by John Luxton
“Yo! Banana boy”
Joel looked up and saw a grinning face looking down from the floodwall. Then a shock of red hair appeared; it was Dave and Siobhan; they had come visiting.
Chapter 7
Each morning Sophie liked to check all the deliveries to the Gate herself. The two dozen Guinea Fowl were to be pot roasted for the midweek menu. Closing the door of the cold-room she could hear raised voices coming from the kitchen.
“Bag out you Tazzy loser.”
“You can’t say that, it’s racist.”
“It’s a state, mate, if I had said Aussie, then yes, but Tazzy is fully PC. And I like to practice inclusion throughout the insulting process. Does anyone here feel left out?”
“Are those ruddy monkfish prepped yet?”
“Did them half-hour ago.”
“Well slap my arse and call me Sally. That’s a first.”
Sophie checked the thermometer mounted on the wall and rolled her eyes listening to the banter coming from the kitchen, as her crew prepared for the lunchtime crowd to descend: The overall jist sounded positive, so she slipped away from the kitchen and climbed the creaky back-staircase to her quarters to go over her notes for the lecture.
Whilst living and working at the Gate over the last eighteen months she had developed an interest in local history. She had become fascinated by the remnants of an ancient causeway that ran from the draw dock adjacent to the restaurant; consisting of wooden pilings and stone sets it spanned the river leading to some steps on the far shore. In the Middle Ages the water level was lower so twice a day it was, supposedly, possible to cross the river on foot. She had put together a sequence of slides to show on an overhead projector and had also been working on drawings that showed how the structure would have appeared in medieval times. There was plenty of archaeological evidence of settlements on both sides of the river and she was sure that an inn would have stood on the site now occupied by the Gate. Stands to reason she thought, people waiting around for the tide to drop. Sell them pies, sell them ale, and give them a fire to sit by. It is a business plan any time. Not just in the Middle Ages.
Once in her office Sophie switched on her laptop to look at the notes she had prepared for the tomorrow evening’s talk. She stared at them absently for a few minutes but was unable to concentrate.
A few weeks ago Sophie had been walking along the alley towards the Gate, coming back from the bank, when a guy who looked slightly familiar struck up a conversation. He told her that he had walked down the draw dock slipway at low tide and seen what looked like a coin amongst the stones. It was a thin piece of metal with a face impressed into it. He left it with her so she could do some research. After some searching online it turned out to be a pilgrim’s badge from around the fifteenth century, made from early pewter, which has a high lead content thus protecting it from being corroded by the river water. The face impressed onto it could be Christ or a saint, the idea being to confer protection upon the traveller.
Next day he returned and she told him that he should probably take it to the Museum of London and technically anything found on the foreshore belongs to the Crown. He told her to keep it.
This is how she had met Jim; and since then she had been unable to stop thinking about him. Now as she sat at her desk looking at the pilgrims badge she allowed her thoughts to drift back down the years.
When Sophie was in her early teens, growing up in Bristol, the off-licence down the road was, for a while, owned by a mixed race family. The husband was Trinidadian and his wife was Irish and there were four daughters, each one more beautiful than the next. They all had freckles, reddish hair, almost golden complexions, terrific cheekbones and hypnotic green eyes. Except perhaps daughter number four who she clearly remembered been referred to by a Jamaican school friend, as a real bunga tuffy. So striking was Jim’s physical similarity to those hybrid honeys from Sophie’s schooldays she had wondered if they could be related to one another. She had also been filled with a deep and powerful urge to jump his bones; a thought that she had immediately expunged from her mind; too busy, too much to do, and the certainty that any kind of engagement was more likely to produce pain than the inverse. See here, she had told herself, you are older and wiser; do not board the crazy train.
She and Joel had split up a year ago after an abortive fling. The timing had been wrong, he was still in pointless grieving mode for his previous relationship and she had overwhelmed him with her intensity of need, or was that the other way round? Maybe so, she thought. After they split up she had begun watching his boat. She once followed him to the station. She had then thrown herself into her work and thus stepped back from the brink of obsession. Now she was obsessive and compulsive about other less emotionally critical areas of life.
Sophie closed the lid of the laptop, pushed back her chair, leaving the pilgrim’s badge and her notes on the desk and danced down the first few steps of the staircase. She was meeting Jim tonight having immediately agreed to a date when he called.
* * *
Jim gunned the engine of the Maserati, making the wheels spin in the gravel of the courtyard outside his flat, before nosing out into the evening traffic. Heading for a supper engagement at the house at Regents Park where his father lived with wife number three. But first he had to swing by the Gate and pick up Sophie.
A flashing blue light appeared in his mirrors, then with a truncated warble from its siren the car powered past him. Jim was especially attuned to police vehicles. If the cops inside them were between calls they had a tendency to pull him over. It was to be expected. There were not many six foot three, dread-locked brown men driving Maseratis in this or any other part of London. He usually just flashed the dental work and aired the cut glass accent and they sent him on his way with a patronising smile and a nod.
It was to be the first visit to his dad’s place with Sophie. He had thought of trying to prep her for the meeting but there was, he decided little point as his old man was a “character” and everybody liked him from the get-go. It seemed that only he knew what a cold-hearted bastard his father was, only him, the two ex wives and several business rivals that were no longer on this mortal coil.
Sophie was wearing a green linen trouser suit and a cream blouse. In her high heels she was almost as tall as Jim. As they drove towards Regents Park they were both quiet. The voice coming from the stereo opined that he was ‘out of reach, can’t take no more’.
“Blues singers,” she said. “Always complaining aren’t they?” Her date just smiled.
Because they were early they had decided to have a drink at a nearby pub. The place was crowded but nobody was taking any notice as Sophie ran some lipstick around her lips then pouted and stuck her tongue out at him. He leant forward and reaching out gripped her left earlobe, drew her forward and mashed his lips into hers. She tasted good.
“Hey. You’re smudging me,” She whispered.
Sophie’s bloody Mary was half way down the tall glass already but Jim’s glass was untouched; he took a long drink.
“Look Soph, you know I told you I grew up in Epsom, and that is kind of true, but before that I, I mean we, did live in St Pauls, in Bristol.” He looked into her eyes, which she narrowed in a cartoon manner. “My old man is bound to mention the old days. So I thought I had better come clean.” He looked for a reaction but there was none. Sophie continued to smile at him. “Basically I tracked you down,” he added.
“Sure you did. Shouldn’t we be going? Otherwise we are going to be late. This is all a lot to take in,” she said standing and reaching for her coat.
“I bought the bloody pilgrim’s badge on eBay.” Jim spoke the words quietly but emphatically. Sophie sat back down and rattled the icy residue in the bottom of her glass.
“You had better get me another drink and then you can tell me who the merry hell you are.”
She watched him standing by the bar waiting to be served, and wondered if his actions were romantic, or just plain creepy
&n
bsp; “So?” said Sophie when he returned with their drinks.
“Welcome to real life,” he said. Putting her drink down carefully.
“Pardon.”
“I don’t know about you but for everyone else on this planet, moving towards what you desire is considered normal behaviour.”
She continued to look at him but the corners of her mouth began to turn up a little and her eyes softened. Encouraged by this Jim continued.
“When I was a kid my parents had the shop in Rudge Street where you and your friends used to buy cigarettes and cider.” Her eyebrows went up then down but she said nothing. “And at weekends my brother and I used to skateboard in the street outside. I remember you, even though it was years ago. The way you looked and moved. I just couldn’t forget you Sophie. I guess I had powerful adolescent yearnings. Then all these years later I saw a thing on the Internet for your talk about the causeway. It’s not exactly stalking, is it?”
“It’s called imprinting. You are supposed to get over that stuff,” said Sophie finally.
“I know,” said Jim.
“As soon as I saw you coming out of the underpass I remember thinking of the four sisters from the off license in Rudge Street; I remember them, but not you,” said Sophie. Jim nodded. “What happened to them, no don’t answer. And what is a bunga tuffy?” she asked screwing up her face.
“West Indian patois for a healthy or fat baby,” said Jim looking confused. “Why?”
“Never mind,” said Sophie, putting on her scarf. “Let’s go.”
She gained a further insight into Jim that night when she finally met “Stone Cold” Cuthbert Mcluhan, his father. The sobriquet was from his boxing days. As a young man he had been a skilled exponent and had been tempted into turning professional. However his career in the ring founded at an early stage. The managers of the other fighters on the circuit quickly realised the unpopularity of having their boys knocked out by a UK citizen with a black skin. It was bad enough that big punching American Negroes held all the titles, regularly turning up on these shores to dispense pain and humiliation: Leading to the popular wisdom of the time – never bet on the white boy. So Cuthbert turned away from the gentlemanly art and started to build a business empire instead.
They were only twenty minutes late but Cuth and Marna seemed dressed for bed. They all wrestled with lobster and drank Moet then Cuth showed Sophie his art collection while Jim helped Marna get her computer’s webcam to function.
Sophie felt Cuthbert’s eyes upon her as she was guided around the collection. In a soft and lilting voice he gave the background to his acquisitions. At no point during the evening did he refer to the ‘old days’ as Jim had predicted, erroneously it turned out. Once he touched her shoulder to indicate the way back to the sitting room. A touch so light she thought and yet he must have channelled destructive energy through those same hands in his boxing days.
“How did you love birds meet?” he asked her, nodding towards Jim who was hunched over the computer at the other side of the room. When she replied that they shared an interest in the past,” his grey eyebrows shot upwards.
“Bleedin hell! Your dad’s got a De Chirico,” she had said later when they were in Jim’s car.
“Yeah art is his passion and he can afford to indulge it. Not to put too finer point on it he made a mint from his dodgy connections in The Islands and Miami.”
“Please don’t tell me this.”
“Of course he is totally legitimate now.”
And what about you in all this? Was about to be her next question but suddenly they were back at the Gate so it would have to wait.
She had however discovered that Jim was a twin; there was a photograph that Cuthbert had pointed out to her on the wall behind his desk; two skinny boys in swimming trunks laughing, standing on the deck of a boat. They looked identical.
“They were best of friends back then.” Cuthbert had said.
“And now?” she had asked. But he had only shaken his head regretfully and led her back to the living room.
Chapter 8
Joel was buzzed; he had spent the weekend in Paris with Mai who had a brief hiatus in her tour schedule. They had taken the Euro star on Friday morning; spent a blissful two days together and now they had returned and were crossing London: Joel to get back to some serious writing and Mai to prepare for her final series of concerts. After dropping Mai at her hotel he had settled back in the cab and tried to ease himself mentally into the space he needed to be in when he had to write to a deadline. He asked the driver to drop him outside the tube station as he was only carrying an overnight bag and wanted to grab a coffee and buy some groceries before heading for home.
In the Mall was Tesco Express where he stocked up on essentials but as he headed to the checkout something caught his eye. It was the headline of the local newspaper: Police Puzzled by Bridge Death. Making an effort to stay calm Joel put the paper in his basket face down. It was only when he was sat at his favourite table by the big window at Starbucks with an Americano in front of him that he took out the paper and read the story. The headline was trailed across the top of the front page but the article itself was on page four. It said that an early morning jogger had spotted the body on the previous Monday morning. The dead man was identified as Darren Shah, a twenty-year-old student and that the cause of death was being investigated by the police.
Joel had deliberately left his phone switched off for the past three days. He had not wanted anything intrude on his time with Mai and it had worked because he was returning to his routine feeling good in many ways. However he now knew that when he switched the damn thing on there would inevitably be an unwelcome intrusion of reality. He was right: three “call me” messages from Severin, one “hi” message from Dave Trulock and lastly one from DC Sharma at Shepherds Bush police station saying that it was important for him to contact her ASAP. He was about to dial the police station when he noticed a text alert from Dave. It was marked urgent and said to talk to him before anyone else. The word ‘anyone’ was in capitals. It only took him fifteen minutes to walk home. He rang on the landline; Dave picked up on the second ring.
“Stay on the boat; put the coffee pot on, I’ll be over in ten.” He then hung up before Joel could say anything into his phone.
Chapter 9
Detective Z stood alone on the touchline watching his daughter play lacrosse. It had been a scorching match but his mind kept returning to the report. Shah’s injuries were consistent with a fall of thirty-five feet onto shingle and rocks, a few feet either way and mud would have lessened his impact. The head trauma was bad enough to be near fatal and the sub-zero temperature would have finished him off. There was of course always the possibility that he could have been pushed or thrown from the bridge, but there was no evidence to support this theory. After the match he put a consoling arm around Lorna’s shoulder as the teams trooped off the pitch.
“You outplayed them for at least sixty five, maybe seventy five percent of the time.”
“It’s not about possession; I keep telling you, it’s the switch; the speed and clarity of the switch, Daddy.”
He smiled down at her. Lorna smiled back at her father then reverted to a serious expression in order to continue educating him in lacrosse’s strategic requirements.
“From defence to offence, you soak it up and then you suddenly strike. That’s how you win.”
Detective Z stopped walking. As the players surged past him he called out. “I’ll try to remember that. I’ve got to be somewhere. See you tonight, flower.” He called everyone flower, said it was his duty as a Yorkshireman.
He took the bus and alighted on the south side of the river, then began to walk over the bridge towards last week’s incident scene. In the centre of the bridge the detective stopped and lit a cigarette. The truth was the department had no real leads, and his boss was getting impatient.
In a few minutes he was on the embankment walking towards Joel’s boat, but paused on seeing Dave
Trulock entering the gardens on a bicycle. The detective watched from behind a cherry tree as the owner of the Gate picked up his bike and started along the pier towards the home of celebrated cult writer and guardian of the mysteries Joel Barlow. His phone rang. It was DC Sharma.
The detective listened as she told him what she had discovered from Darren Shah’s laptop. She had simply visited the sites in the browsing history. There was one particular website called Lacuna Room that was a forum for gamers, Goths, and cyberpunks to show off their tattoos, piercings and gaming prowess. On the days prior to his death Shah had spent many hours on the site so DC Sharma had then concocted an identity and become a member in order to further investigate.
“These rooms are full of perverts, but most of them require password authority to enter,” she complained.
“Have you tried all the obvious ones like Alembic Valise?”
“Yes guv, we tried all those first, but nothing.”
“Try Cembali Silvae,” suggested the detective. He spelt it out for her and it worked. When she started to describe the area she now had access to, he cut her short.
“Hold it right there. I think I need to see this. I will be there in ten minutes so put the kettle on, flower.”
He would like nothing more than to make a sudden appearance on the Alembic Valise, having seen Trulock going aboard, so obviously in a hurry. Barlow must be onboard and this intrigued the detective more than a little. But he knew he would be bluffing it and on balance there was more to learn back at the station. Sensing the breakthrough was elsewhere he walked briskly away from the river.
