by Anne Billson
But most of all, I didn’t want to leave Duncan. Especially not now, when he was paying me more attention than he’d paid me in years. So I did what I’d promised; I headed for Multiglom Tower.
It was a long haul. To get there, I had to go to Tower Hill and transfer to the Docklands Light Railway. It was years since I’d been anywhere east of Aldgate, and the city had changed. The railway was fun, like a slow-moving roller-coaster trundling through a half-finished theme park. Sticking up from the otherwise uniform acres of gutted warehouse were the developers’ party pieces: toy town halls made from primary-coloured building blocks, Lego pyramids covered in shocking pink scaffolding, and Nissen huts decorated with Egyptian murals. Viewed from the comfort of the train it was amusing, but as soon as I emerged from Molasses Wharf Station I found myself trapped in a pedestrian’s nightmare. Progress was thwarted at every turn by fenced-off building sites or gloomy basins of stagnant water. Concrete mixers blocked the pavements. The ground was coated with a layer of pale mud, and every so often a truck would thunder past and splash the backs of my legs. The only other people I saw were distant figures in yellow helmets. My A-Z of street maps was obsolete; streets that were supposed to be there no longer existed, and new ones had sprung up in different configurations. I buried the book in my bag and tried to dust off the instincts that were still sulking from having been dismissed earlier on.
Fortunately, I could see where I wanted to go. It would have been impossible to miss it. Had it been a sunny day, the shadow would have fallen across my path. Multiglom Tower loomed up out of the drizzle like a gigantic monolith, its summit swathed in wheeling seagulls and wisps of grey cloud. The building was controversial, less for its design than its height; it had buggered up half of east London’s TV reception. I had seen photos, but now I had to admit they didn’t do it justice. It reminded me of a sound system: a stack of tape-decks, amplifier, and CD player in black glass, opaque except for odd little pinpoints of red and white glinting deep within the walls. But who could tell what kind of music it would be playing? I steered towards it, or tried to.
After about half an hour of dodging traffic and sneaking through gateways marked with signs of men being struck in the chest by lightning bolts, I found myself within spitting distance of my destination. I circled it warily, craning my neck to stare upwards, feeling like a lost tourist trying to get her bearings in the middle of Manhattan. There were two entrances. There was a service door big enough to swallow a fleet of trucks, but while I was there I saw only one vehicle emerge - a navy blue Bedford van with a tinted windscreen and the words DOUBLE IMAGE stencilled (twice) on to the side.
At the main entrance the word MULTIGLOM was chiselled into marble over three sets of revolving doors. Each door was flanked by uniformed security guards who looked as though they might have cut their teeth on Treblinka. I tried to peer past them, but all I could see in the. black glass was my own distorted reflection. The guards watched me with hard, unblinking eyes. They made me nervous. It was getting on for lunchtime, so I decided to postpone my investigations and seek out some Dutch courage.
Over the street was something which had once been a warehouse, but which was now a brasserie-cum-art-gallery called the Bar Nouveau. From what I had seen of the area, it was the only watering-hole for miles. I assumed it would be doing a roaring trade in Multiglom workers, but it turned out I was the sole customer. There was a sign saying Barsnacks. I bought a half of lager and a Gruyere bagel, and asked the barman how he managed to stay open. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, polishing a glass with his tea-towel. ‘Evenings, we’re packed out.'
‘Don’t they eat lunch? Where are they now?’
‘How should I know?’ Now he was looking vexed, as though I were distracting him from his polishing manoeuvres. I left him to it and wandered away with my drink and bagel to examine the small collection of oils hanging on the far wall. They were primitive in concept and execution, but there was one painting I liked: a picture of a tower-block, not in the Multiglom mould, but the chunky type to be seen on any sixties-built housing estate. Halfway up the building a big white ghost was leaning over a balcony, howling and flapping its sheeted arms in the air. I didn’t know why, but the picture made me laugh.
I settled down at a table near the window and watched people going in and out of Multiglom. I sat there for half an hour, dipping my lager and smoking cigarettes, and all in all, only two people went in, and only one came out. The one who came out was one of the two who had gone in, and he came out again pretty smartly, as though he’d been turned away at reception. I wasn’t sure I could get much further, but it was time to give it my best shot. A last cigarette for luck, and I was strolling, ever so casually, across the street.
One of the guards looked me up and down as I approached, but concluded I wasn’t an interesting enough specimen to be dragged off to the nearest death camp and watched impassively as I wrestled with the heavy revolving doors. I plunged through them into a different world. The daylight was blotted out and replaced by flat white lighting which bounced off the white marble and made me pull up, dazzled. It was like being in an empty cathedral. The floor was as vast and as slippery as an ice-rink, and the walls stretched upward for fifty feet or more, branching out as they rose into a high-vaulted ceiling. There were no chairs, no potted plants, no ashtrays on stems, and no magazines to flick through. Visitors, like diners in McDonald’s, were not encouraged to linger.
It took me about fifteen seconds to walk from the doors to the reception desk, but it felt like five minutes. So white and shiny was the floor, I found myself sneaking backward glances to check I wasn’t leaving a trail of dirty footprints. The reception desk itself was built on a sort of dais, designed so the receptionists could look down their noses at me as I approached. Both of them were dressed in black. I felt like kicking myself; I should have gone back to black, just this once, to blend in. But it was too late: here I was in Prince of Wales check, and it was obviously a serious infringement of the dress code.
I found myself gazing up at the nearer of the women. There was something unnatural about her skin. It was too smooth, as though the foundation beneath the powder had been a thin layer of liquid latex. Or perhaps it was the lighting, which made everything look flat and white and dead. Her facial expression would have made her a fortune at poker. She arched an eyebrow, no more than a fraction of a millimetre. 'Yes?'
'Uh,' I said. 'Which floor is Bellini?' As the words came out of my mouth I realized the acoustics made my voice sound high-pitched and squeaky, like Mickey Mouse. The receptionist's reply, on the other hand, bore all the hallmarks of one who had majored in voice projection.
'Do you have an appointment?' she boomed.
'I didn't know I needed one.'
'You have to have an appointment.'
'I want to see Rose Murasaki. I knew her back in '75.'
Poker-Face barely cracked. She turned and punched out some numbers on a telephone. 'There is a person here,' she said into the receiver, 'who says she used to know the Editor.' She spoke as though she didn't believe a word of it.
There was a faint buzzing. Poker-Face turned back to me. 'What do you do?'
I explained. 'Creative consultant, freelance,' she echoed into the phone as though the words were descriptive of some unpleasant disease of the digestive tract. Then she hung up and said, 'Thirty-second floor. Lifts over there.'
I smiled weakly, and went off to summon a lift. While I was waiting for it, I scanned the small print on the floor guide. Micromart, Superdish, Pharmatex, Hi-Vista, Deforest, Double Image... and there, up against numbers thirty-two and thirty-three - Bellini.
The lift arrived and I stepped inside. The walls were stainless-steel inlaid with strips of solid black Perspex. It was a bit like a hi-tech microwave. I pushed the button for the thirty-second floor, half expecting my head to explode, but instead the doors closed. I didn't normally feel nervous in lifts, but this one made me feel as though a troupe of flamenco dancers were
stomping all over my grave. The upward movement was as quick and smooth as the speed of light, but it was accompanied by an unpleasant clanking sound which set me thinking about all the movies I'd seen in which elevators plummeted down shafts so fast their occupants were plastered against the ceiling or sliced in half by steel cables snapped free from their moorings.
Not before time, the doors slid open. I stumbled out on to thick green carpet, into another reception area, though this was cosier than the one downstairs. Here there were no right-angles, only curves, but the same flat white light as below. And the receptionist looked as though she had graduated from the same charm school, except she was blonde, like Eva Peron. She was perched over some kind of Starship Enterprise console fitted with monitors and a couple of keyboards. From somewhere beyond a doorway to her left came a faint flutter of electronic sound. The place wasn't exactly bustling.
She looked up as I approached. 'You want to make an appointment.'
'I'd like to see the Editor.'
'That's right. You want to make an appointment.'
'Is she in?'
'She can't see you today. You need an appointment.'
'Oh, all right.' There didn't seem any other way of getting to meet Rose Murasaki. 'I'll make an appointment.'
Eva Peron was checking one of her screens. 'When?'
'Tomorrow?' I said hopefully.
She laughed derisively. 'Impossible. I can't fit you in until next week, at least.'
So why ask, I thought. Out loud I said, 'That'll have to do.'
She tip-tapped at the keyboard and inspected something which came up on her monitor. I leant forward and tried to inspect it too, but she flashed me such a look of fury that I shrank back, grinning fatuously and pretending my action had been part of a neck-flexing exercise.
'Next week. The 14th,' she said finally.
'Nothing before that?'
'The 14th. Take it or leave it.'
'OK, OK. The 14th. What time?'
'Nine.'
I winced. Nine was pushing it. I wasn't used to doing business until well after ten, with my brain kick-started by at least two jugs of strong black coffee. 'Can't you make it a bit later?'
She sighed as though I was putting her to enormous trouble. 'Ten o'clock? Midnight?'
'Midnight?' It took a while for this to sink in. 'You mean nine o'clock in the evening?'
She blinked. Once. Twice. 'Our Editor has a very full schedule. She often takes meetings at night.'
'In that case, nine o'clock will be just fine.'
She sighed again. 'Name?'
I missed a beat, but not so as she noticed. Something inside me suggested it would be prudent to keep a low profile. On the other hand, I might just have been fibbing out of habit. 'Patricia Rice,' I said.
'Address?'
I gave her Patricia's address and telephone number, and she punched them into the computer. As I watched her fingers on the keys, I had what seemed like a smart idea. 'Any chance of some back issues?'
She stared at me as though I'd asked her to remove her clothes. 'There have only ever been two issues of the magazine.'
'Well, perhaps you could spare a couple.'
Her mouth twitched. I thought she was going to tell me to get lost, but she didn't. 'Please wait,' she said, and disappeared through the door to her left. I could hear her talking, but I couldn't hear what was being said.
I have never been computer literate. I could operate simple word-processing software, but the finer points of bytes, pips, and programs left me at the starting-point. Still, Eva Peron didn't appear to be in the Albert Einstein class, and she was coping. I hovered long enough to check she wasn't coming straight back, and then I leant across the reception desk and examined the monitor - just in time to see Patricia Rice's name and address flicker on the screen, and vanish.
I thought I'd stopped being the sort of person who takes risks. I'd taken a few back in the early days, when I'd been younger, with an imagination which had not yet expanded to encompass the full range of unpleasant things that can happen to a person. But once again I was experiencing the weird sensation of the world shifting beneath my feet. Rocky times called for reckless behaviour. I slapped the EXIT key and the screen ticked over until we were back in the basic launchpad system. Quickly, I scrolled through the databank to see if I recognized any of the names. ARTEMIS. ARTISTIC AGENCIES. ARTISTS INC. ARTO. ASTRA. ASTROPOLOUS. They unfurled on the screen at a rate of knots. I zapped through the Bs and Cs. One or two companies I'd heard of, but nothing of interest. I had the vague intention of getting as far as M for MURASAKI. But then I saw DINO.
I could still hear the murmur of voices beyond the door, so I punched into what I thought was inspection mode. A load of indecipherable rubbish came up. I pressed exit and enter and return and I ended up with an address: Studio E, 174 London Bridge Road. I tried punching my way back into the main file, but I must have pressed the wrong key. The screen went blank except for a single word in the top left-hand corner: ROTNACHT. I pressed what I thought was the correct key (but hadn't 1 pressed that one before?) and the word disappeared, but then it was back again: ROTNACHT. Now it was flashing on and off. ROTNACHT. ROTNACHT. ROTNACHT. I panicked, pressed EXIT and ENTER and CANCEL and STOP and the word disappeared again and I was just wondering whether I'd erased all the other data in the process when I realized the murmur of voices in the next room had died away.
I straightened up with a sinking feeling. Eva Peron was leaning against the doorframe, watching me with her arms folded. She smiled, but I wished she hadn't. 'Seen anything you like?' she asked, sauntering over, holding out my two back issues. I took them, even though I didn't particularly want them any more.
'Not really,' I said. 'I was just trying your computer, but I don't think I'll buy one like this. It's much too complicated.'
She sat down and scrolled back through the files, trying to work out how much I'd seen. 'This is a specialist machine,' she said frostily.
'I thought as much,' I said, shuffling towards the lifts.
'Thank you...' she said, looking directly at me. 'Miss Rice,' she said, as though she'd always known it wasn't my real name, and smiled again.
'Bye,' I said, pressing the down button. The microwave door slid open. I remember thinking how odd it was, in a building that size, with that capacity, that the lift I had come up in was exactly where I'd left it - ready and waiting to take me down again.
Chapter 5
Duncan and I had arranged to meet in one of the few Soho streets which had not yet been redeveloped as a parade of upmarket eateries, which could still boast one or two Girls in Bed signs, and a sex shop full of inflatable dolls and crotchless panties. The cafe was next door. It was a lousy cafe; it didn't even do cappuccino, but it had the advantage of being undiscovered by bright young media folk and it had never been written about in the Good Food Guide, so there were always plenty of empty tables.
In thirteen years nothing had changed. The radio was tuned to a station which played nothing but Slade and Showaddywaddy. In the corner, the same faded poster for a peach-flavoured aperitif called Sex Appeal. On the walls, the same bleached prints of the Bay of Naples. The contents of the sweet-trolley looked suspiciously familiar as well: the same strawberry gateau with its dusty Quick-Jel filling, the same primordial slime the waiters claimed was Tiramisu, and profiteroles which had calcified into geological specimens.
'The place hasn't changed at all,' I remarked, stirring sugar into my cup. I didn't usually take sugar, but the coffee hadn't changed either; it was so disgusting it needed all the help it could get.
'Hasn't it?' Duncan said absent-mindedly. 'I wouldn't know. I've never been here before.'
My jaw dropped. 'Yes, you have.'
He was puzzled by my insistence. 'No, I don't think so.' I felt like shaking him. Wake up! What kind of spell did she put on you? Not for the first time, I wondered what was going on in his head. Was all the time he spent with me so forgettable? Which pieces of the pas
t did he bring out and mull over in his private moments? Did any of them include me, or were they all memories of Violet? Maybe all the booze and pills had given him brain damage. My own memory wasn't so hot, but I'd always been able to recall certain occasions in the minutest detail. I could even remember what people had been wearing. That Saturday, thirteen years ago, for instance: he'd been in a green corduroy jacket; I'd been wearing a black crepe dress which I had bought from an Oxfam shop. That had been back in the days when I'd still been wearing black.
I buried the memories and described my trip to the Multiglom Tower. This was what Duncan had been waiting for. He'd heard some of it on the phone already, but now he leant forward, listening intently as I ran through it again. I gave him a fairly straight account, but played down my feeling of having been caught trespassing in a high-security morgue.
'But you didn't get to see her,' he said at last.
'Who? Murasaki? You're kidding. It's like getting an audience with the Pope. I've got to stand in line with everyone else. But I made an appointment for Monday.'
'It's her. I know it is. It has to be her.'
'If it is, she's come up in the world. Her standard of living has improved.' I was on the verge of saying too much, and swallowed the rest, but Duncan didn't appear to have noticed anything. 'Those offices are pretty plush,' I added quickly.
'She always did have resources.'
'I should say. I was looking through those back issues. You should see the bylines - all the really big guns.'
'That's what I was afraid of,' Duncan said. He reached across the table and took one of my cigarettes.
'I thought you'd given up.' That was the trouble with non-smokers. They invariably helped themselves to other people's cigarettes, never bought their own.