Tariq said, ‘What about shooters? We need some hardware if we're going to turn over a bank.’
‘“hooters”? “Hardware”?’ Emma giggled. ‘“urn over a bank”? I'm married to the Pakistani Ronnie Biggs.’
But Murray said, ‘Kazza will sort the guns.’ It was his only contribution.
‘I'm sorry?’ Karen exclaimed. But then – somehow – she caught on to his train of thought and said, ‘Yeah, all right. I'll sort the guns.’
‘And how the hell are you going to do that?’ Tariq asked. He was loving this.
‘You know my ex from way back?’ She wished she had a cigarette so she could exhale coolly, like Stockard Channing in Grease. ‘You remember Kush? He can get guns.’
Tariq raised his eyebrows and pinched the bridge of his wonky nose. But Tom looked up sharply, ‘Kush? You didn't tell me you'd seen Kush.’
Karen shrugged. ‘I just ran into him,’ she said. ‘In the street.’
They talked until three o'clock in the morning. They discussed potential targets, suitable transport and plausible cover stories. They imagined how it would feel to point guns at cashiers and to scream instructions from beneath their stockinged heads (‘Masks,’ Freya corrected them. ‘You'll be wearing masks.’). Even the adrenalin of these mental pictures was almost too much to bear. They touched on the moral implications and dismissed them saying things like ‘The insurance company will pay up’ and ‘It's a victimless crime’. It didn't matter anyway because they were only having a bit of fun, after all. They talked and they drank and they only stopped when the baby woke up and began to snivel and gurgle. It seemed like a cut-off point that brought them back to reality and Tariq and Karen suddenly remembered their nine o'clock meetings and Freya thought about Freya Franklin Hats and Tom remembered a stack of unmarked books. Ami was the first to stand up. ‘I should go,’ she said. And the others followed suit.
Tariq showed them out while Emma rocked the baby. Karen thought she looked a little happier and healthier than for a long time; glowing even. Maybe it was just the whisky.
As they all said their goodbyes and Murray kissed her cheek, Emma said, ‘What about you? What's your role in this caper? It was your idea, Mr Murray.’
He straightened up. ‘I thought it was your idea, china,’ he said but the others picked up on it and Tom said, ‘Yeah, Murray. What about you?’ and Karen said, ‘Yeah.’
Murray smiled and there was a twinkle in his eye and his lips quivered. ‘I'm just going to make sure you go through with it,’ he said, and the others laughed.
8
Murray tells a lot of stories, including the one about Der Vollbartclub Von Aachen
Murray tells stories about where he's been and what he's been doing; Murray-stories about Murray-fun littered with Murray-isms. He couldn't keep saying, ‘You know. Around’ and ‘This and that’ for ever because people would keep asking questions until they got an answer they believed or liked or could live with, at least.
Where have you been, Murray?
‘You know. Around.’
Yeah. But what have you been doing for the last ten years?
He shrugs. ‘This and that, china,’ he says. ‘This, that and some of the other.’
No. But… seriously, Muz… What have you been up to?
He pinches a cigarette and lights it with slow care, his expression creased in concentration. He shakes the match and his knuckles crack and his wrist is so loose it looks like his hand could fly right off. Though he rarely smokes, he inhales deeply like a pack-a-day man and he answers through an out-breath that clouds in front of his face. ‘I went to law school,’ he says.
Yeah? Which one?
‘The one off Russell Square.’
You mean Store Street?
‘That's the one. Store Street.’
So you must have known so-and-so. He was there. You know, the guy with the crooked smile and putty features. Or what about such-and-such? Remember her? She went out with wotsisname.
Murray shakes his head. For an instant he looks… What? Disconcerted? No. More like confused. But then it's gone. ‘Small world,’ he says. ‘But I was only there about a month, china, then I jacked it in. I couldn't get articles and I wasn't being sponsored so I couldn't afford it.’ He thinks for a moment. ‘Anyway, Store Street's a big college. Small world but a big college.’
So what did you do next?
Murray flicks the half-smoked cigarette into the gutter and he smiles. Which smile is it? An experienced Murray-watcher might recognize it as number eleven or fourteen or perhaps his eighth smile which is often mistaken for his seventeenth (or is it the other way round?). Whatever. He's getting into his stride, that's for sure.
He travelled, he says. To India. He lived on an ashram in Pune with a sadhu called Sankar who had a beard to his navel, hair to his waist, a thimble penis and a nice line in aphorisms. How long was he there? He shrugs. He can't really remember. Nine months, maybe. A year, tops. The funny thing was that after three months or so, the itinerant Westerners who dropped into the ashram began to assume he was a sadhu himself and sat at his feet when they weren't hanging on his words.
‘Perhaps it was my own little sayings,’ he says. ‘Or perhaps it was…’ He strokes a finger across his cheek. It is a peculiar, almost sexual gesture. ‘You know.’
Your sayings? What were your sayings?
He licks his lips. All kinds of things. About materialism mostly. ‘Western materialism’, they called it. Because wasn't that what the tourists were running away from with return tickets in their bum-bags?
‘“They say that money does not grow on trees. Why? Is it not paper?” Or “Selfishness must be distinguished from true faith.” Or “It's called capitalism because it's the final state of man. It does indeed cap it all.”’ That kind of crap.
But what did you actually do?
Murray pulls out smile number one; although the nature of his reply depends on his audience. Sometimes he says, ‘Not a lot. Just chilled out, smoked hash and got fucked.’ Sometimes he says that he meditated for six hours a day and lived off honey and lassi. Sometimes he says that he helped out the sadhu with those buttockless blondes with a taste for the exotic. ‘Besides his thimble penis, he didn't have much – what do you call it? – self-control, for a holy man. So it was up to me to finish them off.’
Whoever his audience and whatever pay-off he tells them, they say things like ‘Nice one’ and ‘Cool’ and ‘I know what you mean’ and, when they discuss Murray's time in India with each other (which they do), they leave out these details because to speak them aloud would be a betrayal of the intimacy that he surely shared with them alone.
After leaving India, Murray did all kinds of stuff; all kinds of jobs in all kinds of places, like the toy shop in St Albans, for example, and a lot of layabouting besides.
He lived in Jo'burg for a while and took a stall selling fabric in the open-air market in Melville. Was it material he'd bought in India? Yeah. That's right.
‘Melville?’ This is Tom. He and Karen once spent a month in South Africa during the long summer holiday just after she'd left her job as a lobbyist and they'd stayed a night at the Melville Guest House.
‘It really is a small world,’ Murray comments.
Tom turns to his ex. ‘What was the name of that bar?’
‘Ebony,’ she says.
‘That's it. Run by a Swede called Torben and his black girlfriend. What was her name?’
‘Wanisayi,’ says Murray.
Karen shakes her head. ‘No it wasn't. It was an old-fashioned name. Gladys or Sylvia or something like that.’
‘That was her English name,’ he says decisively. ‘Her real name was Wanisayi. A pretty little thing with those big bright eyes.’
‘She was hardly little,’ Tom protests. ‘Arse like a dump truck.’
‘No. I meant little as in young. How old do you think she was?’
‘I don't know. About nineteen?’
‘Yeah. About ninetee
n. Twenty, maybe.’ Murray cocks his head. ‘Wanisayi…’ he says pensively, as though he will be transported back to the source of the memory simply by speaking her name. His manner suggests something unsaid.
Murray moved on to Bangkok.
How long were you there?
‘Any of you ever been to Bangkok?’ Murray asks. And when the others all shake their heads he continues: ‘Because that was a place I could call home, know what I mean? In fact I wouldn't mind going back there some time.’
Yeah? Were you working?
‘Just for bed and board. I had a gig at one of the titty bars on the Patpong Road. You know, persuading the sailors and perverts to come in. A lot of London businessmen actually; a fuck of a lot.’
Freya says, ‘That must've been disgusting.’
‘Sure. But kind of fun too. All those American squaddies looking for lady-boys to remind them of their girlfriends and their able seamen buddies all at the same time. Know what I mean?’
So why did you leave?
‘Friend of mine got busted trying to smuggle a couple of nine-bars in his money-belt. When he got sent down it all got a bit crazy so I figured it was time to move on.’
‘It sounds like that movie,’ Karen says. And then her thoughts take an extra step: ‘In fact it sounds exactly like that movie.’
Murray smiles: ‘Of course it does. The movie was based on my mate. Andy Donaldson. It was in all the papers.’
The others look at each other uncertainly but Ami says, ‘Andy Donaldson? Yeah. That name rings a bell.’
‘There you go.’
Murray worked as a potato peeler in a Baton Rouge restaurant (What kind of restaurant? Southern-fried chicken, of course), he was an apprentice tree doctor in Fort Lauderdale and painted telephone poles all the way from Atlanta to Wilmington (experience in a harness was all that was required). He returned to Europe bringing a kilo of charlie (stolen from the Mexicans' Miami cartel) into Charles de Gaulle up his arse. He then sold gram wraps alongside ten-franc models of Nelson's Column beneath the Eiffel Tower (because tourism's a global business). When he ran short of cash he spent six months on the BeNeLux festival circuit playing with a rave didge four-piece called the Doosandonts. Of course he did.
Tom says, ‘You never used to be into, like, crime.’
Murray shrugs. ‘Like I told you, china. I've changed.’
When he tells Murray-stories, the others – Tom, Karen, Tariq, Emma, Freya, Kwesi and Ami – look at him incredulously. But does that mean they think he's lying? After all, they know that somebody paints poles, somebody deals drugs from their derrière and somebody even plays the didgeridoo over Teutonic techno. So why can't it be Murray?
These days, perceptions of authenticity are at a premium even as authenticity itself becomes ever more meaningless. These days in London, politics, race and class are less statements of identity than descriptions of the way you choose to accessorize. Personal validity lies not in fact but in the simple question, Can you pull it off? At college, Murray's trappings were minimal so his indisputable authenticity (though endlessly various) was derived from intangible ticks of, say, personality and manner. Perhaps, therefore, his friends' present (if momentary) doubts come from the way Murray's now got anecdotes to burn that outstrip all others for thrills and absurdity. But Tom, Tariq and Karen still remember the Murray-fun at LMT and the rest have heard many of the stories so they figure that, if anybody could have lived a decade like that, it has to be somebody like Muz. Murray was never Anybody and always Somebody and they want to trust him for the vicarious excitement he gives them: the smell of danger, the sherbet dib-dab of chaos, the peepshow of potential. Besides, between belief and incredulity lies the no man's land of uncertainty; a contested strip of scrub where Murray's cunning snipers lie in wait to shoot down any sceptic with the Dutch courage to make a run for the other side. Like when Tariq doesn't believe Murray's story about Der Vollbartclub Von Aachen.
Tariq is telling an anecdote to Kwesi. Murray and Tom are there but he's talking to Kwesi. He's drunk and miserable (again) so he wants to make somebody else – no, not somebody; anybody – anybody else feel bad and, on this occasion, that anybody is Tom. Tariq is already laughing at the prospect.
‘When we were at LMT, right, it was around that time when, like, every student was growing a goatee. You remember that? Like every single student. This was the early nineties, right? You'd hardly be allowed into further education unless you had a stupid goatee beard stuck on the end of your bloody chin.’
Tariq seems to think this is the most humorous and intelligent observation ever because he can hardly get the words out. Kwesi looks bemused. Murray and Tom know what's coming so Murray's not listening and Tom smiles weakly because he's well aware that he's the stooge in this gag.
‘So Murray was, like, “We should all grow beards.” And I was all, “What the fuck are you talking about?” wasn't I, Muz? And he was, like, “Do you want to fit in around here or not?” Something like that. I don't remember. So we all agree to grow beards.’ Kwesi yawns into his palm and Tariq picks up the pace. ‘Anyway, the point is we don't see each other for, like, a week or something and then we all hook up in the bar. There's me with some hardcore Paki stubble on my cheeks, there's Murray… and he's only got the most beautiful and fulsome beard you've ever seen. And then Tom walks in.’ Tariq can't take the hilarity of it any more and he begins to snort with laughter. ‘Sorry.’ He wipes his nose on his sleeve. ‘Tom walks in and he's just got this little fuzz beneath his nose. Just a little fucking moustache like some German exchange student or something.’ Tariq packs up again. Apparently this is the punchline but, just in case it's gone unnoticed, he adds, ‘It was so fucking funny!’
By now Kwesi looks completely bewildered. He tries to laugh but he has no idea what he's supposed to be laughing at.
Tom's smile has dissolved into his face. But he wants to lend his college mate moral support so he says, ‘It was kind of funny. But I guess you had to be there.’
Tariq doesn't care: ‘You should have seen him. You remember, Muz? You remember? That bum-fluff moustache.’
‘Yeah,’ Murray says. ‘I remember.’
‘Your beard was the best, though, Muz. Wicked. You should have kept it. Really. You should have done. You should have…’ Tariq tails off into his pint. There is a heartbeat or two of silence as Kwesi fiddles with a beer mat and Tom rubs a hand over his chin.
‘You know what, china?’ Murray says. ‘Let me tell you something…’ He sips on his water. It's the first time he's shown any interest in the conversation and the other three lean forward eagerly. ‘You know I told you about playing the didge around Belgium, yeah? Well, one time we went over the border into Germany to play a festival in this little town called Aachen. I hadn't shaved for about six weeks – we'd been on the road, hadn't we? – so I had quite a beard coming along.’
Tariq cracks up and sprays a mouthful of his beer across Tom who wipes his face uncomplainingly on his jacket. ‘Just that moustache!’ he splutters. ‘Can't get it out of my head.’ He wipes his eyes and looks up at Murray. ‘Sorry, Muz.’
‘It's cool.’ His eyes are smiling. ‘All I was going to say… Well… it was just strange really. I turn up in this little town and they, like, couldn't believe my beard, know what I mean? We were only there a couple of days but, at the end of it, I was like some kind of celebrity. Turns out that beard-growing's the locals' main pastime. It's almost like a sport or something.’
Kwesi says: ‘You serious?’
‘Serious, china. When the rest of the band headed back for Maastricht, I ended up staying on for a month as a guest of the president of the Beard Club. It was a good laugh. Had my beard coiffured and trimmed and twisted and waxed. Even won some regional competition. In the end I only shaved because I was getting hassle off the cops. This was just after those African bombings and they were really jumpy. Thought I was Al-Aqsa.’
Tariq is staring at Murray. His expression is crumpled in drunk
en curiosity. Eventually he shakes his head. ‘Bullshit.’ Tom and Kwesi turn to him. They'd been thinking the same thing but they weren't drunk enough to say so.
‘What?’
‘That's bullshit, Muz.’ Tariq's drunken hilarity has given way to drunken irritation as Murray's every other story unravels in his mind. ‘Jesus! Mr-fucking-Bin-Laden-Bangkok-trannies-coke-up-the-jaxy-bullshit! I tell you something, mate. Trust me on this. When you run your own business, you learn to smell bullshit. And my business is predictive technology. My business is bullshit so I've got a more sensitive nose than most. I don't know about gak up your arse but that's certainly where you're talking from.’
Tom and Kwesi have now turned their attention to Murray. In this instant they realize that none of them have ever really contradicted him before (not so bluntly, anyway) so how's he going to react? Murray smiles and it's a new expression (that Tom, who's recently taking to counting them again, logs as number thirty-eight). ‘You think so?’ he says.
They hook up again that evening in a Putney pub. It's one of those Irish manqué joints with horse brasses, black-and-white prints and seafaring flotsam on the walls. It serves faux-pub-grub from menus faux-written on faux-blackboards for consumption around the faux-coal fire. It was Murray's choice of venue but he's a little late. This time ‘the girls’ (as Tariq tends to call them) are there too. Well, Emma and Freya anyway. Ami's on her last OB for the Weather Channel and Karen's stuck in some PPP meeting. They choose a table by the plate-glass window. None of them feels very comfortable. This isn't their kind of place; mostly young men – sales reps in suits and lager lads in Ben Sherman – and the odd high-maintenance slapper sipping on an alcopop. Generally they'd either prefer somewhere that sold rioja at ten quid a bottle and the modern pub standards of salmon fishcakes and rocket salads or even what Tariq calls a ‘real boozer’ with ladies' darts nights and beer bellies propped on the bar. So Tom asks nobody in particular: ‘Why did Murray want to come here?’
The London Pigeon Wars Page 11