EQMM, May 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Copyright © 2011 by Michael Guillebeau

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Fiction: STARDUST by Phil Lovesey

  * * * *

  Art by Jason C. Eckhardt

  * * * *

  Phil Lovesey is the author of four crime novels, all from HarperCollins: Death Duties (1998); Ploughing Potter's Field (1999); When the Ashes Burn (2000); and The Screaming Tree (2002). He is also an award-winning and prolific short story writer, and while The Times (London) has commented on the “keen, brutal perception of modern existence” and “shocking violence” in his novels, the author's short stories are almost all in a gentler vein. This one has an element of whimsy.

  * * * *

  Someone—it doesn't matter who—once told me we're all stardust. Just strange organic composites of the carbon atom; walking, talking, loving, killing. Humanity reduced to powder. Perhaps it was the dull old spud who attempted to teach me science; maybe the warbled lyrics from a prog-rocker; or a TV presenter doing his best to enliven some sort of astrophysics documentary—like I say, it doesn't matter who—but the words, the concept of it has remained with me since. Bought me comfort over the years at times, helped me sometimes to zoom out from the chaos, the injustices of this life, see myself as merely a cosmic speck at the mercy of the universe and its frequent bitter ironies.

  Pretty existential for a petty thief, I guess.

  Then again, I have had the occasional six or nine months locked away with my thoughts and battered prison-library paperbacks to think some of this stuff through. A not-very-good petty thief, in truth.

  Anyway, back to the stardust and ironies . . .

  I'd just finished a small stretch at one of Her Majesty's less-than-salubrious hotels for the wretched, and had found myself fetched up in front of my new front door as sorted by the dear folk from the Probation Service. A good system this, for the serial offender like myself, get given nine months, keep the old nose clean for five of them; smile, make the right noises, tell the panel how much you've changed, how nights racked with remorse have brought about a life-changing conversion to go straight, and hey-presto, they're sorting you new digs, clothes, and some cash in your pocket to tide you over.

  Best bits of thieving I've ever done . . . and all from the taxpayer. Shame on me, you might say. But seriously, in my shoes, you'd do the same. Your dust ain't no different from my dust.

  It's a horrible door, in a horrible block of flats, in a horrible part of town. The probation guy tries to sell it to me as an “apartment,” as if by his Americanising the shabby place I'll not notice the damp, the cracked windowpanes, worn furniture, and bare bulbs. But I smile and thank him anyway. After all, I tell him, home's what you make it. Or what you take from others. He doesn't react to the quip. He's young, this one—would probably refer to himself as a “rookie"—and simply wants to go. I let him, knowing there's no banter to be had. He's too desperate to “check in for a burger and fries” somewhere, the perfect twenty-something product of a life made bland by corporate domination.

  Like I said, I've had a lot of time to read this sort of stuff.

  Now, there's a drill for this sort of place. It goes like this—let them come to you. They always will. For where there's one shabby probationary flat in a block, there'll be others. And the occupants will soon know when the new bloke hitches up. And then come sniffing, scratching, seeing what's to be had. It's just how it is—I've done it myself.

  Sure enough, within ten minutes of College Boy leaving, a bearded, lanky heap of methadone-using stardust is on my doorstep, trying to ingratiate himself, his pink eyes swimming in a pallid head that nods and twitches as he asks me for “a few quid—just for a few days, like.” I invite him in, give him the money in exchange for some essential “local” information.

  He's called Rambling Ian—apparently—and has served the usual amount of time in the past. We talk about various jails, wings, screws—not reminiscing but testing each other for truths, lies, connections, mutual friends and enemies we've made along our less-than-merry way. I think he's probably all right, and he goes on to describe himself as a “standard human road accident on the heroin highway."

  I ask him about others in the block. He tells me we're the only two “insiders,” the other flats housing the predictable assortment of single mothers, forgotten pensioners, unemployed divorcees, and immigrant workers. No rich pickings to be had here, then. But I'd guessed that already. Rambling Ian follows up with a few possible opportunities for a spot of nocturnal thievery just a few streets away.

  "Big places,” he says. “Fancy."

  "And full of alarms,” I reply, knowing where it's heading.

  "Maybe, but with the two of us . . . you know . . ."

  I smile. I'm not about to shatter his illusion that he's on the verge of hooking up with a latter-day Raffles, because however ridiculous the notion may be, I need him onside for a while; he may have his uses. So I tell him I'll think it over, and he makes for the door.

  ” ‘Course,” he adds on his way out, “there's always Buzz on the top floor. He's an odd, old geezer."

  "Buzz?"

  "As in Lightyear, from the kids’ film. You know, all those toys comin’ to life an’ that?"

  I shake my head. Children's films were never my thing, unless it was to try and pick a few adult pockets or rob a hassled mum's handbag in the gloom of the cinema. My spoils from the Hollywood film industry.

  "American, he is,” he goes on. “Crazy old fella. Lives on his own at the very top with just a telescope. Never lets anyone through the door. Rumour round here is that he used to be some sort of spaceman or something."

  "Spaceman? As in an old druggie?"

  My new “partner” looks a little hurt by this. “No. The real deal. That he went up on one of those Apollo missions back in the seventies. Walked on the moon, drove one of them buggy things, the lot."

  "And, naturally, he ends up living on top of a crummy block of flats in South London."

  "I'm just telling you what folk say about him,” he replies. “Never met the fella myself."

  "Yeah,” I say, trying to sound sympathetic. “Well, I reckon there's a few people pulling your leg, Ian."

  "Ask around if you don't believe me,” he insists. “They'll maybe even tell you about the moon rock he keeps up there. Size of your fist, it is, and he brought it back from the moon itself. Smuggled it out of NASA, brought it over here. Be worth an awful lot of loot, that, wouldn't it? Bit of the bloody moon?"

  "Ian,” I calmly reply, “even if there was the tiniest chance that any of the rumours are true, just how easy do you think it would be to convince someone to fork out ‘an awful lot of loot’ for a lump of stone?"

  "A moon rock,” he replied, wide-eyed, clearly not getting it. “A sacred piece of the heavens."

  "And right now,” I said, closing the door, “I need to get a sacred piece of sleep."

  * * * *

  Rambling Ian was right about one thing: We were the only two “probys” in the block. Indeed, from mostly law-abiding observations over the next few days, I began to realise that of the twenty-six flat stack, maybe a third of them were empty, boarded and shuttered. One day an Asian family moved out, the next day the boards and shutters appeared. The whole block felt like it was dying—a good thing, probably. I guessed that I was the last “resident” who had been allowed in, and now the powers that be simply waited until people moved out, or on to pastures new, in order that it could be pulled down without the cost of re-housing remaining residents. Robbery in its own way, but conveniently legal.

  As for me, familiar urges were beginning to return, fuelled by dwindling money, lack of real employment opportunity for someone like me, and just . . . let's call it old habits dying way too hard. It's not excusable what I do, it's not exciting—or glamorous—it's just what I do. And like I say, I'm not even that good at it. But just as some are born to be judges, I reckon some are born to be judged. Without us, there's no them. Universal balanc
e, I guess.

  Of course, the eternal problem for the house thief is cash conversion. Finding a trusted fence with whom to pass over your liberated goods in exchange for some of the lovely folding stuff. A dying breed, the local fences, literally. None of the youngsters sees the opportunities of the profession, preferring the easier, more obvious routes. Granted, there'll still be a bloke in the local pub who'll mention that he'll give you a couple of hundred quid for a wall-mounted plasma television, but honestly, you try getting those things off the damn wall in the first place. I guess you could say I'm part of a dying breed, too. Forty-seven and too old to rob and roll . . .

  So, I'm looking for easier places, easier things to swipe. Never been good with any kind of vehicle, so they're out. Leaves me with houses—big ones, mostly, for obvious reasons. Not too big, though, as I've never had the know-how to bypass alarm systems. However, as most medium-sized places nearly always have unlinked alarms, they don't present the same problem an engine-disabled Mercedes does. In fact, as any competent housebreaker will tell you (and I do count myself as competent at breaking in, it's the getting out and away with it that tends to be a little more problematic), the appearance of an alarm box on the side of your home is the finest advertisement for opportunists like me. Forget a blaring siren, just have a recorded message that shouts: Hey! Up here on the wall! Yeah, look at me! Lots of lovely stuff inside, and no one's going to give a damn if I start screaming! Get in, help yourselves! The same with half-drawn curtains, lights blazing away inside. The genuinely rich got that way by saving money, not wasting it on electricity. Their curtains will be drawn, just one light in the room they're in. Couple of pointers from the other side for you, that's all. Happy to oblige.

  Anyway, one night I'm returning after a little late-night work a few streets away from the block, not much of a haul, jewellery mostly, but enough to last another week if I can fence the stuff, when I get back to the flat and discover a note has been slid under the door:

  You went in by the front downstairs window. Used a glass cutter. Turned the lights off once you were inside. You went to the front upstairs bedroom. Again, turned the light off. Then left three minutes later. I may have some work for you. Number 26.

  I'd been spotted.

  * * * *

  It was an impressive telescope. Very impressive. Not that I'm the least au fait with optical devices, but this was impressive because it didn't even look like a telescope. Not the normal kind, anyway, the type you might see jammed into a pirate's eye in a swashbuckling yarn. No, this was something you'd expect from a fifties sci-fi B-movie, a great white barrel of a thing, with pipes, meters, and humming electronic devices secured to it, mounted on a sturdy tripod. And, at this precise moment—pointing from its vantage point right at the house I'd just broken into.

  I had my eye pressed into an insignificant-looking tube at its side, but the image was crystal. Made more impressive by the green night-vision.

  By my side, the elderly American messed with a few switches. The image zoomed out a little, then flipped to a series of bodies and cars passing by in variegating red and orange tones.

  "Thermal imaging,” he said. “I followed your every move, then switched to night vision when you were inside. It's a good view here, the house is nicely exposed."

  I stepped back. “I guess I was, too. Exposed, I mean."

  He nodded, as I tried to age him—late sixties, early seventies? Small, compact, still reasonably fit. “You said you might have some work for me?” No point in beating about the bush.

  Another nod as he moved a pile of papers to sit in a tattered old armchair, and they joined one of the many other piles on the floor. I guess that was what made the scope all the more impressive, a gleaming technical artifice in the obvious shambles of such a chaotic flat. Half-finished meals and abandoned coffee cups lay amongst the detritus. He offered me another chair, which even I refrained from sitting on. And as a bloke who's shared a cell with three other lags for twenty-three hours a day, that was really saying something.

  "People round here,” he began, “call me The Astronaut."

  I shrugged, unimpressed. “I heard it was Buzz."

  He smiled. “After Aldrin?"

  "Lightyear,” I corrected him. “Some character from a kids’ film."

  The smile wavered as he caught my eye line wandering back to the scope. “If you're thinking of stealing it, I guess you should know it weighs close on a quarter of a ton. They winched it up the side of the building to get it in. And, in case you're wondering, it's worth well over a hundred thousand of your Brit pounds."

  My Brit pounds. The old guy was obviously still smarting from the Buzz Lightyear thing. Granted, he sounded a bit American, but only in that sort of clichéd way anyone would if they tried to put on an accent. I probably do a more convincing effort after watching a couple of old Star Trek reruns.

  I looked briefly round, tried to get some sort picture of the bloke. Too much contradictory information. An old guy living in a dump like some sort of tramp (no doubt he'd have said “hobo” to try and add extra authenticity to the Yank thing), yet clearly able to afford the sort of sky-gazing kit Greenwich Observatory would have been proud of.

  Other signs. No trace of a woman's touch, so presumably he lived alone. No evidence of any help from the social services—God, it'd have taken a crack team of their best cleaners to even begin to sort the place out. So—weird old recluse with access to expensive technology living in some sort of delusional fantasy world in which he once strolled about on the moon? Yeah, I know—it's where the word “lunatic” derives from.

  And yet, something else about Buzz that Rambling Ian had told me stuck in my mind—Lives on the top with a telescope. Never lets anyone in. But here I was, forty minutes after illegally entering one locked premises, and I'd seemingly gained effortless entry into another.

  "Another great feature of my scope,” he began, “is that it . . ."

  "Takes photographs?” I finished for him, already ahead. Not much of a leap to make, he'd been so keen so show me the means of my “capture,” in all its technological excesses, it seemed logical Mr. Spacemen would also have photographic evidence of my evening's work with which to blackmail me.

  He nodded, a little too smugly for my liking. “I love this block,” he went on. “Love living here—on top. I guess you could say that when you've been to the places I've been to, seen the things I have, it becomes very difficult for your feet to ever really touch the ground."

  I ignored this, didn't want to be drawn into the fantasy. Point was, however odd, eccentric, or plain insane the man was, he had pictures that could stick me straight back inside. “You mentioned you may have some work for me?"

  He smiled, and I knew that he knew he had me. Whatever was going to be played out, it would be at his pace, not mine. “I've lived here since ‘eighty-three. Right here, on the top. ‘Course, it was in better repair way back then. And I've loved it ever since. It gives me . . . anonymity. Leaves me free to just watch."

  "The moon, presumably,” I replied, trying to hurry him along.

  "No,” he replied. “Seen enough of the moon in my time. Far too much."

  "Rumour round here is you walked on it."

  He smiled. “Lots of rumours round here. I use the scope to see the truth.” He fixed me. “I see a lot of things with the scope. Like you, for instance. The day you arrived with the young mutt from the prison services. Yeah, I thought to myself, here comes another one. Then, of course, there's been all your—how should I put this—night jaunts? Those illegal little excursions into these surrounding backstreets. What else could you be but just another common thief?” He paused, steepled his fingers.

  I tried to bow in a slightly patronising manner, but I think it just came across as a bow. No point in denying it, the man did have an unsettling presence. Would have made a good judge. “You have me at an advantage."

  "I know,” he replied.

  "You want me to steal something for you."


  He smiled, shook his head slowly. “Not for me. From me."

  He waited for my reaction. After the aborted bow, I gave it a miss.

  "There were,” he continued, “several visits of the Apollo space program to the moon. As is the way, the first is the most widely seared into the public consciousness. By the time my mission went up, the people were largely bored, and had begun counting the massive cost of the program. They'd grown tired of watching men bounce on a dark, dusty surface a quarter of a million miles away. The so-called ‘scientific value’ of such missions was openly criticised. As such, I was one of the last human beings ever to walk on the surface of the moon."

  "I heard it was just a movie set somewhere out in the desert,” I tried.

  "If only it was.” He looked away, lost for a moment. “My life soon disintegrated. My marriage broke down, and I took to the bottle.” He shrugged. “It's a recognised phenomenon. When you've experienced the heavenly beauty of that cold black solace; when you've looked back and seen how perfect the Earth really is, how it silently spins—just so magisterially—all else, all human experience, pales. You become . . . nothing."

  I watched him, sitting there amidst all the rubbish, a lonely old man with nothing but dreams. Delusional—well, he had to be, didn't he? And yet, something about the way he spoke about it all . . .

  "You still meet up with all your moon buddies?” I knew it was wrong to encourage the fantasy, yet a small part of me wanted to know more . . . almost, perhaps, wanted to believe. The stardust thing, I guess.

  He gave a short, contempt-ridden laugh. “Losers all,” he said. “Every darn one of them. Opening crummy supermarkets to turn a buck. Jeez, the last thing I did Stateside was a series of commercials.” He pulled a horribly insincere smile. "Say please for Moon Cheese."

  "Can't say I ever heard of it,” I said.

  "So I shipped up and away. Came here. To my tower in the sky. Spend what I can on the scope and live very happily."