Plastic

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘The gradient up to the bridge must slow them down,’ I shouted at Lou. ‘Put your foot down.’ The Smart car bounced and skidded on the roundabout, fighting for purchase on the rain-slick road, and then we were skimming over water in a clear lane.

  The downpour was wind-driven, sweeping across the bridge as Lou lost control and hammered the Smart car along the side of a parked coach. We ricocheted off like a green snooker ball and bounced over the central reservation into the oncoming traffic. Behind them, both Foshes had made the short slope with ease, leaping easily over the kerbs. They followed us over to the other side of the bridge with ridiculous dexterity. Now that they were running parallel, they had time to take aim.

  ‘What are they, Olympic medallists?’ asked Lou.

  The surprised driver of a Bill & Ben Office Plants van coming from the north side slammed on his brakes when he saw the overpowered Smart car and the Foshes heading for him. His tyres air-pocketed and failed to grip tarmac as several McDonalds boxes catapulted forward and hit the inside of his windscreen. I was glad we weren’t the only ones in an untidy car.

  We carried on across the lane, losing a headlight and wing-mirror against a lamp-post with a metallic bang. Reversing sharply, we mounted the pavement as the two Foshes, barrelling too fast to turn, tipped and halted within inches of the van’s radiator. A skateboard shot through the air and bounced through the open window of a fried chicken van. We heard a screech of brakes and a crunch of metal as something big ran into the back of the van, and a hubcap overtook us, but we didn’t dare to turn around.

  Lou had decided that it was safer to stay on the pavement. The battered Smart car was just wide enough to make it between the balustrades and the traffic lights. We shot up Kingsway on the sidewalk, scattering a group of horrified tourists who had just had their worst fears about traffic in London confirmed.

  ‘Look out,’ said Lou, ‘Canadians.’

  ‘How do you know they’re Canadians?’

  ‘Well, you just know, don’t you? Look at Celine Dion.’

  By now, the jumbo Mercs had vanished into the side streets, and the helicopter seemed to be tacking between the office blocks in some confusion.

  The cross-current of traffic by Holborn Tube would have killed us, but luckily Lou began applying the brakes the moment she saw the bank looming. Even so, we only stopped when the car’s front bumper hit the wall of Barclays. I leapt out and searched for the private safety deposit box.

  ‘Around the side!’ yelled Lou. Behind her, I could see a couple of constables starting to take an interest. I remember thinking they were very short for policemen, and that the Met must have changed their height regulations, or perhaps it was the new helmets.

  I tried to yank open the deposit box drawer, but it wouldn’t budge.

  ‘You need the pin number,’ Lou called.

  ‘I have no idea what that is.’

  ‘You must do, it was –’

  ‘Don’t say it was in the letter.’

  I looked up at the wall clock. One minute to midnight. A row of asterisks appeared on the readout above the deposit drawer. It was asking for an eleven digit number.

  ‘Eleven digits!’ I shouted.

  ‘Don’t ask me, you’re the one who watched Countdown every afternoon.’

  I don’t know what made me do it but I entered 16121202193, and the drawer opened. Afterwards I had time to consider, and came up with the numerical version of the word PLASTIC, A equalling 1. It was instinct, you see. At that moment I just knew that Malcolm and Azymuth were acquainted, and were probably good friends. Malcolm had worked on some kind of clinic, Azymuth was a doctor and they were neighbours. They made their money through plastic. No-one is without taint, that’s what Rennie had told me.

  I threw the key in, slam-dunking it to the bottom of the wedge-shaped drawer. A moment after it clanged shut, the wall clock above my head clicked over to midnight. Lou let out a rebel yell.

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I need a Mohito,’ she warned, pulling a plastic Simpsons flask from under the seat and unscrewing the cap. ‘I couldn’t find fresh mint so I made it with toothpaste.’

  ‘Let’s put some distance between us and them first,’ I pleaded as the constables spoke to the driver of a patrol car. It pulled out of Great Queen Street and flicked on its lights, like a toy fitted with new batteries. The helicopter was still drifting overhead.

  As the traffic lights changed, the patrol car fell in behind us. Lou swung the Smart car, which had now developed lumpy steering, around in a jerky arc and cut back into Sardinia Street, then gunned it until we hit the comparative desolation of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Here we slammed to a halt behind a skip (actually thumping it with a hollow boom) and doused the lights. It took the police car longer to make the turning, and then it carried on past us.

  ‘It’s a good job we stopped when we did,’ said Lou. ‘The steering wheel’s come loose.’

  I fell back into the seat and opened the window, feeling the rain on my face. The raindrops were so light that some were actually drifting upwards. I love it when they do that. I had one of Lou’s cigarettes. Neither of us spoke for some minutes. Lou poured a Mohito into an empty cigarette carton and handed it to me. I tasted it and winced. The bottom fell out of the carton and the rest went in my lap.

  ‘So, what’s your verdict on the luxurious riverside lifestyle?’ Lou searched the glove box for a fresh packet of Rothmans.

  ‘Interesting. That very respectable building turned out to be a wonderland of liars, psychopaths and deluded criminals.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Jeffrey Archer will want to buy one of their penthouses now then,’ sniffed Lou, flicking her lighter.

  Rain tumbled on the roof and the car cooled.

  ‘Why were you so anxious for me to return the keys on time?’ I asked. ‘It makes no difference to you. Tell me the truth.’

  Lou watched her cigarette smoke roll along the ceiling. ‘One of us has to get out of Hamingwell for good. It isn’t going to be me, is it?’

  I could have hugged her then.

  Later, though, when I mulled over all that had happened, I thought of Piotr. I imagined him as a boy, skinny and pretty, his aqua eyes drawing pederastic glances, outcast for his coquette effeminacy but willing to fight his way to a free life, trusting his new English friends and waking from a chemical slumber to find himself betrayed and transformed for the pleasure of others.

  I wanted to kill Rennie with my bare hands. His speech about keeping the wheels of commerce turning was nothing more than an attempt to justify murder. His only concern was building enough wealth to get away with it. Poverty is still the greatest mark of guilt against any criminal.

  I had walked in the poisoned river ground that Nalin had warned me about, and had left behind a bloodied footprint, adding to its darkness. It was easy to discover places in London so rotten with centuries of greed, corruption and sins of the flesh that no amount of restoration could return them to a humanistic whole. I’d failed to change anything, and had hastened a lost innocent to an ugly death, merely adding to the city’s criminal record. I was disgusted with the way I’d behaved.

  If you’re really going to get involved in urban life, I decided, surviving it suddenly becomes a tough trick to pull off. It’s hard to stay clean. And it must have always been that way.

  As I walked alone through the bare night streets, I realised that for the first time in my life I owed a real debt, and had no way of paying it back. I wasn’t brave or foolish enough to return to the Ziggurat, and could think of no way to make restitution by bringing the man responsible for its secret miseries out into the light.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  First Day Back

  THE POLICE WERE told not to disturb the Ziggurat’s residents while their investigations were being carried out, or they would sue. Madame Funes wouldn’t even let them use the front entrance. Despite Lou’s protestations, an officer managed to get through to Malcolm Phillimore while he was waitin
g for his luggage at Heathrow, just to warn him that there was a forensics team taking the flats apart and bagging evidence. He went mad, apparently.

  I gave a statement at Vauxhall police station, and they asked me to start going through Azymuth’s patient files, to see who I could identify. Material witness to two murders and all that, I could hardly turn them down if I wanted to get away with the self-defence thing. I knew that Rennie’s people were just going to evaporate as soon as they started looking for them. He would already have gone to ground, his office rerouting calls, his mobile number changed, and he’d be calling his well-placed pals and briefing his lawyers, way ahead of the police. The Foshes would all perform vanishing acts because they knew how to do it, and although the police would make a show of listening to me, I would eventually be branded a runaway housewife with a big imagination.

  What the police didn’t know was that I could disappear, too. I was still planning to get paid for flat-sitting, and knew I would have to collect the money at some point. But I had Lou to help me, and she knew a thing or too about dealing with the police.

  Still, I thanked God that our little constable had managed to call in the helicopter. We wouldn’t have stood a chance without something to panic them. I suppose it was simple law of scale, you wheel out something bigger and more dangerous than the people you’re dealing with. But I knew – and the police probably knew – that they would never get Rennie’s organisation to court. They’d end up arresting some of the little people, but not him. Perhaps someone else would decide that he was too much of a risk to stay in business. These people tend to take care of their own affairs.

  I read in the paper some time later that the Minister of Defence was furious about the go-ahead being given for his brother-in-law’s new mega-million-pound building to be pulled apart. Vauxhall’s murder squad was allowed to tear up the brand new beechwood floors looking for body parts.

  But of course, they didn’t find anything.

  One other odd thing happened. The following December I was standing on the Strand looking for a taxi one night. I’d like to tell you I’d been doing something sophisticated and cultural but we’d just been to see South Pacific. And someone exactly like Piotr walked past me.

  I recognised the look at once, because I’d spent so much time staring at that angelic face. She was dressed in a beautiful white Agnes B coat and scarf, and very high heels, and I like to think she was going to dinner at the Savoy. I wondered if there was any way that it might really have been her. After all, I had only seen Azymuth dead. From Eastern Europe to the Savoy via near-death in an incinerator – wouldn’t that have been a story to tell?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  New Life

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU doing here?’ I asked, opening the door. ‘I thought you were in Barcelona.’

  ‘Hilary had to do a double, so there was no point in me going with her. Can I come in, June?’

  ‘Of course.’ I opened the door of the loft apartment wide and stepped back to let him pass. Gordon had put on weight around the midriff, and now looked as I had always imagined him, older and more settled, operating from a lower centre of gravity. I had trimmed off a fair amount of body fat, but was still wearing one of my old baggy tops. Even so, he kept eyeing my slender new form oddly, particularly when I bent down to pull the back of my shoe over my heel.

  ‘It’s not been going very well between us, to be honest. Hilary doesn’t seem so interested now that I’m single. She enjoys her job and says she doesn’t want to be tied down. She’s thinking of going long-haul. The money’s better. She never used to be so –’ I think he was going to say ‘independent’ and stopped himself. I mentally threw an air-punch.

  ‘I’ve just made coffee. Want some? Make yourself comfortable, if you can find somewhere to sit.’ The apartment was a tip. Bare boards, half-plastered walls. I pulled over a tea-chest and upturned it for him. I still felt a spark of emotion when I looked at Gordon, but it wasn’t love. Sadness, really. I found it hard to imagine that I had once depended on him for everything.

  ‘It’s bit of a rough neighbourhood, isn’t it? It took me a while to track you down. I understand you’ve changed your name. Alaska Dash is a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?’

  ‘I named myself after a programme on the Discovery Channel,’ I explained. ‘Something to do with a snowmobile race. I don’t feel like a June Cryer any more. Part of me will always be her, of course. You can’t entirely erase a personal history.’

  ‘You look so different with your hair cut short and coloured like that. I’ve never seen you in jeans. I nearly didn’t recognise you.’ He looked uncomfortable and out of place in this great sunny modern room.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘Not really. It makes you look like a lesbian.’

  To Gordon, any combination of jeans and short hair suggested lesbianism. This was a bit rich coming from a man who looked as though he’d been knitted. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Your horrible friend Lou phoned up to have a go at me over bin bags. I didn’t tie them up properly or something. She let slip where you were. She sounded a bit drunk. I think she’s having an affair with some young police officer.’

  ‘So you still haven’t moved out.’

  ‘No. After the burglary, word got about that there was trouble in the area and the sale fell through. Whatever happened to you on that weekend you went away? I heard there was a fire or something. I’ve asked Lou about it, but she won’t tell me.’

  ‘It was nothing. The insurance company sorted it out.’ Rennie’s men had wiped away their trail by torching several of the apartments and blaming it on the gas company. Malcolm and Julie had split up, and he had gone back to his wife. At least she was eating normally again. ‘It gave me a chance to think things over, that’s all.’

  Gordon went to the window to check on his car. ‘The company bought me a new Rover. V6 engine, two-tone leather interior, SatNav, all the optionals. A very nice motor. There are some unsavoury characters hanging around outside.’

  ‘They’re okay if you stay on the right side of them.’

  ‘Whose flat is this?’

  ‘It belongs to a friend of mine. I’m looking after the place for a few weeks. Doing it up in lieu of rent.’

  ‘A friend, eh?’ Gordon walked around, unsure what to make of the airy open space. I knew that in his eyes it wouldn’t count as a proper home because there weren’t enough walls. ‘You’ve got no curtains up. Anyone can see in. I was going to ask if you wanted to come back to Hamingwell for a few days. I felt bad about leaving you broke.’

  ‘No, it’s okay, it was good for me. Besides, I’m quite comfortable here.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ He looked uncertainly at the chaos of the room, the half-painted walls and boxes. ‘It doesn’t look safe outside.’

  ‘It’s the little kids you have to watch out for, they’re buggers.’

  ‘One of them wanted money for minding the car. He couldn’t be more than ten.’

  ‘I hope you gave him something.’

  ‘I certainly did not.’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t stay up here too long if I were you. Gordon, I saw some of the websites logged on your PC.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘When I stayed at the house overnight. I went on your computer. All those adult sites. Don’t look so innocent.’

  ‘Oh, those?’ He laughed, but I could tell he was embarrassed. ‘They don’t mean anything.’

  ‘I don’t mind what you do anymore, Gordon. It’s your life to enjoy as you see fit.’

  Gordon looked at me in genuine puzzlement. ‘So you’ve no plans to move back to Hamingwell? I thought you’d stay in the area. You loved it there. Apart from anything else, it’s so much safer.’

  He knew that wasn’t true. Only a couple of months ago, some Hamingwell schoolgirls had stabbed a classmate to death and set her body ablaze because she had dissed them on Facebook. It had been in all the papers. Neighbours
were busy silting up the street with plastic-wrapped flowers and teddy bears. All kinds of inexplicable things happen in suburban neighbourhoods, but men like Gordon pretend not to notice.

  There are a lot of people out there who refuse to help. There are victims who have no recourse to the police, and no-one to protect them. It made me start thinking.

  ‘What about your little house, your nice garden, all the neighbours you could chat to?’ Gordon asked.

  This was particularly insensitive, I thought, seeing as he was sleeping with one of them. The only other neighbour I had ever spent time with fantasised about burning the town down.

  ‘No, Gordon, it’s really much easier for me to be here.’ I thought of Virginia Woolf’s comment on London, that it takes up the private life and carries it on without any effort.

  There was a clatter of paint cans and a cry of ‘Merde!’

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked Gordon.

  ‘This is Stefan. He’s helping me paint the apartment.’ Stefan came in from the bedroom. He was naked under his overalls and appeared to have tipped yellow paint over his chest. He reached over and shook hands awkwardly.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Gordon stiffly. ‘Well, June, you seem to have everything under control. Your new life must be agreeing with you. You’ve certainly lost a bit of weight. It makes you look ill.’ His attention strayed to the window again. ‘I think I had better go and keep an eye on the car. Well.’ He jangled the change in his pockets. ‘I guess it’s a divorce then. You could have half of the house, save getting messy in court. I hope you’re ready to handle the financial side now.’

  ‘Yeah, I can handle it. I’m not fussed about buying stuff any more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Once you’ve done it at gunpoint, regular shopping loses its appeal.’

  ‘Oh. That’s a pity. I bought you these. A sort of peace offering. For old times’ sake.’ He set down the shiny white bag before me like an appeasement to the Shopping Gods. Inside was the pair of beaded evening shoes I had lusted after on the day of my last spree on Gordon’s money. ‘I’m not very good with this sort of thing, as you know, so Hilary chose them for me. She thought you’d like them.’