Dust and Desire

by Conrad Williams

  ‘That’s my wife you’re talking about,’ he said.

  ‘Ex-wife, I’ll bet – and she’s been your ex for a long time. Put a tenner on it. Put fifty on it.’

  ‘You piece of shit, Sorrell,’ but it was all air, and it came out of him in a long rush, deflating him. He didn’t have a streak of the cold, hard stuff in him; didn’t even have a pinch of it. He looked suddenly old, and I thought, You and me both, mate. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

  And then he was coming back at me, but his words were slow, his face crumpled. He wasn’t comfortable with this level of nastiness. Which was a surprise because you had to have the mouth if you wanted to get on in the Force. You didn’t gain your pips for saying please and thank you.

  Anyone else and I would have waded in, but from him, a man who was trying to play my game and struggling at it, the words hit home and stayed with me, like painful splinters just beneath the skin. All he had to do was say their names, and that was me finished.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay.’

  ‘You shouldn’t throw so many fucking stones, Joel,’ he said. ‘There’s always someone who’ll pick a couple up and throw them back.’

  ‘Don’t take me in,’ I said.

  ‘Give me something to work with,’ he replied.

  ‘The girl?’ I said. ‘Melanie. The woman I was with when you had me tailed, is she back yet?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’

  ‘I asked you to look after her.’

  ‘Forget her,’ he said. ‘It’s me you should be cosying up to. I don’t look after your diary for you, sweetheart.’

  ‘I couldn’t phone her, because she went to Devon. But if she’s back, then I have to go and check on her,’ I said. ‘I don’t want her to get into any trouble.’

  ‘It’s you who’s in trouble, sunshine. You went away without my say-so, and I want to know what you did on your holidays.’

  ‘I gave you the head in that flat, Mawker. What else do you want from me?’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘I told you, I don’t fucking know.’

  ‘How did you know she was… This would go down better at the nick. Come on.’

  ‘Look, I’ll do you some Jackanory, but let’s all nip up to Maida Vale first. Just to put my mind at rest, hey? If she’s not back, then I’ll leave a note and you can leave one of your glove puppets there, to make me feel better.’

  ‘What prevented you earlier? Having your dick massaged by some floozy wearing a hotel uniform seem more important then, did it?’

  ‘What stopped me? Only the thought that you were doing what you promised me you’d fucking do.’

  ‘We’ve had police in the area,’ Mawker insisted, ‘and everything looks tickety-boo. Very Maida Vale. People fart in Maida Vale and Neighbourhood Watch makes a report. Now book the fucker, Les.’

  ‘Ian–’

  ‘Oh, Ian is it now?’ said Mawker. He was clearly enjoying himself. ‘Get him into the fucking car.’

  ‘You take me in, clearly I am not going to give you anything. I’ll clam up, no matter what you do. Even if you set this mong and your two boyfriends on me.’ I saw his face change, soften a little, and I went at the seam with a chisel. ‘Come on, Ian, give me this. Please. It’ll take us half an hour.’

  ‘And then you spill?’

  ‘I’ll tell you everything I know. I’ll chatter away into your ear until you’re begging me to stop.’

  ‘You’d better, Sorrell, you little wank stain. I’m getting dumped on from above, and the brass have got some serious big arses on them.’

  The lights reflecting off the surface of the pool made little creamy ripples on the ceiling. Lapping water, the music gentle and jazzy, we stood there and took it all in while the cogs in Mawker’s head turned. It wouldn’t have seemed out of place, somehow, if we’d all started swaying to the music. Kicked off on some soft-shoe shuffle routine.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘get dressed. Les will help you. We’ll wait upstairs.’

  Reception gave me my unwashed clobber back and I put it on, feeling grimy and unrested. In the foyer, the three bears were giggling over the prices in the cocktail menu.

  ‘What’s up with your face?’ Mawker asked, as we joined them. ‘You got your own way, didn’t you?’

  I strolled past him to the doors. An unmarked police car was parked on a double yellow. Some stiff opened the hotel doors for us and we headed over to the Vectra, Bert and Ernie flanking me, Mawker behind, Boris Karloff making for the driver’s seat. We drove up High Holborn and got on to the Euston Road heading west. Mawker suggested we tool round Regent’s Park, seeing it was a nice day, and I chewed my cheek, wishing Boris would step on it a little. We eventually got up to St John’s Wood and pootled through the streets to Maida Vale. There were quite a few people out, stunned into action by the bright sunshine, although I thought the shades and T-shirts that some were wearing were a bit optimistic. At the garden centre, people were lugging giant bags of ericaceous compost into their car boots. Bungle started twatting on about Acers, and Boris chipped in with how his old mum was having to create some raised beds to grow rhododendrons, because her soil was too alkaline.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I said, ‘let’s all can Gardener’s Question Time and show some fucking discipline, hey?’

  Nobody said a word to that. I wished they had. I really wanted to lay into someone, and my tongue was aching to sharpen itself against one of these dumbfucks’ whetstone heads.

  As we got close to Melanie’s place, the tension wound itself up inside the car and Mawker opened a window. We piled out on to the street and I barged through the gate, deaf now to the filth’s command to Hold back, we’ll take it from here. I was putting the key in the lock when the door swung open, and it was as if my guts had attached themselves to the door knocker just as it moved away from me. I felt myself unravelling all over the fucking welcome mat. She’s dead. Dead, and there’s me poncing about in a sauna like some health-farm fanny.

  Don’t touch a thing, somebody said, but forensics would be too late to find any iota of evidence to nail this cunt. A fibre from his clothes was hardly going to give us a map to his centre of operations. I went in, despite the swearing, and started calling her name, over and over, until the syllables mashed into each other and it became something nonsensical, almost unreal. The living room was untouched, the mezzanine sleeping area nicely fluffed up, with Mengele on top of the folded blankets, looking down at me bleary-eyed and disdainful. I almost asked the little bastard where she was.

  The kitchen. The kitchen was fucked.

  ‘He took her in here, guv,’ Boris said, and I almost chinned the twat.

  ‘Well, congratulations on that brilliant piece of deduction,’ I said, trying to gather up the red mist and keep it in a safe place inside my head. ‘Any other searing insights you’d like to share with us?’

  Pots and plates all over the place, one of her beautiful kitchen chairs reduced to sticks of firewood, a cracked bottle of olive oil, a sheen of the stuff on the work surface, pooling out over the floor. Mengele’s food bowls had also disgorged their contents; our feet crunched through the Fishbitz as if it were some misplaced gravel for a driveway. One of the panes of glass on the French windows was starred. At its centre, a smear of dried blood, a couple of strands of dark hair. Jesus Christ, I felt Rebecca behind me, plucking at the sleeve of my jacket, trying to say something to me. Something like Looks familiar?

  ‘Les, get on the blower, call some back-up round here,’ Mawker instructed. ‘The rest of us might as well go for a cosy pint, while we share the wealth of your knowledge.’

  I stared at him as I worked hard on my fist, relaxing it. If I hit him, that was me finished. I couldn’t help Melanie while I was staring at the different species of dried jizz on a police-cell blanket.

  ‘There’s nothing you can do here,’ he reasoned. ‘We’ll talk about what’s what, and then we’ll see what forensics can dig up here. If she’s been kidnapp
ed, there’ll be a call through. There’ll be a ransom demand, something like that. There always is.’

  ‘He’s going to kill her,’ I said, trying to keep a lid on it.

  ‘If he was going to kill her, he wouldn’t put himself out, by dragging her off to some other place first, would he?’ Boris looked at his boss, like some dim Igor seeking praise.

  ‘Les is right,’ Mawker said. ‘Let’s go and have a drink and think about how we’re going to play this.’

  ‘You can play this up your arse,’ I said, ‘if you can fit it in, alongside all the other things you’ve been told to jam up it over the years.’ I backed away slowly and curled a finger round the handle of the French windows. If I bolted now, that was it; I’d be looking at an arrest for impeding police investigations, and other stuff too probably – anything Mawker could get to stick. But I knew that if I played cat’s cradle with their red tape, I’d never get a chance to catch him. He’d be dead before I got to him, and I wanted it to be my face that was right in his when he breathed his last lungful. I wasn’t the most effective weapon in the arsenal, but I was willing to have a crack – unlike these clowns. You could shave your face with a Rowntree’s jelly more effectively than these berks felt collars.

  ‘What’s the nearest pub?’ Mawker asked and, when he turned to the others, I took off. I skidded and lurched down the decorative spiral staircase to the basement garden and launched myself at the wall. Behind me, I could hear curses and yelps: what happens when a flat foot meets a puddle of oil on a very smooth floor. I was over the wall, through the opposite garden and into Edbrook Road before they had a chance to call after me, let alone give pursuit. I ran hard, knowing they’d be piling back to the car, until I reached the pub on Barnwood Close. There I stopped for a moment under the entrance arch to regain my breath, keeping a nervy eye on the main road. Then I went inside and ordered a pint. My mobile had run down, so I got a handful of change from the barman and, jamming the receiver of the bar’s public phone under my chin, sorted out a pile of twenty-pence pieces.

  I rang the vets to find out if Melanie had been in touch with them at all, and why the hell Mengele was still kicking back at Melanie’s place. Fiona answered. She didn’t know what I was talking about, which meant that Melanie must have been jumped not long after I had talked to her. He might have been already in the house, while she talked to me. Jesus.

  I took a long swig of the lager and closed my eyes, wishing I had my address book with me. A number gradually formed in the dark. Quickly, I dialled it.

  ‘“Keepsies” here, Dave speaking, how may I–’

  ‘Keith there?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid Keith is with a client at the moment, sir.’

  ‘Go and get him. Please.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but he’s busy. If you call back la–’

  ‘No, I won’t call back later. You’ll get him now. You sound like a bright lad, so I won’t need to repeat myself. Do as I say, or the next time you pick the phone up, it’ll be with a bloody stump. Now move.’

  Much under-the-breath cursing, fading away, dusty footsteps through the corridors. The sound of traffic on the road outside. And then more footsteps. Keith fading in: ‘… think to ask who it was? You nipplebrain… Hello?’

  ‘Keith. Joel.’

  ‘Joel? Jeez, mate, I’m dealing with a customer here.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Look, did anyone get in touch with you? A woman, name of Melanie. Melanie Henriksen?’

  ‘No. What kind of space is she after?’

  ‘None,’ I said. ‘I told her to give you a bell if she got into any trouble, while I was away. I was stupid. I should have been more careful.’

  ‘Rewind, Joel. What’s going on?’

  I fed another couple of twenties into the coin slot.

  ‘I put her in trouble without meaning to,’ I said. ‘Heaps of shit.’

  ‘Look, if you need help, let me know,’ he said. He understood I was stuck in something bad, without having to hear the whole spiel. ‘And remember you can come round any time.’

  I thanked him and rang off, rubbing my face hard to try to get the blood circulating properly. I’d just been spouting nonsense, so I had to get a grip. I shouldn’t be singing the blues down the blower to some poor dolt who didn’t need to hear it. I had to get some information. I drummed my fingers on the counter and took another big swallow of my pint. Mawker and his retards must have given up on me by now, and were doubtless Keystone Copping it back to base. I was in trouble there, but things had developed to a point where I was prepared to do a stretch for fucking them over, especially if Melanie had come to any harm. This was my party now, all the way, and the plods weren’t invited.

  I asked the bartender for a phone book and he trotted off. When he came back, I called Lava Java and asked for Errol. He wasn’t there but I sweet-talked the girl who’d answered into giving me his mobile number. Another girl answered that phone, shouting over the thud of music in the background. Or in the foreground, more like.

  ‘Ez, it’s for you. Some guy.’

  ‘Yo,’ said Errol.

  ‘Errol, it’s Joel. Remember? From the flat the other night. How’s your hand?’

  ‘Soon as it’s better I’m coming to bust your face with it, shithouse.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I had no idea it was going to get that nasty. Nobody could have predicted that.’

  ‘Yeah, well,’ he said, and tailed off. Maybe the hard talk was for the benefit of his passenger. I could imagine her cooing over his muscles. Hell, I’d coo over his muscles. He made Schwarzenegger look anorexic.

  ‘I was expecting a call from you,’ I said.

  ‘Got nothing to say,’ he replied, and turned up the volume. I was running low on coins.

  ‘Listen, Errol, did you find out anything about him?’ There was no need to expand on that, since I doubted he had left Errol’s thoughts any more than he had left mine.

  ‘I talked to a few people,’ he said. ‘’Bout that tat on his throat. Talked to a few of the needles that come into Lava Java, see if they know anything about cobra tats.’

  ‘Nice idea,’ I said, wishing he’d hurry it up.

  ‘Talked to this guy who, it turns out, did it, ’parently. How cool is that? Got a parlour in Camden. Name of this headcase is Cullen.’

  ‘I know that, Errol. Gary Cullen.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it took this guy – Phil Hibbert’s his name – a while to do the tat, because very sensitive area the throat. Phil said he shouldn’t have done it really, not ethically pukka, but he needed the dough. And they got talking. The psycho was a speed freak, by all accounts. Anyway, this guy Cullen had paid up-front for the tat but was in bad shape financially. Spiralling, bad style. Burgling to finance his habit, but having to keep a wife and two terrors happy. Desperate. Upping the ante. Mugging. Bag-snatching. Asking around for a shooter.’

  ‘This guy Phil told you all this?’ The name Gary Cullen was burning up in my thoughts. The bump on the back of my head flared, too. My swede was giving him a right old salute. But he was gone now, which meant that I was back on Phythian. Phythian, a ghost, a shadow – someone who existed only as a name, and a false one at that.

  ‘Yeah, well, I leaned on him a bit,’ he said. ‘Told him that if he didn’t talk to me, he’d have a face full of tats that I’d be doing for him free, like.’

  ‘Go on, Errol.’

  ‘So, things get so bad, his wife threatens him that she’ll leave, take the kids with her, if he doesn’t straighten himself out. Last Phil saw of him, the last session he was having, he said he was going to get professional help. Signed himself up with some kind of counselling service. Therapy. Voodoo? Hypno? Barefoot shit, something like that, you know. Said it was somewhere out East.’

  ‘Somewhere out East? Errol, you would have been just as helpful by telling me to fuck off.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘No idea where this place is? I mean, Christ, Errol. How East? Canning Town? Mar
gate? Fucking Pyongyang?’

  ‘Phil didn’t say. I’m sure he would have done, if he knew. I was going to draw a knob on his forehead with those needles of his.’ Giggling in the background. ‘Anyone would have talked, faced with that.’

  ‘What about this tattoo parlour? This place run by Hibbert. Where is it?’

  ‘Camden, I just told you.’

  ‘Where in Camden?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Okay, Errol. Thanks, mate. Thanks a lot.’

  ‘Don’t mate me, guy. No friend of mine put me through what you put me through.’

  ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘Too right. Hey, any time you fancy coming round the Lava Java for a drink, don’t hesitate to decide not to.’

  Dead line.

  * * *

  I needed to collect Mengele, so I had to go back to Melanie’s place. I checked the area out hard before I approached her house. The place was busy with police. Cordons were being put up and teams of PCs were dispersing to speak to the neighbours. I doubted they’d be specifically on the look-out for me, which was fair enough; who’d have thought I’d be so stunningly stupid to come back? But nor was I about to stride up to the front door and ask for my cat back.

  I went round to Edbrook Road and started making the sounds my cat likes to hear. Top of the list was can-opener-meets-tin-of-tuna, but I didn’t have the tools for that, so I plumped for basic ‘Ch-ch-ch’ noises. I was at it for five minutes before I saw him, on a wall about thirty feet to my left, watching me with the ultra-pitiful gaze that certain animals seem to have perfected. Soon, cats will have evolved into a position where they will be able to open tin cans, or put a maggot on a hook and go fishing, and then they’ll dispense with us altogether. But I was glad that time wasn’t now. I’d missed the little shit. I stroked his dense fur and chucked him under the chin.

  I was in bad trouble now, every option open to me less than ideal. I could go back to my flat and spend every night wide awake on the edge of my bed, waiting with a gun for Phythian, who probably wouldn’t do me the favour of turning up. Or I could lean on another friend and put him or her in jeopardy. Or I could dump Mengele and hit the streets, rough it till this was all played out. The last way was clearly the only way, despite my feeling that I must have lost the direct attention of Phythian during my jaunt up north. Decided, I lifted Mengele into the only carrying position he will tolerate: draped around my shoulders like a scarf. He growled at me a little, and I almost thanked him for it. I was getting off cheaply, because I’d be first up against the wall, come the feline revolution.