by M Y Alam
A few seconds later I hear a papery rustling sound. When I turn to look at Greg, he’s holding out a twenty-pound note. ‘You can make money grow into more money, right?’
‘Well, not personally…’
‘Take this, stick it in whatever you’ve got your money in. You seem to be doing okay.’
Oh, Christ. ‘I can’t…Look, there’s no…’ I stop myself, because I don’t want to hurt his feelings. He guarded my happiness notes, after all. ‘If you want to invest, you might need a bit more than twenty quid,’ I try to sound helpful. ‘Most fund managers…’
‘Just put it wherever your money is,’ he insists. There is a funny glint in his eye that tells me he won’t like it if I refuse again.
I take the twenty-pound note; there is no time to think of an alternative course of action. He smiles. ‘Nice one,’ he says. His phone rings, making me jump. I assumed it was broken. ‘Alright, Daz,’ he says, and settles into his seat for another sparkling exchange with his charismatic friend.
How the hell am I going to get out of this? Greg can’t force me to take his money. I must give it back to him, as soon as he gets off the phone.
His face changes quickly, and at first I assume the signal’s gone again. ‘You’re joking,’ Greg says. ‘Oh, man, you’re joking me, please, you’ve got to be. Oh, fucking hell. Fuck!’ He snaps his phone shut and looks at me. ‘Give us that paper,’ he says, nodding at my happiness notes. ‘And a pen.’ Why is it that unreasonable requests expressed urgently fare so much better than ones delivered in an ordinary tone of voice? I do as I am told. Greg scribbles something that I can’t immediately read, because he is writing over my writing. He has started to sweat again, and drops are falling on to the paper. ‘That’s my number,’ he says. ‘When the twenty quid’s five hundred – no, a thousand quid, get in touch, okay? And I’ll meet you somewhere and get it. If I’m fucking still alive,’ he mutters. ‘And if I’m not, fuck it. Keep it. I’d rather you had it than anyone else.’
If this is true, it is astonishing. ‘Why?’ I ask, but Greg has already disappeared. I see him bounding through the next carriage. I get up to follow him, but the train is stopping. I know he will get off, and I know that I can’t. I mean, maybe I could, but…no, I can’t.
I return to my seat, more agitated than I can remember ever having been before. I must do something. I gasp as I remember my phone, then, with wobbly fingers, pick it up and dial the last dialled number. After four rings, a man answers. He says, ‘Yo.’
‘Andy?’
‘Who’s this?’
‘I’m the person whose phone Greg was using when he rang you before.’
There is a lot of loud breathing before he says, ‘What do you want?’
‘I…look, this is going to sound odd, but…I think Greg might be in some sort of trouble.’
Andy guffaws at this. ‘Greg’s a dead man,’ he says.
A chill spreads through me. ‘What? What are you talking about? Look, what’s going on?’
‘I don’t want to get into it. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Does he…does he owe someone money or something?’
‘Just a bit,’ says Andy.
‘How much?’
‘He owes Steve six hundred quid.’
‘Is that all?’ I snap. So Andy, Steve, Darren and Greg are four grown men who make a huge fuss about nothing; knowing this enables me to deal with the matter more swiftly. I no longer feel nervous. ‘Look, if I give Steve the money, will he leave Greg alone?’
‘You? You’re going to give Steve the six hundred? Don’t take the piss, lady.’
‘Listen,’ I say firmly. If this is only about money, I can handle it, no problem. ‘I think Greg was supposed to be getting some money from Darren. Is that right?’
‘Yeah.’ Andy sounds puzzled.
‘And he was supposed to be meeting someone in London and giving them the money?’ I guess.
‘Right.’
‘Was it Steve who he was supposed to be meeting?’
Andy chuckles. ‘Right. Like Steve’d turn up himself. He’ll send someone.’
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Tell him to send that someone to the Piccadilly Gallery on Dover Street, near Green Park tube – near The Ritz. I’ll meet him or her there at…’ – I glance at my watch – ‘…three o’clock, and I’ll have six hundred quid in cash.’
‘From Greg?’
‘Yes.’ I lower my voice. ‘Tell whoever Steve sends that they must say ‘Helmandi’ before I’ll give them the money.’
‘Hell-what?’
‘Helmandi. H-E-L-M-A-N-D-I.’
‘Got it,’ says Andy after a few seconds.
‘And after you get the money, you won’t be hassling Greg again, will you?’
‘Not unless he runs up any more debts.’
‘He won’t,’ I say with certainty. Am I starting to enjoy this conversation? I appear to have more power than Andy, which is gratifying, even though I know nothing about him and will never speak to him again.
‘If you’re a no-show, Greg’s a dead man.’
‘Why wouldn’t I turn up? I’m the one who suggested the arrangement.’
Once Andy has hung up on me, I start writing a text message to Greg. ‘I will meet and pay Steve,’ I write, but that looks ridiculous. One by one, I delete the letters. What the hell can I say? ‘You don’t need to worry, I’ve taken care of your debt to Steve’? That also sounds absurd. Greg wouldn’t believe me; he’d think it was a trap. I stare at his number, scrawled in biro on my Daily Telegraph.
I sigh. I will have to see him in person, explain. But what if he doesn’t agree to meet me? Presumably he will hear, eventually, that Steve is no longer after him, that some mysterious woman handed over some cash in an art gallery. But will he? My impression is that his cohorts’ communication skills leave rather a lot to be desired. Oh, for goodness sake, this is insane. I have to text Greg and say something. Or ring him.
First, though, I need to ring The Haven and explain that I’m going to be late. My talk isn’t until tomorrow morning. All I will miss is some of the improvised jazz, and very probably the vegetarian supper; isn’t it funny how things work out for the best? Maybe I’ll have tea at The Ritz, after I’ve dealt with stupid, petty Steve. I dial The Haven’s number and ask for Dr Helmandi. ‘Sonia!’ he says, sounding warm and reassuring. ‘We are very much looking forward to welcoming you here.’
‘I’m very much looking forward to coming,’ I tell him. And I am, although I will have to start from scratch with my talk. I don’t want to antagonize anyone, which means I can’t sneer at Dr Helmandi and the other speakers, or praise capitalism. But thanks to Greg and everything that’s happened, I know exactly what I’m going to say instead.
Reading Into
Adam Byfield
‘love is the peak and the pit
but nothing lies between’
George Hinckley, San Francisco, July 1968
Leaning back against the cold red brick, Jess watched yet another set of scarlet tail lights recede into the night. Checking her watch she saw that she had been stood in the chilled darkness now for… three…two…one…seventeen minutes. With a sigh she reflected that while this was twelve minutes more than she had told her friends she would be, it had only been two since she had last checked.
As a fine and misty rain began to settle about her person, she reminded herself that this was just the way it went. Rule number one in any drug deal: everything you hear is a lie. The dealer says he’ll be there in five, but that was…eighteen minutes ago. Returning her hand to her coat pocket Jess continued to recall the events of the evening, in particular the drunken lecture she had delivered in the pub.
She had grown tired of repeatedly having to defend her decision made earlier in the day, to quit her regular job. Several times she had explained that she had read a lot about her new chosen direction and that she felt confident, but that was not all she had been reading. Eventually Jess had launched into
a daytime talk show style confession of personal inspiration. She had briefly described the life’s work of George Hinckley before passionately embarking on the subject of his death.
Hinckley had been a writer who had travelled all over the world in the late sixties researching a new book. One year, almost to the day, after he started writing the book he was in a hotel in San Francisco when he received a telegram telling him that his wife and newborn child had been killed in a traffic accident. Pausing only to scrawl a two-line suicide note on the hotel room wall, Hinckley threw himself from the window of his room and fell to his death three floors below.
At this point she had paused for dramatic effect. However, Mick had interceded. ‘Well that’s all very interesting, but what’s some dead hippy got to do with you quitting your job?’ Laughter had exploded around them and its echoes traced across Jess’s lips for a moment in an involuntary smile before she realised she was not alone in the street. A middle-aged woman, whose expression appeared as heavy as her coat, had appeared and was about to pass Jess.
Dropping the smile, Jess automatically launched into her ‘non-suspicious’ body language. Looking up and down the street, looking at her watch and tutting. I am certainly not loitering here suspiciously. I am quite obviously waiting to meet a friend who is late, she seemed to say. The older woman didn’t even acknowledge Jess’s existence as she passed in a cloud of perfume.
Leaning back against the wall once more Jess returned to the pub. She had told them how Hinckley had written, ‘love is the pit and peak, and there’s nothing in between,’ on the wall. Glazed eyes shone blankly back at her through the smoke and noise of the pub. Mick drew breath to speak. The point was, she had said, beating Mick to it, that it was worth pursuing your dreams because even if they fail it’s better than not trying at all.
For once it was possible to see the stars and Jess looked up to them as if hoping to see Hinckley waving back. It seemed to her that he must have seen everything so clearly in that last instant and that his expression of that clarity backed up the radical change to her life’s priorities that she had so recently made. All at once the future seemed to loom up before her like the high-speed sunrise of some awesome new star.
Her dealer pulled over and dipped his lights. Jess approached the car, fingering the small roll of bank notes in her coat pocket. Five minutes later she was reclaiming her place on the sofa and amid the various conversations. Looking around her friends it occurred to her, accompanied by another smile, that while they may not be at a peak, they were definitely way above nothing.
***
They had been back at his flat for almost twenty minutes when David remembered the files. Lisa was in the bathroom and he had just poured them both a drink when he caught sight of the multicoloured files stacked on his desk in the bedroom. Staring over at the bathroom door he listened intently for a moment before placing the drinks carefully on the coffee table and sprinting into the bedroom.
He had been in such a rush to meet Lisa earlier on that he had forgotten to clear away the numerous papers and files that formed the focus of his hobby. David began to heave the folders up onto the top of his wardrobe, starting with the largest first. These were the thickest files and looked to be the oldest as the names sported by their spines were faded. Kennedy, Lennon, King, Kennedy again and X were all hastily consigned to the shadowy heights, the rest following swiftly.
The last file was in his hand when he heard Lisa behind him. ‘Here you are, I wondered where you’d gone. I’ve brought our drinks through…What’s that?’ David looked at the bright red file that now seemed to match his hand, caught as he was.
‘It’s my hobby,’ the words stumbling from his lips, ‘I was just putting it away.’ He cringed slightly as he saw intrigue flash in Lisa’s eyes.
‘Oh, right.’ Lisa smiled as David waited for the inevitable. ‘So what’s your hobby then?’
The two-word answer sat at the tip of his tongue awaiting orders as dread settled into his stomach along with the expensive dinner and red wine.
‘Conspiracy theories,’ he said finally, his voice thick with defeat.
‘Oh,’ Lisa sipped her drink and considered this. ‘Like the Kennedy assassination?’
Even though the wardrobe sat behind him, in that instant David thought he could somehow see that fat black file sitting smugly under the others. ‘Yeah, it’s only a hobby, I’m not crazy or paranoid or anything.’ They both laughed a little too loudly before falling silent again.
‘So what’s in there then?’ Lisa asked. David realised he was still holding the slim red folder.
‘Oh, this is a guy called George Hinckley. I’ve been reading up on him recently and I’ve made some pretty interesting discoveries.’ As he spoke he watched Lisa sit down on the edge of the bed and kick off her shoes. She was listening to every word but commanded his gaze utterly.
‘Really,’ she smiled. ‘Like what?’
David settled a little further up the bed with the file between them. As he explained the circumstances surrounding Hinckley’s apparent suicide he flicked through photocopies of news clippings on the story. Lisa seemed moved by the tale and commented on the tragedy of Hinckley’s loss when David turned to the fuzzy black and white photo of Mrs Hinckley and child.
By the time David reached the photo of Hinckley’s blanket- covered body he was in full swing, eager to introduce Lisa to his recent achievements. The distance of the body from the building, he told her, was unusual. Had Hinckley simply jumped from the window he should have landed on or near the pavement. He had in fact fallen into the middle of the road, meaning he must have either taken a running leap or been thrown from the window.
David let this hang until Lisa asked why anyone would want to throw Hinckley out of a third-storey window.
‘The book,’ was David’s triumphant answer. Hinckley had in fact completed his book and was in San Francisco to discuss publishing, David claimed. The book was, apparently, subversive in the extreme and contained information that could not be allowed into the public domain. This book would start revolutions, bring about the end of the ‘square’ world and lead to some kind of hippy Utopia, or so the story went.
Hinckley knew that the powers that be were about to move against him and so left a message detailing the whereabouts of the manuscript. Excitedly David turned to the next page which featured various lists of numbers.
‘I thought the message was a suicide note about life without love being nothing, or something,’ Lisa said. David was about to speak when he felt Lisa’s hand land gently on the nape of his neck. He leant over the file that they were both supposed to be studying and attempted to continue as if nothing had happened.
‘It depends how you read it,’ David said quietly, his joy at sharing his work now coupled with the thrill of Lisa’s touch. Hinckley was concerned about that amount of time he had spent away from his family over the previous year, he explained. Hinckley’s message was unusual for him as it lacked punctuation. David had mused that perhaps this was because the number of characters in the message was important. Counting carefully, David had noticed that the message was made up of exactly fifty-two characters.
‘Forty-three,’ Lisa corrected after a moment, frowning, ‘there are forty-three letters in the message.’
Hinckley, David continued gleefully, always used a typewriter and so would have counted spaces as characters as they required a keystroke. For the same reason the end of a line did not count. He found that putting his case before another human made it sound somehow different. For the first time he noticed how tenuous this first step sounded. This doubt was pushed aside though because David knew what was to come.
He folded out a home-made calendar that ran from mid 1967-1968. The calendar was split into weeks each of which listed Hinckley’s location that week. ‘Fifty-two characters, fifty-two weeks,’ David said, suddenly aware of just how good Lisa smelled as she shifted to look at the calendar more closely.
His mouth suddenl
y dry, he went on to explain that he had numbered the considered weeks and then listed those Hinckley had spent with his family to produce a sequence of numbers.
6, 7, 11, 19, 22, 27, 31, 34, 36, 44, 48
Using these numbers to pick out letters from Hinckley’s message, starting with the sixth character, then the seventh etc. David had found another message, a secret message.
love is the peak and the pit
but nothing lies between
‘So what’s the secret David?’ Lisa asked, her eyes huge, David simply pointed to the page unable to speak.
i, s, e, n, t, i, t, t, o, h, s, t
‘Who’s HST?’ Lisa returned her gaze to him and leaned across the file.
‘Hunter S Thompson, the only person Hinckley thought he could trust to protect the manuscript. Of course Thompson denies ever having heard of Hinckley or the book.’
‘The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas guy?’ David could feel Lisa’s breath.
‘Yeah,’ he let the page drop.
‘I love that movie,’ she whispered.
‘Me too,’ he managed to answer as their lips met.
The file fell from the bed as if imitating the death it detailed within. It landed with a clatter and ejected its contents across the floor creating new coincidences as it went and David missed them, every one.
***
Leonard gripped his slim leather satchel with sweaty hands and fumed. He had spent the last three hours sitting in the same leather armchair waiting to be seen. As he reread the same framed film posters for the hundredth time he asked one of the several questions that continued to bounce around his balding head.
Why ask him to come in at ten if they weren’t going to be able to see him until after one? Why not just ask him to come in at one, or two, or whenever the fuck they were going to get round to seeing him. Taking a deep breath he reminded himself that he must keep a tight rein on his temper today. Today was a once in a lifetime opportunity, a chance to bring his masterpiece to life. Exhaling, he cursed his stupid invisible breath, knowing that one simple cigarette could make this process just that little bit easier. He was reflecting on how unjust it was that not even this one small concession was allowed him when he heard his name.