The Wannabes

by F. R. Jameson

  But surely that policeman wasn’t really suspicious. Surely that was just his imagination. That dreadful dream was making him feel guilty, making him act like he had something to hide. But he didn’t have anything to hide, and there was nothing that made him stand out from any other passer-by. There were rubber-neckers everywhere, people who strayed a little too close to any crime scene they came across. He was just another one of them, another snoop, another busy-body, another nosy-parker. He was not someone with any connection to the house, he was not someone who knew the deceased. He was not someone who’d had a dream.

  He straightened his shoulders then started to walk back down the street. This time he was on the opposite side to the house, this time he wasn’t even going to look at it. He was going to keep his gaze forward, his pace purposeful – appearing to be someone of consequence, who had a place to go, who had to get there quickly.

  Unfortunately, the peripheral view was just too difficult to resist – even though he knew he shouldn’t, even though he knew it was best to look ahead, even though he knew a glimpse of it would squeeze the air out of him in horror.

  He walked straight, swinging his arms at his side – yet without turning his head he was able to look at the house, he was able to glimpse that policeman staring at him again. He tried to focus, to observe only what was ahead, keeping his gaze straight.

  Then, as he approached the house – and without him making any conscious decision to do so – he turned his head.

  That bobby was watching him. And next to him – also watching – was an older man in an expensive tailored suit; late forties, grey-haired, a serious face of authority on top of a strong neck and shoulders. Clay had seen enough TV series to recognise a Detective Inspector when he saw one.

  Clay looked at them and they looked at him. Their stare was hard, their pallor grey, their expression stern. The constable whispered something to his superior, who nodded once and stared even harder than Clay.

  Clay didn’t know how he appeared to them. His mouth was open, his eyes were wide and there was a tremor to his gait. He imagined he looked like a man who knew something, a man it would be useful for the police to speak to, a man who might help with their enquires. His stomach churned again and he gasped as he wrenched his face away, focusing on the road ahead. He marched down the hill with long, deliberate strides.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Clay staggered up to Ye Olde Burnt Parchment’s air-conditioned bar and ordered himself a double whisky. He bolted it in front of the barmaid and then ordered a pint.

  As the warm liquor soothed him, he gazed around. In the days he’d visited with Raymond it had been a nice old rustic place, dark wood and shaded little corners. Now it had been taken over by a chain, and although it had the same layout, the décor and feel had been beaten into a different shape. The windows were clean and the sills uncluttered, letting in plenty of light. The light reflected against the bright shiny wood of the factory-produced chairs and tables and it was all lit up in a glory that was strangely anonymous. What had once been a cosy pub for a cold winter’s evening, laden with character and history, was now just any booze-serving pile of bricks on any street corner in any town in the land.

  He took a seat next to one of the new fruit machines and tried to explain it all to himself.

  Something dreadful had happened to Raymond last night and he’d dreamt that something dreadful had happened to Raymond last night. But what did that mean?

  He just didn’t know.

  There was nothing he could do, he thought. He couldn’t go to the police, as what would he tell them? That the only reason he’d shown up today was to make sure Raymond hadn’t been brutally murdered? He’d never go back to Belinda if he told them that, he’d never go anywhere beyond the picturesque confines of a four by six cell. But nor could he sit idle.

  He had these gruesome images in his head. If he closed his eyes, he could see the stunned and injured face of his friend Raymond. So, surely somewhere in there, there had to be the face of the person who actually did it. If he saw what happened – for whatever terrible, uncanny reason – then somewhere in his head must be the image of the culprit. He surely must be able to find out who the killer was. All he had to do was close his eyes and concentrate, no matter how horrible that proved to be.

  He took a gulp of his pint and was sure that he heard his heart beat a little softer – it didn’t calm, it didn’t relax, but it no longer reverberated around his skull. His eyes stayed open though; he couldn’t bear to do it yet.

  Slowly, he stared around the pub and decided it was wrong in every aspect. The pub he remembered was welcoming, friendly, and personable – this was that pub’s ungrateful, tearaway, bastard son. It was clearly created on the same genetic code, it had inherited a lot from its old man – but everything that was good in the original was bad here. It was too shiny, too bright, the kind of pub you saw in TV adverts and sitcoms – not a place you’d actually want to visit and have a drink.

  His gaze moved along the polished floor, the varnished tables and the glossy ‘historical’ posters. He listened to the beat of the latest number one pop hit and the whirr of fruit machines being played. He glanced over to the opposite corner and felt moisture in his eyes. That was where Raymond liked to sit. Clay thought back to one occasion when Raymond had managed to get the group down here – it was a pub quiz night. Something incredibly funny had been said and they’d all laughed uproariously and Raymond spat out his beer right across the table, while everyone screamed a repulsed laugh. Back then the corner had been an alcove, where you sat if you wanted to look like kings. Now it was just a corner. Clay gazed at it. All he saw was an absence.

  “Bloody hell!” said the man at the fruit machine next to him. Clay looked up. The man had stopped playing and stood mouth agape and stunned in front of him. Clay knew the voice but couldn’t grasp who he was straight away. The man looked like someone he used to know, but was a younger, thinner, more handsome version. It was as if everything in that pub was rejuvenated, as if in its tackiness and ‘youthful’ splendour it held the secret of eternal life.

  “Where the fuck have you come from?”

  “Toby? Toby Coops!” It was undeniably his old friend, looking slimmer and healthier. It was actually unfair to compare him with the pub, as he’d changed for the better. He was an improved, spruced up, twenty-first century version of the same man – as opposed to the pub whose design had come by way of McDonald’s. Toby stood with his drink held securely next to his chest, just the way Clay remembered him. He wore an expression of total shock, even his body leaning back in surprise. He’d always been this way; he didn’t so much wear his heart on his sleeve as have it projected on a cinema-scope screen that followed him about. Clay was so happy to see him that he found a smile.

  “Hullo,” croaked Clay.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Toby. “Where the fuck have you been?”

  “Have a seat,” said Clay. He pushed a stool with his foot and Toby dropped himself onto it and placed his glass on the table.

  “Bloody Hell Man!” said Toby. “It’s been – what? – two fucking years! Where the Hell have you been? Where’d you disappear to? Christ Almighty! You made the Scarlet Pimpernel look like a stalker.”

  Clay shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve been nowhere in particular, nowhere exciting. To be honest, I’ve just been hanging out.”

  “Hanging out?”

  “Yeah.”

  “For two fucking years?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “You’ve no stories, no anecdotage, nothing to say about your twenty-four months away?”

  “They’ve just been a pretty uneventful twenty-four months.”

  Toby gave him a stare in a minor key of disgust. “Well, to be honest I’m amazed you could tear yourself back. What brings you back anyway?”

  “Today I came to see Raymond.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah, ah.”

  “Terrible busine
ss,” said Toby.

  “Do you know what happened?”

  “Apparently some bastard beat him to death in his kitchen then set fire to it.” Toby shook his head. “I was coming round to pick something up and there’s this mournful looking police officer in front of me. Awful, awful. Well, he took a statement but there was nothing I could tell him. I don’t know who killed him, I don’t even know who might want to kill him – it’s just an appalling thing.”

  Clay closed his eyes and took a long draw of beer to stop himself shaking. It had all happened in the kitchen, just as in the dream. He opened his eyes swiftly, replacing Raymond Jones’s tortured image with Toby Coops’s curious stare.

  “What about you?” asked Toby. “I didn’t realise Raymond had any way of getting hold of you – in fact, he swore categorically that he didn’t. What are you doing here?”

  He managed to speak without stuttering. “I just came by on the off-chance,” he said with a calmness that surprised him. “I don’t know where anyone lives any more – I didn’t know if you’d still be in the same place – but he made such a fuss of buying that house, I couldn’t imagine he’d have moved.” He took another deep gulp of his drink; he’d nearly finished it.

  “So what brings you back to London?”

  “I’m staying with Belinda.”

  “What? You’re back with her? Oh that’s bad news, man, bad news.”

  “She called me and I came down.”

  “Oh, so she knew where you were then, did she? While the rest of us were baffled as to what the hell had happened to you, while we actually considered employing a real-life private detective to find you – you were swapping calls and text messages with that bitch Belinda, were you?”

  “I don’t know how she got hold of me.” He tried not to sound too defensive. “I don’t recall giving her my number.”

  “But when she called, you came running back anyway? Dear God, man! If you wanted to visit London, you could have stayed with me, I wouldn’t have minded. It would have been good to see you after all this time, although I might have appreciated a few more travel stories and tales of misadventure. Tell me – is she still living with those other two?”

  Clay finished his drink and nodded.

  “Belinda, Abigail and Judy. Oh, that’s bad, man – that whole bitchy actress thing in triplicate. It was terrible enough sitting in pubs with them, listening to them drone on and on about themselves and how talented they were and how successful they were going to be and how all the men loved them, but living with them? Having all that without a break? That’s madness, man. Total fucking madness.” He took a gulp of his drink. “What are you doing? You got crucified by her the last time around, why are you putting yourself through it again?”

  “I like her.”

  “You like her?” Toby laughed. “No you don’t. She’s a thick, selfish, nasty little bitch. And that’s not me being unpleasant, that’s me quoting you being unpleasant – which gives these views an even greater weight in this court of public opinion.”

  “I missed her then. Okay, I won’t pretend everything was always wonderful, that we were an advert for Hallmark cards come Valentine’s day – but I missed her, I was glad to see her again.”

  “You’re smitten aren’t you? Go on, admit it. You’re all soft and gooey-eyed. You’re like a piece of twine that’s been double-knotted around her finger.”

  “I think I’m only going to stay with her a couple of days.”

  “Then what?”

  Clay shrugged.

  “And then I guess you’ll just disappear into the ether again, ay?” said Toby. “Oh well, I better make the most of you while you’re here. Do you want another drink?”

  “Yes, please. I think we should raise a glass to Raymond.”

  “Yeah. That’s the very fucking minimum we can do.”

  Toby – or Tobias as his parents had christened him – was the member of their group Clay felt closest to. They were the two not aiming for the stratosphere, who were there just to relax in good company – not so they could spin out their wild future plans and have their egos pampered. At the end of the night he’d go home with Belinda, but during the evening he’d spend more time chatting with Toby.

  The others would talk up their talents and the success they were going to achieve and the awards they were bound to win, while he and Toby drank and observed them. Some nights, it was amazing. There’d be great competition as they all tried to top each other in future accomplishment. Toby always watched it with a barely concealed mixture of disgust and sneering, but Clay was more open to it. As one of those men who just drifted along, he found it fun to see such ambition, to have such entertaining futures laid out in front of him. Even when he realised – as Toby had realised on his first day of acquaintance with them – that this was largely sound and nonsense, that these people weren’t really going anywhere special, he did still love to watch their wide-eyed self-belief.

  Toby returned to the table with two pints of bitter.

  “Would you like to do it?” he asked.

  “No, I think it’s better if you do,” said Clay.

  They clinked glasses together.

  “Okay,” said Toby. “Fortunately, I’m not particularly practised at this kind of thing, so I don’t know how good I’ll be – but – to Raymond. A bit of a wanker at times, but one of the best friends I had.”

  “I’m sorry, Raymond,” said Clay.

  “Yeah, me too,” said Toby.

  Glasses clinked again.

  “So what happened to everybody?” asked Clay. “I hear the group just fell apart.”

  “Well, yes, it went down as if Samson had pushed away the supporting wall. It collapsed into bitterness, recrimination and general unpleasantness all round.”

  “But what happened?”

  “You know what they were like, mindlessly competitive. Well, when one of them became successful – and really successful, as opposed to just saying ‘Ooh, ooh, this is it, I’m going to be successful next week’ – then the jealousy took over and the bitching began.”

  “Who became successful?”

  “Those three cows really haven’t told you, have they? Yes, I don’t imagine they would. They’re probably trying to block it from their minds like we all do with unpleasant realities. Raymond became successful. He finally got a book published that rang the tune at the checkouts.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what tore everything apart. The fact that he suddenly had achievement and wealth, and then clearly decided he wasn’t going to hang around with a bunch of losers taking the express train to nowhere. He disappeared from that ‘magic’ circle, only keeping in touch with certain people – and those certain people were blamed by the others for causing the schism and keeping them away from the vicarious success that should have been theirs. Then the people who were being shunned by him turned on each other and everyone’s Christmas card lists got a lot shorter.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Raymond,” said Clay. “He wasn’t a man who just shunned people.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so either, but the fact is that he did. Anyway, it all got particularly messy. You know the way they were – no-one really cared for or liked each other. It ended up as – well, imagine you got an industrial sized barrel and in it you put six starving pigs and made them fight each other for supremacy – by the end that’s what it looked like.”

  “Incredible,” said Clay. “What was the book?”

  Toby chuckled a little grimly. “Well, I’m afraid to say I don’t really know. I was one of the lucky ones he kept in touch with, but he’d never tell me what this masterpiece was called. I know he stopped writing the romans-à-clef, that he either got bored with it, or grew out of it, or realised that – really, frankly, let’s be honest here – his life wasn’t very interesting and the fictionalised versions were not improving that. I know the book was horror and that he published it under a pseudonym – but the title of the book and the nom de pl
ume I have been unable to ascertain. I have once or twice stood in front of the horror shelves in Waterstones and scanned along, hoping to recognise his oeuvre straight away – but no luck. Have you ever stood and stared at row after row of horror fiction?”

  Clay shook his head.

  “It’s upsetting to the stomach, I can assure you.” Toby’s nose and lips twisted a little sourly. “Garish covers, with red as a dominant theme, of course, and ample helpings of cleavage and the pale flesh of women. I’d imagine if you’re a thirteen year old with a hard-on that never goes away, visiting the horror section is like taking some trip to your own personal nirvana – but for me...” he crinkled his face; “... well, I found it most unpleasant.”

  “So he never told you what it was?”

  “He was strangely cagey about the whole thing. I don’t know why. His other half was much the same. They both got skittish and never seemed to want to mention it. Maybe they were both ashamed that he’d written such a book.”

  “Where was she last night? Was she at the house?”

  Toby shook his head. “Lizzie left him.”

  Another flashback to the dream – Raymond had told him that, or had he? Clay couldn’t quite remember; it seemed blurred now. Even his memory of Raymond’s face was becoming indistinct. He blinked quickly and took a deep gulp of bitter. It mingled with the petrified taste in his mouth.

  “Why’d she leave him?”

  “Again, I’ve no real idea. I’m sorry. I’m being less than helpful here, aren’t I? Here I am, the one who stayed behind through most of these events and happenings, and I don’t know anything. Oh well, the anecdotes from your time away were hardly informative either.” He tried to smile. “I don’t know why, maybe she really didn’t like that book, maybe she got bored with him, maybe she was getting rammed senseless by Ernie the fastest milkman in the East – I really can’t say.”

  “So tell me, who did he fall out with?”

  “Well, he wouldn’t chat to your lovely actress friends for a start. That’s probably why they didn’t grandly toast his success to you. He didn’t speak to Nick Turnkey – although I can’t really chastise him for that one. He did speak to Bunny, although it was always at an arm and a half’s length, and he made a definite point never to speak to Charles West. I don’t know what happened with any of them and I never found Raymond in the mood to discuss it.”