London Noir - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  * * * *

  It had been years since there’d been genius in his fingers, if there ever was. But now it came. He felt it anyway. And he was amazed by it. He sketched her quickly, with the photographic realism he had practiced in school, with more assurance than he’d had since then, than he’d ever had. Yes, he was going to make a Lizzie Siddal of her: Siddal in her coffin, in the bonfire light. But he would make her like Ophelia too, lying in the Highgate tomb, a sort of rudely resurrected Ophelia, because he felt as if he and the old painters were wrestling in the open grave for the right to portray her. He wove the lines of Rossetti’s poems into the background, into the flames, the trees, the shadow-streaked stones.

  ’Beautiful!’ he breathed aloud. ‘You have such a special look . . . you have this haunting . . . reminiscent look . . .’

  But when he glanced up at her, her expression was convulsed in disgust. She turned to him angrily.

  ’Don’t move,’ he said.

  Her expression did not change, but she shifted her head back into position. There was a moment’s silence while he drew. And then she burst out, quietly, bitterly: ‘Believe me, I didn’t ask to look like this.’

  At once, his hand started to shake again. He grimaced. What did she have to talk for? But he heard himself say: ‘So why don’t you . . . you know. Why don’t you tell me how it happened.’

  ’I thought you already knew everything.’

  He didn’t answer. If he had he would have told her to shut the hell up before she ruined everything. He steadied his hand and brought the pencil point back to the paper. Yes, it was still there. He drew.

  Jane Abbot sighed. ‘I was an idiot. That’s how it happened.’

  The flame-painted face, more alive than in life, the living muse overpowering the decaying flesh . . . He drew rapidly, nauseous with the fever now and with excitement.

  ‘I wanted to get away,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to put it. From my world, from my husband’s world. I wanted to escape a little. I felt like a stopped kettle. I thought I would explode.’

  ‘So you mean you went to that club,’ he said hoarsely, drawing.

  ‘Yes. That’s what I mean. I started going to that club sometimes. When my husband was away. He has to travel - to the continent - two or three times a month.’ She lay still on the bed, hands clasped. She spoke up at the ceiling. ‘And then he . . . this other man . . . Simon . . . Well, I suppose he was very . . . different and charming. It was all part of getting away. Of letting off steam. And I was an idiot - God!’

  ‘Don’t move, don’t move.’

  ‘I suppose what he thought was ... I suppose he thought I was using him. I suppose I was. But, you see, no one uses Simon Taylor. Not an important man like him. No one must be allowed to get the better of him in any way.’ She sneered at the cracked ceiling plaster. ‘So he took photographs. He had a friend in the other room taking photographs. And when I tried to break it off. . . Well, he wasn’t going to let anyone play the fancy cat with him, walk out on him. No.’

  He had to stop drawing. He was just too excited now. Reluctantly, he pulled the quaking pencil from the page. He looked up at her, his eyes were all over her where she lay. ‘Can’t you buy them from him?’

  ’He doesn’t want money.’

  He tried to keep his voice from shaking. ‘How much can he do though?’

  ‘Oh! Believe me. It’s different in America: the newspapers would actually print those pictures here. My husband is an important man. The damage would be unimaginable. And my son,’ she said more softly.

  He wanted to go on, to ask her other things. The details. The things Taylor made her do. And did he make her do them with other men as well? Did he still take pictures? Did his friend watch? He didn’t have the nerve to ask any of it, though. He sat staring at her, glad the pad covered his lap so she couldn’t see just how excited he was.

  She did notice he wasn’t drawing any more, however. She sat up, carefully, keeping her legs together, smoothing her dress down. Her gaze wandered around the room for a moment, as if she’d just awakened in a strange place. Then their eyes met. Hers were sullen, and he could only just hold himself steady.

  ’All right,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve made your picture. What will you do for me?’

  Benjamin’s mouth opened in surprise. ‘Oh,’ he said at once. ‘Anything. I’ll do anything you want.’

  * * * *

  She was supposed to see Taylor again on Friday, so on Thursday Benjamin murdered him. That wasn’t the original plan, of course. He’d been supposed to steal the photographs, that’s all. She’d given him the address of Taylor’s rather suave Notting Hill garden flat. She’d told him what she knew of Taylor’s schedule, prompted him on where to climb the garden fence and even told him which window - the kitchen window - was the likeliest to be unlocked. He did take his matte cutter with him, but only because it made him feel safer somehow. Maybe he’d be able to use it to turn a latch or something too, he thought. Good God, he never expected to actually do battle with the man.

  Taylor went out around nine p.m., as Jane Abbot had said he might. Benjamin, huddled in shadow across the street, huddled in the blustery October darkness, watched him drive off and out of sight. Then he acted quickly.

  The garden fence was low. He hopped it nimbly. He crossed the garden with a wary eye on the facing buildings, but it was all right. Most of the curtains were drawn, and no one was watching. Once he had lowered himself into the well under the windows, he was calmer, even oddly serene. He felt that no one could see him now. Well, he always felt a little like a phantom anyway.

  She was right about the kitchen window too: it was unlocked. He slid it open. He climbed in over a counter, edging a crockery utensil jar to one side as he came. He drew the window shut behind him and dropped down on to the floor.

  He’d brought a flashlight, but when he came into the living room, he pressed the wall switch all the same. Again, he felt invisible. He was sure he would not be seen.

  The job seemed daunting to him at first. The flat was large, two vast rooms, and it was messy. Clothes and newspapers lay scattered on the floor. There were shelves and shelves of CDs and their jewel boxes were strewn on tables all around the stereo. He stood frozen. He did not know where to begin his search.

  He began with a writing desk pushed against the far wall, and he found the photographs at once. The desk drawer was locked but he pulled out his matte cutter, pushed out the blade and worked it between the latch and the slot. The drawer popped open. There were papers in it. He rifled through them and saw a manila envelope underneath: the photographs and negatives were inside.

  Just at this point, his calm, his armor of calm, began to disintegrate. He only glanced at the pictures briefly, but even that glimpse - of her candid nudity, of their vivid sex made pornographic by the camera - unnerved him. Waves of confused sensation washed over him, swallowed him. The reality of the photos, their easy hiding-place filled him with powerful intuitions of Taylor’s arrogance and Jane Abbot’s despair. At the same time, an aura of grandeur seemed to surround this enterprise of his - seemed to surround himself as well. After all, he was the engineer of her salvation, wasn’t he? She would be grateful to him. And he himself might well be reclaimed. The possibilities - the fair future, any future, Christ, at all - rocked him where he stood. He was desperate, all of a sudden. Desperate not to fail.

  Panting, he shut the drawer quickly. He rushed to the living room doorway, slipping the cutter into his pocket unretracted, clutching the envelope in his hand. He killed the lights. He stepped into the kitchen. Almost gasping now, he moved to the counter in the dark, and to the window.

  The front door opened and slammed shut. The living room lights went on. All his heroism died on the instant, a match blown out. There was no trace of calm at all, and there was sure as hell no grandeur. He felt as if he’d been transfigured suddenly into a bug, and he was almost mewling with terror as he hoisted himself onto the counter top.

&
nbsp; Simon Taylor stepped into the kitchen and turned on the light. Just the look of him, his insolent masculinity, the sleek trench coat opened jauntily, the Italian shirt open at the throat, the black hair fallen on his brow - Benjamin was unmanned completely. He cowered on the counter top, drawing his feet in under him as if to shrink away. Simon Taylor looked at the envelope in his hand, gave a little shrug of his broad shoulders and laughed.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re the best she could do,’ he said.

  With a high whine of panic, Benjamin reached for the utensil jar. His fingers seemed to go off in all directions but somehow he managed to wrap them around a knife handle. He drew it out, and was heartened by the size of the blade. He gave something like a shout, and jumped down to the floor.

  ’Fuck you, you bastard!’ he said shrilly.

  Taylor laughed again and shook his head. ’Christ!’

  Benjamin advanced on him, wild. ‘Get the fuck out of my way.’

  Annoyed, Taylor seemed to spit some lint off his tongue. Then, with a bored, whiffling noise, he stepped forward. Benjamin brandished the knife. Taylor slapped him, backhanded, hard, across the face. Benjamin felt the inside of his head balloon. He lost his balance and toppled over, the knife falling from one hand, the envelope flying from the other.

  ’Bloody ponce,’ Taylor said. He reached down and grabbed Benjamin by his coat front. He dragged him to his feet. By then, Benjamin had his hand in his pocket. Taylor yanked him forward. Benjamin pulled out his matte cutter and drove the blade into Taylor’s eye.

  There was a soft pop and a blast of jelly and blood. Benjamin felt the liquid hit his cheek. Taylor’s mouth opened wide but he didn’t scream. He just crumpled to the floor, falling on to his back, one arm flung to the side. The matte cutter stuck up out of his eye socket, the handle wobbling. Benjamin gaped down at him. He wished he was a baby again on his mother’s knee. He wished he were atoms, blown into nothingness.

  On the other hand, he had to get that cutter back. Choking down his gorge, he looked frantically this way and that. He saw the knife lying on the floor and swooped down, seized it. He crept up on Taylor’s body slowly, step by step, holding the knife protectively before him. He bent down, reaching for the handle gingerly.

  Taylor grabbed him. His hand came up and clutched Benjamin’s wrist.

  With a shriek, Benjamin fell on top of him and drove the knife into his body again and again and again.

  * * * *

  3.

  After only ten days, Jane Abbot began to have her moments: seconds, minutes at a time, when she could put it from her mind, when the black thoughts and suicidal daydreams dissipated. It was almost then as if nothing had happened, nothing ever. There were no more stories in the paper about Simon. The police had shrugged him off as a pimp and a drug dealer, and the press had stopped covering the murder after the second or third day. Everything else went on as usual. Her husband was distracted but quietly affectionate. Her son was full of comforting babble about his childish concerns. Only once was there a phone call, after about a week. She heard a shivery silence on the line, and then the one word: ‘. . . Jane?’ But she hung up so quickly it was as if the phone had never rung at all.

  Sometimes, recalling some novel she had read, or some interview in a newspaper, she thought to herself: It really is like waking from a nightmare. Like coming out of a terrible dream.

  * * * *

  In retrospect, of course, that was not the right comparison at all. Those ten days: they were just like moments, actually, moments of falling to earth. The mind does that sometimes to protect itself against inevitability. It protracts the falling time until it seems you are floating in air.

  On the eleventh day, the Monday, as she returned from her son’s school, almost - really for minutes at a time - almost enjoying the clear, wintry air, she saw him again. That horrible little American. Lurking like a gargoyle by the garden fence. Gazing and gazing at her with that disgusting white glaze of lust in his eyes.

  She felt herself collapsing inside. But she put her head down and crossed the street, tried to walk past him. He rushed after her - rushed after her! - calling out: ‘Jane!’

  He caught the sleeve of her coat. She whipped round on him desperately, pulled free. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake.’

  ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘You have to understand.’

  She looked up and down the street. There were people - other people! - walking to work, walking right toward them.

  She let out her breath. Her shoulders sagged. ‘Not here, for God’s sake,’ she said sadly.

  * * * *

  She used her key to let them into the garden. It was artfully overgrown. Even now, with the trees almost bare, there was no seeing into the heart of it through the thick tangle of branches. At the center of the garden, there was a swing set, surrounded by hedges and with a wooden bench nearby. She took him there. The place was almost always empty during school hours.

  She thought it best to speak to him with pity, but she felt no pity for him. ‘All right. What do you want?’ she said. Her breath made plumes of frost in the air.

  The man’s big eyes fairly boiled at her. ‘I told you. You know,’ he whined. ‘I just want to paint you. I need to paint you, Jane. I need ... to bring you back ... To bring you back.’ He apparently couldn’t explain it better than that.

  She stared at him - with wonder more than anything, but maybe even with some pity now too. ‘But you can’t, she said. ‘You must know you can’t. You can’t come near me any more. I can’t be anywhere near you. It would be . . . fatal. To both of us.’

  He gestured helplessly. ‘But you wanted . . .’

  ‘No. Not that. Absolutely. Never that. Don’t put that on me.’

  He ran his hand up through his greasy hair. He pleaded with her rapidly. ‘But no one knows. No one knows anything. You have to . . . Listen to me. Jane. You have a ... a special face. It brings things to mind. Things people want . . .’

  ‘Damn it!’ It broke from her in a harsh whisper. She could even feel herself snap. ‘I told you. This . . .’ She moved her hand up to her cheek, but she didn’t dare touch herself. She was so frustrated she feared she would tear the skin away. ‘I’m not responsible for this! I can’t . . .’

  ‘You bitch! You will!’ he cried out suddenly. He grabbed her violently by her coat. He clutched roughly at her hair. His face, contorted, was pressed to hers. ’I have the goddamned photographs!’

  * * * *

  He let her go, and they both stood a moment, shocked. But she was the first one to comprehend it, to understand what it was he’d said. The despair settled down on top of her with easy familiarity, the old blanket, the old shroud. She sank helplessly under its weight and sat down on the bench behind her. She stared blankly into the grass at her feet with a dazed and ironic smile.

  There really must be an end to this, she thought. Some kind of end; a little peace; my God. If she could close her eyes; if she could sleep - sleep and sleep, enveloped in an element like water . . . She had thought of that often in this last year. Lying in her bath sometimes. It seemed it would be easy. With pills or with a razor. She had imagined herself: floating; floating away. It was within her power, at least, she thought. That peace, at least, she could achieve.

  When, finally, slowly, she lifted her face, he was standing over her, his mouth open, as if still amazed. She thought he might be wrestling with some better remnant of himself, some instinct more humane. But she had no faith in that, she had nothing but the same old heavy irony for that as well.

  And she was still smiling faintly when his features set themselves at last, when he thumped his chest with his fist in a token of ferocity and resolution.

  ‘I have the photographs,’ he said again. And he glared down at her, triumphant.

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