‘What about Mehmet?’
‘We’ll get lost if we push on. He’ll just have to fend for himself as long as the storm continues. He knows the desert well enough. There’s plenty of food and water for him.’
The sombre image of the sand-choked tent and its gnarled inhabitants rose up in David’s mind.
‘How long do these storms usually last?’ he asked.
‘There’s no saying. A few hours sometimes. Often a day or more.’
‘That’s all?’
Nabila hesitated. The camel she was leading was growing fractious.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘Sometimes they can go on for a week. In the city it’s never very bad, we’re too far from the heavy sands. But in the desert ... I’ve heard patients speak of it. You can survive a week in the karaburan if you have enough water with you. Provided the wind doesn’t drive you mad first and send you wandering in circles.’
‘Have you known of that happening?’
‘Oh, yes. A man was brought to us about a year ago. There’d been a big storm along the southern sector of the Taklamakan. It went on for four or five days. This man was a goatherd from Tongguzbasti. He’d gone out into the desert in search of tamarisk, along with a camel for the load. At midday he had some bread and water and lay down for a sleep. When he woke there was a storm the like of which he’d never seen before. There was nothing for it but to hunker down and make the best of it; but at some point - whether it was day or night he couldn’t say - he found himself on his feet, shouting and screaming at the noise, and walking for what must have been miles.’
‘He must have been hopelessly lost.’
‘Should have been. His camel never turned up again. But he was incredibly lucky. When the storm cleared he started walking west, and by a sheer miracle he hit the northern tip of the valley Tongguzbasti’s in. He was in a bad state by the time he reached us. I wouldn’t have given him another day.’
They selected their spot carefully, unloading the camels in a hurry and using the bales and boxes they carried to build an improvised barrier that might in a pinch keep some of the sand from them.
The day darkened rapidly. As the wind spiralled in force, the sun was bit by bit eclipsed until it became nothing but a dim ember glowing behind endless ashes of sand.
‘What happened to him?’ asked David as they placed the last sack on the barricade.
‘Who?’
‘The man who got lost beyond Tongguzbasti. You didn’t mention his name.’
‘Atik,’ she whispered, her voice barely audible above the roaring of the wind. ‘He was called Atik.’
‘And was he all right? Did he recover?’
She looked into the face of the wind.
‘No,’ she said. ‘He lasted two days. We thought we’d saved him, but he kept running away from us.’
‘Running away? But surely ...’
‘Not in body. He was too weak even to get out of his bed. In his mind. He ran away from us in his mind. We couldn’t catch up with him. He died with his face unchanged. It was the face he’d brought in from the desert.’
With the dune to their backs and the camels ahead of them, David and Nabila watched the storm take hold of the world. Piece by piece, everything was wiped out. They held one another’s hands tightly and wondered if, when they next saw clear daylight, they might ever find their way again in the darkness of the desert.
And David wondered if the faces he had glimpsed in that rotting tent had been like the face of the madman caught on the edge of all things lunatic. And whether his own face might not soon grow the features of his own madness.
He thought of Sam, and he thought of Maddie, and he felt the madness grow in him like another storm.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
‘Ah said, Ah’m jist mindin’ ma own business. If you dinna mind.’
‘Actually, Hamish, I do mind. If you don’t move on, I’ll be forced to arrest you for loitering.’
Calum looked the policeman up and down. He hadn’t yet reached the age when all policemen look young. But he was long past the point when they all looked like the enemy. This London Bobby was proving a considerable pain in the arse.
‘Am Ah offendin’ you or somethin’? Ah mean, lookit all these other folk walkin’ up and doon. You’re no’ arrestin’ them, are ye? Ah dinnae see you threatenin’ them wi’ the handcuffs an’ a night doon the slammer.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, you know what this is all about. I daresay it’s not the first time you’ve been asked to move on. Your face doesn’t fit, Hamish. Your clothes don’t fit. Your accent doesn’t fit. Now, I’m asking you for the last time: are you going to move, or do I have to move you?’
Calum took one last look at the house and smiled.
‘Nae bother,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t ye ask me nicely the first time?’
He dipped his head and strolled away comfortably, feeling the street around him like a long, bright coat. His feet barely touched the paving stones, his head felt elevated, like it was up there among the clouds, like it was part of the sky. A less astute observer might have assumed he was on a high. Well, perhaps he was: but it wasn’t the high the policeman thought, or the passers-by if they so much as noticed him.
He could feel the policeman’s watchful eyes hang on him as he walked away, and he formed his fingers behind his back into a V-sign. He didn’t mind being chased off. For the moment, he’d seen all he needed to, found out all he wanted.
The house was owned by a man called Farrar. Some sort of bigwig in a government ministry. Fair do’s. This Farrar was shacked up with the woman Calum had recently been shagging senseless on the biggest bed this side of the Channel. Nobody had known a thing about the girl, which probably made his life easier. He guessed that Farrar was the live-in lover, Elizabeth the sex-starved mistress, and Maddie Elizabeth’s daughter. He had a shrewd idea what Maddie’s problem was; he thought he had the means to solve it while solving some of his own problems at the same time.
‘How much tae King’s Cross, Jimmy?’
The cab driver looked at Calum as though he’d just stumbled off an X-Files set.
‘What?’
‘The train station. Chuff chuff. Ye ken?’
‘You want to know ‘ow much is it to King’s Fuckin’ Cross?’
‘Ye catch on quick, likesay, Jimmy.’
‘Well, ‘ow the ‘ell do I know? Depends on the traffic. Could be around ten quid, could be eight, could be more. Depends. Why don’t you take the Tube, mate? Do us all a favour.’
‘Gie us a break, Jimmy. Ah’ll give ye twenty if ye take the scenic route.’
The heavy door closed behind him with a satisfying clunk.
He didn’t feel out of place in King’s Cross. Nobody would have done unless they were dressed in a fur coat and sporting a tiara. Out on the street, he started trawling. He was looking for someone he knew. If he was going to deal, he wanted to deal with a face he’d seen before. As the dark began to close in, he concentrated less on the streets than the bars and cafes. Sometimes he went in and out again, scanning the faces, watching the watching eyes. Pale, sad faces, red eyes with red rims.
He didn’t need to ask who this one was or that. Their names didn’t matter. They were prostitutes, pimps, dealers, sharks, users, trip-hop kids, speed garage freaks waiting out the hours till their clubs got under way, exhausted social workers, AIDS counsellors, poor immigrants, homeless refugees, travellers without a bed. He’d seen every face a thousand times. They looked at him, recognizing him as one of themselves.
He found his mark about ten o’clock, in a fluorescent dive off Cromer Street. A small-time dealer in a grubby green suit, about five foot eight, sporting a gangsta beard and dark shades. Summer and winter, he looked the same. His front teeth were blackened where smack had left its unmistakable deposit. Calum had him down as dangerous, maybe deranged. He dredged deep into his memory and came up with a name.
‘Y’aw reet, Murray? Eh? Long time no see.’
&nbs
p; He sat down opposite the other man and stretched a big hand across the table. Murray did not respond. Next to him sat a girl of sixteen or seventeen, glassed into a world of her own.
‘Ye’ve no’ forgot me, have ye, Murray? Try tae rememberaboot six months back. You and I did us a wee deal before Ah flew oot on the big silver burd tae Pakistan.’
Murray turned and spat on the floor. Calum wondered if he could actually see him from behind those sunglasses.
‘What are you looking for, Scottie? A woman is it? Is that what you had last time? What about sweet little Linda, here? Cunt like the palm o’ your hand. She’ll make you come twice while you’re waitin’ to start.’
Calum looked at Linda’s sad, unrevealing face. He’d had sex with more dolls like her than he cared to remember, but he’d never once been stirred. They were all stretched flesh and needle tracks and emptiness.
‘Ah’m shagged oota ma brain today, Murray. Ah couldnae do justice tae the doll’s charms even if God wis tae gie me a dick like the Scott Monument as compensation. What Ah need fae you, Murray, is a pocketful of illegal substances.’
‘I don’t carry illegal substances, Jock.’
‘Ay, that’s cool, likes. That’s what ye told us the last time too. Dinna worry, Murray, Ah’ve been in this game longer than yersel’. If Ah canna score wi’ you, Ah’ll fuckin’ score wi’ some cunt else. Some cunt who disnae waste ma time fobbin’ me off wi’ a burd who couldnae fuck a stick o’ rhubarb if it wis covered in butter an’ flavoured wi’ guacamole an’ refried beans.’
Murray pretended to reflect. He’d grown up near Dover Harbour, learned his trade peddling to and from tourists arriving from the Continent. It had been easy enough in the good old days, then the big boys muscled in and pushed petty criminals like himself off the scene. He’d hopped on the first coach out, and washed up at King’s Cross, where he had a friend with a floor to sleep on. Now, a couple of years on, he’d created a small business for himself, a franchise he rented from a man called Bernie ‘the Diary’ Lett.
Murray, who considered himself a growing force in the drug world around the Cross, now calculated across three feet of cigarette-scarred Formica how much of a fool the big Scotsman might turn out to be.
‘How much?’ he asked.
‘How much what? Ah want tae see what ye’ve got. Ah want tae know how fuckin’ pure it is, and Ah want tae know up front how much yer askin’.’
‘I told you, sweetheart, I don’t carry.’
‘Ah didnae think ye did. Did ye take me for a total moron? Ye’ll have tae take me tae yer stash. Only, one thing, Murraymint: Ah’m nae fool, an’ Ah suffer fae a radge bad temper. Y’unnerstan’?’
‘Come on. We’re wasting time inhere. And just so’s you and I understand one another, the name isn’t Murray, it’s Maurice.’
An old man walked along Harrison Street, his coat buttoned, his face turned in against the vagrant chill of the cooling night. His feet made no sound on the uneven paving stones. Once he looked up. On the wall of a boarded-up house someone had written the letters ‘C and ‘E’. He had no idea what they meant, he no longer wanted to know. What did letters matter at his age?
A girl watched him from a doorway opposite. She couldn’t read or write. Letters meant nothing to her either. She’d seen him a dozen times before, shuffling down the street. Sometimes he was carrying groceries from the corner shop, sometimes he paused to have a sly cigarette.
‘Hey, Granddad,’ she called, catching his attention. As his eyes swung round, she put her hands on her thin top and pulled it up to her armpits. She was naked underneath.
He looked at her breasts and looked away again. What did naked women matter at his age?
‘When did you say we met?’
‘What?’
‘You said we met before. Did a deal. When was that, eh? My fucking memory’s a fucking blank.’
Calum looked at his new chum and smiled. For a pusher, Maurice had dipped his fingers many times too often into his own bag of goodies. But Calum didn’t care about that. In a way, it made him feel relieved. If Maurice was taking sneak previews from his own stash, it made it all the more likely that the basic supply hadn’t been heavily cut.
They were in a sleazy upstairs room five minutes’ walk from the cafe. The furniture consisted of two chairs, a low North African table, and a bed with a quilted headboard. Two mournful Chinese prints hung on one wall, snatched from a nearby dim-sum house. On the bed, the girl called Linda lay stark naked, staring at the prints, at the grey monkeys in their tall trees. Maurice had ordered her to strip the moment they got inside. It was one of the ways he used to keep his girls under control. Judging by the bruises on Linda’s body, Calum reckoned it was not the only one.
‘Chrismus,’ he said. ‘It wis just before Chrismus last year. Ah told ya already, Ah wis off tae Pakistan by Hogmanay. Ah met you in a wee bar called McNally’s. Remember that? It wis a friend up in Paisley sed Ah’d find you there. Ah only had tae ask fir Murray.’
‘Maurice.’
‘Aye, likesay, Maurice. There wis a wumman wi’ us. Nice wee number called Nancy. Big eyes. Bigger knockers. She had a tartan tattoo on her right arm. Mibbe you remember that. Not many burds have one ay those. It wis a MacLeish tartan. That wis her name, Nancy MacLeish. Ye must remember a burd like that.’
‘Maybe I do. Maybe if you had a photograph. My fucking memory plays awful tricks all the same. So, what are you looking for? Charlie? E? Puff? Scag?’
‘Got a weebit everything, dae ye, Jimmy?’
‘I can get you what you want. If I don’t have it, my business colleagues will turn some up. As long as you’ve got the dosh.’
‘Dinna fash yersel’ aboot that. Jis’ make sure the gear’s up tae scratch.’
‘All right, all right. I’ve only got the best. But I need to know what you want.’
‘Charlie. An’ a wee bottle of linctus, if ye have any.’
‘Right. Stay here. Keep an eye on Linda here. If you fancy a screw, be my guest. Despite appearances, she’s hardly been used. I’d be sure to roll on a rubber, though. If you see what I mean.’
Maurice went out, locking the door behind him. Calum got to his feet. He didn’t like this place, didn’t like the feeling he got from Maurice. The room smelled of corruption: rotting wood, damp plaster, old drugs, unwashed skin, dried vomit. And cheap perfume overlying everything… He’d been in too many rooms like this. Maybe this one would be the last.
He went to the window and drew aside the grimy curtain that hung skewed in front of it. The street below sweated in darkness. Carved by a streetlamp, an old man shuffled across the pavement, as though uncertain where his awkward steps were leading him. To reach that age, and still to be walking streets like these. The thought made Calum shiver deep inside.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
He let the curtain fall. His fingers felt grimy from years of dust. When he turned back to the dingy room, Linda was looking fixedly at him from the bed. Their eyes met for a brief instant, then Linda went back inside her head.
Maurice returned carrying a brown-glass bottle in one hand and a sample bag in the other. He was trying to smile, but the distortion made his face look wrong. Calum smiled back.
‘Did you ever hear tell of a lad called Roger?’ Maurice frowned, as though the effort of remembering another human being was too much for his limited resources. ‘He was from Belfast. We used to call him Rajjer the Dajjer round here. He was always dodging the police. There was a spot of trouble, and he went to Paki-land last year. Skived off, and nobody’s heard from him since. I wondered if you’d seen him out there. The shit owes me money.’
Calum shook his head.
‘Never set eyes on him, but Ah heard he fell off a cliff in the Karakorams. Terrible lang wey doon. Ye could be five minutes in freefall before ye felt a butt in the head. Forget aboot yer money. A vulture’s had it long since. In the beak and oot the bum, along wi’ most of Roger. Now, show us what ye’ve got.’
The bottle of methadone was fully sealed. Maurice ripped off the white plastic that covered the neck and top, unscrewed the cap, and handed it over. Calum sniffed it, then put his little finger inside and sucked. For a moment or two, he savoured it like someone trying a new wine. He recognized the unmistakable odour and flavour of Balsam of Tolu that had been added to make the linctus palatable. In some, it might have evoked images of South American forests, but Calum was reminded only of his own pained efforts to come off heroin.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘This’ll dae fine.’
‘Taste OK? Funny, you don’t look like a linctus man to me.’
‘Ah’m no’. This isnae fir me. What d’ye think Ah am? Some kind of loser, sippin’ linctus and beggin’ a quick shag offa some stringy wee doll wi’ breasts the size o’ mushrooms?’
‘Look, no offence, eh? Do you want to try the powder?’
‘Ah’m no’ fuckin’ stupid, am Ah?’
He dipped two wet fingers into the tiny bag and extracted enough of the contents to constitute a fair sample. Slipping the fingers into his mouth, he rubbed the powder round his gums and across his tongue. Then he sat and waited, slowly working the paste round his gums and dental cavities. When a couple of minutes had passed, he sucked it all up and spat it out evenly on the carpet.
‘What the fuck wis that?’
‘Ch-Charlie. The real thing, mister, the real thing.’
'That wis as real as yir beautiful, Jimmy. Ah’ve tasted more buzz in a deid wasp. Now, lemme tell ya this just the once. If ye fuck aroon’ wi’ me a secon’ time, yell no’ be a wee prick any longer. Ye willnae have a prick. Ah’ve cut off more dicks in ma time than Ah’ve had white puddin’s fir breakfast. Unnerstan’?’
‘How much do you want?’ Maurice had handled difficult clients day in and day out for years; but something about the big Scotsman gave him pause.
‘Ten bags this size. Bring ‘em in empty an’ bring the mummy bag with them.’
For a moment, Maurice seemed about to protest; but instead he opted for a course of prudence. He went out and returned in less than a minute. His hand shook as he held out the plastic bag of cocaine. It wasn’t very big, a few ounces at most; but if he cut it often enough he could make it stretch a long way.
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