London Noir

by Cathi Unsworth

  “Don’t mind me.”

  The guy spits, “I fucking won’t, cunt.”

  After dumping his rubbish, I’ll fucking dump him in a minute, he shuffles off back to where he came from, counting out his father’s money, no doubt, in his ironic “chav” Burberry pajamas and fluffy slippers.

  He glances, the guy still peeing, and he gives me a limp smile before hopping back indoors.

  Life on the edge of a very plush cushion.

  Indeed.

  Something in the air catches me and sends me spiralling back through time.

  Bernadette: Diorella.

  Eileen: Diorissimo.

  Margaret: Chanel No5.

  In the distance, a crackhead screams for all she’s worth, maybe for all we’re worth.

  “THE WHORE OF BABYLON! THE WHORE OF BABYLON!”

  Blood songs coagulate in the black currents of a cold cold night.

  The need to believe.

  Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem.

  Ready?

  Ready as I’ll ever be.

  I approach the mews and should I go in and change or just get on with it? I decide to perform the latter and go to the office. I skip around the back of the building and turn the key, walk in, and head for my desk. Mary approaches me with a smile.

  “Father Donaghue?”

  “Yes, Mary?” I toss my keys onto my desk. “What is it?”

  “Well, Father, I know you’re very busy, but I was wondering if you might be able to add a few prayers tomorrow for my sister. A remembrance, if you would.”

  “How long has it been now?”

  “It’s been five years, Father. Five years since he took her away from us.” She begins to cry.

  I put an arm round her and remind her that the Lord is with us. And to call me by my first name, which is Johnny.

  She begins to feel a little uncomfortable, questioning my grasp ever so slightly with her eyes, and so I let her go and then offer her a drop, which she accepts.

  “Father. I didn’t know.”

  I stare at my glass.

  “Neither did I, Mary. Neither did I.”

  Mary takes a sip as I put my glass down onto the desk and pick up my crucifix.

  We both laugh now and chat about the bargains to be found at Iceland and Somerfield and how the new pound shop is really quite amazing. Mary lowers her now empty glass back onto the tray by the whiskey decanter.

  “Thank you, Father, I feel so much better now. Yourself? Settling in? Getting used to our little neighborhood? I know it seems a bit on the rough side, but …”

  “Oh, I’ve seen worse, Mary, believe me. Now. I’ve plenty to do, as you can understand?”

  “Oh, forgive me, Father, for taking up your time.”

  “Not at all, Mary. And I’ll be sure to mention …”

  “Molly.”

  “Molly. Yes. I won’t forget.”

  “Goodbye, Father.”

  I sit and wait. For an hour. I fill my glass as tears begin to well up in my eyes and roll down my face.

  Poor me. Poor me. Pour me a drink.

  Believing in Him. Not believing in Him.

  Deus Meus, ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum pec-catorum, eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solum poenas a Te iuste statutas promeritus sum, sed praesertim quia offendi Te sum-mum bonum ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris. Ideo firmiter propono, aduvante gratia Tua, de cetero me non-peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum …

  The phone rings and the glass smashes in my hand, just as I bring it to my lips.

  “Johnny. You know I will have to kill you.”

  A smile widens across my face. “How can you kill what’s already dead?”

  Twelve Canadians were the first to welcome the next day as they took off from the Grand Union on their way to the much gentler climate of Kew. Their wings making a terrific, terrifying noise. Pete, the cleaner of the Grand Union pub, was mopping up the beer garden; lost in the fight with his wife, who’d said before he left at 5 in the morning, “Panic, stupidity, and withdrawal. That’s all you’ve got to fucking offer.”

  “Fuck away from me.”

  When he first heard the noise, he almost dropped dead believing, This is it, expecting Osama himself in a Harrier jet, with eleven henchmen in tow.

  Pint and eleven white wines for the ladies?

  Pete was mysteriously taken by the magnificence of those beasts and marveled in slow motion when they, first down low and then rising up under the Halfpenny Step Bridge, yelled out as they made their ascent, “What a beautiful sight!”

  He looked around to see if Carmel was about.

  “Carmel, you should see this. Come here.”

  Carmel shook her head from inside the pub, and thinking about her eldest daughter’s latest abortion, snapped, “What is it now? Don’t you fucking play games with me, because I’m in no mood.”

  Carmel threw a rag down and turned again to see Pete standing there like a frozen statue. She laughed to herself and walked out toward him. “What’s got you all fucking excited?”

  Pete was still motionless, as though aliens had taken his soul. He was now white as a sheet. “Jesus.”

  “Oh yeah? And I suppose the fucking holy Virgin Mother of Mary, too …” Carmel’s voice trailed off, as now she understood.

  Tied by the wrists to the railing under the bridge.

  Black tights pulled tight around her white neck.

  Eyes, nose, ears, fingers, and lips removed.

  Half-submerged in the canal.

  Dead as a fucking doornail.

  Legs severed at the thighs.

  Red hair ablaze.

  Senseless.

  Legless.

  Beneath the sound of sirens, my view is as always: stark, sullen, and eldritch. I’m prone to believe that it’s a vile and disgusting world above.

  Where I’ll die, the Harrow Road Police Station, now a hive of cordoned-off activity—choppers and coppers setting the landscape on fire—is to my right. Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Vincent de Paul, where in less than half an hour I will asseverate Mass before a shaken community, is to my left.

  A community brought together by God only knows whom.

  A community of chargrins and fighters.

  A community no less.

  Fighters for peace.

  Secondhand peace.

  Crime Time West Nine.

  Meanwhile.

  Gardens.

  Animals.

  Birds.

  Amen.

  PART II

  I Fought the Law

  I FOUGHT THE LAWYER

  BY MICHAEL WARD

  Mayfair

  I pressed PLAY and the screen on the dinky digital camcorder came to life. Vanya’s face the only thing in view, gurning and sticking her tongue out as a kind of visual “testing, testing …” before disappearing.

  Good girl.

  From where the camera was positioned on top of the wardrobe, it takes in about half the room. In the far right-hand corner is a bed with a large mirror next to it, to the left a small chest of drawers, and in between, against the far wall, a coat stand with a French maid’s outfit, a leather basque, and a nurse’s uniform with a white cap; a pair of black thigh-length boots are slumped in front.

  Two seconds later Vanya reappears into view, carrying the chair she’d just used to reach the top of the wardrobe, and placing it in its usual position next to the chest of drawers. She looks in the mirror, makes a cursory adjustment to her hair, and smoothes her hands down her slip before exiting the frame stage left to the door that leads to the sitting room.

  Ten seconds of stillness, then back to moving pictures as he enters the room. Four slow, graceful strides bring him to the mirror, where he stops to take in his reflection. A tall, slim, handsome man in his early fifties wearing a tastefully expensive dark gray suit offset by a weighty flop of silver hair. The epitome of conservative English style. He runs an index finger over each arched eyebrow, taming any rogue
hairs, then turns and unwittingly strikes a face-on, screen-test pose for the camera.

  Perfect.

  Vanya’s back in the room now, her heels wobbling slightly on the squishy carpet as she walks to the chest of drawers and finds a condom. The gentleman takes off his jacket and hangs it on the back of the chair, then places his shoes neatly underneath. By the time Vanya has rolled the condom over her index finger and greased it thoroughly with Vaseline, the man is naked but for his calf-length thin black socks and has positioned himself on the bed, facing away from the camera, bearing his arse to it.

  Vanya kneels behind him on the bed, still in her slip and shoes, and gently greases the QC’s rectal area, accompanying the finger strokes with a softly murmured Croatian lullaby. Mamu ti jebem u guzicu. She gently eases the digit inside and begins finger-fucking the man, her Serbo-Croat mantra rising in volume as the pace of the thrusts quickens. Picka. Mamu ti jebem u guzicu … About one minute later the silver-haired gentleman, wanking furiously now, reaches his climax and the transaction is complete.

  I press STOP.

  Got the cunt.

  Time to rewind.

  The previous week—the previous millennium, in fact—I’d been at the River of Fire. The government had organized the Thames to be set on fire on the stroke of midnight. It was going to be an almighty twenty-stories-high flaming surge of orange-and-red pyrotechnic power bursting through the heart of the city at 800 miles an hour. PM Turns Water into Fire; Elemental Alchemy on the Grandest of Scales. But all anyone got were a few oversized candles fizzling away on some barges along a muddy river.

  Not that I gave a fuck. Fabrication, fabrication, fabrication. I knew those sloganeering cunts would never deliver. I wasn’t there for the show. I was there to steal stuff from unsuspecting thick cunts. And unsuspecting thick cunts do deliver. Copiously.

  I wasn’t doing it for the money—though some of the stuff I nicked did come in handy later. It just needed to be done. With all that sense of hope and expectation for the dawning of a new millennium, someone had to restore the balance. Inject a bit of reality into the situation. These people were supposed to be slick city folk, weren’t they? Experts at the urban experience. Come to London. Where the people are such cunts they piss and shit and vomit on their own streets while a bunch of incompetent failed lawyers-turned-slogan-peddlers fuck them up the arse and make them pay for the pleasure.

  So I put on my own show. Illegal performance art. A one-off special for a discerning audience of—me. Creative theft. Taking and giving. No one else would’ve got it anyway. It was a world away from the ham-fisted gippos and hood rats who worked Oxford Street and the tubes. Banging into tourists with an awkward fumble into their pockets and coming away with the odd one-day travel pass to sell on for two quid. The occasional mobile. No sense of style, no originality. No drama. Mine was a virtuoso performance—just me, my rucksack, and my pair of dextrous pals: Right-hand Man and his partner, Leftie. Dab hands, the both of them. Digitally precise, you might say. Got to keep them at arm’s length though. You see? It’s called style, cunt. Wit! Something those fucks will never have. I take and I give. It’s art, fucking art.

  True, the actual pickpocketing was pretty much the same as I’d done in my act a hundred times before. Same technically, anyway. And I’d picked pockets for real before, illegally that is, a couple of times. But it hadn’t given me quite the buzz I’d expected it to. No sense of occasion. This was different though. The river bit might have been shit but there were still two million happy, stoned, drunk singing people all squashed up together. All mesmerized by a few colorful lights in the sky. And everyone happily embracing their fellow man, getting up close and hugging, like they didn’t actually hate each other, like they weren’t all cunts for one second. I’ll give you “Auld Lang Fucking Syne,” you twats. “Should auld acquaintance be forgot …” Forgot to keep an eye on that, mate, thanks very much. “And never brought to …” Mind if I take that off you, sir? “Should auld acquaintance be for …” Gotcha! “For the sake of auld lang …” Signing off now, gotta go!

  All in front of about a zillion boys in blue. It was a good night. A new beginning. The way forward.

  After the show I figured I’d go for a celebratory fuck. Vanya would still be working. I’d been going to her for about six months—since she’d come over from Croatia. She was very good value for money—extremely pretty face and a good body, but still reasonable rates. If she were English she’d probably have charged twice as much. Maybe three times. But then I guess that’s one of the benefits of immigration. Cheap, efficient labor

  I started slowly working my way through the throng. Up the Strand, past Trafalgar, and on toward Piccadilly and Shepherd Market. Made up a little song on the way, to the old Robin Hood theme tune: He steals from the thick/And gives to the whore/Robbing’s good!/Robbing’s good!/Robbing’s good! Sometimes, Jonathan Marcus Tiller, I thought, you really are the wittiest fucker in the world. In the fucking world.

  I was just taking in Piccadilly Circus—the glitz of Burger King, the glamour of Dunkin’ Donuts—when I was approached by an American tourist: “Hey there. Could you direct me to Piccadilly Circus?” He said the last two words uncertainly, as if no such place with that name could possibly exist.

  I didn’t reply, just announced the thing with outstretched arms, then turned to him with an expression I’d hoped conveyed: What the fuck do you think that is, cunt? Now fuck off.

  It didn’t work.

  “Only, I’m kinda here to make this movie and I was told Piccadilly Circus was where to look.”

  I glanced up and down his face as he spoke.

  “Look for what?” I said, mildly intrigued.

  “To meet actors. Only, I’m filming the thing in my hotel tonight and I thought you might like to …”

  Suck your cock? “Don’t think so, mate. But yeah, this is the right area—just a decade or so too late …”

  I left the Yank fruit to it and carried on up Piccadilly. Walked along the north side. It’s lined with imposing gray-stoned edifices, like gigantic doormen keeping an eye on things, keeping the undesirables out. Raising a suspicious eyebrow at anyone who dares venture near the promised land of Mayfair. Perhaps sir would be more comfortable taking a different thoroughfare? A street more suited to sir’s … position, shall we say?

  Not tonight though. Tonight I wasn’t being hassled by them. It was as if I’d passed some kind of test. Like I was okay now. They hadn’t exactly handed me the keys, but at least they were going to turn a blind eye while I picked the locks for a while. It was definitely a new beginning.

  I took a right down White Horse Street and into Shepherd Market, a twisty-turny little red-lit corner where all Mayfair’s dirt had been swept to, out of sight. Like a mini Soho but better-spoken and wearing a blazer. By day, the place wasn’t really that special—a bit too twee for my taste. But come night—proper night, that is, once the after-work lager’s been drunk and the late-night diners have fucked off—that’s when it happens. When it reveals its true identity. The perfect place for a discerning maverick street thief artist.

  I stopped to hitch my rucksack up, then turned left, then right into Market Mews. Stopped at the open door marked Model 1st Floor and made my way up the stairs. Up the wooden hill to Shagfordshire. Another good one, Jonny boy. On the way up I waved at the CCTV camera on the wall and pressed the plastic doorbell helpfully labeled Press. Rita opened up. A short round woman with enormous sagging tits, bald but for a few patches of yellowy-gray hair. She was sporting worn-out pink slippers and a loose-fitting cream-colored tracksuit topped with an off-pink toweling dressing gown. Rita is Vanya’s maid, the woman who welcomes the punters.

  “Hello, Jonny love, she’s with a gentleman at the moment, be about ten minutes, that all right?”

  “Fine,” I said, unhitching the rucksack and plopping myself on the foam two-seater sofa in the living room. The only other rooms in the flat are a tiny kitchen with a kettle and microwave an
d a small bedroom.

  The TV was on so Rita and I sat watching the ITN news report of the millennium celebrations. I broke a Marlboro open to pad out a joint while Rita puffed on her B&H.

  “Looks bitter out,” she said, nodding at the TV images of the crowds along the Thames. She got up to turn the thermostat to one hundred.

  “Yes,” I said, twisting the end of my newly constructed joint before lighting it up.

  “Aren’t you playing a show tonight, love? Thought you’d be busy tonight of all nights.”

  “Nah. I could’ve had a gig but I wanted to check out the River of Fire,” I said, watching the end of my joint glow as I toked on it.

  I’d often chat with Rita while Vanya was otherwise engaged. She thought I was a bit glamorous cos I was a magician.

  “Been busy?” she asked.

  I told her about the last gig I’d done—a Christmas party for an accounting firm in the city. I’d been booked with an illusionist called Damon Smart to entertain the staff before dinner. I’d worked with Smart before. His real name was Dave Smith. He was a cheesy cunt, but skillful.

  We would approach a group of five or six of the accountants as they enjoyed some preprandial quaffing and introduce ourselves as so-and-so and so-and-so who’d just joined the firm. After a while Smart would start behaving oddly, grimacing and rubbing his stomach, complaining of indigestion. Then he’d do some pretend-wretching and—this is the particularly cuntish bit—start pulling a thread of razor blades from his mouth. Yes, it was that shit. Shitter, in fact, cos once his shtick was over I would then produce a selection of items I’d lifted from them while they were busy watching Smart hamming it up. “And I believe this watch is yours, sir …” I fucking hated it. I fucking, fucking, fucking hated the fucking fuck out of it.

  Not that I let Rita know this though. She was happy to think of me as some kind of Paul fucking Daniels, so I figured, why upset her? Nothing to be gained.

  “So, yeah, it was a good night,” I lied, and took another draw on my spliff.