Bloody London

by Reggie Nadelson

  “I can tell.”

  She drank another glass of wine. “The hotter the market got, the more people were squeezed on to the streets. It’s become the dirty little secret of Britain’s boom years. Anyway, my business makes me paranoid, and when I heard there were two dead men at Frye’s new shelter because of flooding, I thought something’s terribly wrong. I asked around. The shelters aren’t safe.”

  “Last night I said Lily had a picture of Thomas Pascoe in her closet, and you turned white. Iz?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I met him a few times with Lily. I thought him an ass, a self-obsessed old man who had once lived the high life and had vague left-wing ideas, and he was arrogant. Felt he could do anything so long as it had a moral imperative. But he didn’t deserve to die. I think you have a lead on some of this. Am I right?”

  I thought of Geoffrey Gilchrist. “Not a reliable one.”

  “Use it.”

  “I need money I haven’t got to make it work.”

  “I’ll talk to Keir. Maybe he can help.”

  “You wanted to talk about Lily.”

  “If you can’t forgive Lily, I don’t know what she’s done to you, not really, but if you can’t love her anymore, at least help her. I want you to get Lily out of London. And Beth, of course. Take them home, Artie. Lily seems to believe Phillip Frye’s operation is some sort of mission. She’s in way over her head here.” She held my hand for a few seconds, and said, face tensing up. “Please.”

  “I’ll try.” I pulled a notebook out of my pocket. “Write down for me where the dead guys washed up. Write it down.”

  “If you’re going out there, get hold of Jack Cotton. Don’t do this by yourself.”

  “Frye’s a creep, isn’t he, Iz?”

  “Yes. He’s a man who likes mayhem. He’s a man who thinks you can create something useful out of chaos.”

  “You still haven’t really told me why Lily having Pascoe’s picture scared you. She knew him too well? She was involved?”

  “Not him.”

  “Who?”

  “The wife.” She paused. “Frances Pascoe.”

  I picked up a rental car and a cellphone and drove uneasily on the wrong side of the road. I had no goddamn idea where I was headed, but I was full of Pru Vane’s death; somewhere along the line someone would figure I’d been with her the night before. Someone was going to ask questions. I wanted Frye in a hurry now. After I left Isobel, I went to his office. He was out. I conned one of the girls and she told me he was at the new shelter on the river where two men drowned and gave me the address. The same address Isobel gave me.

  On the radio, people talked about politicians I didn’t know and told jokes I didn’t get. Outside, as I rubbed the cold side-window clear, an ugly waste land stretched for miles. I peered at a sign. Woolwich Road.

  The windshield wipers beat a counterpoint to the rain, as I drove past broken streets and shitty houses. Once in a while I saw a grocery store, a pub, a hardware store; they were grim and shabby, some of them boarded up against the storm.

  At one of the stores I pulled up and went looking for some smokes. An Indian guy in a yellow sweatshirt sold me the cigarettes, but he was occupied with a small TV and a cricket game in another continent where the sun shone.

  Through the rain, I saw the river. The conical top of a skyscraper pierced the gloom. A sign pointed to the Thames Flood Barrier and I pulled into the visitors’ lot and got out.

  I walked up to the river. Faint shapes rose out of the water, a row of curved steel caps, like hoods over giants’ stoves. They stretched across the river until they disappeared into the fog. I walked a while, then glanced at the map. Hiroshima Promenade, Nagasaki Walk, they were labelled. Then I walked in the other direction and I could see where the water had come up over the banks and stained a cement bench. There was steel under the grass here and I figured it was some kind of flood wall.

  It was raining lightly and I thought about Tessa Stiles, then the rain came down heavier and I ran for the car.

  Further east along Woolwich Road, I found Frye’s shelter. Westminster Industrial Estates, the sign said. I almost missed it.

  Fog rolled in so thick now I couldn’t see the road in front of me. I thought I saw an airplane, but the airplane disappeared into the fog. Out of nowhere, as I turned into Frye’s place, a truck loomed up. I could just make out it was a TV van. Frye’s warehouse was where the dead bodies washed up, Isobel Cleary said. The brakes shrieked. I jammed on my own brakes and got out of the car.

  A TO LET sign dangled from a pole in front of the six-story warehouse at the dead end of a narrow road. It had a corrugated iron roof and exterior stairs like a fire escape. I left the car where it was and walked.

  The warehouse itself was near the edge of the river; there was an old jetty, crumbling now, as far as I could see. The building had been freshly painted, but there were already damp stains on it. A hand-painted sign announced it was a shelter provided by HOME. A truck was backed up to a loading dock. Figures in green slickers were unloading a pile of flat plastic bundles, dragging them out of the truck, dumping them on the raw ground. Frye’s Life Bubbles. They lay, limp and oily in the rain, like used condoms.

  Water sloshed on the ground in the courtyard where more trucks and vans were parked. More women – I recognized some of them from Frye’s office – unloaded crates. Mattresses and cooking pots were covered by plastic sheets.

  Nobody noticed me. Around the side of the building, I dragged an empty crate under a window and climbed up. There was dull light from inside the window, the scuffle of feet, the sound of hammering, the drip of water. I scrambled on to my feet. With my sleeve, I scrubbed at the mist on the window and looked in.

  Under the window, a woman sat at a makeshift desk and talked frantically into a phone. She sat cross-legged on her chair. She arched her back as if to get relief from the stiff chair that was too small for her and put her hand in the hollow of it. The phone was tucked under her chin. With the other hand, she lifted the red hair off her neck. I shifted to one side. If she turned around, she’d see me. I didn’t want her to see me, not here.

  Frye appeared. He wore black jeans and a shirt with purple stripes and white collar and cuffs. He sat on the edge of the desk and leaned over her, then whispered to her. His demeanor changed, became intimate. He reached down and rubbed her back. Christ, I thought, Lily was in it, whatever it was, up to her armpits.

  I don’t know if Frye saw me. I stepped back off the crate, turned, pulled my jacket over my head – the rain was coming down in buckets – and ran for the rental car. It wasn’t just the rain that made me run; I didn’t want a fight with Phillip Frye, not then, not when he was rubbing Lily’s back.

  I could wait. I wanted Frye on his own, stealing, extorting, setting up some patsy, like I knew he set up Pru Vane but couldn’t prove. First I had to get Lily out of the way, out of Frye’s path. I couldn’t make a move, not until then.

  I drove away from the shelter, returned the rental car, went to Gilchrist’s house and picked open the lock on his front foor. I went looking for a lead.

  The files were tied with string and I worked my way through them, but there were only tidy stacks of bills and letters and notes for a memoir. The house was clean as if experts had worked it over. There wasn’t a scrap of paper that gave up anything about its owner. The albino goldfish stared at me.

  While I turned over the files, I listened for a car or cab. I poked around his closet, where you could smell tobacco on the tweed, but there was nothing else. But Gilchrist was a smart old bastard. He would know I’d been in his house, and that’s what I wanted.

  I wanted him alert. I wanted him in touch with Kievsky and the rest of them. He was a messenger boy; he could send my message for me. I wanted them – whoever wanted me – out in the open where I could see them. London had too many secrets.

  Five minutes later, after I’d locked the house and walked to the end of the str
eet, Gilchrist showed up in a taxi. I cornered him.

  For a minute he fought his umbrella. I grabbed it from him and opened it and held it over us with one hand. With the other, I held his arm. “Give me something, Geoff.”

  “Is it a threat, dear? What shall I give you, Artie?”

  “Something I can work with. Some kind of information. I’ll get you money when I can, but I need a handle on this case, so unless it was all bullshit about my father and you and me, give me something to work with here. I’m drowning here. You get it? You want to repay the family, here’s your chance.”

  The umbrella turned inside out in the wind. I fixed it, and while I pulled the metal struts into place, Gilchrist put his hand in his pocket. I gave him the umbrella. He held up a keyring, removed the keys and gave it to me.

  “Frankie Pascoe gave me this, actually,” he said. “Sent it to me as a little gift. Perhaps it looks familiar to you,” he said. “Does it look familiar, Artie? It’s something, isn’t it, dear? Take it, and let me give you some lunch Thursday, all right?” he said. “The Reform Club,” he added, and hurried up the steps into his house.

  I looked at the keyring in my hand. From it dangled a miniature version of the bronze begging hands.

  29

  The white-hot desert sun beating down. A big aquamarine pool, shape of a kidney. Golf on emerald-green links. The awesome purple crack in the planet that was the Grand Canyon, and Sigfried and Roy with the white tigers, and Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Wayne Newton. Memories of Sinatra’s rat pack and the thrill of the slots when you scored.

  The rain beat down, gray rain, gray streets, and the cabbie regaled me with his annual trips to Vegas past and present. “Rio Suites,” he purred. His ambition was to stay at Rio Suites. Or the Bellagio. I played with the keyring Gilchrist gave me like worry beads.

  “Give me something, Geoff,” I’d said and he’d given me the keyring with the begging hands. There was a connection between Warren and Tommy and Frye. Blood connected them. Pru Vane worked for Frye and Pru was dead. As the cab ploughed through the rain, I felt myself dragged down in it all. The tangled relationships seemed to spread like dry rot. Lily was in this with Phillip Frye and I didn’t know how to talk to her. Did Warren know how it played, was that why Gilchrist sent me? I was on my way back to Warren Pascoe’s studio in a hurry.

  The driver scanned the street, then pulled up at the building where Warren worked. “You sure this is it?”

  “Yeah. Can you wait for me?”

  He lit a cigarette, pulled a fat brochure from under the seat, waved it at me – it was a brightly colored Vegas brochure – and said, “Sure, mate.”

  “Warren? Warren Pascoe?” I shouted into the studio and my voice hit the concrete walls and died. A piece of paper landed on my face, it was soft and wet, it felt alive as it blinded me. I tore it off. The old wood floor creaked under my feet.

  The building was silent except for the echo of my own feet. I took the gun out of my belt and put it in my jacket pocket. I fumbled on the wall and found a light switch, but nothing happened.

  “Warren? You here?” A faint streak of artificial light came through the windows high up – a streetlight, the beam of a passing car – otherwise it was black as pitch. There was the incessant sound of dripping water. One of the windows was open and I could smell the wetness of the place.

  I flicked my lighter on, found the work table and a piece of a candle on it. I got the candle lit.

  In the shadowy light, the half-made sculptures made eerie shapes, entwined arms reaching up, a torso draped in damp pale cloth, the heads smiling down at me from the high shelf.

  “Warren?”

  No one answered. I took out my gun. Somewhere in the building, very faint, like a signal from another planet, a talk radio station started up; in the silent studio I could hear it, indistinct, polite. No human sounds; only a radio. Thunder rumbled outside. Outside were miles of empty streets, waste ground, demolition crews, cranes, the swollen river and the rain.

  I picked up the candle and worked my way around the place, my back to the wall; the candle gave me enough light so that before I stumbled on the body, I saw the blood.

  Where the floor sloped down, water seeped in and formed a puddle that was black with dirt, red with blood. Warren Pascoe was lying in it, a crumpled figure, wrapped in a sheet of plastic. When I touched it, water poured off the slick surface.

  Soaked, he was hard to move. When I got the plastic off his head, in the creepy half-light, Warren Pascoe’s face turned into Thomas Pascoe’s, the head bobbing in water, the swimming pool slick with blood in the basement of the Middlemarch.

  Grand Guignol, Lily said I called Thomas Pascoe’s murder. She was wrong. I never thought death was a joke. Not then, not here, three thousand miles from home in this stone-cold place. First Pru Vane, now Warren. There was nothing to make me laugh here.

  I tried to untangle more of the plastic sheet, then the old tweed coat. Warren was dead. Small, bald, the skin waxy. I stared at the face some more. I saw the family resemblance even better now: the distinctive Pascoe nose – Thomas had it, so did Phillip Frye – the long forehead. I replaced the plastic and backed off.

  I wanted out. Gilchrist as good as sent me to Warren’s and Warren was dead. I left him on the floor. The scene was intact. I headed for the door. Then I tripped. A plaster head crashed on to the floor. It split at the mouth so the sweet smile came apart. The plaster was damp, I could smell it.

  Water came up over my ankles and seeped into my shoes. I tried to pick the head up, but it had cracked into two pieces, and I put them carefully on a work bench. I held the two halves together. I held the candle closer to the head.

  It was a cast of the homeless man who had attacked Phillip Frye. The man with the cleft palate who fell in the mud. A dead man, Frye had said. Won’t last the night. The man I’d seen in the shelter the day before had been Warren’s last model. Or maybe I hallucinated.

  Did Warren use him after he died? Did Warren Pascoe get bodies from Frye’s shelters? Was that what Gilchrist meant when he tossed me the keyring with the begging hands? Why did he send me here? Get me out of the way? Who gave Geoffrey Gilchrist his orders?

  Suddenly, a leak opened up in the ceiling. Rain poured in.

  I was drowning. Somewhere, I lost my balance. Someone pushed me or I fell. I lost my footing and my head was on the floor. The floor. Sidewalk. Steps. Cold stone.

  There was the taste of blood. Sewage. In my mouth and nose. I could smell the river, the fetid smell of oil and garbage, feel the wind, taste the menace. It was dark. Someone banged my head on the ground again, and now I was only half conscious.

  My head was under water. I saw everything drift by and I was freezing cold. I thought: If I pass out, it’s over. I thought how cold it was. Hypothermia, isn’t that what they called it on TV when little kids fell through the ice somewhere? Minnesota. Canada. Somewhere. Where was I?

  I was cold. My lungs ached. I thought about the swimming pool out back of Kievsky’s house up on the hill. The river. A lake. I thought someone dragged me down some slimy steps to the river. I had seen steps when I was out walking, steps, metal moorings, floating pontoons, tugs, boats, a houseboat. The Beach Boys’ “Little Surfer Girl” ran in my head.

  Staten Island Ferry, fishing off Long Island, my sailboat in pieces on the roof of my building in New York, the pool at the Middlemarch where they got Tommy Pascoe. Frankie in the bathtub, full of gin, dying. Frankie naked in the swimming pool.

  I heard the smack of water against a seawall, felt the stone surface under me; it was slick with shit and dead vegetables. I could feel metal. I couldn’t move. My head was under water. Someone yanked it up by the hair, then shoved it back. Lungs hurt.

  I couldn’t move. I realized they’d dragged me out of Warren’s studio, down to the river, banged me around good, then dumped me back in the studio. They wanted someone to find me. Things went gray. My body relaxed and I tried to breathe in, except there was
water inside me. I was drowning.

  30

  Water streamed out of me, mouth, nose. It choked me. Arms holding me let go. When I forced my eyes open, I saw a concrete ceiling. A skylight where rain drummed on the murky glass. Plaster casts of dead men, covered in cheesecloth. I was in Warren’s studio. A bucket on the floor was half full of water. Blood in it. My blood. It floats, I thought, looking at it.

  Somehow I crawled out, down the stairs, into the street and found the taxi still waiting. The driver was fast asleep, the Vegas brochure over his face. I tapped on the window.

  He dragged me into the cab. Unloaded me at some hospital. There was some change in my pocket and I gave him everything I had. The creeps didn’t take my money, but the gun was gone. My passport was gone.

  The next time I looked around, I was in the corridor of an emergency ward that resembled something out of Dickens. The stink of the linoleum. Carbolic. I tried to crawl off the steel gurney, then half-fell, half-sprawled on a plastic chair. My legs shook.

  Half-conscious, I stayed on the chair alongside the poor, drunk and hopeless; you could smell the misery. It smelled like Moscow.

  Snatches of conversation drifted towards me, then away. People cracked their bones slipping, a doctor said. His lungs fucked, someone else muttered. Bad weather. Damp. TB on the rise again. People coughing. Carbon monoxide. Train stuck in a station. Station flooded. No air.

  The gabble of anxious voices surrounded me, the quibbling, contentious sounds of a public hospital. I was too tired to care. Maybe I dozed. When I finally came to the surface, standing over me, in a Burberry raincoat the size of a tent, was Tolya Sverdloff.

  “You set me up.”

  Tolya looked at me. “Don’t be an idiot.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Swear on your kids.”

  “Yes. On my kids.”