How the Dead Live (Factory 3)

by Raymond, Derek

  Page one of the file had the name on it – William Mardy. Profession: general practitioner. However, there was a note against this – struck off, see file that refers.

  Then there was his address, Thornhill Court, Thornhill, Wilts.

  Sickening errors, democratically arrived at of course, lay either side of the road as I drove west out of London. Blocks of semi-abandoned streets made dead ends of effort where people who had tried to start something – anything – had been crushed by the dull, triumphant logic of the state. I crossed the demarcation lines of two ethnic groups at Swallowtail Lane; the Regal cinema loomed up in my lights, its façade blackened by fire. I passed a series of streets that stood for political convictions. No one crossed them on foot now at night; yet they were streets that we had easily patrolled, one, two of us, as young coppers on the beat in the old days. But now there was no asserting yourself here as police unless there were fifty of you. The blindness to understanding was equally lit by the few lights that swayed in the icy darkness, and by the rows of windows, some half lit, in small streets that now no longer led anywhere but to danger. The windows all had the same mail-order leer that made a flat, to its family, whatever its colour, seem falsely safe, and each was whitened by the eyeball of a Japanese lampshade. Now, on the main road, a first-floor sash yawned, broken, open and unlit next to a traffic light that was at red. I stopped, waiting for this light to change, watching the rain sweep off the eaves in the north wind thick as a widow’s tears; an Indian woman hurried down a sidestreet with a coat over her head against recognition and the rain. A block further on lay a heap of smashed cars frosted over on a stretch of waste ground; next to them, black with grime, its forecourt wet with dirty snow, stood a shut-down petrol station.

  In further sad, narrow streets, beyond my car lights, half hidden by groups of old bangers with their front wheels up on the pavement, lay ruined three-storey houses that the council neither had the money to restore, nor corruption interest in pulling down. These were all dark – the power, the water cut off in them, life itself cut off there at this wrong end of winter. Yet life still did cling on in them, I knew. Uncivilized, mad life; these rank buildings that had housed self-respecting families once were now occupied by squatters of any kind – the desperate last fugitives of a beaten, abandoned army, their dignity, rights and occupations gone (or never known), their hope gone, tomorrow gone. I passed Arcade Street where there had been a machine-gun attack a fortnight ago on the wrong house (they were terrorists who had wanted the house next door) – wife and nine-month-old child killed as they watched TV in the sitting-room, terrific. But the homeless, made invisible in their misery by the frozen night, were folk that in my work I knew much too well; the ruins of their youth framed their shrieks. They screamed and robbed each other for any money or drug that would release them from their rags and bed of cement, sang, droned and wandered through these lost parts of the city for as long as hell lasted for them, and the embarrassed or absent eyes of passers-by seemed to me far worse than any well-bred laughter or liberal music heard from the snow and rain behind elegant ground-floor blinds.

  What maddened me sometimes with my work at A14 was that I could not get any justice for these people until they were dead. These university drop-outs, these mad barefoot beauties that had been turned away from home, who staggered down the streets with plastic bags filled with old newspapers against the cold – wrongo’s, druggo’s, folk of every age, colour and past, they all had that despair in common that made them gabble out their raging dreams in any shelter they could find. They screamed at each other in Battersea, moaned over their empty cider bottles in Vauxhall, not having the loot for a night in Rowton House, their faces the colour of rotten-stucco under the glare of the white lights at Waterloo Bridge and wreathed in the diesel fumes of the forty-ton fruit trucks that pounded up from Kent to Nine Elms all night long. In the day you could see them, white, faded and stained after such nights in winter; I saw them at the morning round-up at the Factory, waiting in various moods to be taken for sentencing at Great Marlborough Street – the thin, crazy faces, strange noses, eyes, hands rendered noble by madness and hunger, the rusty punctures in their arms, their whiplash tongues and then, later, the flat, sullen grief of their meaningless statements to the magistrate. And still the politicians blag serenely on, as though poverty, since they have no policy for it, didn’t exist.

  Yet no murder is worse to find than a body dead of cold against a door.

  5

  It was a long time since I had been in any villages or small towns; London hasn’t spared its own. Not that it made any difference. Where I drove into Thornhill it looked just like London. There were the same council estates, sprayed-on graffiti, closed-down factories and padlocked gates; there was also the same collection of boasting Rastas and white youths with Mohican trims leaning against dark walls, furtively drawing on anything that could be smoked behind a cupped hand. The pubs had emptied, their contents draining noisily away towards the Quikchik at the corner; I might as well have been in Tooting, except that there wasn’t the city beyond and all round me that I was used to, only the empty country. I continued to drive down what was left of a seventeenth-century main street, and noticed many charming old seventeenth-century phenomena occurring around me. Five whites were chasing an Asian under the amused gaze of a pub sign called the Jolly Sailor, and a group of Angels whipped past me on seven-fifties, each with a dotty little bat in pink jeans up behind him – yes, it was almost like home.

  I got to two hotels, Quayntewayes and the Saxon Arms, both built of brand-new brick, whatever the gold Elizabethan lettering said over their front doors; each stared their brightly lit windows into the other’s plate-glass eyes from across the street. Fat men in their fifties, dressed as farmers only without a speck of mud on them, backed carefully out of five-door Mercedes estate cars. They wore tweed hats, pheasant feathers in the bands and all – Christ, I thought, it’ll be gaiters, a pair of Holland and Holland guns and shooting-sticks next. I heard them all roaring with laughter and they looked well pissed. I slowed and watched them elbowing their way through folk on the pavement. They’re the kind of people I love to watch through narrowed eyes – no class, too much money and too much noise. Red as beef in the face, they’re not very nice beyond their own kind – I remember the gusto with which some of us had cleaned up the secret wargames that some very similar folk had been playing some years back. They slapped a man who was quietly vomiting against a lamp-post on the back, then staggered into the bright interior of the Saxon Arms, though it was after time down here – not that it was anything to do with me.

  Next I came to a poor old church that I was sorry for, though I’m not religious. A notice said that it was seven hundred years old, but it was arc-lit at the taxpayer’s expense to show where council trendies had fiddled about with it. There was also a board at the lych-gate – gold lettering on a black ground announcing many a long sermon to be preached by a Reverend Eustace Disney-Smith. I built up a glimpse of this person, minor public school and jangling some change in his blue shorts as he pounded up the field on thick but futile legs, blowing a very thin whistle in the mist, ignored by the players and righteously refusing a second shandy in the bar after the match: holy to a fault, yet mingling blamelessly with the boys.

  Further on still stood a recycled cinema with space games on machines that paid out and bingo at street level, called the Lucky Jack Club. But I reckoned that the more spacious part of the building didn’t bother with the unemployed and the OAPs but concentrated on punters who wanted to play blackjack, stud poker, throw dice – win, lose, but grab a bird. I knew this from long experience by the two heavies I spotted leaning on the fake marble entrance, their fists in the pockets of their tight trousers, scanning faces.

  Yes, well, it was what passed for rural Britain now, once you had staggered off your RestRoads bus, whacked your way round some stately homes against the wishes of your ageing heart (‘you’d have done better not to go, Geor
ge, you ought to have stayed at home and watched the film on BBC2, I told you you’d be worn out if we did this’), gone round a final castle that let the rain in that was starting and anyway loathed the sight of you (‘No one to cross the white ropes into the Family’s area, please’) and had a look at the desperately fit tigers in the park. I finally got to the police station; it was brand-new. There was also a brand-new squad car, a three and a half Rover, outside to go with it, and two scarcely used young coppers in cheese-cutters sitting up front. We all looked at each other expressionlessly as I drove by. Through the main doors I spotted a young black complaining with his arms at the desk sergeant. It was just like Poland Street; the black might as well have been skanking to his own ghetto-blaster for all the notice anyone took of him. I looked for a place to park but it was solid, so I made a U-turn on to the yellow line in front of the station, braking bonnet to bonnet with the squad car; then I swiched off and got out. The moment I did so, the copper in the passenger’s seat of the squad car got out also, pausing to settle his chessboard hat in a slow and regulation way.

  ‘Evening, sonny,’ he said with a grin, ‘you ever heard of the highway code?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and I could beat you on it, darling; I’ve been driving since before you were in nappies.’

  The grin died. ‘Trying to be funny, are we?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but your act isn’t working, and mine doesn’t have to try very hard to beat it.’

  That got us straight to a silence. Into it I said: ‘There’s one thing about me, son. I react very badly to being called sonny – I really, really hate it, see?’

  His mate, the driver, had also got out of the motor and was wandering over, pulling the armchair creases out of his tunic.

  My bloke said: ‘Look, can’t you see you’re parked on a yellow line?’

  ‘I can,’ I said, ‘I’m by no means colour-blind, and where were you parked?’

  ‘Ours is a police vehicle,’ he said, ‘and besides, we’re in it.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ I said, ‘you’re both outside it talking to me, so you’re both committing an offence and could be reported.’

  The first copper said: ‘So you’re telling us the law, are you? Is that it?’

  ‘It’s not difficult at all,’ I said, ‘if you happen to know it.’

  ‘I see,’ said the first copper. It was obvious that he didn’t quite. With his mate he exchanged one of those careful looks from under his cap that you see them do on television when the producer hasn’t got it quite right – he was young, and needed much more practice with a look like that. Finally he said: ‘I’m going back to the car, you just stay right where you are with this officer, get it?’

  ‘You’re the great big policeman,’ I said, ‘and yes, I’ve got it.’

  ‘Don’t follow me up with any more jokes just now,’ said the first copper, ‘not if you want to keep your guts in where they belong.’

  I said to the second copper, the driver: ‘This officer has just threatened me, will you take official note of it?’

  The driver said: ‘I think I’d let it go if I were you.’

  ‘If I were you,’ I said, ‘I probably would, only I’m not.’

  ‘You really are looking for trouble,’ said the driver, ‘aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve found a lot of it too,’ I said, ‘more than you ever have in your short lives.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you have,’ said the driver, in a voice as grey as rain.

  ‘What you ought to be doing,’ I said, ‘both of you, is hop into that tax-paid motor of yours that you can’t take your bird for a ride in and get into the fight I just saw three streets back on the right, five whites running for an Asian to beat him up. It looks dodgy but at least you’d be doing some good. Here, you’re doing no good at all. Here, you’re just wasting public time, dear.’

  ‘I don’t like the dear,’ the driver said. He bunched his fists. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘It’ll teach you not to call people sonny,’ I said. ‘Are you going to have a go?’

  ‘It’s really dark here,’ said the driver, ‘and there’s no one watching that I can see.’

  ‘And they call you a police officer,’ I said. ‘Well, that’s the gullible public for you.’

  I could have let them off the hook long ago if I’d wanted to; but in my shabby clothes, with my tired-looking car, I wanted them to take me for just anybody, to see how far they would go.

  ‘Just one little smack,’ said the driver, ‘might teach you manners.’

  ‘Do it if you must,’ I said, ‘but I should think very hard first. I could have a weak heart or a strong right – whichever it was, you’d be looking for a job.’

  It was near, but in the end he flexed his arms, sighed and looked away; just then his mate came back with a drink-and-drive kit. ‘Let’s do a little breathing, son,’ he said. ‘Breathing out. I think we’ve been drinking a bit, haven’t we? I think we’ve had a few, yes.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said the driver. ‘Very slow. Nice and hard.’

  ‘I don’t object to the test,’ I said. ‘The only thing is, let me just examine that kit before I blow into it.’

  ‘Why?’ said the driver.

  ‘Because I know some coppers where I come from,’ I said, ‘they keep a special one in the car for folk they don’t like, and that’s a hat that might fit me, isn’t it?’

  ‘And where are you from?’ said the second copper.

  ‘From where you two berks would get red ears fast,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, London, is it?’ They both smiled. ‘How very nice to meet a Londoner on our little country patch, though they say our great capital’s not the city it once was – must be on account of the people that live there.’

  ‘In this little shithole,’ I said, ‘they can say what they like about London.’

  ‘He’s cheeky, this one, isn’t he?’ the driver enquired upwards of the scudding sky. ‘Very cheeky, yes.’

  ‘It’s a habit we all have to try and master,’ I said.

  ‘I might just have to shut your yap for you after all,’ said the driver.

  ‘I’m busy,’ I said. I was examining their kit. It looked all right, spanking new to me, though they had taken a long time getting it out of their car and I hadn’t seen it come out of its box. Anyway, I didn’t care much – there was no chance of my being over the top with a fast-food inside me and only one pint of beer, and that hours before. When I had finished they took it away and conferred by their headlights. Then the driver came back to me and said: ‘It’s just as we thought, you’re right over the top, yes.’ And his mate added: ‘Oh yes, yes. Way over.’

  ‘I didn’t expect anything else,’ I said, ‘not parked next to you two, but can I just look at that gear I blew into?’

  ‘No you may not,’ they said together, ‘as this is now, or could be, evidence in a matter that may lead to your prosecution on a charge of being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle.’ The driver added: ‘So now let’s all go inside, shall we?’

  ‘It certainly does look inviting,’ I said, ‘yet another police station.’

  ‘Oh so you know about them, do you?’ said the driver. ‘I thought you might have.’

  ‘You could say that,’ I said. ‘Yes, you definitely could.’

  ‘That’s it, he’s got form,’ said the other copper, ‘you can almost get to smell it, can’t you? I’ll bet you it’s a yard long; we’ve got a right runner here, Ben.’

  We went through the doors and crossed to the desk sergeant, a hatless middle-aged man with a rash in his hair. ‘Well?’ he said, ‘what’s this, then?’

  ‘Drink and drive,’ said the copper called Ben, ‘way over the top, bang to rights.’

  ‘How I do love a country Londoner,’ I said. ‘Bang to rights!’ I mimicked. ‘1950s slang, I lap it up.’

  ‘And cheeky with it,’ said the same copper, reddening. The desk sergeant looked up at me and said: ‘You’d better realize, laddie, you
’re doing yourself no good with that kind of talk.’

  ‘What you’d better realize,’ I said in a leaden voice, ‘is that I’ve got an actual name, and I strongly recommend you to use it. It’s neither sonny, laddie, darling nor dear, what do you take me for? A sheepdog starring in an old B-movie?’

  ‘All right, all right,’ said the sergeant warily. He pulled his pad of charge sheets towards him. ‘Since it seems you’ve got a name let’s have it, if you’re sober enough to give it.’

  So I gave it to him.

  ‘Address?’

  I told him Earlsfield.

  ‘Place of work?’

  ‘Poland Street.’

  ‘Poland Street?’ he said, creasing his eyes up. ‘What number in Poland Street?’