Raucous

by Ben Paul Dunn

  ******************************************************************

  Mitch waited until he saw Charlotte exit the hospital. She pushed through the basement door and walked, looking left and right as if expecting to be greeted with a mad mass of paparazzi cameras. She moved quickly. And Mitch followed.

  Charlotte used public transport. Jumping onto buses and leaving them before they stopped, and quickly jumping onto the next. She was fast and confident, and knew the routes, and occasionally a driver. Mitch followed with difficulty. She was trying to shake a tail, and doing well. She never looked round. Her gaze was ahead, or through a side window. She could not know Mitch was behind her. She never paused bar the moments a bus she rode was left idling in traffic.

  Charlotte stepped from the latest bus as it pulled up to its stop. Mitch waited and followed but she was gone. Mitch panicked. His heart-rate rose, he felt the sudden fluctuation in beat in his chest. He spun around, people stared at him as he bumped a few passers-by. She was gone. He took two steps forward, craning his neck but she was not there. He paced to the side, and then back. Charlotte had vanished.

  Mitch stood still as people of all race and style walked around him. He looked across the road. He knew the place, had heard the name. Green Park. He walked to the crossing, waited with a hundred people for the illuminated man to turn green. A man, a face cracked by sun, booze and nicotine, with thinning dreadlocks and heavy hemp clothes, walked across the road early. A car sounded his horn and the man swore. The lights changed, a rhythmic beat sounded, and a mass of people crossed in unison. Mitch entered the park, the temperature was below twelve degrees, the sky cloudy and dark, a light breeze blew across the grass, and people leaned forward, or were pushed away. Four plastic bags twirled, dipped, and circled as trees rustled. Mitch saw an empty wooden bench. The plaque spoke of a man who had died ten years before but had loved the park. Mitch sat down and watched the path that ran next to the hidden stream. People walked at pace, unsteady, like actors feigning to be pirate seamen newly onshore. He didn’t see which way the person arrived, he was too busy looking at people rushing through, but he heard and felt the person sit down to his left. He waited twenty seconds; he counted them in his head, and then glanced left. Charlotte was looking back.

  She asked her question. It was out of context, a nod to a novel, or film from the 60s. Seduce her? That would be the reverse order. She seemed to find the association funny, amused to watch a reaction of recognition.

  “The graduate?” Mitch asked. “Our ages aren’t different.”

  Charlotte licked her lower lip, “A memory you don’t know.”

  Mitch squinted, looking directly into Charlotte’s wide eyes. “I’ve read the book,” he said.

  Charlotte moved forward, her face two inches from that of Mitch. Mitch could not see her mouth. “When?” Charlotte asked.

  “I don’t remember.”

  Charlotte snorted, unbelieving.

  “Any reason to be following me?” She asked, leaning away.

  Mitch stayed silent, looking into her eyes.

  Charlotte gritted her teeth “You’re at Rollin’s penthouse. Nice if you can get it. How’s the bonding going?” Real father-son love fest.”

  Mitch clasped his hand in front of him. He did not want more anger. “We don’t see each other so much. A slow process.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  Mitch looked up, confused. “I feel about us,” he said. “What we did.”

  Charlotte looked up to the sky and blew out air. She looked back to Mitch. “It was a mistake, a shot at a past I never had. Sorry, if it means anything to you, I feel as bad as you do.”

  “You know about me,” Mitch said.

  “I know about who you were,” Charlotte said. Her voice louder now, the words punching out. “But not about what you are.”

  They sat on the bench in silence.

  “I have a dream,” Mitch said.

  “Like Martin Luther King?”

  “It’s me, on a balcony. A door smashes open and then black. Always had it, don’t know why.”

  Charlotte pulled back and stood. She did this quickly as if preparing to run. “Stand up,” she said. She reached out her hand, grabbed Mitch’s arm and eased him to his feet. She grabbed his hand in hers, not romantic, similar to a tired and stressed mother pulling her son away from a display of toys. “Come with me,” she said.

  They walked for ten minutes; the rows of bed and breakfasts slowly gave way to small shops, and then pubs and then bars. Many years ago the street was an upper-class area with maid's quarters and butlers. Now the easy money had gone and properties were for business and entertainment. Charlotte stopped; she still held Mitch’s hand. Charlotte looked up. Mitch followed her gaze. The edifice was unusual in comparison to those around it. The flat, but decorated faces of the buildings either side, looked as though they had been built without imagination. It was a large building, the entrance set back from the street, an overhanging balcony held up on seven white circular columns. The place was a new trendy bar. It would be this way, fresh and cool, for one season then lull, fade, lower prices, and accept clientele for which it was not designed and fold.

  The front had been opened up. The whole front, shaded under the large balcony, was a large open space. Inside the tables were dark wood, large and heavy with matching chairs. The bar was a long rectangle open on three sides to customers at it jetted across the room. Mitch saw that it was a converted cinema, one of the old types. To the left and right of the ground floor room, were swinging doors, a circular pane of glass in each of the four panels that were protected by worn brass plates. Raucous could imagine the spiral staircases behind them that led up to the first floor.

  Charlotte was speaking to the barman. Their ease indicated they knew each other well or that the barman was the most experienced flirt in London. They looked at Mitch, the barman shaking his head. Charlotte said thanks and walked to Mitch.

  Let’s go, she said, pushing open the swinging door to the left.

  The spiral staircase curled up, opening up onto a large space that had once been the ticket office and foyer. Now the place was a dining area. Seventeen tables, evenly spaced, four occupied by families, each with a child, each with a pushchair. They spoke little and ate cod and chips, hot-pots and salads. A large double door filled the middle of the far wall. Mitch stared at it as if it held a secret.

  Charlotte saw him and said, “They say the theatre is still out back, that big bowl, snap down seats, curtain covered screen,”

  “The left for the smokers, the right had it banned,” Mitch said.

  Charlotte nodded slowly. “You like the cinema,” she said.

  “Liked.”

  “I worked here, you came.”

  Mitch stared at the door. Charlotte pulled him to the opposite side of the room, she pushed a door and they walked out onto a balcony. This area was busier. Smokers pulled on cigarettes, Middle-aged, ruddy faced men with large stomachs spoke loudly and laughed as they made fun of each other with jokes and insults they had used a thousand times before. They gathered around large heaters shaped like tall mushrooms, the women sat in outdoor chairs of brown plastic, molded to vaguely resemble a basket weave. Smoke drifted, capillaries expanded and cheeks flushed, as hand gestures made long wisps of smoke twirl and break.

  Charlotte walked Mitch to the edge of the balcony where there was a free table and low chairs with off-white cushions. Mitch sat down, pinched his shirt away from his chest and realized he was sweating. He looked around the balcony and saw his dream.

  The door that bashed open was now made of glass, frosted in stripes, not the red emergency door of old. The empty space was filled with people and tables and chairs and fire and smoke. But the dream was set here, years before, before the bar, before the change, when multiplexes hadn’t destroyed simple screens, when Christian lived.

  Charlotte waited, watching Mitch understand where he was. His face was set in confusion; he couldn
’t comprehend where he was.

  “It’s not a dream,” Charlotte said. “Nor a nightmare. It’s memory. This is where we died.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

  She had never been to the Turk’s office, never needed nor wanted, and while nothing had been moved or changed, it now belonged to Raucous.

  The curtains were open, light spilled in, and the dust and dirt accumulated in edges where cleaners couldn’t reach, showed the age of tired furniture. Raucous walked around the desk and sat in the leather chair. Everything creaked and cracked, floorboards, wood and leather. Charlotte sat opposite.

  “You made it to where you wanted to be. How does that feel?” Charlotte asked.

  Raucous smiled and leaned forward, crossing his arms and placing them on the desk surface. “How would you know this was my goal,” he said.

  Charlotte leaned in too. She fixed Raucous with a stare she hoped conveyed all her anger. “A young man growing up here, what other dreams would you have?”

  Raucous nodded, he paused and thought, he wanted to speak truthfully. He had nothing to hide from this woman, not any more.

  “Dreams change,” he said. "As you grow up, you start to question and see things differently.” He smiled as a thought came to him from an angle he had never considered. “I'd pass my knowledge to the kids of these parts but if they are anything like me, they wouldn't listen."

  Charlotte shook her head, like a teacher seeing one of her students act badly at a distance.

  “Your destiny didn’t change,” Charlotte said.

  Raucous lost his passive exterior for a brief moment, he looked surprised and confused.

  “You think all this was written in the stars?" Raucous said. He looked around the office, "I wouldn’t say I am where I want to be. Not yet.”

  Charlotte waited; she looked around the office too. It was a small dingy place for a big fat empty man who was gone and would not be remembered as anything other than the man who used to run things. The Turk provided nothing for history. He was a figure-head, an accountant. Nothing of nothing to anyone.

  “I thought you would want to kill him,” Charlotte said.

  Raucous turned and gazed through the window, he saw grey clouds and a polluted city sky. He shrugged and turned his face back to Charlotte.

  “Someone beat me to it,” he said.

  “Who was that?” Charlotte asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  Charlotte turned her palms up to the ceiling and moved her hands apart so she looked like she was halfway through a catholic mass.

  “Mine is Parker,” she said.

  “And I cannot think of a better person to have done it. It would have been slow, better than anything I could have done."

  Charlotte looked at the office again. She turned and fixed Raucous with an inquisitive stare.

  "Raise your eyebrow any further and you'll look like Roger Moore," Raucous said.

  “Are you taking over everything?” Charlotte asked.

  Raucous leaned back. He looked around the office and smiled. “I’m more of a destroyer than constructor. My history tells me that. I can't see myself changing now."

  Charlotte bit her lower lip. She thought and fixed Raucous with a stare. She waited and neither blinked. Raucous knew what was coming.

  "You are going to go through with everything?"

  Raucous had his answer and didn’t need to pause or cause suspense.

  "I spent too long wanting it,” he said. "To be swayed by a leather chair kept warm all these years by a man I would not wish to be. I don't want to be the man they look to."

  "But you are," Charlotte said.

  Raucous shook his head four times slowly. He refused to accept her words as truth.

  "Only for now,” he said. "My reign, for want of a better word, will be brief. Who the hell wants the brains of the organization to be a man named Raucous?"

  CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

  Charlotte laughed at the name. “Belfour? Isn’t that a ghost hunter? Why do you think he can help us?”

  She was reading the name and address from a piece of paper Roach had given her.

  Roach didn’t answer. He was driving. He liked to concentrate on the road. Charlotte knew and found his concern amusing. He drove a ten year old Toyota Corolla, a bland, clean, car, grey in color and jarringly obvious in a crowd. It ran smoothly and had a mileage of 43,000. Roach was no traveller. And he was no driver. He checked the rear view mirror.

  “Still there?” Charlotte asked.

  Roach nodded. “Red fiesta. Strange car to use to follow someone.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “I don't see how.”

  Charlotte looked through the rear window. The red Fiesta was two cars back.

  “How long before we get there?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  Charlotte touched the dashboard with her right index finger. “So really, who is he?”

  “Someone I should hate. He took something from me. Knew Chamberlain, worked with him.”

  “And he wants to meet us?”

  “He doesn’t know it’s me.”

  Roach drove slowly. They didn’t speak. Roach checked his rear-view mirror, until they were two minutes from their destination and the red car vanished.

  They pulled up to the gate of a long drive to a house in Dulwich. Greenery and countryside beauty in the heart of London. The large college standing proud within its open grounds. A cricket pitch lay dormant but cared for. They were stopped at a barrier. A toll booth. A large man, probably retired stepped from the small white cabin.

  “This is a private road, you can turn back and go all the way round, or pay the fifty pence,” he said.

  He didn’t wait for an answer, he turned and shuffled back to his seat and paper and sat down.

  Roach straightened his legs so he could dig into his pocket. He found fifty pence, leaned out of his window and slotted the coin into the machine. The small flimsy barrier lifted and he drove through. He turned left when the road hit the main street; he followed the edge of the college sports field, went under the railway crossover and turned right into a street over hung on either side by tall oak trees. He slowed down and indicated right even though there were no other cars on the street. He pulled up to the gate and stopped. They looked for the buzzer, or keypad but saw none. A camera on top of the right gatepost blinked at them. They sat, the engine idling for two minutes. A flashing yellow light started on the left hand gate post and the gates started to slowly open inward.

  They drove the hundred meters from the gate to the front door, pulled up on the gravel and stepped out of the car. A man was waiting for them on the large top step to the open front door.

  The man was six feet tall and in shape. Not power lifting muscles bulging through polyester suit, but lean and strong, a middleweight boxer's body after six weeks of camp. He was young, not yet thirty-five, Charlotte guessed. She wondered why Belfour needed a bodyguard. He moved with a grace. He indicated that Roach and Charlotte should follow.

  The hallway was a large open space. But the bodyguard led them through quickly to a large study room at the rear of the house. Charlotte had read a lot of Chandler many years ago but she couldn’t remember the title of the book with an old crippled Colonel in a wheelchair worried about his daughters. She was sure Belfour could. It was a conservatory of high humidity and greenery of the exotic kind covering every space. Belfour was in his Victorian dressing gown, sat at a basic wooden table. He had his silk pajamas underneath. He was sitting in front of a very old typewriter with spools of paper spread everywhere. He looked up on their entrance and lowered his glasses. He invited them to sit.

  Charlotte exchanged a glance with Roach. She didn’t know if he had the same idea as her, but Belfour was putting on a show.

  “You told me you were journalists over the phone, Mr. Roach?”

  Roach started to speak. “No, no,” Belfour said, “No need for the formal, I work for so and so routine. What w
ould you like to ask me? A color piece is it? I don’t see a photographer or a camera. Is the article to be published without my image? Shame, after I had gone to all this effort.”

  Silence filled the room. Charlotte watched the man in the suit. Belfour saw. “How rude of me,” he said. “This is Michael, my, well, I don’t know what I would call him. My safety net? Yes. Safety net.”

  Belfour sniggered to himself and looked at Roach, his focus zooming in and out like a drunk. “Well, if I am not going to be photographed, I am off to get changed into something more normal.”

  Belfour stood and quickly paced from the room. Michael stayed, his right hand holding his left with his arms straight down. He stared ahead like a Roman centurion.

  Roach leaned across to Charlotte and whispered, “He’s changed since I knew him. He has lost it. Completely crazy. He writes bullshit. I think I wasted our time.”