Red Gloves, Volumes I & II

by Christopher Fowler

  I suppose I’d seen too much American television. And as it turned out the drug dealer was white, not black, and looked like the sort of cherubic, overfed, shaven-pated teenager you’d let into your home to assist with the repaving of your patio. He was dressed in a scuffed brown leather jacket with a grey hood, and jeans that were slightly too long at the back, so that they had frayed. He looked like he had been born with his hands in his pockets. He spoke out of the side of his mouth in barely more than a mumble.

  ‘What you after?’

  I supposed lads like him were always hanging around stations, invisible to all except those who were looking for them, so I said, ‘I’d like some cocaine please.’

  And he said, ‘One or two?’

  And I said ‘Well, I’d better get two,’ as if they were eggs and I wasn’t sure about the recipe’s quantities.

  And he said, ‘One twenty.’ I must admit that I felt rather chuffed about discovering the street price of cocaine. I suppose it made me look a bit less clueless. Now, as luck would have it I’d been to a cashpoint earlier in the day and had taken out £200 to buy things I’d needed for the dinner, and I had £150 left because I’d ended up putting the wine on my Visa card. He asked to see the money, I showed him, then he told me to follow him.

  ‘Can’t I just wait here and let you bring it to me?’ I asked, and it turned out this was a bit of a naïve question because he screwed his face into a ball and said, ‘You’re ’aving a larf, incha?’ And of course when I thought about it I realised there were police and cameras all over the place, so I meekly followed him down Pentonville Road to an alley that reeked of urine, and into a backstreet full of council flats. It was just thirty seconds from Will’s apartment but it felt as if we had been suddenly flown to Afghanistan.

  I’d never been in a council flat before, and I hope I never will again. It was quite, quite ghastly. We threaded our way along an underlit terrace covered in bicycles and dead plants and plastic lawn chairs, past gangs of very thin Indian boys standing around with their hands in their pockets like they had nothing else to do. It was all most peculiar. Every single one of the front doors we passed was fire engine red, which I thought an odd coincidence. As we skirted around them, the Indian boys made derogatory remarks and sucked their teeth, for absolutely no reason that I could see.

  My drug dealer gave a complicated knock on the door and after a minute it was opened by an emaciated girl in a black vest and baggy grey trousers. There were no social niceties, no introductions. I simply followed him in. You’d think she would have checked. I could have been anyone.

  The hallway smelled of fried chicken and something less sanitary.

  ‘Go in there,’ said the Cherub, holding open the first door off the hall. I found myself in an incredibly small room filled with the kind of brown leather sofas they always advertise on Boxing Day. You know the type, very common and vulgar-looking. Wedged into the sofas were four men and two girls. The girls looked like beauticians from a provincial department store, the kind who appear to be wearing their underwear on the outside of their clothes, all legs and makeup, and the men looked like various versions of Frankenstein. The walls were covered in film posters attached to the blotchy silver wallpaper by drawing pins. I noted Reservoir Dogs, Inglourious Basterds, Bad Lieutenant and rather less explicably, Toy Story 3.

  Very complicated-looking bits of drug paraphernalia were scattered over the tiled table in front of them. Don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t a total hick. I knew what cocaine looked like; I’d seen Scarface. But there were glass pipettes and blackened beakers and rolls of silver foil and other bits and pieces that mystified me. Oh, and for some reason, a big stack of X-Men comics, council house literature.

  The TV in the corner was showing a movie I vaguely recognised. The colour was turned up too high. The group seemed to be playing some kind of game involving the film they were watching. On the screen, a man in over-developed pectorals and a nappy yelled something about the honour of Sparta and shook his spear. Suddenly everyone in the room made a guttural roaring noise, reached forward to the table and threw back a small glass of clear liquid, followed by a swig from a black bottle. A moment later, the nappy-man said ‘Sparta’ again and everyone roared again.

  ‘It’s a drinking game,’ the Cherub explained as he returned, ‘tequila and a Guinness chaser every time Gerard Butler shouts “Sparta”.’

  The Cherub threw me a beer. No-one had ever thrown a beer at me before. I even managed to catch it. Seating himself on the arm of the chair, he unfolded a rectangle of newspaper, handed me a shortened section of a McDonald’s plastic straw and said, ‘Check that out, pal.’ I was his pal now.

  I hadn’t thought about this. Suddenly I realised that I would have to try the merchandise, just like drug lords did in crime films. There was no way out. I jammed one end of the straw up my right nostril and sucked hard.

  ‘Fuck!’ shouted the Cherub, snatching back the paper, which was now empty. McDonald’s straws are quite wide, and I assumed he meant that it hadn’t all been for me. ‘You’d better make it one fifty and I’ll get your gear,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. The girls imitated the way I spoke and tittered.

  ‘That wasn’t your coke, was it,’ the Cherub replied. I had to stop and work out whether he was asking me a question.

  ‘Then what was it?’ I asked. The inside of my nose was really starting to burn.

  ‘Some kind of MDMA cocktail we cooked up in the kitchen. Pukka designer stuff, no rubbish.’

  ‘MDMA? What’s that?’ I asked, but everyone just looked at me and started laughing again. The Cherub was waiting, and the best Frankenstein in the room, a teenaged monster who had a curving row of crimped stitches running around his right ear and over his cheek, glared at me so hard I feared he might have left a burn-hole in the wallpaper, so I dug out my wallet and handed over the contents before he decided to hit me.

  ‘Okay, let’s go and get it,’ said the Cherub, rising.

  ‘Is it not here, then?’ I asked.

  ‘No, it’s at the Baron’s.’

  ‘Who is the Baron?’ Everyone laughed again, quite rudely I thought.

  And we were off once more, but now some of the Frankensteins and one of the girls came with us out of curiosity, following behind like some kind of Victorian concert party gone horribly wrong.

  This time we went through the rear of the building to a black-painted fire escape, and up several floors to the flat roof. Looking down, I could see the road I had walked along earlier. If I leaned over the edge, I could probably have spotted my dinner guests patiently sitting around the table.

  The Cherub pushed open another red door and led us into a bare rectangular concrete room lit in each corner with a fat black candle. On the breeze-block wall opposite was a really terrible painting of a woman having sex with a crocodile.

  In the centre of the room crouched an enormously fat man in a top hat covered in gold Christmas tree decorations. He had a mad frizzy grey beard and was wrapped in a woman’s red floral bathrobe, and wore matching red Wellingtons. An iPod had been docked into a speaker on the floor, and was playing something that sounded like a radically decelerated version of the theme music to Doctor Who.

  ‘Is it hot in here, or is it me?’ I asked, loosening my collar, and everybody laughed again, like court jesters paid to guffaw at the king’s jokes even when he didn’t say anything funny.

  I noticed that there was something wrong with the candles; their flames were leaving fiery trails whenever I moved my head. The Cherub said something to the bearded man and they shared a private moment of covert laughter. One of the beautician girls wandered over to me and ran her hand down the front of my shirt. She seemed to be moving in slow motion. Everything was. Suddenly, without any kind of warning, she pulled open her shirt and released a pair of astonishing, pendulous white breasts. Thinking back, it must have been done up with press-studs.

  I found myself feeling
simultaneously threatened and excited. Leaning forwards, she held long, dark nipples between her thumbs and forefingers and rubbed them back and forth across my chest like battery contacts. She said something, but it sounded like a radio someone had placed a pillow over. I stuck a finger in my ear and wiggled it, but still couldn’t hear.

  She slid her hands inside my shirt and ripped it open. Buttons landed on the floor, very slowly and loudly. I felt my trouser zipper opening and my tumescent member being removed from its safe nest.

  ‘Now look here, hang on a minute,’ I said, ‘I came here for a legitimate reason’—I had trouble saying the word legitimate—‘to collect two portions of cocaine.’ But I don’t think any of the words came out very clearly.

  I felt my member being enveloped in something wet and hot. Closing my eyes, I saw myself flying backwards and up, like a child on a tall playground swing, higher and higher, my stomach rising and falling. When I looked back down, I found Father Christmas’s face attached to my groin, his fat lips glued over my private parts as if he had swallowed them whole. He looked up at me and rolled his eyes. I think I might have screamed.

  I certainly jumped back. Everyone was laughing, and by now I was hot and angry. The Cherub appeared to think that I’d been a good sport and slapped me on the shoulder, as if I had passed some kind of revolting initiation ceremony. His face loomed close to mine. His lips were a mile across, and as he spoke I thought his mouth would swallow the universe. ‘I’ll get your coke, don’t worry,’ he said, speaking very loudly and distinctly, like a teacher dealing with a truculent child. I was trying very hard not to think of the Father Christmas-man who had been attached to my testicles. He was still kneeling on the floor grinning.

  There was a fire burning in the middle of the next room on a rusty old barbeque grill, and the only piece of furniture was a ratty old IKEA sofa with the springs poking through the cushions. Another pair of Frankensteins sat side by side on it. These ones were wearing matching Elizabethan ruff-collar shirts and black leather jerkins, and were drinking lagers. They continued to talk across me very quickly, as if I wasn’t there, like some kind of peculiar burlesque hall double act.

  ‘London’s wildlife is tragically under-appreciated,’ said one.

  ‘Murderers are the most elusive and mysterious of all the creatures that appear in conurbations after dark,’ agreed the other.

  ‘They’re shy nocturnal souls who leave their spoor in various parts of our fair city, especially in the section christened Murder Mile, from outside Camden Town’s Pret A Manger—’

  ‘A trainee rabbi was found hacked up in bin-bags,’ interjected the other.

  ‘Past Royal College Street—’

  ‘Ladies of the night were chopped into pieces there and dumped in bin-bags, identified by their breast implants.’

  ‘And the Regent’s Canal—’

  ‘Where the American tourist was slashed in half with a machete.’

  ‘Along Kentish Town Road—’

  ‘Adam Ant threw a carburettor through a pub window and threatened patrons with a fake gun—’

  ‘To Kentish Town tube—’

  ‘A man was beaten to death by gang members for doing nothing more than politely asking the way.’

  ‘Up to Tufnell Park tube station—’

  ‘Home to at least half a dozen recent assorted gunshot victims all under the age of seventeen.’

  ‘Bin-bag murderers are civic-minded. They’d never dream of shovelling guts and limbs into gutters, and at least allow the dustmen some faint hope of recovering the victims’ jewellery.’

  Now they both spoke together in perfect unison. ‘And so the city’s Hogarthian spirit, vengeful, feral and packing serious heat, lives on.’

  It was quite a performance. The Frankensteins fell silent and turned to look at me as if waiting for a round of applause. Their heads were moving around, leaving phosphorescent traces in the air, as if they had become radioactive. The fire was whizzing about all over the place.

  I pointed at a can of lager. ‘Could I have some of that?’ I asked thickly. ‘I seem to have a terribly dry throat.’

  One of them gave me his can and I drank greedily, spilling most of the beer down my shirt.

  The Cherub was grinning and beckoning. I stumbled towards him, forced to follow, partly because I was having terrible trouble maintaining an upright balance, partly because he had all my money, and partly because I still had a dinner party full of guests waiting to be served a dessert treat.

  ‘What’s wrong with those two?’ I asked, looking back at the Frankensteins. ‘I think I need to get what I came for now. Would that be possible?’

  ‘It’ll just be a couple more minutes,’ the Cherub told me, maintaining eye contact as he walked backwards. His crimson pupils were Loris-sized in the candlelight. There were flames waltzing in them. ‘So, what’s a posh ponce like you doing here?’

  ‘I needed—I need to prove—I just need—’ I was finding it hard to concentrate, because the two Frankensteins on the couch were now singing showtunes very loudly, very off-key, something about a lonely goatherd.

  ‘There are no addicts on the streets of King’s Cross anymore,’ said the Cherub sadly. ‘You used to feel you were providing a useful service.’ He pushed open the door and stepped out onto the roof. He span around and stared into my eyes. ‘Have you ever seen your heart beating outside your body?’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ I admitted.

  ‘Have a drink of water.’ He passed over a two-thirds-empty bottle of Evian.

  Without pausing to think, I drank. ‘It tastes funny,’ I said.

  The Cherub gave an apologetic shrug and held up a little white pill. ‘I dissolved some of these in it.’

  ‘Why do you keep doing that?’ I asked, angry with him now.

  He grabbed the back of my head and held me still. ‘You’re going to feel very strange in a minute. Are your feet tingling?’

  ‘Yes, that’s funny, they are.’ I held out my arms, which seemed to be about four feet long. ‘And so are my fingers. Oh.’

  As I watched them, my fingers slowly turned green with the kind of suppurating rot I saw around the bases of elm trees on my father’s estate. The nails blackened, cracked and fell off like old paint. I could see pale points of bone sticking through the tips of my ragged digits, although they didn’t seem to be sore. I remember thinking that I would have to wear gloves from now on. I looked down at my retreating feet. The same thing was happening with them. Somewhere along the line I had lost my shoes and was walking about in bare feet. With each step, I left behind another rotted toe.

  ‘Problem with your feet?’

  ‘You could say that,’ I mouthed at him. ‘I don’t want this to happen when I’m old. All this falling to bits.’ I grabbed the back of his jacket. The leather felt so nice that I never wanted to let go. ‘Please don’t let me get old. It’s all squishy. I will stay young if I have your jacket.’

  ‘You can’t have my jacket.’

  ‘Can I just stroke it again?’

  ‘We have to go down now.’ He pointed to the fire escape, but it looked like a roller coaster, stretching off into the far, far distance, somewhere in the inky darkness several hundred miles below. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked me, clearly concerned.

  ‘I’m getting in the car,’ I told him, as if it should be obvious. The roller coaster car was shiny red, with chromium lightning bolts on the sides and fat chrome bumpers. I climbed in and hung onto the side rails as he released the handbrake and we fell sharply, the wind punching my breath from me. We raced down the lethal steel slope for an age, far beyond sight of the ground.

  ‘Let go of the banisters,’ the Cherub was shouting in my ear.

  ‘What banisters?’ I asked, looking back at my white-knuckled, rotting hands gripped tightly over the sides of the roller coaster car. I shook my head, unable to speak at all now. There was a terrible noise inside my brain like the mountain sliding down ont
o the tracks in The Railway Children, and I realised what it was: I was grinding my teeth. I could taste blood.

  ‘Okay, I can see we’re going to have to try something else,’ said the Cherub. ‘We have to fool the cider’s jail.’

  ‘What?’ I bellowed in his face.

  ‘We have to pull the tiger’s tail.’

  I shook my head violently, dislodging a number of buildings.

  ‘Come with me. Just hold my arm and turn around. That’s it.’ I looked behind me. Sitting on the gravel of the undulating roof some kind of mythical creature was sitting on its haunches, breathing heavily. It was tiger-striped, yellow and brown, with an immense jawbone and leaking yellow eyes. It lumbered blindly to its feet and sniffed the air. Around his vast bull-neck was a great steel chain.

  ‘My God, what on earth is that?’

  ‘That is the Were-Tiger,’ said the Cherub, reaching up to stroke the creature’s chest. ‘Its father was a werewolf and its mother—’

  ‘—was a tiger, I get that,’ I said anxiously, watching it crunching something in its mouth. ‘What’s it eating?’

  The Cherub pulled something from between its bloody teeth. I caught a blast of stinking meat. He was holding the top half of a baby, probably no more than about six months old. Horrified, I stumbled backwards.

  ‘Why are you feeding it babies?’ I asked.

  ‘Highlights are his tutors,’ he replied.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘He likes them as chew-toys.’ The Cherub began to undo its chain.

  ‘Look, do you think that’s wise?’ I asked.

  He brought the end of the chain over to me and looped it through the belt of my trousers, at the back. ‘How long would you say this is?’ he asked, holding up the chain.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know—about ten feet?’

  ‘So you’ve got about five seconds’ head start, haven’t you?’ He reached around the back of the Were-Tiger, raised his boot and stamped hard on its tail. The beast threw back its head and roared, spraying me with bloody flecks of baby-meat. Its little baby arm bounced bloodily off my chest.