Bleeding London

by Geoff Nicholson

  He realized the absurdity of lying there listening to these other problems when he had plenty of his own. His rejection of Judy which might have felt like an act of faithfulness, or at least of well-intentioned self-denial, in reality felt like an act of neurosis, aggression and self-destruction. He kept listening to the radio, hoping it would stop him thinking about: what a fool he’d been.

  The last caller of the night was identified as Judy. The voice was now unmistakable. She said she’d called last week about al fresco sex but now there was something else she wanted to talk about. She was told to state her problem as briefly as possible because the show was nearly over.

  She said, ‘There’s someone I want to sleep with but he’s not interested in me. And I think it’s because of where I’m from.’

  The hostess seized on the topic excitedly.

  ‘That’s terrible, Judy,’ she said. ‘Sexism, racism, homophobia, they’re all part of the same mentality, aren’t they? And they’re all terrible, and in some small way we on this programme are doing our best to fight them. And where do you come from, Judy?’

  ‘I come from Bethnal Green.’

  ‘Yes, but where do you come from originally?’

  ‘Streatham.’

  ‘Yes, but your ethnic background?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s got anything to do with my ethnic background. I think he won’t sleep with me because I’m from London.’

  Suddenly the closing music was playing and the hostess was saying, ‘And I’m sorry we don’t have more time to discuss that one. Maybe next week. For now it’s good night, London, sleep wisely and not too well. Ciao.’

  Mick was not sure what he’d heard and he wished he didn’t care, but later that night his dreams proved otherwise. They were full of images of jigsaw pieces, naked Japanese men, Judy running all over London following the dictates of some sexual game she had devised for herself, and there at the centre of it all, for no reason other than dream logic, was Jonathan Sands, a man on whom Mick urgently intended to take revenge.

  MARINA

  Mick Wilton sat at the bar in one of the expensive, laughable hotels at Chelsea Harbour. He was reading a leaflet he’d picked up. It extolled the virtues of the Thames Barrier, both as an engineering feat and as a tourist attraction. It went so far as to claim that the Thames Barrier was the ‘Eighth wonder of the world’.

  Mick, naturally enough, had never been to the Thames Barrier, though he did remember seeing something about it on TV, and he thought this leaflet might be overstating the case. He read how the barrier was the world’s largest movable flood barrier, though it didn’t name any of the world’s other flood barriers, movable or not. The barrier was said to be a great triumph for British designers and constructors although apparently some ‘Dutch specialists’ had also been involved. And then the leaflet said that a visit to the barrier was a ‘memorable experience’. He thought this was pretty weak. A visit to Madame Tussaud’s might be a memorable experience. A visit to the eighth wonder of the world ought to be something a lot more dramatic.

  Mick was bored, by the leaflet, by his surroundings, by the waiting. It would soon be time to deal with Jonathan Sands, but it was only fair to wait, to give him a chance to finish the business he was currently engaged in. Mick looked at his watch. Another ten minutes then he’d have him.

  With its new hotels and restaurants and blocks of flats, Chelsea Harbour looked like a resort out of season, deserted, ominously clean and ordered, something futuristic and authoritarian. There were lumps of modern sculpture dotted about, all new, all looking as though they had been bought off the peg to give the area a bit of class.

  Mick felt out of place, but who wouldn’t? There were only two other people in the bar, otherwise everyone he saw was an employee of the harbour, carrying tools, buckets, bundles of electric cable.

  He looked towards the angular, irregularly shaped marina. It was small, no wider across than an easy stone’s throw, and that was where the boats were moored, not many of them either, not more than fifty. The jetties were new and recently swept and well endowed with ‘Keep Out’ signs. The marina connected to the river via a long, narrow lock and Mick was amused to see a traffic light on the marina side. To Mick it looked like no more than a car-park with water, but the boats themselves were a lot more impressive than the kind of thing you’d find in most car-parks. Some were sleek white wedges of state-of-the-art machinery, with great tangles of navigational gear atop them. Others belonged to the classic school, older, more soulful craft with varnished wooden cabins, teak decks, curls of gleaming brass.

  Mick had always detected something nautical about the way Jonathan Sands dressed out of work hours. He’d seen him wearing bright red and blue waterproof jackets with too many zips and pockets, with elasticated cuffs and storm flaps. Sands’ boat was a motor cruiser, about forty feet long, sleek, all white and silver and angled glass. Inside it was spacious, with a central wheelhouse saloon, and two separate cabins, one fore, one aft, each of these spaces being considerably larger than Mick’s room at the Dickens.

  Mick had followed Sands to the harbour a couple of times previously. Sands seemed to go there for some sort of solace for peace and quiet, away from his wife and child. Once there he usually simply sat inside the boat, lounging on one of the padded benches in the wheelhouse saloon, doing nothing except sit and stare. It would have been easy enough for Mick to pick him off on these occasions but the perfect moment hadn’t yet presented itself.

  Tonight the pattern had changed. Sands had returned late from work, stayed in the house just long enough to change his clothes, then gone out again. But instead of heading for the harbour he’d gone to an expensive bar off the King’s Road that was done out like a Mexican cantina.

  Sands was a good-looking man. In certain ways he was more classically handsome than Justin Carr. His face was more conventionally that of a film star, and he carried himself in a manner that advertised his wealth, his style, his self-confidence. He would never have trouble picking up women. Nevertheless, Mick was surprised when Sands left the bar after only an hour or so with two girls in tow. They were very young, very drunk, very King’s Road, and Sands had one on each arm. He hailed a taxi and Mick watched as they drove away. There was a great temptation to get into another cab and pursue them but Mick resisted. He knew Sands would be taking them to his boat, and Mick certainly intended to follow them, but the time it would take him to walk there would be just enough for the party to get into full swing.

  Sure enough, as Mick entered the marina he could see that the lights were on in the aft cabin of Sands’ boat, and that the curtains had been hastily drawn, so hastily that they didn’t quite meet, and once he’d positioned himself directly outside the window, he was able to see in through the thin gap.

  He peered in. The cabin was done out as a bedroom, with wood panels and brass light-fittings, and most of the floor space was taken up by the bed, the foot of which was curved to fit into the specific contours of the boat. Sands was at the centre of the bed, naked and happy, looking regal, lordly, captain-like, and he still had a girl on either side of him, but now they were also naked, lying flat on their stomachs, their firm little buttocks raised and taut as they wriggled around and took turns sucking Sands’ cock.

  Mick thought of Sands’ wife alone in that big Chelsea house, looking after the child. He thought what a shit Sands was. It was easy enough to feel disapproval, distaste, but at the same time Mick found it impossible not to be a little envious. He’d never been to bed with two girls at once, never had two girls take turns sucking his cock. He tried to stop himself thinking about it. He couldn’t allow himself to be envious. He had to be a better man than Sands, so that he retained the authority to hand out punishment.

  As Mick continued to watch, the two girls started kissing each other, started touching each other’s breasts. He had to walk away. It was too much for him. He felt unbearably cold and alone. He saw himself as though from a distance. He was a sa
d outsider peering in at somebody else’s good time, desperate for warmth and having to make do with revenge.

  And yet he knew that when the moment came, punishing Sands would be particularly sweet. But that moment hadn’t arrived yet. It would only come after the girls had been finished with and packed off home. That was why he had to wait. That was why he was in the hotel bar, reading a leaflet about the Thames Barrier, waiting for Sands to finish.

  When the time was right Mick downed his drink and sauntered back to the marina. He was on time. When he got to the boat the girls had gone, the light was off in the aft cabin and Sands was again to be seen sitting alone in the wheelhouse saloon. He was wearing a nautical T-shirt, jeans, no shoes, and even though the hatch was open to the cold night he didn’t seem to feel it. Mick walked up to the hatch and said cheerfully, ‘Nice boat.’

  ‘Oh, well, thank you,’ Sands replied.

  He was not surprised or startled by Mick’s sudden, unannounced presence but the politeness of his response was automatic, not to be taken as a willingness to talk. His thoughts were a long way away.

  ‘This is the Turbo thirty-six, isn’t it?’ Mick asked, having read the name on the side of the boat.

  ‘That’s right,’ Sands said.

  ‘What’s your top speed?’

  ‘It’s very happy doing twenty-five, twenty-seven knots,’ Sands said, then realizing he might be sinking into an unwanted conversation with a dodgy stranger he said, ‘Do you own a boat here? If not I should point out that this is a private jetty and we have very good security.’

  ‘That’s my boat over there,’ Mick said, and he gestured with all possible vagueness towards the boats in the centre of the marina.

  Sands was not convinced but he didn’t intend to cross-question this intruder. He just wanted him to go away. He decided to ignore him. He turned his body, said nothing and sank back into his brooding silence, and Mick seized this moment of weak acquiescence to step on to the boat and in through the hatch.

  ‘I wonder if I can borrow a cup of sugar,’ he said as he entered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Isn’t that what new neighbours are always supposed to ask for?’

  ‘I think you should get off my boat at once,’ Sands said.

  He moved towards Mick, his intentions vague though hostile, but Mick only smiled. He continued to smile as Sands tried to grab him by the arm and frogmarch him off the boat, but Mick wasn’t having any of that. He turned, slipped out of Sands’ grasp and kneed him in the balls with neat, well-directed force. Sands crumpled. He sagged. Mick took Sands’ outstretched arm and dragged him across to the wheel, and in one sharp, dexterous manoeuvre he handcuffed him to it.

  ‘OK,’ Mick said. ‘What’s going to happen is this. You’re going to get your boat in motion, get it on the river, point it upstream. Then I’m going to start asking you questions about London, twenty questions in all, from out of this book.’ He waved the copy of Unreliable London that he’d bought from Judy’s shop. He’d always known he’d find a use for it. Then, each time you get an answer right we’ll go forward to the next bridge and so on. If you get one wrong, don’t worry, there’s no penalty, you don’t have to go into reverse or anything.

  ‘And so it goes on for twenty questions. Now, for our purposes I’m going to call the Thames Barrier a bridge as well, the final one, like the winning post. And I’m not going to count Hungerford or Cannon Street ’cos they both look like poxy little bridges on the map. And if we’ve arrived at the Thames Barrier by the time you’ve answered the twentieth question I’ll ask you to put me ashore and you can go happily on your way. Look at it another way, there are eleven bridges before the barrier, so if you can answer twelve questions right out of twenty you’re home and dry. OK?’

  Sands looked at him in frightened bafflement. He had no idea what was going on, but the handcuff on his wrist told him it was serious. Coming so soon after the session with the girls it had a preternatural air of divine retribution about it.

  ‘I can’t do that,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes, you can,’ said Mick, and he clubbed him round the back of the head with his fist.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to,’ Sands said wretchedly, ‘but the fact is, the tide is out.’

  Mick thought for a moment. He knew nothing about rivers and tides and Sands had no reason to be telling him the truth. But then he remembered that when he’d done a circuit of the marina earlier he’d walked past the lock and it had indeed been dry, and the river end of it had opened out on to nothing but a wide mud bank. It dawned on him that Sands was probably telling the truth.

  ‘Oops,’ said Mick. ‘Bit of a balls-up, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to think about this.’

  He began to think, looking round the cabin for inspiration. He saw a stack of nautical charts and immediately saw that they offered possibilities, since a couple of them showed the Thames in a scale that he could deal with.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘It’s a shame about the tide, because I was really looking forward to the boat trip, but I guess we’re just going to have to do it theoretically, do it in miniature like a board game, OK? And I think we’re going to have to conduct it in one of the cabins so that you can’t try anything funny like attracting a security guard.’

  Mick unlocked one end of the handcuffs and Sands immediately launched himself forward away from Mick, trying to break free and escape from the boat. Mick yanked him back, grabbed his hair, smashed his face against the wheel, and dragged him into the aft cabin. The bed was still unmade from when he’d been there with the girls. The room smelled of women’s perfume, not cheap. Wine bottles and drug paraphernalia were scattered about the tiny area of unused floor. Mick clocked them with disgust and knocked Sands about a little more harshly as he handcuffed him to a suitable light fitting.

  He stripped the covers off the bed to give himself a flat surface on which to lay out the charts. Sands felt the blood running out of his nose and watched Mick in continuing confusion.

  ‘OK,’ Mick said, jabbing the map with his finger, ‘you’re here. If you answer this first question right, then off we go upriver to Battersea Bridge. Here, I’ll make it easier for you to see where you are,’ and he reached into his pocket and produced a tiny model ship, a counter from a game of Monopoly, which he placed in the centre of the river, outside Chelsea Harbour.

  ‘Number one,’ Mick began. ‘Who said that when a man is tired of London he’s tired of life?’

  Sands looked at him suspiciously. Could he really be asking such a ridiculously simple question? Well, possibly. Perhaps that was only an overfamiliar quotation if you happened to be a Londoner.

  ‘What on earth makes you think that I’m going to play this ludicrous game?’ Sands asked.

  Mick looked hurt, as though Sands’ failure to understand was a personal slight and a great disappointment to him.

  ‘You’re going to play out of fear,’ Mick explained. ‘Because if you don’t play then I’ll inflict all sorts of terrible pain on you, and I assume you’d rather I didn’t do that. Why not play a ludicrous game if it saves you getting a beating?’

  Sands nodded. He wasn’t stupid. There was already no doubt that Mick could inflict a very efficient beating on him. If playing along was going to gain him even the smallest advantage he realized he might as well do it. He said, ‘As a matter of fact the answer is Samuel Johnson.’

  ‘I’ve got Dr Johnson down here,’ Mick said, ‘but I guess that’s near enough. That’s very good. How did you know that?’

  ‘My expensive education wasn’t a complete waste of money,’ Sands replied.

  Mick moved the tiny boat along the chart, sat it on Battersea Bridge and said, ‘Then you’ll probably get this one. Question two: in which London square will you find a statue of Mahatma Gandhi?’

  ‘No idea,’ Sands said dismissively.

  ‘Don’t want to guess?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘It’s Tavistock Square. Hard lines.’


  Sands shrugged to show it meant nothing to him. Mick thumbed through the book looking for another question and said, ‘It must be nice coming here of an evening, watching the ships roll in and then watching them roll away again.’

  ‘I like it,’ Sands replied.

  ‘But it must cost a packet to keep a boat here.’

  ‘Yes, mooring fees aren’t cheap.’

  ‘You ought to tie your boat up in Filey or Robin Hood’s Bay, somewhere a bit more scenic.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I happen to live and work in London.’

  ‘What line of work are you in then?’

  ‘Insurance,’ he said.

  ‘We have insurance in Yorkshire too,’ said Mick.

  ‘I’m in marine insurance. You need to be in London if you’re in marine insurance.’

  ‘Yeah. Obviously. Because you see so many boats in London, don’t you?’

  Sands gave a lightly exasperated sigh. In his current circumstances he was not inclined to embark on an explanation of the workings of the marine insurance industry.

  ‘Forgive my ignorance,’ Mick said. ‘Right, question number three: how many black cabs were there in London in 1982? It’s an old book. I assume they must have had a recount since then, but go on Have a guess, to the nearest thousand.’

  ‘Twelve thousand,’ Sands said.

  ‘Hey, not bad, I’ll give you that. Was that a guess? The answer’s 12,560, and they were all diesel except for seventeen of them. You’re doing well. Now tell me, how do you get two girls to go to bed with you just like that, the way you did with those two tonight? This isn’t one of the twenty questions by the way. I mean, what do you say to them? How do you get the conversation round to the subject of three-in-a-bed sex?’

  ‘Charm has something to do with it,’ Sands said. ‘And offering to give them drugs.’

  ‘You give them drugs?’

  ‘I offer them drugs. I don’t slip them a Mickey Finn.’

  ‘Drugs,’ Mick tutted. ‘Don’t you have any respect for your sexual partners?’