered by his lawyer, Tobias Elton, and it was through the efforts of Tobias Elton that the fortune remained intact, despite the legal and sub-legal activities of three of Agatha’s sisters; those who were the product of his second, and lengthiest marriage, and who were already grown up by the time he died.