Back out again now. The only thing that makes it better is the only thing that ever did. Back out again now. Tired (but my vigilance can seep with the night now only an hour or so away from first light and the dawn chorus of car alarms).
For the last ten minutes I've been trying to track the howl of a burglar alarm down to its source. Running. Maybe they're in the house and her screams are lost under the siren's wail. Still a few streets away the alarm cuts out. I stop. Hold my tarry breath. Listen. Nothing. Now I'll never know where it was. I wander round a few streets in the general direction, but don't find any broken windows, doors or a woman sitting on the front step of a private mews house, too scared to go in.
And now I feel wound-down, silly and pointless on my independent patrol. Like a sleepwalker who wakes to find himself outside Safeway in pyjamas holding a kettle. I must tighten up my procedure. I gotta think of something so I'm not just chasing burglar alarms. Not just walking around with a funny hat on.
Hornsey Road. Insomniac, in her thirties and a limp, white T-shirt wanders in a lit third-storey window. In a world without sound she has to guess when the kettle's boiled, and pours the hot water with the sad concentration of people that don't know you're watching them in their own home. She's like this every night. I take my helmet off so the badge doesn't catch the light.
Scanner
It looks like a walkie-talkie. A chunky clutch of black plastic heavy in the hand with a rubber antenna. PRO-62 TRIPLE CONVERSION HYPERSCAN. 200 CHANNEL DIRECT ENTRY AM/FM PROGRAMMABLE SCANNER. Brand-name: REALISTIC. The volume dial clicks it on. I press PGM, ENTER, then MON. Press the down-arrow to scan south from 934.087 FM, listening in on random phone-calls within a two-mile radius. One of the two callers has to be within a two-mile radius. When I get below 911.000 it's just static and I press the up-arrow and go back to the top of the slide.
I listen in on home phones, payphones, mobiles, office switchboards and sometimes, strangely, music. Greek-Cypriot bazoukis and balalaikas, Hungarian folk zithers. Is this the head-height frequency of a coat-hanger basement station serving Green Lane's Azerbaijani community? Or did an Armenian folk troupe's minibus crash on the M25, leaving all the musicians in iron lungs and tetraplegic hook-ups, so that the only way they can jam now is on a six-way conference call? Whatever, however, I approve. It is a welcome light interlude when it comes. A respite.
Two hard-sounding estate girls: ' … She's saying its nothing to do with me, but I said no, she shouldn't be saying those things, and then when Darren come over, l said no, she should fuck herself 'cos it had been agreed, definitely agreed that she was gonna pay, but I just think if she was being like that then she's got to expect a slap … '
… Blatant, agrees her mate.
Many calls are reported speech endlessly tidying up estate-etiquette, self-justification, showing how last night's behaviour was totally to code, however whacked that code may be.
' … I said to him "Do you know what my dogs like? Do you know what my dogs like? So shut the fuck up, then. Why am I even talking to you?" I told him, "Do you know what my dogs like? Do you know what my dogs like?"'
Pressing up, down, up, down, all the time trying to home in on Slag Central. My own personal Control! To find out what's going down and where and when and who. Criminal intelligence.
I've never really believed what they say about fishing being the most popular sport in Britain, but here's the proof. Here's yet another call where two forty-year-olds are arranging to go fishing. Common to these calls is that both geezers always sound heavily reluctant. Like going fishing is the last thing they want to do, like they'd been given two hundred hours' community fishing: 'Oh well, … [sigh] What time, then?'
'Well, I'm gonna have to get to you about five a.m., six at the latest.'
'Oh no. Really?'
'Yeah, if we wanna catch anything.' [Sigh.]
''Ow long's it take to get there?' [Sigh.]
'Hour?'
'Tench?'
'Yeah. And pike.' [Sigh.]
And pike?'
'Yeah.'
'Oh shit. [Sigh.] Yeah.'
'What if the weathers like this, though?'
'Yeah, then we can forget about it.'
'OK. But how will we know?'
'Oh.'
'I'll tell you what, I'll set my alarm for half-four, look out the window, and if it's shit I'll tell you don't bother to come over.'
'Yep.'
'OK, we'll leave it like that.'
'I won't answer the phone, if l hear it ringing I'll just stay in bed.'
'OK.'
Bought my control from Tandy in Camden High Street this morning. The way the law stands you can listen in but it's illegal to act on information received. A policeman may not use a phone scanner. But I can.
'Marky. What's up?'
'How d'you know it was me?'
'Your number comes up on my phone.'
'How you doin'?'
'Good, yeah.'
'Yeah, good. Er, have you got any of those, er, CDs left.'
'Yeah, they're here now. How many do you want?'
'Can I have two? And, uh, have you got any rock music ones?'
'Mm-hmm.'
'Can I have a dozen?'
'Yeah, yeah.'
'What are the, uh, CDs like now?'
'Did you like the last lot?'
'Well, I felt they were a bit sketchy, er, a bit too much treble in the mix type thing … '
'Yeah, well you know the stuff from before, its like that.'
'Oh yeah, they were much more mellow, bit more bass in the mix.'
'Bit more jazz-funk.'
'Yeah.'
'This is the same production values.'
'You in now? I'm by yours.'
'Yeah. All right. Bye.'
'Yep.'
No details. Inoperative. But I put the key-lock on that frequency so I can come back and visit them again.
The paranoia of the short-wave eavesdropper: 'He's under manners, don't worry abaht it, 'e's on his manners nahow, he's bin told, he didn't knah who you are, it won't happen agen, don't give it another thought. You go back there tonight, and you'll be whooshed strite through.'
I'm sure they can hear me, or that their phones will register some interference. But no. A tentative heckle or two at first, followed by a pause. They can't hear.
'Where are you, Mummy?'
'I'm up in Teesside.'
'Where's that?'
'You know, where your bedroom is with the Batman light? I'm there. Oh look, don't cry, I'll be back in a few days.'
Having been in almost as many strange flats and houses as there are burglaries and domestics, I fancy I can picture the rooms that go with the voices. This last one recalls the desexed bedrooms of parents with young children which always look like store rooms, where their sex life has been packed away for the next five years somewhere among the battered cardboard boxes of breakables, kitchen implements, the iron and ironing board and the clothes-horse that used to be an exercise-bike. Refugee clutter from the spare room that became the baby's room.
'I'm afraid he's in a meeting.'
'Is that Lisa?'
'Oh, hi Ben … Do you wanna leave a message?'
'Yeah, if you could just tell him that they're saying we agreed on an estimate, but I'm saying yeah, but it's a sixteen-foot room and the estimate was for twelve foot. We're agreed however that it's twenty foot wide … '
'Hold on, he's free now.'
I scan up and down. Balalaika and wailing from another Moroccan pirate station with a coatwire aerial. A couple of calls I think I can locate for definite: this might be the payphones in the Magistrate's Court: 'I got two years.'
'Two years! What are you gonna do?' says his girlfriend or sister.
'What you mean, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna do fucking bird, inni'?'
And the background bing-bong-beng on this call must be Euston station. An Arab voice on a mobile with maybe his suitcase between his feet: ' … hadji
, ach'um mhuna th, zim tadj un t'alla … '
Bing-bong-beng! Scanning now, a couple of calls just ending, someone's answering service saying You have no more messages. I scan all the way down and all the way up. I turn the knob that says 'squelch' and the static grates against the air like a harsh stylus bouncing on the rubber turntable. And then … It's the tone first; the tone that lets me know evil is here. The lack of complication in the tone, that costly simplicity of manner, the illicit ease.
' … I've been trying to stop it,' says the voice on the scanner. 'Trying to stop myself doing it for so long, but I can't. All this time waiting, waiting. Nothing happens. Its building and building. Holloway, Clapton, Tottenham, somewhere the bitch goes … ' The scanner keeps getting interrupted by bursts of static. ' … at night … somewhere like that … the white van … or just get up behind the lamb … and teach that bitch manners … I don't care any more. Fuck the law, that's no justice … kill that bitch in the back of the van.'
' … The Repairmen! Hahaha!'
'You in?'
' … 'Cept I got me case coming up.'
' … You don't have to do the killing, you can always say you didn't know I was gonna do it until I did … It's nature, innit? Instinct, blood rage, got to go with it or you get cancer.'
' … Do you know where the slag lives?'
' … No, but it's in the area. Get … in the back of the van and do it by — you know, by that place where we were that time — you know, that evil street? 'Cos I can't wait any more, I dunno where the bitch lives, but it's definitely in the area … and the stupid slag likes to wander at night, … He's on his own … We can get up behind the lamb, and do it quickly, blade, quick, in-out, yeah? … Hold on … What? No, chucked me fag out the window … '
' … mid-twenties?'
'Twenty-six, twenty-seven — won't see twenty-eight, that's for fucking … '
The scan keeps cutting out. I freeze stock-still in the middle of the room. If you move when the signal's weak then the scan-search slides away rolling up or down to a solid lock. The squelch static wails away like sirens in distress.
' … We did 'em in the slaughteryard, but not, not there … no manners, fuck it … put my face up close and say, "You know what this is for?"'
'Or by where you can't be seen because of the wall, by the railway, by that tag that says sensei – '
' … Either there or somewhere else. Check it out, but you never know who's gonna be passing.'
' … You still on the broken bridge?'
' … You know where it is, dontcha, yeah, 'cept there's no signposts anywhere … that derelict shop.'
' … Tonight … where are you?'
' … I'm the doorman at the end.'
'Promised land?'
'Yeah.'
The call cuts out. Scramble-static. Blood pumping behind my eyes, thoughts like jelly, legs like thoughts, cold-neck fever. The victim — the innocent 'lamb' (wow, that's brutal to think of the target like that) is somewhere now, this very night, walking. I see her already with her hair up in a conical bun, a slow switching, dawdling step, high heels that mean she can't run. Her? Why am I saying 'the lamb' is a she? ' … bitch … ' Maybe the intended murder victim is male. 'Kill the bitch in the back of the white van … ' To slags like this men are 'bitches' and women are 'its': that's inflation. Man or woman? Think now. Remember. Which is it? Shit. Wish I had my best mind. Wish I wasn't dopey with dead time, slugged by these nine months of mental sub-division. 'He's on his own.' It's a man.
Now all the rights and wrongs of whether I should be out on unlicensed patrol or not don't matter, and all the slack time tight. The black clip-on tie seems to snap in by itself. I scramble, tipping black gloves out of my helmet to the floor, tunic still unbuttoned, running out the door.
UltraViolet Mackenzie
Pounding through empty streets, running down the clues. 'You still on the broken bridge?' Maybe a builder repairing a broken bridge. 'The repairmen?' Pedestrian footbridge over a motorway? But that wouldn't be broken, without them closing the road, unless, of course, it just had a few steps missing. An estate bridge? Or the walkway on a derelict estate? Yes. Good. Possible. A rotten, planked-up, no-entry bulwark over a remote stretch of Thames or Grand Union? 'The doorman at the end'. This is the killer's macho posturing, feeling so good to be holding the keys to life and death, coolly holding open death's door and saying this way please. To control the end of another's life. Yes, that's it. Weird: there, in his bow-tie and dress shirt, was a doorman without a door, at the beginning of my patrol, a patrol without a mission then; and now — 'I'm the doorman at the end.'
Where am I going? I slow down to a fast walk. Accept nothing. Believe no one. Confirm everything. ABC. OK. Let's go.
'The slaughteryard … ' Smithfield?
Move on.
A butt-end on the pavement. A derelict shop.
Bollocks. And this is imminent: 'I can't wait any more … '
The murder is imminent. 'We can get up behind the lamb, and do it quickly, blade, quick, in-out, yeah?' And I'm not getting anywhere. Ten minutes to midnight and the clock is ticking. The end could be a place. The end of a street, or a street called Something End.
The Repairmen. Electricians? Mechanics? TV-repairmen? A gang name?
In the area is in this area or at least a two-mile radius. One of them was within a two-mile radius. Right. Somewhere out there in this same night air.
Midnight by Caledonia Park. The broken bridge. Sometimes you get a folly bridge in nineteenth-century parks. That could be vandalized enough to count as a broken bridge. I climb the high Victorian railings of the padlocked park, and walk across flat blackness looking for shadows.
No, there's no bridge here, broken or humped. Folly. I stand in the park as empty and dark and useless as this place. Oh what the fuck am I doing? I am on a broken bridge myself. I track back over wet grass. Where's the way out? Which way did I come in? I see a bench. I remember passing one on the way in. Head for the bench. I'll be able to see the railings when I get there. It's not a bench. It's a bundle on the ground. Across dark grass in murder park I move towards it. A body. Still. I step nearer the clump of dead human very slow, as if it might leap up and devour me. The body stirs. I step back. A woman. Black. But … severe points of light flash on face, hands, arms, shins, bare feet. I go nearer, and moonlight reveals these flashes as bleach burns. She is wearing yellow plastic sunglasses. She lies on a bath towel, plastic bottles next to her. And now I know who she is. Violet MacKenzie — nutter of this parish, or UltraViolet as Kieran calls her. Heard about her but never seen her before. A mythical beast. Legend has it she sat in a bath of bleach as a kid and now moonbathes in the pitch-black, locked-up park. Every mild night she smears herself with Piz Buin and tries to catch the night rays — the famous UltraViolet MacKenzie.
She turns on her side, leans on her elbow, forearm pointing up vertically and raises her head in the crook of her arm to stare at me.
'GET AWAY!' she shouts.
I panic but say, 'It's all right, Violet.'
'GET AWAY! I'LL SCREAM!' she screams.
'I'm a police-officer.'
'YOU'RE NOT!'
'Sssh! Look at me! Police.'
'I know what the police look like! I know what the police look like!'
'Maybe if you take your sunglasses off, madam.'
'I'm not taking any clothes off.'
I step back a pace.
'I'M NOT TAKING ANY CLOTHES OFF!'
'Sssh!'
'You're not police! You're not police!' On her brow, between her eyes the bleach-fried skin rumples in burnt black flesh-folds. Among the rustling leaves her rumpled dark skin looks like the deep ridges of oak bark. Then she mumbles, 'I know all about you and what you get up to when you think no one's watching. And what you did.'
'What did I do?'
'You know,' she says, turning her back on me. 'You know, you know, you know, you know, know, know, no, no, no — '
'What di
d I do?'
'GET AWAY!' she explodes.
'WHAT DID I DO?' I shout. 'WHAT DID I DO?'
'AAAIIEEE AAAAGH, A A A AIE Y YA AGGH!' She gets up, screaming in her long skirt, bent double as if suffering stomach pain, like she'd just swallowed some more bleach in the dark. 'AAAIIEE, AAAGHH!'
'Stop screaming! Please stop scream-!'
'AAAAGH! GO AWAY!'
'STOP SCREAMING!'
AAAAIIEEE!' She runs at me.
AAAHH!' I scream. I'm stuck. I can't run. I'm stuck. I run scalded with terror. Hit a hidden litter-bin keep running. Is she chasing? Her breath is every swaying shrub, leaf-whisper and the blanched breath of my running. On, on. I rip my trousers on the wrought-iron railings. Mad fucking bitch! Back out on the road again, safe as houses, safe as factories with security spotlights, safe as all the signs and painted lines of the Highway Code.
Walking now. By making black white and white black, she can act like the past never happened — and see right through me in the dark.
The Same Force
Full headlights in a pot-holed, one-way gully searching for the evil street. Cold hands on the steering-wheel, windows all the way down the better to feel evil in the air. But this ain't the way. Too removed. It's not working. I can cover more streets in the car but can't sense what I'm looking for. Park up. Get out. Walking. Yes, this is better. I walk through a deserted estate car-park. On track. Walking now in the cold night air gives me space and rhythm to try and put my concept of evil into words. This will be a start in tracking the street that feels evil. Talking to others about good and evil makes you sound mad: you leave the narrow bandwidth of acceptable conversation, spinning into the static crackle of unresolved electrical energy in the night. Walking alone in the night air now, it seems to me that there's a kind of conspiracy behind what people talk about. Daytime conversations stick with the coherent, and yet most of our experience is incoherent. When you think of the complexities behind even the simplest human interactions you realize we're constantly receiving a whole spectrum of impressions but only talk on the narrow bandwidth of stuff that is coherent. And so the majority of our impressions, the incoherent, are outlawed from talk.
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