Bad Dreams

by Kim Newman

  At the sight of Erskine's face, Anne felt a flash of cold anger. She had never met the policeman, but she had read the doctor's reports on Charlie Aziz, arrested for 'driving without due care and attention', breathalysed and proved not under the influence of alcohol, then battered to death by 'person or persons unknown' in a South London cell. The official version was that Charlie suffered a claustrophobic spell and injured himself fatally, but Anne knew that was not consistent with his all-round injuries and with the police force's unexplained suspension of Erskine, the arresting officer. Erskine, a blandly handsome young man, did not look like a monster, but then they never did. In his off hours, according to Anne's investigation, Erskine was a member of the English Liberation Front, a far right splinter group who alleged that immigrants from the Indian sub-continent and the Caribbean constitute an army of occupation and should be resisted with maquis tactics.

  Aziz's parents were glimpsed, but they did not get to say anything. Over the last few weeks, attending meetings of the Charlie Aziz Memorial Committee to Stop the Attacks, Anne had got quite close to the boy's mother. She admired the woman's quiet determination, and her ability to cope with family tragedy while doing something concrete about it. Mrs Aziz, Anne believed, was quite capable of forcing answers from the police where years of investigating journalists would only get nothingy press hand-outs. And if that happened, there would definitely be a book in it. Perhaps even a television docu-drama. Perhaps…

  She picked up her spoon, and the telephone rang. She dropped the spoon, and found herself shaking. It was only partly the cold. Using the remote control, she turned off the television. The ringing was needlessly loud.

  Nerving herself for The Call, she picked up the telephone, and said 'hello'.

  The line did not crackle. It was not from America. This was not The Call.

  'Anne…' It was Mark Her whole body tensed. She did not need an '… about last night…' conversation. 'Anne, I'm ringing from the office…'

  He sounded edgy, urgent, like a conspirator during a crisis.

  'Mark, I…'

  The police have been checking up on you. Anne…'

  The doorbell rang.

  'Mark, excuse me, someone at the door…'

  She put the receiver down, and stabbed the entryphone buzzer. It would be the postman, and she did not want to miss him and have to take the trip to the sorting office to pick up the Federal Express packet. She unlatched her door, and stepped out onto the landing.

  It was not the postman. Anne shrank back, mentally kicking herself for her lack of caution. In New York, that sort of mistake could get you killed; and London these days was not exactly a paradise of non-violence either.

  'Good morning,' said the visitor. 'Anne Nielson?'

  It was a civil service type in a grey topcoat, but the dread did not lift.

  'Yes?'

  He showed her a card, with his photograph under plastic. She looked at it, but could not focus on the words.

  'I'm Inspector Joseph Hollis, from the Holborn Police Station.'

  The name did not mean anything to her. She looked backwards, at the still off-the-hook telephone. She adopted a neutral expression, and did not invite the policeman into her flat. Any business they had could be done on the landing. She was not paranoid, but she had friends who had been harassed for what they wrote. She had not expected any official feedback on her Aziz pieces, but she was not surprised.

  'Miss Nielson?'

  The face was unreadable but vaguely sympathetic, the voice professionally expressionless.

  She took a breath. 'Yes.'

  'Anne Veronica Nielson?'

  She expected to be told her rights. 'Uh-huh.'

  'And do you have a sister, Judith Nielson?'

  Judi! She always came out of left field, but today…

  'Yes. What is this about?'

  This time, the policeman drew breath. Whatever it was, she knew, it would be bad. With Judi, it was always bad.

  'I'm sorry, miss, but I have to tell you that your sister is dead.'

  TWO

  THE NIGHT BEFORE, Nina had been out with Rollo, one of her regulars. They had ended up at his maisonette in Hackney. She had tried her best, but just was not up to it. Afterwards, she had vomited biriani on his new duvet cover. It was decorated with ringlet-haired ancient Greeks kaleidoscopically demonstrating an assortment of lovemaking positions. It was supposed to be tasteful.

  Rollo had kicked her off his futon and called for a minicab. He had given her less money than usual, and made her wait for the taxi outside his front door. She had got cold listening to him clatter about the house, tidying up, and had come even further down. Her toes were still frozen, without feeling, from the twenty minutes outside. She had had to pay the driver out of her earnings. Usually, Rollo would give the cabman ten pounds to cover it. He had not made a date to see her again. They had met in the first place through the 'Heartland' section of City Limits. He was 'in the music business', but did not have any records out at the moment. His sitting room was full of framed posters for concerts by bands she could barely remember.

  Back in the flat, she hugged her Snoopy pyjama case, imagining a gentle and considerate lover. Someone like Jeremy Irons in Brideshead Revisited. A schoolfriend had once told her that all prostitutes were really lesbians. But, then again, Nina was not a real prostitute. She was… What was she? A party girl, she supposed. Like everyone else, she called herself a model on her tax returns.

  Exhausted, she did not dream.

  When she woke up, she felt ghastly. It was then that she decided to quit using smack. But smack was not ready to leave off using her.

  Aware that she needed to build her strength again, she fixed up as substantial a breakfast as was possible with what she had left in the tiny fridge and the cupboard over the sink. Branflakes, six cheddar thins, grapefruit juice and a cup of jasmine tea.

  She sat at the kitchen table, looking at the neatly laid breakfast for a quarter of an hour. The hot water in the teacup slowly darkened until she could no longer see the sachet in the bottom. She took the paper tab and hauled the teabag out on its length of cotton. She dangled it in front of her face, and took the soggy lump into her mouth. It was slightly scalding, but the flavour was good. She could taste the perfume.

  She spat the bag out into a saucer, and began to nibble one of the biscuits. Her stomach contracted sharply, 'Soon,' she said, 'it's coming soon.' She kept the cheesy pulp in her mouth for minutes, squeezing it through her teeth. Finally, she swallowed. It hurt going down, but it hurt a lot more coming up.

  She bent double, cracking the cereal bowl with her forehead. The spasms hit her again and again in the belly. She twisted off the stool and dived for the kitchen mat, curling up around her pain. Milk and bran dried on her face. She managed to control herself before the kicking started.

  This had happened before. She could live through it.

  After a while, she calmed down. She unwound herself, and lay face up on the floor, looking up at the Marvel comic covers pasted to the ceiling by a previous tenant. Silver Surfer and Daredevil, Iron Man and The Avengers. She had had a guy around for a party once who was a comic collector. He claimed that, unmutilated, several of the '60s issues that had been cut up for wallpaper were worth around fifty pounds. What a waste.

  She sat up, and felt temporarily at peace with herself. It would not last. There was no smack in the place. She had hoped to be able to find the silver paper her last jab had come in, but it was lost. She had got a hit off that kind of minute residue before, by licking it. It felt like sherbert on the tongue, and a carnival in her brain. At least, it had once. More recently, she had been treading water, using the shot to stay even, not to get ahead. That was dangerous, but she was a strong person, she told herself, she could deal with it.

  It took her a full minute to dial Clive's seven figure number. Apart from her own, it was the only one she knew. She had forgotten her mother's, and had a little book for regulars and friends.
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  Clive. Charming Clive. Well-spoken Clive. Cunning Clive. He was the one who had found the song with her name in it. Nina Kenyon. He had suggested she find a partner called Ina Carver. It was the first line of 'My Darling Clementine'. Ina Carver, Nina Kenyon. Excavating for a mine. Clive would have smack. He always had smack.

  Clive's telephone rang four times, then his answering machine cut in. It told her in the kind of voice she usually only heard on University Challenge that Clive Broome was out right now and that she could leave a message after the bleeps if she wanted to. She did not.

  She could not quite get her phone back on the hook. The tangled cord got in the way.

  In any case, she knew Clive would only come across if she paid him for her last shot. He was her friend and he loved her, but he was a businessman like any other and he could not make that kind of exception. She barely had enough cash left over from last night to get her through the day.

  Even from the other side of the room, she could hear the phone. The dialing tone buzzed, annoyingly loud, like a persistent insect.

  She squandered a fifty pence coin on the electricity meter and turned the fire on full strength. Standing up, she felt pins and needles in her knees. The gilt-edged invitation that had come in yesterday's post was on top of a pile of newspapers, magazines and bills on the coffee table. Under the copperplate request for the pleasure of her company and the address, Amelia had written 'bring a friend'.

  So, if she could get herself together, there was the prospect of earning some good money. Not in a terribly comfortable way, but good money was good money. She had been to Amelia's 'entertainments' before and survived.

  And Clive would be at Amelia's 'entertainment'. And wherever Clive went, he did business.

  'Bring a friend.' Nina had not known if Amelia was being graciously hospitable, or issuing an order. 'A friend'?

  Nina had thought that had to mean Coral. The last time she had met Amelia, she had been with the skinny blonde in the Club Des Esseintes. The hostess could easily have been quite taken with Coral. The girl had certainly been exciting attention for as long as Nina had known her.

  They had come from the same school in North London originally. At first, Nina had been the one to show Coral how to get along. They had worked as a sister act for a while, but had got on each other's nerves. They went back too far to be comfortable together these days. Coral could be a moody cow when she wanted to, and was ungenerous with her gear. She had stopped crashing most nights on Nina's floor a few months before, and found a place with the American girl, Judi. Once Coral moved out, Nina found she got on better with her friend. There were plenty of relationships that worked best that way.

  Judi? Maybe Amelia meant Judi. Nina had introduced her to the hostess as well. The more she had thought about it yesterday, the less she had known whether to call Judi or Coral. In the end, it had hit her that she did not have to make a choice. Judi and Coral were still together, at the same address. If she phoned them, one would answer the phone. Today, she could not remember which she had spoken to. But she had arranged to meet with one of the girls at the Club. Judi or Coral. She wondered which.

  In the cramped bathroom, it took Nina a while to get dressed. She kept being distracted by her face in the mirror. Even before she washed the bran off, she did not look like the girl in the old smack adverts. The ones that said it screws you up. Just because she did smack did not mean she could not wash and comb her hair - although soapy water did make her feel squirmy sometimes - and put a little make-up over the blue-ish crescents under her eyes.

  She dressed for the party, mainly in her best black. She favoured forties styles, with padded shoulders and deep pleats. She always wore long sleeves. Nina posed like a model in front of the tall mirror. She looked so much better since she started losing weight. She did not have to suck her cheeks in to appear glamorous any more, and she had completely lost her stomach.

  She still thought she could get by doing modelling, but she never had the money to assemble a decent portfolio and that was what you needed if you wanted to get into the big money. She only had one nice photo of herself, and that was years out of date now. One of her regulars had wanted her to model for him, but he turned out to be interested only in private camera sessions. She did not want any of those photos.

  She brushed the tangles out of her hair, feeling the scratch of the tines on her scalp. There was nothing wrong with parties, really. They were probably easier than modelling jobs.

  More in control now, she got back to the telephone. After putting the receiver properly in its cradle, she picked it up and, flipping her book open to the number, called Coral and Judi. Knowing what they were like, they probably needed reminding about the meet. Their phone rang and rang until she gave up. She tried Clive again, but put the phone down before his machine could finish.

  There were hours to go before Amelia's 'entertainment', so she would have time to set something up with Coral and/or Judi, and to pull herself together.

  THREE

  WHILE ANNE waited for the policeman to come back, she listened to the hospital piped music. They were playing something strangled by a million strings. Irritated, she recognised 'I Saw Her Standing There' under the Mantovani massacre. Messages from administrators to doctors chirruped in the background like signals gone astray in deep space. The Synthesised Celestial Choir segued into 'Do You Want to Know a Secret?'

  Even under normal circumstances, she could not comfortably listen to The Beatles any more. They had been so much a part of her pre-adolescence. The four chord melancholies and ecstasies had turned scary. It had been 'Helter Skelter'. They had gutted Sharon Tate in Hollywood, and shot John Lennon in New York. All that was left was musak.

  Judi had been into groups with more honestly horrific names. Paranoid Realities, Skullflower, Coil, Bad Dreamings, The Manson Family Reunion, Three More Bullets and a Shovel. She would have spat on 'Love Me Do' and 'Please Please Me'.

  Still, The Beatles had been with her all her life. Anne's first memory was of her father letting her stay up past her bedtime to watch them on The Ed Sullivan Show. Not the first time, but a re-run. Judi had not been born yet. Later, the Double White was the first album she had bought with her own money. She had played it over and over on the old phonograph in the cellar rumpus room of the summer house in New Hampshire. Cam had taken personal offence at 'Revolution No. 9', and so it automatically became her favourite track. Even so, she would lift the needle over it when he was not there.

  Judi was around then, making her presence felt everywhere, all the time. She had been reading almost before she could put a real sentence together in her mouth, and father had taught her long division before she ever saw the inside of the school. There had been no doubt about it: Judi had been the clever child, the pretty child, the promising child. Cam was the first-born, and thus beloved of God (and his mother, Dad's ex-wife). That left Anne as the nondescript one in the middle.

  Now, Cam was as rich and famous as it was possible for a self-styled avant garde composer to be, Anne was working her way up the ladder as a journalist, and Judi was dead.

  'I'm sorry, miss, but I have to tell you that your sister is dead,' Inspector Hollis had said. No tactful build-up, no euphemisms. The policeman had simply established that he was talking to Anne Nielson, and told her what he had to. She could not help but wonder whether he was familiar with her Aziz pieces. They had not been calculated to endear her to the Metropolitan Police. But she knew really that this was how everybody got treated.

  There are a million stories in the naked city, and not enough words to go around. What with government cuts, a copper's vocabulary would have to be pared down to the absolute minimum. No surplus circumlocutions, synonyms hoarded like golden acorns.

  Back in November, Anne had interviewed an ex-marine who had written a good book about Vietnam. He never used the words 'kill' or 'dead', just 'waste' and 'wasted'. That was bluntly the best way of putting it. Wasted.

  Anne saw the doc
tor who was supposed to have looked at Judi when she was brought in. He was busy now, pulling apart the do-it-yourself mummy swathings wrapped around the head of a little West Indian boy. She glimpsed red cheeks, raw meat rather than blushes. This time, she was impressed by the doctor's performance as he kept up a non-stop stream of soothing chatter for the boy and his visibly anxious mother.

  With Anne, he had been offhand, awkward. She wasn't his patient, just related to an inconvenient lump of deadness he could have nothing more to do with. Alive, you are a challenge; dead, you are an embarrassment.

  There were uniformed soldiers, unarmed, in the corridor. With the ambulance drivers' dispute dragging on, many local authorities were calling in troops to man the emergency services. Two squaddies, berets folded and tucked into the epaulettes of their olive-drab jerseys, were sharing a cigarette and a joke in an alcove, trying to keep out of the way. Their presence in the hospital made the place not feel like mainland Britain. Anne assumed this was what combat zone first-aid centres were like, in Belfast or in Central America. Even this early in the day, the casualty reception was busy. With the holidays starting, it was a prime time for accidents. Anne had had to do the hospital ring-round when she was starting out as a journalist, fishing for stories. Now, that seemed a long time ago.

  Anne had been at home that summer when Judi was fifteen. She was freshly graduated from journalism college, doing bits for the local paper and working on the novel she never did finish. She had been a witness to what their mother, in one of her infrequent bursts of British understatement, called 'Judi's turn for the worse'. It was as much her fault as father's, or Cam's, or anyone's. 'There are some days,'Judi had told her in a rare communicative mood, 'when I think that life is an unending Hell of misery and desolation, and others when it seems merely to be a purposeless punishment, unending in its monotony.' It was hard to come back with something like 'yes, but what will you be wearing to the junior prom, sis?'