Disturbia

by Christopher Fowler

  Chapter 33

  Stitches, Sequins and Sex

  Jason Wentworth raised his throbbing head and looked around. He found himself in a tiny room constructed of sweating bare bricks, propped up in a wicker armchair, surrounded by what appeared to be sequinned sixties cocktail frocks and wigs. Hanging on the wall was a tattered pantomime cow’s head. A broad white bandage was swathed across his bare stomach. When he tried to sit up properly, it felt as if someone was pouring boiling water over his gut.

  ‘Where am I?’ he asked weakly. ‘Eric? What are you doing here? What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘You’ll split your stitches if you don’t stay still, fidgettybot,’ complained an ugly elderly man seated at a makeup mirror across from his chair. He was patting the fleshy oval of his face with pink powder, testing bee-sting lips. ‘Drink your tea while it’s still hot.’ He wore a bulging string vest and a lime green ballet tutu. ‘You’ve been in a fight, dear, but you’re going to be fine so long as you keep very still.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  Eric checked a minuscule gold watch hanging from a pair of rubber breasts above the mirror. ‘Ten to three. The security at The Grotto had to make a full report to the police about your ‘incident’ and of course they lied through their teeth. None of those boys will ever go to heaven. You was stabbed, dear,’ he said loudly, as if having a conversation with someone who was profoundly deaf. ‘The cops wanted to ask you questions, but the boys got you out. Do you remember what happened, or don’t you want to tell me?’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell,’ he replied, nervously wondering where his multi-coloured dreamcoat had disappeared to. ‘Some geezer didn’t like the look of my face.’

  ‘It wasn’t your face we was worried about. The blade of that knife only just missed your stomach wall. It’s a good job you was wearing that jacket of yours. Buggered up the kapok lining.’

  ‘Where is my coat?’ He was sure it had been ripped off for the drugs before he had even hit the floor.

  ‘Behind you on the door. I had Malibu Sidney take it off you before the cops turned up. Don’t worry, everything’s still in it.’ Thank God, thought Wentworth. His entire investment was tied up in that mind-altering garment. He realised with a shock that his former pupil had not paid him for the uppers, either.

  ‘What do you reckon on them bandages? I did a nice job, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did this? What, stitches and everything?’

  ‘Well, we couldn’t let you be taken to hospital while you had God knows what tucked about your person, could we?’ Eric explained, lighting a cigarette from the butt of his last. He was performing at the pub tonight for the benefit of a local AIDS charity. The bar would remain open until 5:00 a.m. and the last bleary-eyed patron would stagger out at 7:00 a.m. Not like the old days, when last orders were called at twenty past ten. He preferred the old days. Ah well.

  By day Eric worked as a nurse at Charing Cross Hospital, where he also held a position as a bereavement counsellor working in the same team as Betty, but it was the nightwork he undertook performing with his drag troupe that really made the money. This was not the first time he’d agreed to help Wentworth out, but who could resist him? There was a sense of lost innocence and something worth saving about the boy, even though the ‘boy’ had to be in his early thirties by now. Eric always told his friends that the drag routine helped him to relax, but the simple truth was that he loved doing it. He had been applying his makeup and hoping that Betty would come over to see his act when news reached him that Wentworth had been attacked.

  ‘Did they catch the bloke who did it?’

  ‘Darling, that building has too many exits to stop people from leaving sharpish. You get a kip—I’ve got to go on in a minute. You’re not in any danger. I gave you a couple of pain-killers and a strong antibiotic to prevent infection, so I hope you haven’t taken anything else tonight. Now it’s down to you to rest and stay out of trouble. That means no dealing for a while, Jase, you understand?’

  But that, he knew, was impossible, because the second Eric left him he would be up and attempting to head back to the club.

  ‘I’ve got to get back, Eric. Maudsley will need feeding.’

  ‘The boys brought her over so she could be with you. She’s by the door.’

  Wentworth winced in pain as he pulled the reluctant terrier forward. He’d named it Maudsley after the famous schizophrenics’ home in Denmark Hill where his mother had spent the later years of her life.

  ‘Dog-minder, wound dresser, Jill of All Trades, that’s me, and don’t keep calling me Eric, only you and my dear sainted mother know that name and I’d like to keep it that way thank you.’

  Maudsley seemed determined not to enter the star’s dressing room. Wentworth had to admit that the smell of cheap perfume and hair lacquer knocked the breath from most people.

  They were in a converted storage room at the back of a pub in Vauxhall, a few feet from the pungent half-flooded toilets and a cramped bar area where a mixed crowd of two hundred locals, regulars, tourists and slumming yuppies waited for Eric and his well-drilled team to hurl themselves about the stage in shameless abandon. The dressing room was part of the old beer cellar, and was decked in gaudy harlequin rags the colours of a Battenburg cake. Eric gave up his attempt to glue a sapphire-studded caterpillar of eyelash onto his right lid, and studied Jason’s stomach in his makeup mirror.

  ‘Seriously, I don’t want you going back there no matter how good you reckon your constitution is.’

  ‘Heaven must be missing an angel, Eric.’

  ‘Fuck heaven, dear. They’ve got quite enough of my friends already. Listen, I’m going on now, so what do you need?’

  ‘I was supposed to meet this bloke just before it happened, and I need to find him again. It was a big deal.’

  ‘Oh you and your deals, you’re always just “meeting a bloke”. You know I don’t approve. I wonder what your missus thinks. Well, he won’t be there now, not with the lights up and the plods swarming. Is there anything else?’

  ‘I’ve got no cash on me. Can you lend us a tenner?’

  Eric shoved a coat stand of sequinned gowns and feather boas to one side and blew away a dune of face powder in order to make some space on his desk top. On this he upturned the contents of his evening bag. Among the mound of seventies colour cosmetics he found a ten-pound note, clamped it between coral nails and passed it across.

  ‘You haven’t got a coat I can borrow, have you?’

  ‘Fucking hell, take the shirt off my back, you will,’ complained Eric. ‘Have a look in the alcove. You might find something that fits you. Don’t put any pressure on that wound or you’ll end up in hospital. Wait till you see the gorgeous cross-stitching I’ve done on your tummy. It’s not surgery, it’s art. Hang on.’ He emptied some small white pills from a tin on the desk. ‘If you insist on staying up all night you’d better take a couple of these every three hours. The stitches will hurt like buffalo after the pain-killers wear off, but these’ll get you through.’

  Outside the crowd were starting to slow-clap in unison. Eric dug out a heavy navy-blue Schott jacket that had belonged to a former lover and had somehow migrated into the troupe’s wardrobe hamper.

  ‘Go on, then, take it, but I want it back. Got sentimental value, has that, seeing as the owner, a man very dear to my heart, is no longer with us.’

  ‘Did he die?’ asked Wentworth, checking the sleeves for length.

  ‘Good God, no, he’s in jail in Singapore for soliciting. Go on, bugger off and let me do my act.’

  ‘What is it tonight?’

  ‘Tarts medley, Madonna and Child sketch, bad disco medley, drunk Liza Minnelli sketch, anti-Tory medley, Michael Portillo in drag. They’ll love us. This crowd is so pissed David Mellor could come on and strip down to a g-string and still get a round of applause. Oh, hello, who’s this nice young man?’

  Vince stood uncomfortably in the doorway, his fist poised to knock on the half-open do
or.

  ‘Come inside, dear, don’t be strange.’

  Vince entered the cramped dressing room and nearly choked on the overpowering scent of hairspray. Wentworth looked terrible. His face was the colour of stale dough.

  ‘Vince, how’d you find me, man?’

  ‘I brought him over.’ Betty stepped around them and found a place to perch. She had changed into a short black skirt, boots and a white T-shirt. Vince felt an alarming stirring in his jeans as he studied her.

  ‘Here, I’ve still got your letter, man.’ He tried to twist around in the wicker chair, but the stitches in his stomach tightened and stung. Vince reached behind him and felt inside the jacket, extracting the crumpled page. It had only broken into quarters. He could tell by the discolouration of the paper that some sheets had been less chemically treated than others.

  ‘Just don’t burst them stitches or Mother will be very fucking angry with you,’ admonished Eric. He tucked a ratty blanket around Wentworth and eyed Vince lasciviously. ‘Now you must let this poor boy get some rest. Surely there’s something Betty can find for you to do upstairs. Come on, get your arses out of the fucking way and let an artiste get to the stage before they start chucking beer bottles.’ Eric had disappeared, his character superseded by a more waspish persona, an alter-ego that regarded the punters through cynical spangled eyes for a moment before slipping between the mouldy red velvet curtains and acknowledging the entrance music to the roar of an appreciative crowd.

  Vince looked back at Wentworth, curled in the wicker chair, to find that he had already fallen asleep.

  ‘We should do as he says,’ said Betty. ‘Eric’s suggestions are usually for the best.’ She took his hand and led him from the claustrophobic cell to a narrow staircase covered in a dozen layers of black paint. It led behind the stage to a dingy linoleum-floored corridor above the bar.

  ‘Follow me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked, although he already had a pretty good idea. She pushed open the first of the doors they reached and led him inside, backing him against the far wall of a tiny bedroom lit by a single red bulb. The sleet that drifted against the cracked window above the bed was turning into rain. Water leaked through the bottom of the casement and dripped from a black fungal patch in the corner of the ceiling, yet the room felt inviting and warm, like a gypsy caravan. Coloured scarves of every hue hung from the walls and formed a crumpled quilt on the bed.

  Betty placed her hands against the wall, on either side of his head.

  ‘People say I’m too aggressive. Do you think I’m too aggressive?’

  ‘No.’ Vince swallowed. ‘If you want something, you should go out and get it.’

  ‘Well, I don’t normally have to do that. It usually comes here, sent up those stairs. But there are nights. Bad weather slows some people down. Not me.’

  Her tongue flickered hotly in his mouth, her citrus-scented hair enveloping his neck. She undressed him quickly, clipping open the belt of his jeans with practised ease, and sat him naked on the corner of the bed while she disrobed. Vince had no illusions about the profession of his new-found friend. As she freed her breasts from her T-shirt and shivered out of her panties to lie beside him, he could only marvel at her libidinous grin, her shameless touch, her miraculous body and her spectacularly inappropriate sense of timing.

  Chapter 34

  Clue, Cat and Tortoise

  Night-time London had entered a new phase now, a temporal no-man’s-land between departing clubbers and arriving cleaners. The sky, if not exactly dark, was becoming less reflective. By five it would be as deep as ink. There was still plenty of life on the streets, in coffee bars, at night-bus stops, but it was more subdued, less optimistic, less reputable, wearier and warier. Down by the river, the plangent tone of Big Ben tolled the half hour. On the other side of the turpid waters, Vince was back on the street and the phone, sheltering from an elemental downpour. Ahead of him, the last of the night’s traffic straggled across the rain-misted bridge towards the city.

  ‘What was the next one on the list?’ Harold Masters asked.

  ‘Fleury,’ said Vince, trying to read the decimated shards of paper in his hand. ‘I’ve only got about three quarters of an hour left before my cut-off time,’ he added guiltily.

  ‘Bear with us—we’re writing them down. How are your batteries holding up?’

  ‘Oh, they’re great now,’ he was about to say, until he realised that the doctor was referring to his mobile phone. Physically he felt—what was the word—re-energised, with freshly pumped-up voltage, prepared to face the vicissitudes of the remaining dark hours. After their lovemaking, Betty had dried the sweat on his chest and smiled a crooked, knowing smile at him. Holding a silencing finger to her crescent lips, she had slipped back into her clothes and vanished into the crowded pub downstairs. She wasn’t the kind of girl who said goodbye, because she knew he’d come calling again; he still had her card, memories of her thighs, the small of her back, her opal eyes.

  Vince checked the power level on the phone. ‘They’re all right at the moment, but I’ve not much change for public boxes. I’m low on money and nowhere near a cashpoint, and there are still four challenges to complete.’

  ‘Okay, we’re working on it, don’t panic.’

  ‘I know what they are,’ said Maggie Armitage excitedly, flapping a ringed hand at the doctor, ‘why won’t anyone listen to me?’

  ‘Sssh, I can’t hear him very well.’ Masters held his receiver closer.

  ‘People don’t listen to you, Margaret, because you get everything wrong,’ Stanley Purbrick complained. ‘You new age people are all the same with your lovely warm wibbly-wobbly vibrations and purple auras, but when it comes down to hard facts and figures you ignore the evidence. New age? Symptoms of old age, more like.’

  ‘Oh, for the love of Mithras don’t give us your government infiltration theories again,’ complained Maggie. ‘Call me narrow-minded but I think there’s a bit of a difference between you insisting that Margaret Thatcher was involved in the cloning of Ronald Reagan’s sperm to create a new breed of super-politicians, and my beliefs about astral alignment.’

  ‘The main difference is that my theories are rooted in scientific reality and yours involve waving a bit of crystal about on a thong.’

  ‘Your aura turns a very unpleasant shade of heliotrope when you start being rude, did you know that?’

  ‘I wonder if you two could give it a rest for five minutes and help out here?’ asked Jane Masters, pointing to her husband holding the telephone receiver.

  Maggie pushed herself forwards, elbowing Stanley away. ‘They’re crosses. Tell him they’re all types of crosses. Heraldic ones, all kinds. There are drawings in this book, look.’ She held the pages open for all to see. ‘They’re not just Christian, you know. The ancient Egyptians used them as sacred symbols. And the Aztecs.’

  ‘There used to be a chocolate bar called an Aztec,’ said Purbrick, morosely hoisting a bottle of red wine over his empty glass.

  ‘Vince, we think they’re crosses,’ said Masters. ‘Though I don’t see a connection between such artefacts and the Anne Boleyn lines.’

  ‘Suppose the lines were just there to point Vince towards Anne Boleyn,’ said Jane.

  ‘So what?’ asked Purbrick. ‘She’s connected with all sorts of places.’

  ‘Think about the crosses. Is there a particular church associated with her? What about the chapel at Hever Castle?’

  ‘But that’s not London, is it?’ said Jane.

  ‘Isn’t there an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, something about the Treasures of Hever Castle? Paintings on loan.’

  ‘Does anybody have a newspaper?’ asked Arthur Bryant.

  ‘There’s one in the rack over there.’

  Maggie tore open a copy of The Independent with a theatrical flourish and began intently scouring the pages, which was a waste of time because she was looking at the sports section, having left her reading glasses in a veg
etarian restaurant in Tooting the night before. ‘Nothing in here,’ she concluded. ‘Pass me The Guardian.’

  But Masters had already found the appropriate advertisement. ‘Here you are, “Treasures of Hever Castle”, opening tomorrow at the National Portrait Gallery, and there’s a reproduction of one of the pictures.’

  ‘Oh, it’s the famous one,’ said Jane, ‘the portrait of Anne Boleyn by Hans Holbein. That would fit the bill.’

  ‘That’s where you have to go,’ Masters told Vince. ‘Then I guess you need to find something with a lot of crucifixes.’

  ‘It had better be on the outside of the building, or nearby. I certainly won’t be able to get in.’

  ‘Saint Martin in the Fields is opposite. Could that mean something?’

  ‘No,’ said Vince. ‘This is something in or on a painting, I’m sure of it.’ He knew how much Sebastian admired monarchist art. Holbein’s portrait of Boleyn would have struck a chord with him. Perhaps he simply expected Vince to break a window and find the next letter before anyone could catch him, but such an attempt would be suicidal.

  ‘Hang on a second.’ The doctor turned to Purbrick. ‘Who do we know at the National?’

  ‘George Stokes has been there for over thirty years,’ said the elderly gentleman who had just let himself in from the hall. ‘A good man. Helped me sort out some nasty business with a vandalised Pre-Raphaelite a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Do you have his home number?’ Masters turned his attention back to the telephone. ‘Listen, Vince, this is going to take some organisation. If what you’re being sent to retrieve is inside the gallery, we’d have to get the keys and the alarm codes for the entry system.’