by James Newman
He had a surprise for her. A pair of diamond earrings he’d acquired from a fence for a quarter retail. He’d been a bad parent. She deserved something special.
A special treat.
He felt guilt. The old man felt guilt that he had left her care and upbringing to a bunch of strangers who were now off the scene. It was hard bringing up a daughter without a mother around the house to do the things that mothers do. This was true but there was another side to the coin. Daughters needed fathers more than sons needed mothers. Both required the opposite sex as a primary carer. Basically a kid needed at least one decent parent. In order to operate in society leaders had to be followed. He had been there. That was the important thing. He had been there. Many others would have fled the scene and left the details to the state. Byron had done well as a father, he had given her the best education he could afford and had let her have her freedom. She may have been trouble but all women were, and he had pushed her to do it. Pushed her into working in the club.
Or had he?
Had Rose simply manipulated him?
The diamond earrings were simply a way of expressing his gratitude. No, not gratitude, perhaps admiration was a better word.
“Rose!”
He heard sounds inside the room.
Sounds like she was watching a porn movie.
LONDON RULES
THE COORDINATOR looked at Joe across the desk. The office was much the same as before. The purple dead flowers, the painting on the wall, the photograph of his kid on the desk and the piles of files stacked on the floor next to the filing cabinet. “So this is what the tropics does to a man?” he said looking at Joe. He took off his eyeglasses, polished them and then put them back on. “I should have never have sent you out there on that case, Joe. Men go to the tropics and things happen. Women, booze, drugs, disease...”
The coordinator was a man with more chins than a Chinese phone directory and his head was now completely bald. He looked a little like Alfred Hitchcock. The girls in the office called him Humpty after the guy in the children’s song. But the coordinator hadn’t fallen off the wall.
Joe had.
Fallen hard.
He had bounced off more hotel rooms than he could remember. He had once worked a simple job here in London. Checking up on cheating husbands and employees with their hands in the till. The Bluegreen case in Thailand had both freed him and trapped him. He was aware that the last time the coordinator saw Joe was almost three months clean, thin, white-skinned. Now he had a paunch, a habit, and a face that was red most of the day and night. The five years he had been away had taken ten.
“I’m not looking for an assessment, sir. I’m looking for a person. Should be easy enough to find. I’m prepared to pay for your help.”
“I won’t charge you a penny, Joe. Shit, I thought you were dead.” The fat man stood up and put his arms around Joe, patted him on the back. “It’s good to see you. Who’s the missing person?”
“Name James Taylor. Born Tonbridge 1993. His mother died in a drowning accident. The father thought he died too. Turns out he was raised by gypsies. I know the father. He is eager to have him removed from the country. I have yet to find out what the pressure is, sir, but I believe it’s real.”
“Okay. That’s all I need. If he has failed on a credit card, been arrested, or generally screwed up I should be able to find him. On the other hand if he has paid his taxes and has a mortgage we should be able to find him. Being raised on a camp isn’t a good start. Give me twenty-four hours.”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks for what?”
“Thanks for not kicking me out the door.”
“Well, you have twenty seconds before I do just that,” the coordinator smiled.
Joe left the office and walked over to the receptionist. Mary had not changed as much as he had. A little bit more weight perhaps but she was still a fine looking woman.
“Hello, stranger. What are you doing here?”
“Just some business. I’ve been away.”
“I heard. What brought you back?”
“I missed you, honey. Real bad. Look I need to use the toilets.”
“Charming. You know where they are.”
“Thanks.”
Joe entered the toilets and checking nobody was in any of the cubicles quickly opened his shoulder bag and took out the ounce of herion. He hadn’t touched it in over three days. The codeine pills had taken the edge off the withdrawal. He thought about taking a farewell shot and then thought against it. Why get back on that train. He knew each and every station it stopped at. He opened the door to one of the cubicles and stood on the toilet seat. The suspended ceiling was paneled with square plastic tiles. About the size of a pizza box. He lifted up one and placed the ounce of junk inside.
For security.
FORTY
THE BEAST
“HE’S HOME!”
“What?”
“Don’t speak. Just put your clothes on quickly. There’s a way out through the window.”
“The window?”
“Quickly.”
I found my jeans and pulled them on. Next the shirt. Shoes. Where the fuck were my shoes?
A knock at the door.
“ROSE!” The voice said.
Knew that voice from somewhere.
Then through the drug haze it dawned on me.
“Just go,” she whispered. Then as an afterthought writes her number on a rizla paper.
I pocket it.
Carefully.
Shoeless and coatless I opened the window. A blast of October wind.
“Open the door, sweetheart, I have something for you,” there was a slight pleading in the old man’s voice. A voice I recognized from somewhere.
Somewhere – shit.
Made it out of the window onto a ledge. Below a twenty foot drop, a tree, an evergreen, if only I could...
The door clicked open and I could hear the old man. The voice familiar.
Then it twigged.
I jumped, made it onto the evergreen slid through the branches landing in a heap on the lawn.
Mary mother of God.
I’d just put me fucking neck right in it.
The ground was wet and muddy. Stood up, leg hurt like a bitch. Check my jeans pocket. Thank Christ the wallet’s still in there with a couple of twenties inside, plus a few wraps of Charles, and Rose’s rizla. Cold air sobered me up. Make it out onto the road and sprint barefoot in the rain to the nearest telephone box. Line up a fat one inside the telephone box and use a twenty to hoover it up. Call Beeline taxis and stand inside the phone box smoking cigarette after cigarette until the cunt arrives in a Datsun.
Takes one look at me, shoeless, jacketless, a limp.
“Jesus – you look like you’ve ‘ad a rough night, son.”
He looked like he’d had more rough nights than me in the past but I let it slide. He’s the one with the motor, right?
I get in the back and tell him an address in Bromley. A squat I used to serve up to back when I had my own gaff.
Lost the gaff when the coke habit got heavy.
But that’s another story.
You wanna hear it?
No.
THE SQUATTERS
SARAH OPENS the door to the squat. “Jesus, look at the state of you,” she said.
“Charming,” I say. “Where’s the hospitality gone in this country?”
“To the dogs,” she says, more like a question than a statement. Sarah hated dogs – preferred cats.
Horrible fucking animals.
Let’s get something clear about Sarah.
Sarah was one of those girls who had everything going for her before something went wrong. That thing was brown. It started out as a romance affair and ended up in marriage. They went to the cinema together, visited the zoo, art galleries. One perfect day after another. The open parks and city squares. Mexican restaurants. Exhibitions. There was a man along the way who died in a car crash. Fell asleep on the nod at the wheel.
Once she got chipping, she chipped, chipped away at that stone until she unclothed a gargoyle. Gargoyles are ugly and spit out filth. Statues she dug especially, flunked her fine art degree with dishonor. Parents lost faith. Basically good looking, with her mousy hair, thin nose, and thin unassuming figure, but she would never turn heads the way a girl like Rose could despite her heart of gold and golden soul. She was also under constant suspicion from the fashion police with those striped leggings and the woolen cardigans she always chose to wear throughout the year. But who was I to talk? A fucking vagrant. An artist living in squalor. Would you Adam and Eve it? “You’re not coming in,” she said, barring the door with her bird-like figure. “No fucking way.”
“Just for a day, Sarah, Sarah, baby. I need somewhere dry.”
“You remember the last time?”
I did.
Said, “No, I don’t.”
“It was after one of the games. I don’t get this thing with you and Millwall – it’s like the football gives you a license to act like an idiot every week.”
“Well, that is pretty much how it works for most geezers. Besides all this resentment – Tis too starved an argument for my sword.”
“Shakespeare?”
“Yeah.”
“You kidding me?”
“You thought I never read? Listen Sarah, I won the junior poetry prize three years in a row. Never told a soul about it. I met the mayor and read on national radio. Won a prize. Several prizes.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
“I bullshit ye not.”
Neglected to mention the fact that I swore on national radio at the age of eight.
My poems were raw back then.
A sudden downpour of rain.
“I thought you couldn’t read.”
“Alice, I’m vulnerable out here. A drowning poet.”
“Well come in, but be nice to people this time. Make a few apologies.”
“I never apologise,” I tell her.
“Well, young man, it’s time to start.”
Young man, she called me, young man, as far as I could recall I was born a year before her.
Young man.
I follow her through to a room, the living room, bare floorboards, with a couple of rugs and a sofa that harbored its own eco-system of trash. Two geezers with beards and joints in their hands are linked up to a gaming system playing a skateboard simulator. There’s a sound system playing Ride, a shoe-gazing 90s outfit. I recognize the song , a decent track and it seems to fit the scene. A bird with dreadlocks sits on the floor cross-legged with her eyes closed in some sort of yoga-move. She opens her eyes and begins to speak. “Just got back from India. Seven months.”
“Reverse culture shock,” I say, having heard some weirdo use the expression in the White Horse once.
“Yes. Exactly. Have you ever been?”
“Well, I’ve been to the Bengal Star a few times, and the Bombay Brassarie.”
“It’s a different world,” she says. “It’s,” she struggles to find the right word. “Spiritual.”
“I’ve had some spiritual mornings after the night before.”
“Gandhi’s revenge?” One of the beards says. Calls himself Jamie. He struggles with the gaming control pad as his skater performs a 360 mute grab transfer from a wooden half-pipe into emptied out swimming pool.
“Big time.”
“Have a blast on this,” Beard One says. I take the spliff from the beard calls himself Jamie, have a hit and then hand it to the yoga girl next to me. Christ I hate spliff, like to feel in control. Or out of it on my own terms and conditions.
His skater stacks as he loses balance on a tricky hand-rail smith grind before he hands over the controller to Beard Two who begins his run with an impressive manual roll kick-flip to manual before entering the pool on the board in a crouched position, poised to ride the concrete transition.
“Never had too much time for smoking the green. Makes me think too much,” I said.
“That’s the whole point, man,” says Beard Number Two. “You ever play Sonic the Hedgehog?”
“No. I grew up in a caravan,” I tell him. “I ate hedgehogs for breakfast.”
“Well, Sonic the Hedgehog, the underwater level. It’s the hardest level, man. And it’s the penultimate one, man. It’s not even the last level. You know what that tells us?”
“To get out more?” I venture.
“No. It tells us. The hardest level is often the one before the last, I think philosophically. Its lightest before dawn, would be another way of putting it.”
I let the thought dance as a matter of courtesy.
“It’s a metaphor for life,” says Beard two. Hell, these two are like ZZ Top if ZZ Top were born up in Bromley and raised on pop tarts, game consoles and strong Dutch weed. “That’s why those at the very top, the big corporations and leaders of nations government of otherwise. That’s why they make it so tough to get there. It’s not the rise to CEO of an oil company that’s difficult, it’s finding yourself applicable for selection. Now some may have cheats, family in government office to take the USA example.”
“I don’t need to think too much, brothers. Saving the world starts inside. I can’t think too much. You want to save the rainforest? Not me, man. Not when I have enough to think about anyway. I mean if all you have to worry about is saving the universe then it probably helps you sleep at night. But when fifty grand in the hole and you have a few hours to get the cash the last thing you need to be thinking about is the corporate corruption in the third world. And the...”
“Are you in trouble, Jimmy?” Sarah gasps. Her eyes widening as she scratches her arms
Trouble?
Does Fred West own a shovel?
“Trouble, I got turned over. I’ve got to come up with fifty grand within the next two days and to top it all off I ended up shagging the big man’s daughter. Had to make a sharp exit hence the lack of shoes and a coat.”
“That’s heavy,” says one of the beards, not sure which one but he delivers the sentence well. For a moment I’m in San Francisco.
“Does she love her father?”
The question came like a bolt. It was the hippy chick smoking the joint.
“She hates him from what I can tell. What’s that got to do with anything.”
Beard Number One speaks “I think I know where she’s going, am I right Sam?”
Sam, the bird with the braids and the India trip, eyes closed in the lotus nods her head. “Does he love her?” she says.
“He treasures her,” I say. “No way!” Beard Number One says in an annoyingly American accent. Does dope make you speak like an American?
What is that all about?
“Yes.” Sarah nods reading my thoughts.
“Look, I might not be fucking Einstein but would somebody try to explain to me what is going on here?”
“It’s easy, Jimmy, you silly thing. All you have to do is kidnap the girl.”
What was she talking about kidnap the girl. Sarah was a nice wholesome girl. I’d met her father once. We spoke about badgers. The beauty of the small beasts who fed on earthworms, and now, here she was, telling me to kidnap the one woman that had made a connection. A sexual connection. Maybe it was Sarah I needed, not Rose. Maybe I needed no one. Maybe that was the answer.
Badgers.
“But when he finds out...”
“He’ll never find out. Not if you do it the right way.”
For a moment there, I had the seeds of a plan.
And a rizla paper with a telephone number.
Things were happening in that room. It may have the smoke or it may have been the risk of danger, it may have been the suns alignment with the planets. Sarah sat behind the braided girl on the floor and began to massage her back, little grunts of pleasure rose from her, tiny gasps as the tension released. She lay down and removed her top and Sarah began to work on her back, next she removed the underwear and the two beards and myself were looking at a third beard.
It seemed her India guru left out the part about shaving. On her back now Alice’s long tongue flicked and teased. One of the beards got up and sat beside them and played with her breasts. I didn’t know what to do, as the other beard came over and began to remove Sarah’s underwear – she didn’t stop him. I watched them go at it. Now and again Sarah would look up and smile mockingly. The hippy chick’s eyes remained closed in meditation. I sat and watched for a few more minutes before finding my way into a disgusting kitchen. The drugs were wearing off. I found a dirty glass and filled it with water from the tap, drank it. Tasted like hell. Took a peak back into the living room they were both paired up now, fucking like rabbits. There was an old rotary job affixed to the wall. I took out the rizla paper and looked at the number. I must have looked at number for a good twenty minutes while listening to the sounds of the four love-makers. I took out the wrap of Charles and mapped out a line and hoovered it up. Picked up the telephone and rang the number.
Dead.
The line had probably been cut a decade ago.
STUCK IN THE MIDDLE
THE GLASS of Pinot Gregio rose to Rose’s lips. She took a long drink. “There’s something about him – that interests me,” she said.
“Well, what was it, apart from the cocaine and the limp?” her best friend Jane replied looking across the pizza restaurant, Bromley, the usual crowd of tracksuits and jeans and women trying to out-dress each other. “Doesn’t seem like one of life’s winners to me.”
Rose knew that Jane was right, but there was something about Jimmy’s honesty, his shyness cloaked with bravado, that she admired. She felt a connection, and a connection was something she had never really experienced. At least not with a member of the opposite sex. There were horses, P.E teachers, there was the guy that chartered the boat on the trip to Ibiza. This was different. “How was your guy?” she asked.
“Bounty? A complete nightmare. I tell you he was useless, all fumbling, and twitching and when it came down to it he had the smallest one I’d ever seen. And you know what they say,” she lowered her voice, “about black men?”
“Yeah?”
“Well it ain’t true.”
They both laughed.
“I mean really, I tried not to laugh, but how the hell he expects to ever satisfy a woman with that is beyond me.”