by Mark Timlin
It was bloody freezing in the street and I wished I had stayed in bed.
I trudged through the snow, carrying my stick. It was pretty well redundant if not downright dangerous in the weather conditions. Teddy stayed by the jeep and watched me coming. When I reached him, I said, ‘I don’t want to hang around. Let’s go.’ Gingerly I found the edge of the kerb, kicked through the snow in the gutter and went round to the passenger door of the car. It was warm inside but draughty from the gaps between the fastenings of the soft top. Teddy got in and switched on the engine and hot air blew through the vents under the dash.
‘What’s all this about? he asked.
I told him. About Jack Dark and the money and our aborted dinner date, and about the telephone call from Lawrence Taylor.
He looked at me oddly when I finished. ‘Who’s Lawrence Taylor?’
‘Who knows?’
‘How do you know it’s about all this?’
‘Because everything lately’s about all this,’ I replied. ‘But if it’s because I haven’t paid my milk bill and Lawrence Taylor is a special investigator for the United Dairies, I’ll apologise for dragging you out in the snow and buy you breakfast, if we can find a café that’s open.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘Are you going to take me?’
He didn’t look happy. ‘I’ll take you.’
‘Let’s go then. Time’s a wasting.’
He put the jeep into gear, pulled out into the middle of the street and pointed it north.
The roads were almost deserted as we went. One or two cars, a few newspaper delivery trucks and a couple of buses trying to maintain some sort of service, but the stops were deserted and pedestrians few and far between. The closer we got to the centre of town, the clearer the main streets got, but not much clearer.
I’d checked in the A-Z before I left the flat and directed Teddy down the Kennington Road, which wasn’t too bad for snow, and then right and sharp left into a narrow street of terraced houses where it lay thick and untouched. I squinted through the side window past Teddy’s head. ‘There,’ I said. ‘On the left, park down a bit.’ He did as I directed and switched off the engine. I could hear the wind whistling against the side of the vehicle. I pulled the two guns from my pockets and held them, one in each hand. Teddy’s eyes widened. ‘Can you use one of these?’ I asked.
He nodded.
‘Which one do you want?’
‘The revolver,’ he said.
I passed the S&W to him, cocked and locked the Beretta and put it back in my jacket. We left the jeep and stepped back into the bitter wind which pasted my jeans to my legs and made me want to piss. I didn’t take my stick. Teddy was still holding the magnum. ‘Get that out of sight,’ I hissed.
He pulled up his jacket and pushed the gun down the front of his jeans, pulling the jacket back over the butt of the pistol. I winced. ‘Don’t blow your balls off.’
‘Don’t worry, I won’t. Which number do we want?’
‘Number 28, top flat,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’ We went up to the door of the house. The carpet of snow over the short path from the pavement was trampled flat. Two bells, both tagged. Top one in the name of Murray, bottom one Johnson. Neither name meant anything to me. I rang the top bell. No answer. I rang it again. Same. I rang the bottom bell. No answer. Again. Same.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Teddy. ‘Kick the door down?’
I ran my hand along the top of the door frame and came away with dirty finger tips to my gloves and a Yale key.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Let’s kick the door down. Let’s make a nice racket, this early on a Sunday morning. You’re good, you know that, Teddy? Someone’s been and gone here. I don’t like it.’
I put the key in the lock and opened the door. We were in a tiny hall hardly big enough to accommodate the pair of us, facing two half glass doors, one with a brass ‘A’ screwed to the woodwork, one with a brass ‘B’. ‘A’ was closed tight. ‘B’ was open six inches or so, just wide enough to see a slice of stairway leading upwards. My stomach did a back flip. I’ve learned to distrust doors that should be locked standing open and inviting. I took the Beretta out of my pocket, slipped off the safety and held the gun in my left hand. I saw my other arm stretch, almost of its own volition, and the gloved hand push the door wide.
I walked through and felt warm, fetid air. I turned to Teddy. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about all this,’ I said. My chest was pounding and I found it hard to breathe. I wanted to turn and run, just go anywhere that the air was fresh and fear didn’t wait behind every open door.
I started up the single flight that seemed to stretch for miles. I heard music softly playing above, and something else, like an electric alarm clock, going off further away.
The central heating had been turned up full. The radiator on the stairs was bubbling and nearly burnt me, even though I only touched it for a second and was wearing gloves.
The music stopped and so did we. I heard the click of an automatic turntable through the silence and the song started again. Me And Mrs Jones, it was, by Billy Paul. I can never listen to that song now.
I got to the top of the stairs and Teddy was right behind me. There was a passage leading away to the back of the house, decorated with flowered wallpaper in colours nature never intended. It contained four closed doors, all painted white and fitted with naff silver handles, like council issue. I opened the nearest. Toilet and bathroom combined, all clean and neat and feminine. Opposite was the living room, curtains drawn, one table lamp lit. A Scotch bottle and two dirty glasses on the coffee table. Billy Paul on a cheap stereo. It was so hot I was all wet under my clothes and wiped sweat from the stubble on my chin.
The third room was the bedroom.
I pushed the door open. The curtains were drawn and the central light was on.
Teddy was right behind me.
The room smelled like an open bowel. It was small and seemed crowded with too much furniture. A large wardrobe with sliding doors, a dressing table cluttered with bottles and tubes, a flounced stool, a chest of drawers and a large double bed that had been pulled away from the wall into the middle of the flashily patterned carpet. The bed linen and pillows had been pulled off and scattered across the room. There were clothes twisted and balled in the sheets and duvet. The mattress was covered with a mixture of blood, shit and piss that had set to the consistency of the filling of a lemon meringue pie. It was thick and brown with a black crust around the edges that looked like it would crack if you touched it.
A still figure lay face down, half on and half off the bed. It was a woman. She was naked except for a black bra. The handle of a chisel or a screwdriver protruded from between her legs, poking obscenely upwards. The wood was smeared with blood dried to a rust colour. Her hands and feet were tied with cords and the flesh was black and swollen around the bonds.
Squeamishly I gripped her shoulder and turned her over. She rolled out of the gunk with a sucking sound, expelling foul air from her mouth and sexual organs, and I looked at a face straight out of a nightmare.
Her features had set in a rictus of agony. Someone had cut her lips off and the ragged edges of her mouth were drawn over yellow gums. Her open mouth was full of clotted blood. Her throat had been cut into another mouth and someone had carved WHORE on the skin of her chest above the bra.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I heaved and tasted a bile of curry in the back of my throat. My eyes blurred with tears and I put my hand on the wall and lowered my head as if to block out the images of inhumanity and death.
Teddy put his hand to his mouth. ‘Don’t be sick in here,’ I said. ‘Don’t you fucking dare! Go to the bathroom or get out, but don’t let anyone see you.’
He went to the bathroom. I left the bedroom after him and closed the door behind me. I stood in the hallway, back against the wall, head bowed, trying to find some fresh air to breathe. I heard Teddy force the bathroom window open and felt a small, cold breeze. I gulped at the cool freshness of
it. He came out of the bathroom with a towel over the lower part of his face. Billy Paul was still singing about having it off with someone else’s wife. I was getting sick and tired of the tune.
‘Turn that fucking racket off, will you?’ I saw Teddy’s eyes above the white edge of the towel and there was something strange in his expression, but he went into the living room and the music stopped.
I made for the last door.
Big mistake.
The smell in the kitchen was even worse than in the bedroom, if that was possible. The air was thick and rancid and the smoke detector was bleeping. That was the noise I had heard before. Something, someone, was lying across the burners of the electric cooker. A white geezer I’d never seen before and didn’t want to see again in a hurry. He’d been left on a low heat, naked, simmering. His eyes bulged with milky secretion and his hair had been burnt, so that what remained was glazed on his blistered scalp like charcoal. The skin and flesh that touched the hobs was done to a crisp.
He was as dead as dead could be, and overcooked.
I heard Teddy come in behind me and turned. I wanted to warn him, but his arm was raised and came down and the pistol in his hand crashed against my head and the room tilted and splintered into a million gilded sparks of blood red and orange and I plunged into darkness like a diver making the longest dive of his life.
20
The sound of an emergency klaxon brought me round with a jump. For a few seconds I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. But when I tasted curry again and smelt cooking human flesh, I remembered, and knew it would be a week or two before pork featured in my diet. Then I thought of prison food and the thought brought me to my knees and up to my feet, nearly keeling over as the dizziness and pain hit me. I righted myself by holding on to the kitchen table. There was blood in my eyes, blood on my hands, blood in my mouth and bloody murder on my mind. Teddy and the two guns were gone. Luckily the woollen watch cap I was wearing had taken some of the power out of his blow.
I looked around in panic. I heard voices and footsteps below. There was a door in front of me, key in lock and double bolted. I cracked the bolts, turned the key, opened the door and looked down a steep metal fire escape. I slammed the door behind me, locked it from the outside and threw the key as far away as I could.
The steps of the escape were slick with ice and rust and I blessed old Doctor Marten for the grip his boots gave me. I half jumped, half slid down the steps, kicked aside a pile of black garbage sacks and beat a path to the back gate. It stuck and I felt fingernails break inside my glove as I dragged it open. Outside the gate was a narrow alley, running right to left, and facing me another back gate. I pulled it open and ran through the garden, up a passage at the side of the house and over a set of iron railings into the Kennington Road.
A bus was just pulling up at a stop and the doors opened with an hydraulic sigh. An old dear clambered on board and I clambered after her, exhibiting considerably less agility. I pulled out a tenner and asked for a sixty pence ticket. The driver gave me a dirty look. ‘I can’t change that,’ he said and clocked the state of my boat race. God alone knew what I looked like. I heard sirens in the distance. ‘Keep it,’ I said.
He heard the sirens too and hesitated, then took the note and worked the switch that closed the doors, engaged gear and pulled away. I fell into the seat reserved for the handicapped and people with shopping or babies and held tightly to the chrome bar, watching the world and the police cars go by. I felt every eye in the bus on me. I closed mine and sank back against the vibrating window.
When I opened my eyes again Kennington had merged into Brixton. I didn’t know what bus I was on, where it was headed or how far I could travel, but I figured for a cockle I was all right for a trip to the terminus and a cup of tea in the canteen.
The bus reached Brixton Hill and I passed streets I recognised. Wanda the Cat Woman lived close by and I needed sanctuary. The bus lurched up past the prison where Emerald was probably just finishing his breakfast and, if I wasn’t careful, I’d soon be joining him for some porridge of my own. I saw a request stop looming, rang the bell and hit the pavement.
I was starting to crash and crash heavily. My eyes weren’t focusing and every small step was a giant leap. I would gratefully have curled up in the gutter and slept until a Lambeth Council mechanical sweeper came and plucked me from my temporary bed.
I headed up Brixton Hill, slipping and sliding on the packed snow, then turned left by a big council estate and found Wanda’s house down on the corner. I rubbed some snow over my face to clean it and clear my head. I pushed open the garden gate and walked up the path. I leaned on the bell and felt myself going again. I was being watched by an audience of cats sitting in the front room window. There seemed to be dozens of them and the inside of the glass was cloudy from their breath. They looked disdainfully on as I slumped against the door jamb.
I was beginning to wonder what the hell I was doing there when the door opened and I fell into the passage. I registered blonde hair, a Japanese kimono and a smell of cats, and a voice said ‘Hello, Nick, have you been at the glue again?’ before sweet darkness enveloped me once more.
21
When I came to, I was in a vast, soft bed. But I woke with such a start that I imagined I was back in that dreadful kitchen with a dead body cooking on the stove. I must have been clutching the sheet and sweating in panic for two minutes before I realised I was safe.
I stank and my mouth tasted like the inside of a soil pipe. I shouted some gobbledegook as I came up from unconsciousness and Wanda appeared in the bedroom doorway, looking cool but concerned.
‘Good morning, Nicholas.’
‘Hi.’
‘Bad dreams?’ she asked.
‘Could be.’
‘Nightmare on Elm Park?’
‘Something like that.’
‘So I gathered. You were talking in your sleep last night.’
‘Last night? What day is this then?’
‘Monday.’
‘Jesus, what happened to Sunday?’
‘A winter’s Sunday in Brixton Hill? You were lucky to miss it. I let you sleep through.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Seven-thirty.’
‘In the morning?’
‘Got it in one.’
‘I haven’t slept properly for a few days.’
‘It showed. You look better for some rest.’
I didn’t think I could have looked much worse.
‘Thanks for the hospitality.’
‘Just as well I didn’t have a boyfriend in.’
‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend. I thought you were saving yourself for me.’
‘If I was you’d have to grow up a bit, and I don’t think I can wait that long.’
‘Aren’t I mature enough for you, then?’
‘Mature, you? Mentally you haven’t reached the age of consent.’
I guessed she was right. Having no responsibilities means someone else always looking after your arse and getting you out of trouble. So I changed the subject. That one was a bit too close to home.
‘Did you sleep with me?’
‘Of course. There’s only one bed.’
‘Did I, you know?’
‘You tried, but you couldn’t get it up.’
‘That’s nothing new. It runs in the family. I hope I didn’t get you too hot.’
She gave me a disgusted look. ‘I didn’t have to bite my knuckles in frustration, if that’s what you mean.’
‘That’s OK then. Maybe next time.’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’ll dream about it.’
‘Dream on.’
‘Now you’re getting me hot.’
‘Your mind is like a sewer.’
‘My mind is OK, it’s my armpits that are like sewers.’
‘Want a bath?’
‘Good idea.’
‘I’ll run one.’
‘Hot,’ I said.
‘As hot as you can handle.’
The way I felt, that wouldn’t be very hot at all. I struggled out of bed and wrapped myself in a sheet.
‘Modest too,’ said Wanda.
I felt another crash coming. ‘Wanda,’ I said, and my voice sounded miles away and I nearly fell. She supported me, and held me tightly.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’ll manage. I’ve been pushing the boat out a bit over the past few days.’
‘I would never have guessed.’
‘It’s not what you think.’
‘If you say so. By the way, how’s your leg?’
‘I’ll survive.’
‘You’re not taking care of it, and your foot’s swollen. I had a terrible job getting that boot and sock off. Why aren’t you using your stick?’
‘I lost it.’
‘You’re a bloody fool to yourself.’
‘I know, but I’ll be OK. I’ve just got to take care of a little business. Then the scars can harden or else it won’t matter.’
‘You can’t leave. You’re not well enough.’
‘I’ve got to.’
She tightened her mouth but didn’t argue. I followed her into the bathroom like a dog. As I went in she stalked out and slammed the door. I shrugged. The bathroom smelled fragrant and both taps were gushing into a green, scented bubble bath. I turned off the cold tap and tested the water. Perfect. I dropped the sheet and eased myself into the water with a groan. I looked at my leg. It had the texture and colour of raw meat and my left foot had swollen by at least a size and a half. I hoped that I would be able to get my boot back on.