Trilogy: The First Three Books in the Amber For Go Series

by Paul Harris

  The waitress was hovering again but I sensed it was more to do with avoiding the attention of the woman of quite indeterminate shape than with any intent to push us for our order. “Drink?” I asked Angker, in an attempt to pre-empt the waitress’s next assault anyway.

  She was dressed in her customary outfit of leather jacket and jeans. She bit her lip and place both palms of her hands flat on the table in front of me. The waitress was peering again and the woman of quite indeterminate shape was watching us, and even seemed to be eavesdropping as she caught ice cream in her bowl as it dripped off her chin.

  “I have a dream,” Angker whispered, evoking images of Martin Luther King. The woman of quite indeterminate shape was visibly straining to hear. So was the waitress. “Recurring.”

  “You’re always having dreams,” I whispered back. “You dreamt about that barn, didn’t you?”

  She nodded her head and looked sad. “The barn was long ago. I was only a small child. I have so many dreams. So many visions.”

  I sighed and shook my head slightly. “But, what can I do? What can I do to help? This new dream is different?”

  “Is different, ja,” and her usually impeccable grasp of the English language very nearly failed her.

  “Why is it different?”

  “Because it is close.” She bowed her head towards the table. “It is too close. And you understand the dreams and what they mean.”

  “Tom?”

  She shook her head. “He doesn’t know like you know.”

  I looked at her with so many unspoken questions balancing on the tip of my tongue.

  “He is your son but he is not your son.” And now she’d crossed the line and become too cryptic even for me to understand. Of course, being Angker, she immediately sensed this. “Tom doesn’t believe in the dreams. You are the only one.”

  “And you think I can help in some way?”

  “No,” she shot back, “nobody can help, not in any way!” She removed her hands from the table and clenched them again. “But you are the only one who knows that the dreams are reality.”

  “And that the reality is…?”

  She shrugged and took a deep, deep sigh.

  Raising her eyes, she turned away. Her attention had been drawn to nothing more than a broken overflow pipe on the opposite side of the street. She distractedly gazed through the window of the diner at the dirty water trickling from a split in the rusting cast iron pipe and watched it as it spread across the painted pale green brickwork of the shoe shop.

  “And this latest…vision?” I asked.

  She turned to me and leant forward, dropping her voice even lower. “It’s Tom. I see him.”

  I waited for her to continue. She was nodding her head again, more vehemently now, and, in extremely hushed tones, said, “I have dreamt that he kills….a man.”

  “No!” I shook my head at her. “No, Angker, you have made a mistake!”

  As I wiped confusion from my face, she grabbed my hand and gripped it tightly. “You know this. You know that I don’t dream mistakes. You know what this means.”

  Seconds passed and the ticking of the clock on the wall behind the cash register seemed to grow louder with every second. “Who? Who is Tom going to kill?”

  She released my hand and stared into my eyes. There was a slight commotion as the kitchen door swung open and a man in a tight white shirt emerged and glided across the restaurant floor. He spoke to the waitress and seemed to be admonishing her.

  “Be careful, Rodney,” said Angker, sliding the menu across the table towards herself and then examining it.

  Before I could probe further, the waitress was standing at my side with a pen and a notebook in her hand and an expression of grim determination on her face. Angker began to order for both of us and I left her to it. I heard the woman of quite indeterminate shape making a snorting sound and turned in time to see her spraying ice cream from between her teeth. Her golden nose-ring glinted in the harsh lighting of the diner. The tattoos on her upper arms wobbled as she removed her cardigan to reveal far more flesh than seemed strictly appropriate. Buddy Holly began to sing “That’ll be the Day”. The whole scene was, somehow, surreal and, at the centre of it all, sat Angker Fischer, her brooding, piercing, flame-like eyes burning into me and reducing all of our futures to dust.

  Rod Stewart

  Following the meeting with Angker at the diner, I called Tom. I called again and again but I never got through to him. Angker had told me that he was working ridiculously long hours these days and was rarely at home. She said that he was at the office day and night and would often arrive home in the early hours of the morning looking exhausted, sleep for a couple of hours, and then go straight back out to work again. I quipped that they must be rolling in cash but she said that was far from the truth. I’d laughed. “But…” I began, and then saw how sad she looked, so left it. I remember wondering to myself what it was that he actually did that demanded so much of his time and, apparently, paid so poorly.

  Although, constantly haunted by events that were beyond her control, Angker seemed to be fretting more than ever. Her worries were beginning to draw lines across her pretty young face. The troubled tone of her voice broke my heart.

  I called Tom’s mother but she hadn’t heard from him for months. “Haven’t you seen him?” she asked.

  “Well, no.” I paused, trying to think of a reply that was free of my usual sarcasm. “That’s why I’m calling you.”

  She wanted to chat so I obliged for half an hour.

  “All pretty mundane stuff then?” I commented when she eventually left me a gap long enough to squeeze five words into.

  She sniffed and hung up.

  For weeks, Tom’s mobile phone seemed to be permanently engaged and when it wasn’t, it was unobtainable or it just rang out indefinitely.

  “Doesn’t he return missed calls?” I asked Angker, in a fit of pique, during one particularly brief telephone conversation.

  “It’s probably best just to let him be,” she said, and she hung up on me too.

  As is human nature, my enthusiasm in regard to getting involved with Tom’s problems steadily began to wane and I managed to put Angker’s fears to the back of my mind for the time being. I lost contact with both of them for a short period but every now and again, her haunting features would leap from the back of my mind into the front and a feeling of trepidation would send a shiver down my spine.

  “What’s up?” asked the landlord.

  I squinted at him as I put a handful of loose change into his open palm. “Nothing. Why?”

  “You look like someone just walked over your grave.”

  I looked at the pint of beer that he’d just poured me as if I was waiting for it to perform a magic trick. I realised that I didn’t really want to drink it; that like so many things, it no longer appealed to me. I took a begrudging sip anyway. He continued to speak to me but I couldn’t quite distinguish what he was saying. Loud music had begun to boom out from the speaker above my head. A tall red-headed lady was singing on a makeshift stage. Her voice was impressive and demanded one’s attention. She sounded like Rod Stewart and clearly knew it as she’d chosen to sing “Baby Jane”. Her long shiny hair hung like molten lava flowing across her face as she twisted her head in time with the music.

  “Good singer you’ve got on tonight,” I yelled at the landlord.

  “It’s karaoke,” he yelled back. “Have a go. There’s the book.” He pushed a ring-bound book across the bar to me. “Choose your song.”

  I pushed the book back towards him. “I’ll give it a miss, thanks.”

  I lingered at the bar for a few seconds longer to watch the singer. Her eyes were closed and her head was raised as she approached the end of the song. “I can’t believe you’re not a professional!” I called out to her. She removed one of her hands from the microphone and, without opening her eyes, gave me the finger. For some reason, she thought I was being sarcastic. I felt wounded and pushed my wa
y through her audience to where Buffalo and Lola had situated themselves, as far away from the stage as was possible.

  “What you doing all the way over here?”

  “Lola ain’t much into karaoke,” replied Buffalo.

  “Lola ain’t much into anything apart from bashing his bishop.”

  Lola gave me a reproachful look and muttered something disgusting beneath his breath.

  “And food,” contributed Buffalo. “Remember when him and his dog got nicked that night? He weren’t bothered about being locked up or the damage he’d done to the old woman’s phone. All he was concerned about was if he’d get a free breakfast in the morning.”

  I did remember, and I laughed.

  Lola sighed. “Man’s gotta eat.”

  Someone else began to sing; a male voice; sort of. He was trying hard, maybe a little too hard, but he lacked natural talent; that certain x-factor. I think he was doing U2 but I couldn’t be sure, and I had no idea what song it was.

  “Jesus Christ!” exclaimed Lola, feigning to put his fingers in his ears. “It’s painful just listening to this shit. How can you possibly enjoy this?”

  “You’ve got to admit the geezer’s got minerals to get up there in the first place.”

  “The geezer’s deluded, that’s what he is. It’s a shame for him. It’s embarrassing.”

  “You got no sense of fun, that’s your problem.”

  Lola puffed out his cheeks with an air of exasperation. “Watching people make complete fools of themselves isn’t my idea of fun, that’s all.”

  “Well,” re-joined Buffalo, “I spend half my life watching you make a fool of yourself and I love it.”

  Lola took a mouthful of beer and looked at me. “Listen to this buffoon,” he said, nodding in Buffalo’s direction. “What’s he on about?”

  “You’re dribbling down your shirt right now,” I told him.

  “So what? Buffalo’s got a Mini Cheddar dangling from his ridiculous facial hair. And you’re worried about a few drops of beer?”

  “I think it’s saliva, not beer.”

  Buffalo wiped his face with his hand and the Mini Cheddar dropped into his half full glass. This added ingredient did not appear to have a negative effect on his thirst as he still managed to finish the remainder of his pint with a great flourish.

  “Nah!” continued Lola as Buffalo went to the bar for another beer in a fresh glass. “The place is just full of deluded morons who think they can sing and they can’t sing. It’s totally humiliating.”

  “They’re having fun,” I argued.

  “Well, I’m not, and I’m the one that’s got to listen to this crap.”

  “What about the red head who’s just been on? What about her?”

  “Well,” Lola mused as if he was trying to recall a distant memory, “I’ve had my moments in the past but that kind of thing doesn’t really rock my boat these days.”

  Buffalo returned as we were chatting. He set three glasses down on the table and started complaining about the price of the beer. We ignored him. We’d heard it all before.

  “I meant her voice. She had a proper good voice.”

  Lola shrugged. He just couldn’t bring himself to admit that she was good or even just quite good.

  “She sounded just like Rod,” I said to him.

  “She was alright, I suppose,” he muttered, and then qualified his glowing assessment by adding, “if you like that sort of thing.”

  I was ready to throw the towel in. “You’re just not having it, are you?”

  “No.” Lola was emphatic. “It’s rubbish and it belongs in the eighties and it belongs in Japan. It belongs in the eighties in Japan. It doesn’t belong here in my boozer.” Then, he turned his attention to Buffalo who was still muttering about the price of a pint. “Will you stop going on about the cost of the beer!”

  “Well,” said Buffalo, staring at his glass in disgust, “it’s a proper rip-off.”

  “It doesn’t stop you drinking it, does it?”

  “Do you know, I worked it out: by volume, even unleaded’s cheaper than this.”

  “Well, go down the Texaco and get some four star down your Gregory then!”

  I stood up and went outside for a cigarette. Although the sun had set, the evening was still warm. I sat alone and smoked not one, but two, cigarettes and contemplated my own private thoughts until Angker began to force her way into them. At which point, I stubbed out my half smoked butt and re-entered the bar only to find, to my great consternation, that Buffalo and Lola were now arguing about who had started their previous argument and who was the more disagreeable of the two. I went to get some more drinks.

  The alcohol was beginning to do its stuff and people were beginning to sway from side to side, taking the first self-conscious steps towards full-blown dancing.

  “Be with your shortly,” said the landlord over his shoulder.

  “There’s no hurry,” I nodded, and meant it most sincerely.

  I was surrounded by smiling faces, relieved that the weekend was finally upon us. Laughter and happy banter rang out from every corner, apart from the one that Lola and Buffalo were currently occupying.

  When he came over to serve me, the landlord seemed uncharacteristically amicable. “So, are you going to sing then, Rod?”

  “I can’t sing,” I mildly lamented.

  “Neither can half these clowns,” he laughed. I thought that his cynical view was quite distasteful. It was, after all, his gig. “But as long as they keep buying the beer,” he went on, “I’m a happy publican.”

  “I wish I could sing, Reg, I’d be straight up there.”

  “You wouldn’t have the balls.”

  I wouldn’t have the balls? Did he know who he was talking to? I gave him the look.

  He coughed. “Eleven-forty, mate.”

  Buffalo had a point: the price of beer was bloody scandalous. I handed him a couple of notes.

  “So,” he asked, as he counted the change into my hand, “supposing you did have a voice, what would you sing?”

  I mulled it over. I’d never considered it before. “A bit of Billy Bragg, I think.”

  “Unusual choice.”

  “I reckon it’d be relatively easy, that’s all. Probably suit my voice better as well.” I took a sip of my pint.

  “What song?” he persisted, and I wasn’t sure why he was being so persistent. I found myself looking for his angle; looking for a dig.

  “What song?” I repeated, and gave it some deep deliberation. “Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Why would you?”

  When I got back to Buffalo and Lola with their drinks, they were waiting for me. Buffalo was strumming his fingers impatiently on a beer mat and Lola was picking a dried baked bean off the front of his olive green t-shirt.

  “Heinz?” I asked Lola as I placed his glass in front of him.

  “Branston’s, I think. I can’t remember. It was a few days ago. Might have been Heinz or possibly Sainsbury’s Basics.”

  “Okay,” I interrupted him before he got into full throttle, “it’s not that important.”

  “You asked!”

  Buffalo stood up, stretched his arms above his head, and unintentionally thrust his impressive stomach out. “Time for a fag,” he announced, and then paused. “Here, Rod, I haven’t seen your boy, Thomas, for a while. Everything alright with him?”

  “I haven’t seen him either. Neither has anybody else, for that matter. I don’t know how he’s doing. Must be good, though, considering the amount of hours he’s been putting in at the office.”

  “Good, good. Nice lad,” commented Buffalo without any conviction whatsoever as he walked away with a packet of cigarettes in one hand, a disposable lighter in the other, and a Mini Cheddar clinging to the seat of his trousers.

  Harry Growler

  Tom Peddle sat on a plastic chair, leaning with his elbow on a dusty table and nervously propping his chin with his h
and. It was the furniture that one would expect to find in a nineteen seventies school classroom rather than the office of a renowned businessman like Harry Growler. The walls were bare and the fluorescent strip lighting flickered incessantly. Several cardboard boxes were stacked against one of the walls and above them hung a list of names that were pinned to a large cork notice board.

  Tom strained to see if his name was on the list but in the intermittent light, he could not be sure if he had read it correctly. This made him yet more anxious. He shuffled in his chair, removed his elbow from the table, and clasped his hands together as if he were praying. He felt as though he had been left alone in the headmaster’s study to await an, as yet, undetermined punishment.

  The door opened and Tom noticed that the paint was peeling from the door frame. A man entered the room. He was portly and ageing. He wasn’t dressed smartly like a traditional man of business but wore a woollen pullover and a pair of striped brown slacks. His face was deeply grooved and knotted and a pair of plastic rimmed reading glasses hung from a fine chain around his neck. He paid no heed to Tom’s presence, almost as if he wasn’t there. His phone rang and he answered it with a curt, “Yes?”

  He listened to a voice on the other end of the line and then, with great deliberation in every word, said, “Do whatever you feel is necessary.” He then dismissed the call and placed his phone on top of the table at which Tom was sitting. He sat down opposite him and stared menacingly into his face. “And what can I do for you?”

  Tom shuffled in his seat again, as if he were squirming just a little, like a naughty school boy. “Thank you for seeing me, Mr Growler.”

  Growler held up a hand and cut him short. “What do you want?”

  “I need you to extend me some credit.”

  Growler pushed his spectacles onto the end of his nose and locked his eyes on Tom’s. “You want to borrow money from me!” He struck an attitude of disbelief. “From me! Although you still owe me from the last time I was kind enough to extend my credit to you and your family.” Growler seemed to grind his teeth pointedly as he overly pronounced the word, “family”. “Or had you forgotten about our previous arrangement?”