He smiles. “Is that why you like it? It’s ghetto music? You a ghetto girl?”
She pushes him gently. “Don’t tease. I like it because it makes me dance. And that makes me feel … Do you ever dance?”
“No.”
“You don’t know how it feels. It sets you free. And you never hear swing music in clubs. How did you find that one?”
Gregor turns over again, onto his back and pulls her close.
“Spike. He knows where stuff happens. He’s always got his ear to the ground. I’ve never seen him dance though.”
They laugh. “That would be quite something, to see him rip up the dance floor.”
“It’d have to be some big dance floor.”
They laugh again. She gives him a squeeze and a kiss on the chest. She listens for any sounds from the road, or birds outside. There is nothing. She puts her head on his chest. Nothing. This must be the quietest place she’s been.
“Did Archie ever take you out?” he asks.
“Yeah there were some clubs we went to. None as nice as that one though. All house music, and everyone popping pills. We’d go out to eat sometimes. He took me to the Kasamet a few times.”
“The Kasamet? The curry house on Richmond?”
“Yeah, it was good, big portions I remember.”
“That place was closed down about six months ago.”
“I knew it had closed. Do you know why?”
“It was run by a family I used to have dealings with. They had issues with their meat.”
Lucy pushes herself away from him and looks in his face.
“What do you mean?”
“They didn’t want to go through the usual channels. Finding ways to cut corners, I guess it was a business decision. A bad one.”
“So where did their meat come from?”
“Well, probably abattoir scraps, but it was the gangs running the meat, that’s what stopped the business.”
Gregor leans to her and strokes her hair gently then kisses her. Then he breaks off and looks into her eyes.
“How did we end up talking business again?” He kisses her again then rolls over, pulls the cover back and stands up.
“I’m going to get some coffee on the go.”
He walks to the wardrobe door and steps into a walk-in closet, disappearing.
She gets a sudden flash in her mind. An image of a scene that Archie once described to her after the Kasamet had closed. The owner, an Indian man, had been found tied to chair, his head bent back so that his eyes were focused on the ceiling, with a huge saucepan sticking out of his mouth, its handle rammed down his throat. Archie had said that he had been like that for days before they found him. It is as if he is in the room now, in front of her, swollen neck, flies buzzing over his face, feeding on his open eyes, crawling down the sticky handle and disappearing into his mouth. Lucy lets him sit there, lifting her head from the pillow, as the image gets more solid she takes in every detail.
She asks, “How long have you known Spike?”
The question rings round the room for second before Gregor steps back out. He is wearing a white dressing gown. He looks at Lucy lying in the bed, half covered with the sheet, her bleach blonde hair tussled, one of her breasts exposed, her pale arm reaching to the edge. As he walks past the bed toward the door he stops in front of the mirror. His torso is lean and muscular, his hair is sticking up at angles, ruffled.
“Why?” he asks.
“Do you trust him?”
“Why?”
“There’s something about him. Maybe it’s just the way he was looking at me.”
He turns to face Lucy.
“The way he was looking at you?”
“I don’t know, it’s probably nothing.”
“I’ve known him a while. You’ve just met him. He’s a big guy, not always easy to read. Yes, I trust him. Unless there’s something else you’re not telling me?”
“No, no. It’s nothing, just me. It’s probably nothing.”
“It’s nothing.”
He leans down to kiss her again. She sits up and puts her arms around his neck.
“Hey there’s no rush is there? Come back to bed.”
“Business.”
Gregor leaves the room. Lucy gets up and takes her clothes, untangling them from his, and goes to the bathroom. She steps into the shower. The warm water against her face feels good and she stays there for a long time. When she comes out, she wraps a towel around herself and opens the door. The steam dissipates in the landing and she tries Gregor’s bedroom door. It’s locked again. She can hear him talking downstairs. She moves quietly halfway down the stairs until she can hear what he’s saying.
“Who have you got covering him? I’ll send you a recent photograph. Well, if Ali meets him at all, I have to know immediately. And then … yes. Yes, that’ll be the end of Ali.”
Gregor listens to whoever is on the other end, Lucy takes another step, then freezes as she hears Gregor shout into the phone. It is the first time she has heard him angry and the intensity of it sends tremors of fear through her. “I DON’T CARE WHAT CARDS ALI IS HOLDING, IF HE’S WITH STRANSTEC, I’M HITTING HIM!” She moves quickly back upstairs and into her room. She closes the door and leans against it. The girl on the edge of tears looks at her from the canvas.
***
Chapter Fifteen
Alison stopped taking the train into the city because she was getting so wet. Once in the car she very quickly began to relish having that personal space. Even if she was sitting in traffic, at least she was comfortable. At the end of the day she didn’t have to rush to the station, she could stay late, she could go home whenever wanted to.
In the office, she was the manager’s first choice. He chose her to be the one who dealt with important or tricky contracts. One contract was representing a very wealthy vendor who was picky about who he sold his property to and what they were going to use it for. He wanted the property, which was a listed building, to retain the design features he had installed as well as the official heritage architectural features. She met with him several times and let him talk and talk, asked him about his business and interests. She secured a sale for above the price he was expecting, and she also showed him around some exclusive properties she knew of, on the pretext of showing him examples of what some of the most sought after architects were designing for the city centre. What you are interested in is a very specialised area, she told him as they took in the view of the city from a high rise studio space, and the passion you have is truly a vocation. Converting old to new. I think that you will love Park Road. Not many properties like this come along at this kind of price, she said. They visited the Park Road property together and he went for it. The feeling of achievement as she watched the elegant loops of the vendor’s signature appear on the contract was like nothing she had experienced before. Inside she was excited like a child, she wanted to jump up and down and clap her hands, hug everyone in the room. Instead she smiled broadly and congratulated the millionaire on making an astute purchase. When she reported to her manager he was astounded.
“They bought? Hang on, weren’t they selling?”
“Yes, they sold and they bought Park Road.”
“You sold theirs? And they bought another? Park Road? They bought Park Road?” He scanned the papers she had put on his desk, open mouthed.
“Good grief, Alison, I really don’t know how you did that. I put you onto them because I thought they were a pain in the ass. Alison, you’re a treasure. Here, there are some other interesting inquiries coming up you might want to handle. The Phoenix development, do you know about it? You should take a look.” He took some files from his drawer.
“I know it, that’s not due for acquisition for months.”
“We’ve got a heads up. Take a look at what they’re doing.” He handed her a file. She promised to give it a look over and walked out of his office, leaving him looking at the paperwork and shaking his head.
As she walked
through the main office she could feel the eyes of the others on her. She felt energised, like she had just been linked to a chain of electricity.
Back home, she was sitting on the couch with her laptop open, reading from the screen and turning a pen slowly between her teeth as Martin flicked from one news channel to another.
“You are getting later and later,” he said.
“Later and later?”
“Home. After work.”
She continued to read from the screen, scrolling down.
“That’s because I’m working later and later.”
“And who are you working with?”
She looked up. “Martin, I’m working alright? It’s not like I’m missing out, when I get back you’re stuck up in your room anyway. I’m not working with anyone.”
“Do you have to work when you get home?”
She closed the laptop and put down her pen.
“Okay. Sorry, I’m here now.” She leaned back and lay across the sofa, so that her feet were in Martin’s lap. “Can you do my feet babe?”
“Sure,” he said and put his hands around a foot.
“Where’s the remote?” she asked, and he handed it to her.
While she pressed the buttons to skim through the channels, he watched the changing images on the screen and massaged the sole of her foot with his thumb. She went through channel after channel, occasionally stopping for longer than a few seconds, but never long enough for Martin to get a grip of what the images were saying.
“There’s nothing ever on,” she said.
That night they went to bed together and lay side by side. They didn’t turn the light off and lay facing each other.
Martin saw the rounded contours of Alison’s face and the lines around her eyes and mouth. Her eyes closed slowly as she put her hand to his face and moved her head so that her lips met his. They kissed tenderly and she slowly rolled on top of him. This was the first time in weeks they had been this close.
Martin tried to think, had they made love since the rain started? Since the Sugar Club? He was willing himself to get aroused. He felt no sensation in his groin, he knew that they were making contact, but he felt nothing. They caressed each other, Martin running his fingers up and down her back, Alison gently holding his head and neck as their mouths opened wider and their breathing got heavier. Alison eased her hand down his chest, over his stomach and down. Martin felt she may as well have put her hand into a black hole, into a vacuum.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “it’s not … sorry.”
“Martin,” Alison replied, “don’t apologise, I like kissing, let’s just kiss.” They did, but all Martin could think of was why his body was not responding to what his mind was telling it to do. He tried to concentrate. The sickly thick smell of the pack of men jerking their cocks in the cold storage room of the Club came to him, and his stomach heaved. He dry retched into Alison’s kissing mouth. She straightened up, straddling him. “What was that? Are you okay?”
“I’m just not feeling great, let’s just …”
Alison looked down at him and said, “Yeah, you look a bit yellow.” She moved off him. Martin turned away from her, curling his knees up to his chest, pulling the duvet over his shoulder.
“I’ll be fine, I’m just not feeling right. Can you turn off the light?”
Alison leaned from the bed and turned the lamp off. Immediately Martin felt himself relax. The darkness of the room gave him some distance from her, from himself. He didn’t feel like he had to say anything when the light was off.
“Oh yeah,” she said through the dark, “I meant to say, I’ve got that office thing tomorrow night, it would be great if you could give me a lift in.”
“No problem.”
“It shouldn’t be a late one.”
The rain continued to fall.
***
Chapter Sixteen
Maya’s husband drives a big black four-by-four with tinted windows. There is someone in the passenger seat, another man.
The car is easy to track. Henry has tracked so many lives over the years, followed so many people’s personal maps of the city streets. Each time it is like a combination lock; a simple reordering of the familiar and each person has their own code to unlock the city. Henry has an imprint of the city in his mind. The pathways he has tracked crisscross and connect like synapses. The patterns are embedded, they can never be undone. Henry’s mind is a mesh of the tracks left by others people’s lives, secrets, and crimes.
All the time he passes through the city like a ghost, unattached and unseen, making no marks of his own. His thin frame and sunken eyes do not encourage a second glance. One look is enough to see right through him. His small, thin-lipped mouth does not demand any attention, his inquiries are innocuous enough never to be called to mind again, and his paper-thin presence is instantly forgettable. When people do speak to him, they often empty out their souls, tell him what they could never tell anyone else. Maybe it’s because they sense that he will disappear. Maybe it’s because, in his expressionless face, his unjudging, unflinching demeanour, they see that he will never have anyone to tell, and if he does tell, no-one will listen to him anyway.
* * *
Maya has sent some family pictures to his phone. She is as Henry pictured her, but younger. Her voice carries a weight of years her face does not. She has attractive exotic features, like a Caribbean queen. Her husband is broad and muscular and very tall, shockingly pale in comparison, with a bald head and a thick neck, on the side of which is the tattoo of a scorpion. Her daughter looks like her, or how she would have looked as an awkward teenager. There is a palm tree behind them and sand at their feet. The picture must be a few years old because the girl looks young, about fifteen, skinny, straight hair, and braces. He stands behind the two of them towering like a smiling colonial giant who is about to snatch them off their tropical island.
Within an hour of trailing, Henry sees it’s clear that the Scorpion man doesn’t work for a chemicals firm. First he goes to a run-down area in the north part of the city, to a cluster of high-rise flats constructed generations ago, rising like rotten teeth from the skyline.
Henry sees the black four by four pull up in a car park. Henry parks up and watches the children roam in gangs and the broken and elderly shuffle past. The Scorpion man, dressed in a black suit, gets out of the four by four and it pulls away. He enters the block of flats. These layers of concrete were designed to be used, not admired, and are now abused and feared, even by those who live there.
The clouds behind the grimy flat roofs pass quickly until the Scorpion man comes back out from the foot of the tower dressed in stained white overalls and walks to a white van. He puts a hold-all, which is weighted so that the straps are straining, into the back of the van and then gets in the driver’s seat. Henry notes the number plate and lets the van get to the end of the street before starting up and following.
He follows the van east, around the city ring road to a wealthy suburb. The white van turns off the main street and down a leafy estate road. Halfway down, in the shadow of an old elm, Scorpion gets out and carries the hold-all to the side door of a semi-detached, where he knocks three times. The door is opened by a man in glasses and they disappear inside.
Henry unties his shoelace and gets out of his car and walks down the street. Beside the van he kneels to tie his lace and slips a tracker on the underside of the van. He walks a bit further, and crosses the road. He lights a cigarette and looks at the house Scorpion has disappeared into. All of the curtains in the house are pulled across. The garden is tended, the grass no longer than next door. The face of the house is giving nothing away.
Henry walks back to his car. While he waits he looks again at the family picture and checks the tracker receiver on his phone. Twenty-four minutes later Scorpion emerges with an empty hold-all and gets back in the van. Henry lets him pull away, then opens up his glove box and rummages through some laminated cards till he finds the one he is looking for.<
br />
He goes to the house, to the front door, and rings the bell. No answer. He rings again. Still no answer. Henry takes the card from his wallet. It is dark blue laminate with gold writing and a lightning bolt across the top. It says Sorry we missed you, Don’t miss out on our outstanding power offers—the Power Fix team. He bends down to peek through the letter box as he puts the card in the door. He can’t see anything, but a smell of chlorine mixed with ammonia comes to his nose, like cat piss in a swimming pool. Henry gets back in his car and switches the tracker on his phone on. The van is moving toward the centre of the city. He could wait here until the glasses guy leaves the house and then get in and check it out, or he could follow Scorpion. It’s still early in the day; 12:50. Henry gets the feeling that the glasses guy doesn’t leave that house very often. He starts the car and follows the van into the city.
The city in the day is noisy and hot. The traffic moves slowly and Henry cuts across some streets to come out within sight of the white van. The van parks in a car park near the central train station, in a long-term bay. Scorpion emerges from it without his white overalls, back in his dark suit and with a briefcase and a shoulder bag, looking like a businessman on an overnight trip. Henry watches him walk out of the car park and disappear into the throng, people all moving with purpose, all with somewhere to go, all dressed in dark city clothes, crisscrossing shades of grey and blue and black. Henry undoes his shoelace again and goes to the white van, detaching the magnetic tracker.
Back in his car, he calls Maya.
“When he takes his calls, where does he go, in your house I mean? Does he have an office?”
“In the garden usually. We have a gazebo, he stands there and talks and smokes.”
* * *
Within an hour Henry is at Maya’s house, finding suitable locations for tiny microphones in the timber gazebo in the garden. The house is a well-kept detached, with a walled garden at the back. Under the circular gazebo roof sit two wicker armchairs and a glass table with a full ashtray in the middle. Maya sits on one of the chairs. She looks more tired than the Maya in the photograph, her nose more bulbous, her eyes smaller. There are string lights tied up to the eaves of the gazebo. Henry unscrews one and attaches the microphone in its place.
The Fly Guy Page 12