by John Dalton
* * *
Harry didn’t want to meet up in his hotel. This was a security guy who wore a leather blouson and a black turban. Harry was a bearded warrior Sikh, young and proud. He was also someone who believed in the age-old practice of tipping, so Des shifted another fifty quid of Bertha’s dosh and hoped it would be worth it. They met at the Merchant Stores, a sort of up-market wine bar on Broad Street. But there were no conventioneers or Japanese industrial heritage freaks around. A couple of suits were lingering long after their lunch break and that was it. Des lit up a fag and swirled the ice in his malt. It didn’t seem so inviting as the time he’d given Rebecca the bad news. Harry had an alcopop (the arsehole); he dug his hands in his jacket and tapped relentlessly on the floor like life was busy and this dick was slowing him down. Des went into his spiel once more. He kept it brief and matter-of-fact, and hoped he’d out-cool the warrior.
‘So it could be that these two got into some fuckery with a hotel punter.’
Harry eased up on the tapping and gave Des his attention. He had a lean, well-groomed face with wary, sharp eyes. Des thought he was probably black belt as well as black turban.
‘Yeh, that’s heavy business.’
‘So the job now is to get hold of Gary Marlow.’
‘Yeh.’ Harry stared out of the big window of the Merchant Stores and watched a couple of women stride past. ‘Well, you know, my hotel puts up a lot of celebs, you know, pop stars on the road, actors, and it’s my job to keep an eye on such people, liaise with their minders and stuff.’
‘Do you know this Gary then?’
‘Sort of. I mean, I don’t do any deals with clients. The hotel has to be strictly clean, but we do kind of indulge some of these celebs, you know, their little numbers. Then it’s my job to keep it discreet and out of sight.’
‘Of course, you wouldn’t buy coke for a lead guitarist.’
‘It’d be me out of a job, but I know the guy you mentioned.’
‘Huh-uh.’
‘Well, I say I know him, but I haven’t met the guy, and didn’t know nothing of the guy until he did a split.’
‘Quite a relationship.’
‘It was a week or so back. These guys were coming up to me, you know, minders and the like, and they kept asking me where the hell Gary was. You know, the dealer had gone and the punters were hungry. I was asked if I could supply.’
‘Tricky.’
‘I have a few connections. I went out and found someone else to do the dirty work, part of the service, and I heard then that this Gary Marlow had buggered off down the Smoke because of some fucked-up deal.’
‘Was that all you heard?’
‘Yeh.’
‘Any idea were he lived?’
‘Nah.’
‘What about Claudette, ever hear about her?’
‘Nah, but I guess I could ask round, you know, if it was . . .’
‘Yeh, worth your while. You don’t, of course, know who pimps for your snorting stars?’
‘They don’t need them, man. I just have to make sure the right groupies get in.’
‘Huh, so what do you do with the ones that don’t?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know.’
Des left Harry tapping out time in the Merchant Stores. He didn’t feel he’d made much progress but he was sure now that Gary Marlow was involved. One last call to make. The wonderful Fedora. It was only half a mile away so Des hoofed it through the city streets for a date with his DI.
It seemed that New Orleans had livened up that afternoon. The big eyes of Bogart were staring down at a party of eight: office people out on some kind of birthday binge. Wayne was actually busy and there was no Dick to be seen. Des cruised in and waved to Errol who lounged alone in the far corner.
‘What’s happening, Wayne?’ he said. ‘There’s a third of a crowd in here.’
‘Don’t panic, Des, just the annual outing for the tax office.’
‘Shame. Thought maybe it was the start of the big time.’
‘I don’t ever say it, Des, but fuck knows, the Fedora is and always will be a flop.’
Des got in a couple of whiskies and went and sat with DI Errol Wilson. The DI had a long line of peanuts set out on the table and was eating them one by one.
‘You’re late, man,’ Errol said with a smile. ‘You gotta know I’m too important now to be fucked around.’
‘Wow.’
‘I tell you, if I’d reached the last nut, I was off and out of it.’
‘I’m a working man too, Errol.’
‘Oh, I forgot. Another shit-heap place you’ve led me into.’
‘This is the future, mate. It doesn’t exist other than as an image of something that never was, an image that nobody cares about. It probably isn’t even here. It’s virtual, see, like we’re probably sitting in the street now getting our shots of booze.’
‘Jesus, Des, what the hell you on about?’
‘Fuck knows. It’s the Fedora, what it does to you.’
Des, feeling that his brain was beginning to speed after a long day’s gabbing, quickly got down to business. And he felt smug enough doing it, even though the Gary Marlow lead wasn’t his.
‘Bleeding hell, ain’t you the genius?’ Errol put on an exaggerated show of admiration. ‘I’m serious though, Des. That’s good work.’
‘I tell you, I’m off the bottom and moving up.’
‘So how d’you do it?’
‘Found something at Claudette’s place that you guys had missed. Got in with the pros and found out more.’
‘Yeh, well that is your advantage. That and the incompetence of some of our guys.’
‘Could you check him for me, Errol, find out where his local pad is?’
‘I reckon you deserve that.’
‘So how are the flat feet doing?’
‘Making our feet flatter. A lot of checking of pervs and so on. What you’re digging up does seem to point to something closer to home.’
‘Maybe too early to say.’
‘Yeh, well I’ve got a bit of news that adds further spice to this case; it concerns your Bertha.’
‘Huh-uh, I wondered when she might figure in the proceedings.’
‘You know she was no angel in her younger days, a pro like her daughter?’
‘Yeh.’ Des sighed. He’d been trying to keep Bertha out of his mind. He’d been vaguely thinking he should keep out of her way. She knew his weakness.
‘Well, man, I was talking to one of the old-timers down at the station. The guy remembers Bertha. Said she had a bit of a thing with Ross Constanza.’
‘The name rings a bell.’
‘You know him. Second-hand car dealer, backer of night clubs, escort agencies, cover jobs for piles of villainous fuck’ry.’
‘Right.’
‘There was some trouble, way back, involving another sleaze dealer – Paddy Conroy. Bertha got ditched and disappeared from the scene. The old-timer couldn’t believe she’d surfaced again.’
‘I can’t see any connection with Claudette and now.’
‘Mebbe not, man, but worth knowing, huh, what you’re dealing with?’
‘Yeh, guess so.’
‘It would kinda make me want to watch my back.’
Des didn’t say anything. He was thinking of the pink room and was wondering what else Bertha had to offer. He didn’t want to admit it, but those thoughts turned him on.
10
It was the whiteness he saw first; a blanket of white, soft but overwhelming. And then it was the wet he became aware of, clammy skin-tight wet that made Des writhe. And after that, after the movement, he realized someone was pulling on his foot, tugging hard, attempting to drag him down. Des tried to look below, to see who it was who held him but it was pitch dark down there. ‘Miranda or Bertha?’ he muttered half conscious. ‘Who the fuck is it with me?’ Des continued to struggle, saw the whiteness even brighter above and then managed to prise open his eyes. He was totally drenched in sweat. Des pulled h
imself up onto an elbow and shook his head. ‘Shit . . .’ The room came into view. The cluttered, pale green room he’d spent many a sleepless or stupefied night in as he had lived, post-Miranda, with the big wallow. A shitty room he hated for all the memories it held. Des fumbled across the bedclothes and found himself a fag. He looked at the window. The sun was blazing away outside. Before the first traces of nicotine hit his hungry veins, the phone rang.
‘So where have you been then, lover?’
‘Jesus, Bertha, I’ve just woke up.’
‘I’ve been up a while. Couldn’t sleep. It may be hot outside, but my bleeding bed is cold.’
‘I was pretty whacked last night,’ Des lied, ‘but I guess you were in my dreams.’
‘Not good enough. After our night of passion I thought –’
‘Yeh, I know, but let’s –’ Des felt a niggle of irritation. ‘Let’s, you know, let’s try and keep a perspective. There’s work too, yeh. There’s your daughter to think about.’
A marked silence at the end of the phone. Des squirmed like a worm around the receiver. He cursed himself for being so ratty.
‘Shouldn’t have said that, should I? But then I guess it shows how complicated it gets.’
‘I’m disappointed, Des.’
‘Let’s talk about it later, huh? I’ve been working and I’ve got news.’
Des quickly launched into a report about Gary Marlow, knowing that Bertha was far from happy but hoping he could distract her thoughts. Bertha reluctantly responded, distance and disappointment in her voice.
‘You think he could’ve done it?’
‘It’s a possibility.’
‘No one else involved?’
‘Hard to say. He’s done a bunk. Could be out of guilt, or fright.’
‘Find out, Des.’
‘That’s what I’m doing.’
‘And come and see me tonight.’
‘Of course, I mean, I want to –’
Bertha had hung up on him. Des threw the phone back down on its cradle and realized he was still sweating. Swearing, he flung the covers off and began to scowl at the pale green walls. The phone rang again.
‘Hi there, Sherlock, you up and at it yet?’
‘Half asleep, sweating like a pig and pissed off, Errol.’
‘Urgh, that makes me wanna put the phone down.’
‘I don’t think it’s catching.’
‘Better not be, man. It’s bad enough as it is dealing with you low-life scum.’
‘Thanks.’
‘But some news, huh. I got an address for this Gary guy, for your use for today only, yeh?’
‘That’s good. I need something to sweeten up my client.’
‘Poor you! We’re also running a check down London to try to find out where he is. He’s got a bit of form, man. A coupla drug busts, sounds like a user too, but no record of anything violent.’
‘Thanks a lot, Errol. Give us the address then, eh, and I’ll check you later.’
Des sat up on the bed. The sweat had finally chilled and he shivered. Maybe it was just enough to get him afloat. An old friend on the phone and something to do.
* * *
It was all too much for Jerry Coton. He stood on a suburban street a long way from home and felt as if – and maybe wished – he would spontaneously combust. He’d had a wasted journey to see someone he’d met in a pub about a one-off job. No someone, just a busy street in eighty-degree heat and no sign of a bus to haul him home. Jerry glared at the groaning traffic and tried to avoid the acrid fumes.
It had been a bad few days. The sickness was still with him, made worse by weed. He had a brain full of feathers and the world seemed like a cinema set he roamed with disbelief. He felt uncomfortable. Deep within him was a needle of fear, an insidious worry that kept him jittery. The anxiety had grown when Mary had a break-in. In the middle of the day when Jerry lay prone, spliffed and watching soap, someone had gone in and trashed her darkroom. He hadn’t heard the intruders, but when he found out he almost collapsed at the thought of such malevolence coming so close. Mary was not sympathetic. Jerry resolved to pull himself together, but the hours were long and the temptation great. He wiped sweat off his brow and struggled to breathe. A bus edged into sight. But would he be able to count the change for his fare?
Inside, it had to be one hundred and rising. There was no prospect of escape as the bus began its slow crawl through the suburbs. It wasn’t long before Jerry got the shakes. An irritating twitch on his thigh to begin with, then a tic on his cheek and finally an awful sense that his head wasn’t properly attached to his body. It really felt like his head was wobbling, that he’d suddenly lost the supportive aid of a spine. If held in his hands it felt all right, but left on its own, his head could’ve been a balloon flopping and straining to escape. Jerry began to think everyone was looking at him. Those hot faces that normally look anywhere but at another face, they were now slyly turning their eyes to watch the jelly-head wobble. He didn’t know what to do. There was no escape. He found himself slipping down in the seat. He pushed his head against the window and wedged a hand under it. This stopped the wobbling, but then his head vibrated in synchronicity with the engine of the bus. Jerry sneaked a look at the snooping passengers. Why the fuck didn’t they suffer? Such complacent faces like stupid sheep off to the slaughterhouse! He groaned and squeezed further into his caged space. Would the driver never stop?
He did stop. Jerry teetered onto the baking pavements of the city centre and resolved to walk the last few miles home. Out in the open, there was no more confinement to face. But the world still seemed out to harm him. Vertiginous buildings bending over and hurting his head. People blocking and bumping into him. People who sneered malevolently or mugged him with their eyes. Jerry kept his head down. He heard whining sounds, sounds like forks scraping plates or chalk on the blackboard. Dragging his legs along the hot pavements, he managed to haul himself away from the crowd and out to the quieter backstreets. Jerry still kept his head down. For some reason, he found himself distrusting gravity, fearing that if he looked up, he would fall from the ground and hurtle to the clouds.
The leafier suburbs closer to home offered a kind of relief. Fewer cars or people on the streets and the relative silence made things better for a while. But there seemed no way Jerry could get back to his normal old stuttering self. He soon began to suspect the silence and wondered why no one was about. Were all the people, the nerds, deliberately staying inside to avoid the wobble-headed loony? Or were they watching from behind those net curtains? Looking for signs of non-conformity or little misdemeanours they could shop him for? That really kept his head down but it didn’t help much. There were so many trees in the streets – poplars, planes and limes – and they began to seem more threatening than the clouds. The limes were the worst. Horrible sweaty leaves covered in grime, and pallid flowers that looked like excreta from an alien planet. It was a lime tree that finally flipped him. Jerry just happened to glance up and there it was. A scrawny, grey monstrosity sat on a branch just above him. It had beady eyes and a white corrosive head. Jerry staggered to a halt and flopped against a privet bush. He tried to keep hold of himself, to enforce the voice of reason that said he was looking at a juvenile pigeon, but he couldn’t. Suddenly, the whole tree began to sweat white flakes of ash or snow. His brain, his body, they just seemed to close down and he was paralysed. Only his eyes existed, floating, full of flakes of white and straining to see the bird’s eye that drifted further away. He must’ve passed out then for a moment and when he awoke he found himself sitting on the ground, sweating, shaking and very scared. But Jerry got himself up with the bird still watching. ‘F-F-Fuck you!’ he cried, then staggered desperately, angrily the last few yards home.
* * *
A gun might have come in handy where Des was. Many of the thirty-year-old buildings looked close to collapse. On the far side of the road, all the flats and maisonettes that sat behind half-mature trees were grilled over with steel me
sh. On the corner of a side street, a bunch of surly youths gave Des, the stranger, the once-over, like customs officers checking for illegal immigrants. Des merely sneered back and clenched his fists. It was proving a hard job to find Gary Marlow’s pad. Half the road signs were missing or had been daubed illegible. Many of the little blocks of flats seemed to hide unmarked down alleyways. He had yet to see a friendly face he could ask.
The road he tramped along dipped down and he came to a bridge over a stream. Some joyriders had ditched a car into the grey, polluted waters. A hefty biker-type was directing a gang of kids to strip it of spare parts. Des took a left turn along a drive that led to another complex of boxes. As he walked, he almost dived into the stream as a ferocious Alsatian reared up above a garden fence and barked wildly. Finally, Des did find Gary’s pad. Kicking his way through empty cans of lighter fuel, he ran up cold concrete steps and found the number of the door he’d been searching for. It had been kicked wide open.
Des entered cautiously. The heat of the day, though waning on the outside, was still intense within the flat. Smells of burnt debris mingled with those of piss and shit. There was no one in the place and not much left to make it a place at all. As he sneaked his way round, Des saw that the kitchen had lost its cabinets, cooker and fridge. The bathroom was minus its toilet and the bath had been smashed up. The living room was bare, bar a broken chair and a forlorn lampshade. Des began to sag. He wiped the sweat off his face and felt the frustrations rise within him. It seemed appropriate to kick the wall. He did and his foot went six inches in.
The last place to check was the bedroom. This was where the burning smell came from; the bed itself was a two-foot hole of charred stuffing. Des entered. Syringes and silver foil littered the floor. The cupboards here were built in but they too had been smashed. Clothes, magazines and other rubbish had spewed out around the bed to be kicked and trampled on. Des picked up a splintered piece of wood, sat on the bed and then began to prod around the rubbish. There was practically nothing there of significance. Male fashion mags and soft porn, broken CDs and slivers of mirror mingled with the mud-stained tiles and underwear. Des only found one thing, a torn triangular third of a black and white photograph, upon which Des could see a bare white bum.