by G. Brailey
Tracy took the point, and realising she had possibly gone too far, reverted to professional mode.
“You said you returned to your flat between 12 and 1, and yet at 11.30…”
“I made a mistake,” said Zack, aware just how feeble this sounded now. “Susan must have sent that text from my phone in my flat, it’s the only explanation.”
“You didn’t drive back home I take it.”
“No, I’m not quite that reckless.”
“So who took you?”
“A cab driver,” said Zack, following her reasoning.
“Well I think we need to speak to this cab driver, don’t you?”
Good idea thought Zack, although he didn’t say it.
Zack knew he could sack Tracy Bright at any time. He could hire someone else entirely, and occasionally, the woman irritated him so much Zack wondered what was stopping him, but actually he knew what it was. For some bizarre reason he needed to convince Tracy along with everyone else that he was innocent, and as Zack suspected that Tracy doubted him, it made him doubly keen to convince her otherwise. He knew that Tracy Bright would bridle at any preconceived notion of being labelled a female chauvinist yet here she was subscribing to the view that all men were bastards, him very much included, which led him to question what the hell she was doing defending an alleged rapist anyway.
“I’ll try and track down the cabbie,” said Zack, a note of conciliation in his voice, “although whether he’ll be prepared to play ball is another matter”
“If you get bail,” said Tracy, a little too eagerly he thought. “That’s not a given, so don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves just yet.”
Zack did get bail, although the formal charge of Susan’s rape hung over him like a tarnished halo as he left the police station and made his way to his car. He was due in court for preliminary proceedings at the end of week, although in his experience that could be postponed for months because of backlogs and delays.
He desperately wanted to see Veronica, but she had gone to Venice of all places to meet with some brooding sculptor who sounded too charismatic and glamorous by half. Threatened by her meeting with this Italian god, Zack had done his best to persuade her not to go, but she was set on the idea. So here he was, for the first time in his life completely at the whim of this bloody woman who could render his life empty and meaningless just by plumping for some bastard Italian pseudo-intellectual over him.
Under normal circumstances he would have bombed over to Sid’s and got out of his skull, and although tempted, he thought maybe this time he should err on the side of caution. Mooching around his flat an hour later, Zack came across Jason’s bundle and sat down to give it the once over.
From what he could glean, even allowing for his tender age Jason was looking at two to three years minimum as he had agreed to supply undercover police officers with a large amount of crack cocaine, telling them he could get more where that came from and suggesting another deal that would net him roughly 50 grand. Something was not quite right with all this Jason business, but for the moment Zack couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Bored with the pages of small print, Zack decided to shoot over to The Mango Tree for a couple of drinks, calling in on Sid’s mini cab office maybe on the way home.
The Mango Tree was quiet. News of the police raid had gone round the neighbourhood like bush telegraph and most of the more colourful clientele were lying low. A girl came over and started talking to Zack almost as soon as he’d stepped up to the bar, but she was out of it, and although once attractive and possibly charming too, heavy duty drugs had put paid to all that. She told Zack she was an aristocrat, and Zack had no reason to disbelieve her, she had that detached superiority that only the best of stock possess. Rake thin, gaunt, tossing back mousy hair that hung dull and lank over bony shoulders, she bummed a fag and asked Zack if he wanted to ‘come back’.
“No thanks, love, thanks all the same,” he said, not remotely interested, and well aware that she expected him to pay for it anyway.
“Don’t call me love, I’m not your love, I’m no one’s love,” she spat out.
“Yeah, you know somehow I can believe that.”
The girl glared at him for a moment, but realising it was a lost cause, slid off with a nasty snarl of her crooked red mouth.
Just then Sid walked in. He saw Zack straight away and a little sheepishly came over asking Zack what he was drinking, which was a first. Zack accepted the drink, and waited until Sid had pocketed his change before indicating his favourite table barely visible in a very dark corner. As they sat down, Sid took out a scruffy piece of paper from an old wallet and handed it over.
“That drug you ask me about. No way could I pronounce it so me write it for you, handy you turn up, now I can fulfil me obligation face to face.”
Zack gazed down at Sid’s large uneven hand and tried to pronounce the word.
“Amyltrifloraltriptamine, is that it?”
“Something like that, something like that…”
“Well is it or not?”
“I and I do me best,” said Sid, his voice going up an octave, “but English not me first language, you know that.”
“So what is your first language then? Remind me.”
“Jamaican…”
“Jamaican… really? Well that’s a language I don’t know too much about.”
“You taking the Herbert, man,” said Sid, “when me struggle duty bound in this regard.”
“I got busted, Sid, damage limitation that’s all,” said Zack, causing Sid’s eyes to widen in alarm, making him look curiously vulnerable suddenly. “Don’t worry, I gave them the usual bullshit, the trail won’t lead to you.”
“Give it all up, man, it’s a mug’s game,” said Sid, expansively. “Me had to cast me eye over the wreckage too many a time. Why compromise survival in any bad ass circumstance? Be thankful God’s good grace give you more than one chance to fuck up and celebrate the fact,” said Sid, with his usual baffling logic.
Sid downed his drink in one go, stood up and offered his hand. Zack stood up to take it and remained holding it a few moments too long. “Be lucky as they say, Mr Fortune.”
And for some strange reason both men knew at that moment that they would never see each other again, not in this lifetime anyway.
CHAPTER 15
Westline Mini Cab office stood at the end of a row of shops, its back entrance opening onto an alleyway that ran parallel to the street. Three cabs waited outside. Zack glanced at each driver in turn as they leant up against their chariots, but none of the faces that turned towards him rang a bell. He crossed the pavement to the office and stepped inside. There was the usual kitchen work surface that doubled as a counter, and behind it, controllers wearing headsets sat at wonky old desks right round the perimeter of the room. Up on the wall was a blown up photograph of Boris Johnson with his arm round a large man, and underneath someone had written the caption: ‘Charlie and Boris talk turkey!’
“Yes?” said the man himself, lumbering out from the wings towards him.
“I wonder if you can help me,” said Zack with an uncertain grin.
Charlie Manifold reckoned he had seen and heard just about everything in his sixty two years living in Westbourne Grove, consequently, his usual response to a request for help was to refuse as a matter of course.
They suffered the usual stream of life’s disasters in here: druggies, drunks, psychos, but Charlie found it in his heart to forgive anyone just about anything provided they didn’t throw up in his office and they had the right fare clutched in their sweaty palm. Failure to meet these conditions however meant that they were dispatched in no uncertain terms with the threat of Charlie’s chunky bull terrier, Kylie, to hasten them on their way. Money was the only language Charlie spoke.
“Depends,” said Charlie, warily.
Zack filled him in, asking if there would be any logged call or a way for him to track down the driver who took him back home last Friday, he jotted down
his phone number and handed it over but Charlie was looking increasingly suspicious. There was a distinct possibility this guy could be some sort of official checking up on them and if he said the wrong thing now it could bring all sorts of lumber down on their heads so Charlie was careful in his reply.
“No telling who picked you up, pal, we don’t keep tabs on things like that.”
“He was a Muslim, I think,” said Zack, hoping this would narrow it down a bit.
“Oh yeah?” said Charlie, feigning interest.
“There was a sticker on his windshield quoting the Koran…” said Zack with a shrug, curious himself as to why he remembered that.
“Take your pick,” said Charlie, nodding outside to the group of drivers that had expanded their ranks and who were milling about outside now, flicking through tabloids and sharing jokes.
“He was very young if I remember, a student maybe?”
One of the controllers, a gaunt Somali looked up, and by his response was ahead of Charlie, although debating whether or not it was his place to jump in. Zack noticed the reaction, and changed focus.
“Thin, goatee beard, black anorak…”
A look from Charlie warned the man not to get involved, so he took the advice, and head down, got back to work.
“Look,” said Zack to Charlie again, “it’s no big deal I just need to know the time he dropped me back home, that’s all.”
“And you can’t remember that yourself?”
“Not with any degree of accuracy I can’t, no.”
Another pisshead thought Charlie, why am I not surprised.
“And better to talk to me than to the police, surely.”
“Why the police?” said Charlie, looking serious suddenly.
“It’s a police matter, that’s all… and for you, well, it could become quite intrusive.”
“Wait here.”
Less than three minutes later Charlie came back shaking his head.
“You’ve got the wrong place, pal.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You have. We don’t keep much information, but every number does get logged with the pick up address and this number has not shown up at all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“What about computer failure?”
“What about it?”
“Maybe it just dropped off the system.”
“It can’t just drop off the system, my old china, the call wasn’t made.”
Zack considered the possibilities. Maybe this guy was fobbing him off, keen for him to get the hell out of his cab office and to leave him in peace. Or maybe Charlie had spent those few minutes making sure that Zack’s number was deleted from his computer’s memory putting paid to any prospective police enquiry once and for all. Whatever, Zack was well aware that he had hit the proverbial brick wall.
Through the window, Zack noticed that all the cabs and their drivers had gone, every last one, as though they had never been there at all. Zack needed transport home but he didn’t feel particularly encouraged to ask Charlie for assistance and so mumbling some semblance of thanks, he left the building and set off, hoping to pick up a black cab on the Harrow Road. He turned left, another left, and left again. The Harrow Road was in the opposite direction and Zack knew that, and that could only mean one thing.
There was a drone from somewhere, like a thousand flies swarming over decay, excitedly waiting their turn to feed off decomposed flesh and in the distance, movement amongst the bins and crates that dotted along the tunnel of grey concrete that stretched out before him. Zack hoped it might be a fox or a cat foraging for food but he knew really what it was. He noticed moonlight first of all reflected in glossy deep red blood, seeping out of this young black teenager who sat slouched against a wall, almost prostrate, a hopeful hand over his worst wound that gaped and oozed. He gazed towards Zack with fateful eyes, willing him on, following his slow progress.
The drone had stopped now and the usual muffled silence fell as though layers of cotton wool had floated down and settled over them. No sounds of cars or the rumblings of tube trains underfoot, just this stifling, vacuum packed insulation that Zack waded through, and when in the end he reached his destination and looked down at the boy, he felt a strange sense of accomplishment to have got there at all.
“Zachariah! I thought you’d never come, help me…”
Zack made a desperate effort now to meet the hand that was reaching up to him, its bony black fingers fluttering like the dishevelled wings of a crow, but as hard as he tried Zack was unable to. He was just a conscious monument, gazing down as this weird thing called life reached its humdrum conclusion. It didn’t seem to matter, relief swept through the boy, who remained looking up at Zack in ecstasy. A smile spread across his face, his lips parting to display a flash of perfect teeth. Then the whites of his eyes washed with blood and his last breath left his body with a jerk, but his body didn’t sag or deflate, it remained taut, defying defeat, refusing to accept its uselessness.
Zack’s movement came back just as a young black girl, her face contorted with tragedy flew towards them, her screams, like the wail of fireworks, weird, alarmed, inhuman. She threw herself at the boy and grabbed him, pawing at his body with greedy fingers, plastic talons at their tips, little gem stones on each one, catching the light. Zack turned away and left them to their final commune, but at the end of the alleyway he looked back as the distant sounds of emergency vehicles came closer, invading the night with their mournful fanfare. She had lain down next to him as though they were about to make love side by side, holding his face gently in her hands for fear it might break. Too late, Zack thought, too late for all that now.
“What the hell?” said Sam woken by the relentless buzzing from the intercom.
“Don’t answer it,” said Clarissa lazily, unwilling to allow anything to permeate their little world, even Zack Fortune, but the buzzer was insistent.
Sam jumped out of bed and padded along the hall to the door. He pressed a button, shouting into the mouthpiece. “Who the hell is this I wonder?”
“Come on, Sam, let me in.”
Sam knew that this did not bode well. Zack used to turn up at all hours of the day and night until Clarissa put her foot down, now here he was back to his old ways.
“You know what time it is?” asked Sam, as Zack pushed past him into the hall.
“I presume that’s a rhetorical question. Where’s Clarissa?”
“Where in God’s name do you think she is?”
Clarissa was sitting up in bed now ready to read Zack the riot act, but when she saw him, she lost steam.
“God, Zack… are you okay?”
“No, I’m not okay, Clarissa, I’m anything but okay.”
Sam joined them less than a minute later with a bottle of Jack Daniels. He handed out glasses and perched opposite Zack on the other side of the bed, while everyone waited for the conversation to begin.
“Against my better judgement,” said Zack, with the attitude of someone embarking on a long story, “I agreed to take part in some dubious claptrap you call past life regression, maybe you remember that? Well, things have gone steadily downhill since, and as you seemed so hell bent on getting me involved with all this baloney, perhaps you can advise me as to what I do now, Clarissa, because suddenly my life is not my own.”
Clarissa knew that she had had her head stuck firmly in the sand since learning something of Zack’s trauma. She’d just been hoping for the best, hoping that the hushed warnings from her tutors had been an exaggeration, but seeing Zack here like this, she realised they were anything but.
“Okay,” she said, “tell me.”
“I keep coming across dead people, at least not quite dead, but almost. They call out my name and reach out to me as though I can do something, actually, as though I can save them. Usually they seem pleased to see me, then they die. It’s just happened again, so that’s four times now. I don’t want to know the whys and the wherefo
res, I couldn’t be less interested, just stop the damn things.”
“Before the regression, I told you not to come out of it yourself, do you remember me saying that?”
“So it’s my fault now, is that what you’re saying?”
“You never told me what frightened you so much, what was it?”
“Okay, here it is, I’ll tell you. A man was in bed in a cottage or somewhere and I was standing over him. He clutched onto me and asked me to help him, then his mouth opened and he spewed blood all over me. I could feel it behind my eyes, I could taste it in the back of my throat even, actually it was like I was drowning in the stuff… so I did what anyone would do, I jumped up from the famous Chesterfield and I scarpered.”
Sam was gazing at Zack now, disconsolate. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Zack, or at least believe that he believed all this, but Sam had thought long and hard about these encounters and he found it difficult to accept that any of Clarissa’s absurd contrivances would lead Zack to end up like this.
“I met someone in Derbyshire,” said Zack, “who more or less said I’d asked for it.” Clarissa looked at him, unsure now where this was leading. “He said I’d brought it on myself because aspects of previous lives were best left where they were.”
“It can be beneficial, but if you break back into your current life suddenly and without warning, your psychic memory can become confused,” said Clarissa, “events can break through into this life which have no business being here.”
“So what are you saying exactly?”
“Well it could be that you knew these people from a previous life, although… I’m no expert.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” said Sam, under his breath.
“So why go around helping people remember all this stuff if the results are so unpredictable?”
“Usually it’s very helpful…”
“Oh yes? In what way?” said Zack, with exaggerated politeness, “please, I’m all ears.”
“Sometimes… solutions to recurring problems become clearer. We often struggle with the same problems in each of our lives, and by picking up on a solution from a previous life we can bring it into the present and use that knowledge to our advantage.”