Claudia laughed. “You’re such a ray of fucking sunshine, Max, give the poor boy a drink!”
Max grumbled something but poured a house whisky and slopped some Coke into the glass and a couple of ice cubes.
I thanked him and took a swig. It burned on the way down but it felt good.
I sat there for a while and talked to Claudia. She managed to drag another drink for me out of Max and we continued to talk until two men came in and sat down at a side booth.
The chick who was sitting on the stool got up to dance and Max told Claudia that she should be doing her job at the door, so I followed her up the stairs.
At the front door I said, “Thanks for getting me the drinks. I think I needed them.” I managed a weak smile.
“Hey kiddo, no sweat. Just come on back here to see me soon, you know? Don’t leave it so long next time.”
I promised I would, said goodbye and walked off back to Leicester Square. The drinks had left me hungry and I realised that I hadn’t eaten for ages. At the bottom of Leicester Square was a lane with outdoor restaurants. They were easy picking.
When I reached the end of the lane I saw that there were a fair few people sitting outside the various restaurants, many of which were Italian, which was a good sign. The sun always makes things easier for a person living off the streets.
I walked down the lane until I spotted a couple sitting at a table closest to the road. They’d finished their food and were waiting for their plates to be cleared. In the centre of the table was a pizza tray with two slices left but in front of them were plates, the knives and forks together, and his plate had a balled-up napkin on it.
As I walked past I scooped up the two slices of pizza off the tray and carried on walking.
“Hey!” yelled the man and I turned around, eating the pizza.
“Yes?” I replied.
At this point two things would normally happen. Sometimes the person would come after me, at which point I’d just run. Normally, however, they get stumped; they’d finished their food and it was about to be taken away. It’s hard to make an argument when someone’s taken something you’d technically disposed of.
The guy just stared at me so I shrugged. He shook his head and sat down, saying something to his partner, probably not in my favour.
I turned and resumed walking. A few people had noticed what had happened. A couple stared and one person laughed. I kept on walking.
Not entirely sure how long I walked for but I’d gone some distance. I’d walked as far as Covent Garden and hopped the barriers onto the Tube. I took the underground as far as Kensington, got off at Gloucester Road station, hopped the barriers again and started walking back to central London, past the museums.
Often I’d spend time in the museums, especially if it was cold. They were free and made a nice change from sitting in libraries.
By the time I’d walked back to Piccadilly Circus the sun had disappeared and dusk had just started creeping in, so I headed for Soho and back to my ‘home’.
As I lay on my bed and waited for it to get dark my mind was racing. What now? Did it all just finish? I kept going over the day and the image of the dead guy’s face kept flashing across my mind, unbidden.
I heard a noise in the alley and I jumped. I’d never really been nervous here before, accepting the noises in the alley as part of daily life and that no one could guess someone was up here. However, now I felt scared. Every noise seemed to grate against my nerves; every breeze-blown plastic bottle was someone coming for me, every scrape was someone climbing up the drainpipe.
I pulled the blankets up around my chin despite the warm evening and did something I’d not done in many years.
I cried myself to sleep.
5
I woke around six, which is pretty much normal. London starts waking up around this time and I’m usually awoken by the sounds of the city stirring: van doors slamming, people shouting, car horns and the odd emergency vehicle siren.
The wind rustled the plastic walls of my home but the sky was clear. Despite the chill of the morning, this was going to be a nice day, although I was in no mood to enjoy it.
When I first woke it had taken a few seconds for the reality of the day to come washing back into my mind but when it did I felt the same knot in my stomach that I had the day before.
I lay in bed, staring at the sky through the plastic sheeting. I didn’t want to think about this anymore; I wanted to get it out of my head, so I got up, got myself ready and headed out. I needed normality.
I walked through to Leicester Square and decided to buy breakfast at a café on the corner. Normally I’d enjoy breakfast as I like mornings like this but today it just felt functional.
The rest of that day was spent wasting time. I hopped on the Tube and headed up to Gloucester Road station and walked back, past the museums and through St James’s Park. I stopped at my usual spots but found no joy in them; the world seemed dark and cold despite the hot sun beating down on the back of my neck.
I stood by the Thames and stared at the water as it continued its slow meander towards the sea. By the time I got back to Soho my mood had not improved and now I was tired, hot and sweaty.
I have nothing else to say about this day. The best thing that happened was that it ended and I went to bed, unwashed and itchy from sweat.
The next few days were similar but I think there’s a limit to how long a person can feel like crap because by Friday I was feeling more positive.
The images of the guy in the office had faded slightly and were no longer bursting through to say “hello” every ten minutes, and I was beginning to feel slightly more hopeful that I’d never see Ethan again, although I don’t like to express that thought just in case. I was naturally superstitious, despite feeling that superstition was a load of rubbish (touch wood).
There was a small theatre close to, but no part of, the West End called the Civic Theatre. It boasted its West End location but the nature of its performances suggested that it didn’t get the sort of crowds that you’d expect from such a boast. The stage door was usually unlocked as there were people coming and going most of the day, mainly scenery workers and a few performing arts schools obviously taking advantage of the low rates a place like this would charge to allow tomorrow’s hopeful stars to practise their skills.
In an age of high security, where nearly everything was locked and required magnetic card-operated badges to gain access, it was quite comforting to find that there was still a place like this, where people seemed naturally trusting.
Over the last couple of years I’d made my face known here. There was a caretaker who lived in a small flat at the top of the theatre who you could usually find wandering around. I’d taken the initiative of getting to know him quite early on.
During my first tentative visit to the place, I’d found him in a corridor and asked for some help locating a ladder, telling him that mine was on the van but I couldn’t find parking close enough.
We struck up a conversation and from then on I’d make a habit of chatting to him every time I was around. Any suspicion he might have had for me had dissolved over the next few weeks and I could now pretty much walk around with impunity, provided that I occasionally painted something or fixed something. I quite enjoyed it and felt quite proud of myself for managing to pull off such a carefully contrived persona, until it dawned on me that they were basically getting high-quality art work and a general handyman for the price of the occasional shower and use of their laundry facilities.
This morning I’d arrived around nine o’clock, grabbed a coffee from the kitchen and had found some stick-like woman sorting through material backstage. Against the wall was a flat that someone had obviously begun sketching out a design on. It looked like the side of a Victorian town house.
She told me that they had had a few p
eople back out who had promised to help and she was worried they weren’t going to get stuff done for a show they were hoping to put on the following week for some children’s theatre group.
She jumped at my offer to help with the flat and by lunchtime I’d created a decent screen of a Victorian house at night in shadows, complete with yellow-eyed cat.
I offered to come back on Monday to help again and she seemed very grateful. I left feeling more positive than I had in some time; I’d managed a shower, had some lunch and coffee and painted. I thought that maybe I’d surprise her and go back tomorrow to do some more but I guess that was tempting fate too much; by tomorrow I was going to be dragged further into the hellish nightmare that I thought I’d left behind.
However, now, oblivious to the future, I walked back towards Leicester Square, browsing through shop windows and watching people go by, when I became aware of a car pulling up slowly to the curb behind me. Although it slowed it didn’t stop and the bonnet of the car appeared beside me as it crawled along.
All of the fear and paranoia that I thought I’d left behind came flooding back and I refused to turn around, hoping that I was being foolish and that it had nothing to do with me. The car lurched forward a short distance so that it was in front of me and as I got alongside the passenger window wound down.
I couldn’t help myself; I leaned down and looked inside.
Luther.
He looked at me and patted the seat next to him. I just stared at him.
He sighed and leaned across the car and pulled the handle to pop the door open. As he leaned across his jacket bulged open just enough for me to see the black, metal butt of a gun in a shoulder holster.
The door swung open slightly and Luther sat back up in his seat. I pulled the door open and leaned in.
“I’m not getting in. Why don’t you just leave me alone?” I said.
Luther sighed again, took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes as if I was causing him a fair amount of frustration.
“You are getting in. Either you can do it the easy way or we can do it the hard way. Personally I’d prefer the hard way as the easy way just makes me feel like a taxi driver but it’s your choice.”
“You wouldn’t dare do anything right here, amongst all these people,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
“True. Maybe I’ll catch you later, eh?” he said as he reached across to pull the door shut.
“Wait!” I said. The thought of having to look over my shoulder waiting for Luther to turn up didn’t interest me much, especially as my imagination was lapping up the “hard way” comment and really going to town with it.
I pulled the door open wide enough to get in and slid into the passenger seat, pulling the door closed with a clunk.
“Buckle up, we wouldn’t want you getting hurt, eh?” said Luther.
I buckled up.
I watched the streets go by again, with Luther at the wheel.
“Where are we going?” I asked, but Luther remained quiet. For a scary thug he drove like an old lady; slowly and carefully, never rushing through an amber light and breaking to allow other vehicles out in front and giving way. How could someone with no apparent conscience show so much consideration to those around him?
We drove for some time until we finally pulled up in front of the Piccadilly Thistle hotel. He handed me a plastic card.
“Room 312,” he said. “Be ready by seven o’clock.”
He popped my seatbelt and reached over to open my door. It swung open across the pavement.
I got out of the car, closed the door and stood there as Luther pulled carefully and considerately into traffic. I looked at the room card in my hand and then back up to see the rear end of Luther’s car disappear around the corner and out of sight.
I walked into the hotel. In the foyer was a reception desk, some chairs and tables and the lifts. I walked to the lifts, pressed the call button and waited.
I assumed that room 312 was on the third floor so I pressed number three in the lift and waited. Nothing happened. I looked down and saw that I needed to put my card into the slot to make the lift work.
When I got out of the lift on the third floor I followed the arrows until I found room 312. I placed the card in the door slot and a little green light came on with a click, so I turned the handle and opened the door.
I was in an average-sized hotel room, bathroom on the left and a double bed, desk, TV etc. Hanging from the curtain rail was a suit wrapped in plastic and on the coffee table in front of the suit was underwear, shoes, a watch, a shaver and some other toiletries. A single piece of paper was in front of all of these items with ‘7pm’ written on it.
As I was taking all of this in there was a knock on the door. I walked over and hesitantly opened it. Standing in the corridor was a woman in her thirties, bleached-blonde hair and huge amounts of makeup giving her an orange tint.
“Matthew Hawk?” she asked.
“Erm, yes,” I replied.
“OK, I’m Beverley your hair-care professional today. May I come in?”
I opened the door wider and Beverley took this as an invitation. She picked up a sports bag by her feet and pushed past me into the room and began organising herself, moving the room around to allow her to place the chair in a space and unpacking her bag onto the table.
She asked a lot of questions I couldn’t answer about my hairstyle and looked at me like I was an idiot when I suggested she did what she thought would be best. Apparently, “shorter” isn’t an adequate response when selecting a hairstyle.
She chatted away as she worked about things I knew little about: Ibiza, hen nights, her friend’s brother and X-Factor. I welcomed the chat about normality and, although I couldn’t add much in the way of insight, I kept the conversation going.
Eventually, as she shaved the back of my neck, she said, “My sister thinks I’m stupid doing this job; that I should pack it in and do something else, but I’m like ‘no way!’ I’ve spent two years getting to here. It might not earn me millions but she really doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“She might be right,” I said.
She laughed. “Yeah, OK Mr ‘I don’t know what hair I want’, what do you think I should do?”
“Maybe go back to college, get the last couple of exams you need and get into nursing?”
I heard the sound of the shaver switching off and she walked around to the front of me. She looked at me and for the first time I noticed lines appear across her forehead.
“I can’t,” she said.
“I’m pretty sure you can,” I replied. The frown on her face gave way to a look of sadness and she disappeared behind my back again, probably to disguise the fact that her eyes were beginning to tear up. She switched on the shaver again but did nothing. She switched it back off again.
“It’s not that easy,” she said.
“You’re right, it isn’t easy but nothing worth doing is easy.” I swivelled around in the chair and stood up, hair falling onto the carpet. I looked around the room and saw a writing set with a hotel pencil. I picked it up and, looking at her for a few seconds, I started to draw.
After a few minutes I’d finished what was a very hastily drawn sketch showing her standing at a door dressed as a nurse with a small child with its mother walking away, arm in a sling.
“Here,” I said, “this is you in three years.” I gave her the drawing.
She took it from me and stared at it. Her eyes welled up and she started flapping her hand in front of her face to dry the tears. Saying nothing she took the sketch and placed it carefully into the outside pocket of her bag.
I sat back down and after a minute she came back over and stood in front of me. She looked carefully at me; I could tell she had a million questions, none of which I could easily answer.<
br />
“Do you want me to thread your eyebrows?” she asked.
I had no idea what that was but said, “OK.”
I could never have imagined that so much pain could be inflicted by a single piece of cotton but eventually the torture stopped and I made a mental note never to agree to that again.
When she was done she packed up her stuff and headed for the door. I held the door open for her as she went through with her bag. Outside she turned to me and said, “I don’t suppose there’s any point me asking how you knew to draw that picture?”
“No,” I said, “not really. I don’t really know myself. Just don’t lose it and don’t forget it.”
With that she turned and walked down the corridor. I went into the hotel room and switched on the TV.
Itching from the haircut, I stripped naked and walked into the bathroom. I shaved using the toiletries left on the table and showered. I had no idea what was in store for me with the suit but I knew that being ready at seven o’clock was important.
After my shower I checked my watch. I had three hours before I needed to get ready so I crashed out on the bed in a towel and started watching cartoons. Within minutes I was asleep.
I woke with a start and, panicking, I checked the clock. With relief I realised I’d only been asleep for half an hour but not risking that again I got up and brushed my teeth.
A few minutes later there was a knock at the door. I opened it and there was an Indian gentleman in a hotel uniform with a small trolley.
“Mr Hawk, may I come in please?”
“Er, yes, OK,” I said, holding the door open but realising he couldn’t push past me and the door with the trolley.
“That’s OK, sir, I have the door. Please.”
I walked into the room and he followed me with the trolley. “May I place this on the table, sir?”
“Er, yes, OK,” I replied, again making use of my vast vocabulary.
He placed the items on the table and then turned to me. “For you, sir. Some tea, coffee, orange juice and assorted cakes.”
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