Nirvana Bites

by Debi Alper

  I pushed through to my friends, who had joined Robin. He was still speaking to a couple of the journalists, urging them to keep the pressure on.

  ‘C’mon,’ I said, taking his elbow, ‘you’ve had your fifteen minutes of fame. Let’s go home.’

  About thirty or so of the protesters who could count themselves as friends followed us back to Peckham. I raided Stan’s cash stash and we bought bottles of tequila and wine, cans of lager and plenty of munchies. The sun was warm enough to give the first real hints of summer. We fixed speakers on to the flat roofs of the bathroom extensions and pumped out reggae, house or rock, depending on who was at the controls. We crowded round the TV and cheered as we watched footage of boxes of papers and computers being carried out of Koi Korner.

  It was the lead item on the Six o’Clock News. A demonstration outside a shop in south London alleged to be the nerve centre for an international right-wing conspiracy. The local MP, a top cop, a spokesperson for Searchlight…each in their own way pledging to ‘get to the bottom of this’. This was success beyond anything we had dared hope for.

  The day blurred into evening. I refused to think about the one major problem remaining. Wherever Gunther was, he would know we were behind blowing the whistle on his mates. The news was unlikely to endear us to him. Maybe the police would find stuff at Koi Korner to link him with the fascists. But would they make the connection to Della? I decided I’d post the photos I’d found at Stan’s to DS Mackay the next day. I might even put Gunther’s name and address on the back so they wouldn’t have to work too hard.

  As I got more pissed and stoned, the party seemed to disintegrate into a series of snapshots: Gaia whirling like a dervish, skirts billowing, beads whipping round like martial-arts weapons; a guy with shocking-pink hair and ears like dinner plates pissing on the rose bush; Frank snogging a tiny woman with corkscrew curls; Ali lighting garden flares with the gravity of Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic flame; Mags in a heated discussion with a second cousin twice removed about the Nation of Islam.

  At one point I went inside and found Robin slumped at the kitchen table, staring at the blank wall. I put my hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Robin? You OK?’ I slurred, trying to focus.

  He didn’t move. ‘Nick should have been there today,’ he mumbled. ‘He should be here now…’ He twisted round to face me, searching deep into my eyes. ‘Where is he, Jen?’

  I felt a hot stab of guilt, which had the benefit of momentarily clearing my head. Nick had been missing for over two weeks now. Yet with everything else that had been going on, the only time I had given any thought to his absence was when Robin drew my attention to it.

  ‘We’ll find him,’ I asserted, with the confidence of the very pissed or very stupid. ‘We’ll start looking tomorrow. We’ll phone the Missing Persons Helpline. Get his pic in the Big Issue. Put the word out. We could even print up some leaflets with his photo on. Don’t worry, Robin. We’re going to find him.’ I put my arms round his bony shoulders and hugged him. ‘And when we do,’ I said, pulling back, ‘I’m gonna be the first to tell him how cool you were out there today.’

  I grabbed his hand. ‘C’mon. Let’s go and have another tequila slammer.’

  Robin gave a weak smile and allowed me to lead him back out to the party.

  34

  YEARS OF TRAINING put me on autopilot and I forced several glasses of water down my throat before I tumbled into bed. I woke up the next morning and drank several more before I could steel myself to look out of my bedroom window. The garden was strewn with rubbish, the barbecue still smoking. At least there were no comatose bodies to be seen, unlike after some of our previous parties.

  I went downstairs and used my key to open the door to Mags’s flat. I tiptoed down her hall. Judging by the cacophony of grunts and snores coming from her front room and bedroom, several of the survivors had crashed at her place. I let myself out of the back door into the garden.

  The sun was shining and birds were singing. Optimism filled the air. The double whoosh of a passing Eurostar reminded me there was a great big world out there. And we had achieved something that would make this corner of it a better place. How often can you say that?

  I started to sort the debris for recycling. One bin-bag for cans, another for bottles and a bucket for compost. I knew from past experience it would be better to get this over with now. The others are a bunch of lazy gits when it comes to the garden. I would end up doing it myself anyway, so I might as well ride the energy wave I still had from our victory while it lasted.

  I crouched down to weed the herb patch, first removing a burnt-out flare, two paper cups, a crushed beer can and a sleeping cat. The late-spring sun warmed the leaves. I worked in an aromatic haze of mint, lemon balm, rosemary, thyme and marjoram. There was still no sign of anyone else. From behind the wooden fence, I could hear Tyson in Mrs V’s garden, his huge paws pounding the dirt, a deep growling echoing from his throat.

  The sun was warm on my back. I felt light-headed from too much adrenalin and partying plus too little sleep and food. But, for a time there, plucking weeds and tufts of grass from the pungent herbs, I felt more relaxed and at peace than I had for weeks.

  In my memory, that moment was one of pure beauty and innocence. After it, nothing would ever be the same again.

  In the warm May morning stillness, I can remember hearing Mrs V’s back door creak open. I heard her slippers scuff on the dirt. I heard her reedy voice call out.

  ‘Tyson? Ere, Ty. Wotchoo got there then, eh?’

  A shrill keening pierced the air. Non-stop wails, one after the other with scarcely a pause for breath. Unearthly, high-pitched shrieks that stopped my breath and turned my blood to glaciers.

  I leapt up and ran to the fence. I jumped at it, my arms clinging to the top, my feet scrambling for the bottom slat. Mrs V was standing at the back of her garden, just outside her door. Every detail is tattooed inside my brain. She was wearing a pink nylon housecoat, strappy gold slippers and Pat Butcher earrings. Her wispy orange hair was tied with an enormous pink ribbon. Her hands were held to the sides of her face, her open mouth an O of horror. From it, the inhuman screams issued unabated.

  I followed the direction of her gaze to the other end of the garden. Tyson was romping with a filthy ball with a rope attached. He was batting at it with his enormous paws, grabbing it in his teeth and shaking it. As I watched, he clamped the rope in his slathering jaws and began scything the ball backwards and forwards. As it swung in great pendulum arcs, globs of red and cream gunk sprayed out across the garden.

  The ball was a head.

  It was barely recognisable as such, but the long coiled rope of hair identified it with utter certainty.

  It was a head.

  It was Nick’s head.

  If that part can never be erased from my memory, the next few hours feel as though they must have happened to someone else. A blur like a movie seen long ago, the details smudged and foggy.

  I remember throngs of strangers moving through our space as though we were irrelevant. Questions, questions, questions coming from all angles. I remember insisting on talking to Mackay. At least he already knew about Della, so I wouldn’t have to explain too much.

  He arrived and I spoke to him in my front room. Other people were there, but I can’t remember who they were. I was freezing cold in spite of the blanket thrown over my shoulders. Through chattering teeth, I told him all I knew about Gunther. I also gave him the photos. He rifled through them, his features a blank mask.

  I didn’t tell him about beating Stan, abducting him and dangling him from Boddington Heights. I was suffering from shock, not stupidity.

  Mackay went easy on me. He must have been pretty pissed off with me for withholding evidence and interfering in a police investigation, but he was good enough at his job to recognise that the priority here was catching a killer, not getting heavy with a traumatised nobody who had just given him the evidence he would need to solve one or maybe even
two high-profile murders. Good for the image of the boys in blue. A possible promotion for him. Why bother throwing the book at us? Especially as, up to that point, we’d done a far better job of finding and exposing the bad guys than they had.

  I also filled Mackay in on Nick’s last known movements. What we didn’t know was how and when Gunther – assuming it was him – had got hold of Nick. It was Mackay who told me they had found the rest of Nick’s body – at several points further down the track. They reckoned he’d been placed on the line just after the bridge, where the track crosses at an angle behind the gardens.

  They didn’t know if he’d been alive when he was put there.

  The train must have severed Nick’s head, sending it bouncing down the embankment and over into Mrs V’s garden. If the perpetrator had chosen that particular spot on the track for maximum freak-out of yours truly, he must have been delighted by the unforeseen bonus of Nick’s head landing up in Tyson’s grisly clutches.

  Mackay delivered the information deadpan. He didn’t react, even when I sprang to my feet and ran to the toilet to throw up for the second time that day.

  35

  SOMEHOW WE GOT each other through the next few days. In those circumstances, most people would run home to Mummy and Daddy to be nursed through the trauma. None of us had that option. Except Robin maybe, but he wasn’t about to abandon us. Whatever we were feeling, whatever had happened, this was still our home. And now, without anyone needing to discuss it, it was his home too.

  We holed up for a siege, with the media camping out on our doorsteps. Still in techno mode, we ordered food via the Internet and had it delivered. None of us stepped outside the front door for a week. Mags took compassionate leave. No one cared about or would miss the rest of us.

  At some point we heard that the cops had raided Gunther’s home in Kent. His basement had been converted into a dungeon filled with instruments of torture and Nazi paraphernalia. They found plenty of evidence to prove that Nick had been held there. Gunther was arrested and charged with murder.

  Life became automatic. Most of the time, we were all together. Under normal conditions, we all acted as jealous guardians of our own space; sometimes I wouldn’t see any of the others for days or even weeks. Now we ate, drank, smoked and sometimes even laughed together every day. Ali slept in my bed each night. To be honest, I was glad of the company. Not that the sex was bad – once I got over the guilt of being able to fuck while Nick lay dead. Gaia would have said we were affirming our possession of the life force.

  I think Robin and Frank were the worst affected. Robin, because he’d known Nick since they started school together aged eleven; and Frank…well, Frank because his resources were the most drained. But at one point or another, everyone cried. Except me, of course. The luxury of tears was still denied to me.

  I managed to get it together enough to phone Philip Courtney and make some suggestions about Della’s funeral. He told me the cops had contacted him. They had found evidence at Gunther’s that pointed to Della having been held there. Way to go, Mackay. Don’t forget me when you’re basking in the glory of a case solved within weeks instead of the usual months or even years. Or rather, please do forget me. I’d prefer it that way.

  The Day of the Two Funerals loomed. I had already decided – and I was rock-solid unmovable on this – that I would go to Della’s but not my father’s. The others were unanimous in condemning my decision. The usual unspoken rule was that we supported each individual to do what they felt was best for themselves, in spite of any reservations we might have. So I was surprised – and defensive – when the rule went out of the window this time. The way they told it, Nick’s violent death had forced us to change our priorities. Permanently. They were not prepared to stand by and support me to do something they felt would be damaging to me.

  During the days of siege, we had all opened up about intimate details of our pasts. It was amazing. I’d known, lived and worked with these people for years. Yet I was shocked to learn the extent of the damage and pain we had managed to accumulate between us. I suppose they must have felt the same about me, which gave them the ammunition to pressurise me to attend my father’s funeral. As a rule, I don’t react well to pressure. It just makes me even more stubborn. But it was true. It was time we all reassessed our priorities.

  They each had a different take on it that was characteristic of their own perspective on life.

  Gaia – ‘It’s karma…one funeral straight after the other. You can’t deny your own karma, you know. It’ll screw you up…’ Robin – ‘When all’s said and done, he was still your father. Going to his funeral will just be an acknowledgement of the blood tie. No more.’ Frank – ‘Go just to see the old bastard dead and buried. You could always spit on his grave…or dance on it…’ Mags – ‘It’ll grant you closure. You’ll be able to move on more effectively.’ Ali – ‘Go. We’ll all come.’

  It was Ali’s argument, terse though it was, that swayed me in the end. The fact that they were prepared to put themselves through that for me. Hadn’t I just exposed them to an ordeal none of us could ever have imagined a few weeks earlier? If I hadn’t taken on Stan and his sordid little secret, Nick would still have been alive and none of us would have been together to have the discussion in the first place. Yet there was not one single word of recrimination. In the midst of all that intrusion, grief, trauma and raw emotion, not one of them pointed so much as a single finger in my direction. How do you account for that? This was the sort of unconditional love most people talk about getting from their own family. Yet none of us had had that experience. Life may have been shit enough to rip Nick from us, but at least it had given us each other.

  I reluctantly agreed to go to both funerals. I wasn’t happy about it. But then there seemed to be precious little to be happy about in those desiccated days.

  36

  HOW DO YOU dress for a funeral? Would it be the same if the funeral was your father’s as it would be for a good mate who happened to be a flamboyant transvestite? My hand hovered over Kate’s interview suit, which I still hadn’t returned, but I couldn’t bring myself to take it from the hanger. What the hell. I chose my black-leather mini-skirt, corset and jacket. Minus the handcuffs, which were presumably not still attached to Stan’s ankle. Well, the outfit was black, wasn’t it? The others gawped a bit, but said nothing.

  I dragged out the time, keeping my friends waiting. The last thing I wanted was to be early and have to deal with my living relatives as well as the dead one.

  The service was already under way by the time we parked the transit in the leafy car park at Brenchley Gardens. The others followed me into the chapel. We slid into the back row. It was a tawdry little affair, with only a dozen people present apart from us.

  In the front row, I could see Kate wearing a black pillbox hat, her shoulders rigid in her tailored jacket. It looked like she’d forgotten to take the hanger out. My nephews, uncomfortable in their Sunday best, fidgeted between their parents. I couldn’t blame them. Even the vicar sounded bored and unconvinced. I watched Kate’s hand flick out and slap her nearest son on the knuckles, all the while looking straight ahead.

  In the row behind them sat three elderly men and one woman, looking vaguely dusty, as though they were left over from some previous funeral. I didn’t recognise any of them. My eyes flickered over the coffin to the pews on the other side. Only one seat was taken, by a burly man with short blond hair and wearing a badly cut suit. Next to him, in the aisle, was a wheelchair. From behind the occupant looked shrivelled. He was slumped, his head lolling. At first I assumed it was another geriatric crony of my father from the nursing home. Except his dark spiky hair, so much like my own, revealed him to be closer to my age. Two years eight months older than me, to be exact.

  I felt a tightness in my chest as I realised I was looking at my brother Len for the first time in nearly two years.

  Len had always been the sensitive one. Physically delicate and with no hard emotional shel
l to protect him, he couldn’t take the punishment like the rest of us. We were all protective of him, even Dennis. But to our father, his sensitivity was effeminate and weak. A direct affront to his manhood. Yet no matter how vicious and cruel the treatment, Len always made excuses for his tormentor. He tried so desperately hard to please, yet everything he did just seemed to infuriate our father more, as though he couldn’t bear the love and had to try to destroy it.

  In the end, I don’t think he ever did succeed in destroying the love. But he did destroy the soul. Len was first sectioned when he was seventeen. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Maybe it would have happened anyway. Or maybe it was a combination of his suffering, the psychoactive drugs and the shock therapy. Either way, Len’s psychosis took off into the outer limits and his previous sweet and gentle self has never been seen since.

  I used to visit him regularly at first. Most times, he didn’t recognise me – either because he was too drugged up or because I was part of the interplanetary conspiracy to evacuate Earth and leave him behind. On the occasions when he did know who I was, it just seemed to make him more distraught. Seeing me didn’t seem to help him. And it tore the guts out of me. In the end, I slackened off to every few months, then once a year. The last time I had seen him was on the eve of the millennium, when he’d been in zombie mode.

  I wondered whose idea it had been to get him along here today. Kate’s, no doubt. With Den acquiescing as usual. Did she not see the callous irony of a man, institutionalised for over fifteen years, getting one trip out – to the funeral of the person who had robbed him of any chance of a normal life?