by Claire Peate
“I remember that.”
“And we drank.”
“Did Babs drink?”
“Don’t you remember?”
“No! Remember what?”
“Don’t you remember what Babs did?”
“No! What did Babs do?”
“Well her boyfriend came home.”
“Oh yes I do remember that. He was very young wasn’t he?”
“And you said that you had a pole in the cellar.”
“Oh… I didn’t did I? Did I tell her about the dancing pole?”
“You did. And her boyfriend and I went to get it.”
“Ye-es.” I said, the memory coming back to me now.
“And then he and Babs went upstairs. With the pole.”
There was a silence in the bed, the only sound was Finley slightly snoring at our feet.
“And we…”
“We carried on drinking in her kitchen.”
“While they were upstairs?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“With the pole?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, God.”
“And then we came home.”
“Yes.”
“And then we came up here.”
“A-ha.”
“And then…”
“We talked?” I said.
“No Edda. We didn’t talk.”
“Did we?”
“Did we what?”
“You know…”
“No. We didn’t.”
“Oh.” I lay there, looking at him across the pillow.
“You have a very nice body,” he said in a hoarse voice.
“So have you.”
“Thank you.” And then he reached over and pulled the two together.
I staggered out of the bedroom, pulling my dress on in a bid to exhibit at least some modesty. I clutched the banister as I hurtled down stairs on legs that refused to work properly. Reality seemed rather blurry. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the phone. It had been ringing almost constantly for the last ten minutes and we’d done our best to ignore it, but clearly somebody somewhere very much wanted to speak to one of us.
“Edda!”
It took a moment for me to place the voice. “Beth!”
“Where have you been?”
It took me a split second to decide that I shouldn’t answer that question directly. Where I had been required a long and detailed conversation delivered in person. “What time is it?” I said.
“It’s three o’clock!” Beth sounded slightly breathless.
“Is it?” I started laughing. “Is it really?” And then I sobered up in an instant. “Are you OK? Is the baby coming?”
“I’m fine. Why were you laughing – what’s going on today?”
“Oh. Nothing. Well. No – I’ll tell you when I see you. When are you next coming over to?”
“Eds! Eds do you know your road is on the national news?”
“What?” I sobered up in a flash. Robert was coming down the stairs, deliciously bed-headed and rumple-shirted.
“Eds, I’ve been watching Geoffrey Road on the BBC news for the last ten minutes. I even saw your house when the presenter was walking past it! Something really big has happened in Brockley.”
Oh God. Things were starting to slip into place. Yesterday at Babs’. Tyrone. Robert’s Big Plan…
“The police have sealed all the streets off around Brockley Cross. The radio said there are no trains or buses stopping there all day. The local news called Brockley a lock down.”
“What’s happened Beth?”
“Edda, how the bloody hell should I know? I am calling you on your home phone aren’t I? How can you be at home and not know that something’s going on?”
“Hmmm,” I said, realising that yes, actually, I could hear strange noises outside and the sound of at least two helicopters fairly nearby.
“The people on the news aren’t able to say anything yet. They’re just calling it a significant incident, but that there hasn’t been any loss of life.”
Of course not. Loss of life hadn’t been in Robert’s Big Plan.
“How come you don’t know about it?”
“I?”
“Oh God, Eds! You’re not loved up with that artist bloke are you?” she said. “You’re not doing that all-day-in-bed thing are you? Oh I hate you! I hate you!”
“Right idea, wrong man.” I whispered as Robert left the kitchen.
“What? What? Damn your eyes!” Beth said on the other end of the phone. “Call me back when you’re free to talk. But in the meantime put some knickers on and get dressed. Find out what the big deal is with Brockley!”
She hung up and I put the phone back on the kitchen shelf.
“It’s done?” Robert said, sitting on the bottom stair.
“Sounds like it,” I said. “Beth told me it’s all over the news.”
He was laughing and, joining him on the staircase I couldn’t help but laugh along with him. “Oh, bloody hell,” I said, “bloody hell.”
“Shall we go and investigate?”
It was obvious that something major had happened the minute we stepped out of the knot garden. A police riot van was mounted half on the pavement opposite my house where the skip had once been, and towards Brockley Cross there were policemen everywhere. And the noise … crowds talking, people shouting, sirens, car horns on blocked roads further away. It was mayhem.
Dazed, Robert and I walked out into the street, his hand finding mine and making me feel fizzier than a Sherbet Dip Dab.
“No Babs, I see.” Robert said and I looked up to her house. The curtains were closed and the front door shut.
“Sleeping it off,” I said.
“Or keeping a low profile.”
Robert closed the gate behind us. “It’s the plan isn’t it? All these people and all this police presence. Tyrone must have carried out the plan last night.”
“Oh God.”
“Are you ready to see our work?”
“I think so.” I bit my lip. “There’s no turning back now is there?”
“No. Come on.”
My heart was pounding in my chest as we walked, hand in hand, down towards Brockley Cross, threading our way through the curious locals: one more of them gangs’ work ain’t it, and frightened newcomers: I just worry that it’s going to bring down our asking price.
“Look at V-2,” I pulled Robert to the café. There were four police officers standing at the front of the café, one of whom was talking to one of the new girls who worked there. She looked terrified. As we drew nearer I could see a note pinned to the window: Gone to beach. Back (no time) soon.
“So he’s gone…” I said, feeling relief that they’d got out before all this hit. Neil had escaped at last.
“Edda!” Robert pointed to the other window. There was the first of them: a stencil of fox in a pinstriped suit and smoking an enormous cigar with one paw squashing down a rabbit’s head. The rabbit was splayed out beneath the fox and in one paw it had a crumpled and spilt coffee cup. FORCED 2 WORK was sprayed across the window.
A woman beside us leant in to me. “I don’t see why everyone’s going so crazy about it. There’s graffiti all over London. Why they have to close down Brockley because of this is a mystery. I mean it’s good and all, the fox is brilliant, but it’s not a Banksy is it? Or is it?”
“You really think it’s brilliant?” I asked, swelling with pride. “You think the fox is brilliant?”
“Come on, you.” Robert put a hand behind my back and propelled me away.
“It ain’t the quality,” a man in a cloth cap piped up, “it’s the quantity ain’t it? There’s loads of the bleedin’ stuff all over the place, on them posh shops.” He had a bull terrier with him, tied on a piece of blue nylon rope at his side.
“Edda, stop staring at him.” Robert hissed in my ear.
“God. Sorry. But he has a cloth cap and a dog on a string.”
“Look at this, then,” Rober
t took me by the arm and led me to Fox Estates where two policemen were standing on either side of the doorway and inside were more policemen and what must have been detectives going through paperwork.
And across the spotlessly clean plate glass window was sprayed X MARKS DE SPOT.
“Oh my God.”
“Hey it came out really well.” Robert nodded to the stencil of a fox standing upright, tailored in a pin-striped suit, fanning himself with a paw full of bank notes. And, poking out of the back of his stripy suit jacket – a thick, arched tail. “I didn’t think the pinstripes would come out because they were so fine. It’s a good job you had that craft knife, I’d never be able to have done it with Tyrone’s blade. He did a good job spraying them on.”
“Or you could shut up.” I said, jabbing him in the ribs. At least one person had overheard what he’d said and was looking curiously in our direction.
“Can you see Eustace?” I whispered, craning my neck over the crowds on the street and looking into the busy estate agency. There must have been ten policemen in the building.
“No. Is there a back room or an upstairs? If they’re questioning him on-site they’ll probably do it away from all these people.” Robert turned to me. “How are you feeling?”
“Scared,” I said. “And excited. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. Come on, let’s see what else there is.”
On a mission, now, Robert and I sped on, through denser crowds and round the corner to the Petit Marché. A pool of brilliant red paint was puddled on the pavement with a thin trickle running from the door of Mr Iqbal’s shop. In the same vibrant red but spray-painted onto the window was the word VICTIM with two bikini-clad Miss-World types stencilled either side, posing in a mock-shocked attitude, mouths open and hands on foreheads.
“Yours?” Robert asked.
“Yup. Well, Tyrone’s, of course, but modified by me.”
“It’s very good. I didn’t see that you’d done that one.”
“Edna and Robert!” Mr Iqbal emerged from the store. “Here, have a nut bar, my dear customers! Well what a very exciting day this is, don’t you think so? What a day for Brockley!”
“Thanks.” Robert took the nut bar and immediately tucked in. I looked at him, horrified. He obviously wasn’t sufficiently scared and unnerved by what was going on for his appetite to be suppressed. I, on the other hand, felt so nauseous that I would never be able to eat again in my entire life. Everyone around us – the police, the people, the TV crews – was here because of something I had done, because of an idea that the man beside me had come up with. It seemed incredible that we could pass through the crowds completely unnoticed because – to me – it felt as though there was an enormous red flashing arrow above my head with the word GUILTY above it.
“And take a look, here, at my window.” Mr Iqbal pointed, proudly, at the stencil we had cut for him.
“It’ll wash off.” I said to Mr Iqbal. “You haven’t got any paint on the woodwork so it should all go.”
“Oh I like it, Edna.” He turned to the bikini women. “I’ve had so much interest in it. I gave an interview to the BBC and to Channel 4 and a lovely woman from a newspaper. I gave her a nut bar too, she was very polite. I think it’s very good and I’ve sold so much stock today it’s incredible.” As we stood talking to him I noticed that the basket on the front of the old bike now contained imported tins of coconut milk and packs of rice. “I don’t know why my window has the word ‘victim’ on it though. Perhaps it is because my beautiful trees have been set alight. For that I am very sorry, because they were such a kind gift. But then all the little trees have been set on fire so we are all victims today in Brockley. Do you know what is going on? I really have not one idea.”
“No,” I said. “Is there more round the corner?”
“Go and see,” he said. “And you will think I have escaped lightly, yes?”
He went back into his shop and I turned to face the approach to the station. It was easy to cross the road now that the traffic had been banned: we walked up to the gardens that I had helped dig what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Of all of the stencils we did,” I said, admiring our work, “this was this one that I thought was least likely to work. But it looks great doesn’t it?”
A King-Kong style gorilla with a trowel was standing astride the wall, roaring.
“That is so cool,” Robert said. “You are a guerrilla gorilla graffiti genius!”
To draw the gorilla gardener I’d gone back home to get my Child’s Picture Book with its double page picture of King Kong, which Tyrone copied and I had embellished with his help: no that won’t work sprayed up, you need more fur here…
I’d wondered, while I cut out the gorilla, just what my parents would have thought if they had known how the book was going to be used: “To Edda,” said the inscription on the front page, “Happy Christmas 1982, love Mummy and Daddy xxx”. The surprising thing had been that I hadn’t felt sad when I’d seen it: far from it I’d felt happy, happy that in some silly small way my parents were still a part of my life now, thanks to the purchase of a book so many years ago. It was because of them that I had a picture that I could use. Somehow, stupid I know, they were with me.
We left the gorilla and some students taking photographs of it and walked down the road, past Reg’s launderette and on to the deli: I FORCED DA SHOP OUT slashed across the window, a fox bounding along the window with red paws, red paint dripping like blood down the window and pooling again on the pavement. Again at the bistro: PUB LICENZ REJECTED 4 ME, the antique shop: DIS PLACE RENT FREE and on. Foxes running on the windows, leaping on doorways with their bloodied paws and the occasional fox paw print trail in blood red paint on the pavements. Robert had traced them from the same Child’s Picture Book. And everywhere there were burnt bay trees, kicked over into the pavements with their soil scattered and their chains cut from the walls.
“Hi there,” a policeman was suddenly beside me. “Sorry to make you jump,” he opened his pad. “Do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? We’re asking everyone round here.”
“Sure. Fine. Absolutely.” I tried a smile.
“What’s your name, love?”
“Edda Mackenzie.”
“And you live locally?”
“189 Geoffrey Road.” He noted it all down in an official notebook. Robert put an arm around me and held me tight. Which was good as I was shaking so much my voice was starting to go funny.
“And where were you last night?”
“I was at home.”
“Alone?”
“No. With my erm…” I looked to Robert.
“Live-in lover,” he said, absolutely straight-faced.
The policeman didn’t even blink. “I’ll put partner if you don’t object, sir.”
“That’s fine.”
“And did you and your partner see anything or hear anything suspicious in the night? Anything at all?”
“No. We’re pretty heavy sleepers,” Robert said, “aren’t we darling?” He turned to face me.
I could have punched him. “Yes. Yes we are.”
The policeman asked Robert’s name and while he was answering I could see Claude being led out of his bistro and taken to the back of a waiting police car, escorted by two officers.
“Do you have any leads at all?” I asked the policeman. “Do you know anything about what’s behind all this?”
“We’re following up a number of avenues,” he said and then asked us to get in touch if we could think of anything.
We left and wandered back to Fox Estates, where a TV crew were setting up for a transmission.
“I don’t think he’s in there,” I said.
“Do you want to see his house?” Robert said suddenly. “Da Baron might have gone there too.”
“We didn’t talk about that, did we?”
“No, but he might have gone off-plan and decided to do something on his own.”
We turned and walked briskl
y beyond our house – still no Babs next door – and down towards Eustace’s grand villa.
“What do you think Tyrone will have done?” I asked as we walked. “Used more of the fox stencils on Eustace’s house? What good would that do?”
“I have an idea…” Robert said. “It was the way he looked at you when you told him about that soirée you went to at Eustace’s house.”
“What about it?” I asked, but it was too late. We were in Tresillian Road.
“He has been here.” I said. There were more police cars but there were fewer spectators this far away from the main scene of the crime in Brockley Cross.
I couldn’t help laughing. “Oh my God, Robert!” We walked slowly up to Eustace’s house – or as near to it as we were allowed to get what with the police tape rolled out around it.
“That boy,” Robert was laughing, “is a genius! I like Da Notorious Baron’s style!”
I got my phone out and took a picture of the scene before me. “Beth is going to love this!” I looked at the photograph, laughed and then forwarded it on to Beth’s phone.
Positioned in front of Eustace’s house were all the police signs he had ever taken off the streets, listing all the crimes that had been committed in the area: the stabbings and snatchings and muggings.
“Tyrone must have broken in to Eustace’s house last night, liberated and arranged them,” I said. “Can you imagine what Eustace must be thinking right now? The horror at seeing his empire collapse?”
“And there is the man himself,” Robert said and I looked up to see Eustace, in handcuffs, being escorted down the beautiful mosaic-tiled path that I’d walked up seemingly so long ago.
He was scowling hard, and sweating profusely; even from across the road I could see the shine on his ruddy forehead. It took him and the policeman beside him a while to negotiate all the tightly packed police signs and as he did so Eustace looked up straight at us.
Even though I was feeling terrified I managed to summon up the courage to wave at him and Robert gave him the thumbs up. Eustace scowled and was then pushed down into the back of a waiting police car. The car started and it sped down the hill in the direction of Lewisham town centre.
My phone beeped and I read my text. It was from Beth. “ON MY WAY!”
