Almost immediately the moustachioed barman appeared and took our new orders. I looked up as the door to the gallery opened and straightway closed again. The man with the briefcase came smartly down, feet tapping, knees bouncing. Like the other man he seemed to deliberately avoid looking in my direction. The barman returned almost colliding with a bald man who seemed in a hurry to get up the stairs. The barman set down the two pints of ESP as I caught sight of the bald man knocking and disappearing through the gallery door. Lauren had her wallet ready.
‘… No… my turn!’
‘I have to go after this one.’
‘You got the last one.’
‘This is the last one.’ The emphasis was on the penultimate word and the significance of her seemingly obscure remark about male lions suddenly hit me.
I felt an alarming chill run through my body as I realized what I must do next. And I would have to do it tomorrow, or if not tomorrow then the next day.
Twenty-three
You look familiar.
I’m on the train and looking at the head opposite me as it rests against the seat back. You’re old so I can’t think where our paths might have crossed… Couldn’t be Rotary, Round Table, The Lyons, Freemasons, or the Civic Trust ’cause I wouldn’t be seen dead within a mile of any of them… A regular Mr Lean and Slippered Pantaloon you are.
Next to you is a young man… Long head – enormous brow, and sticky-out ears. His neck is the same diameter as his head, making him look like a giant wine amphora – his lugs the handles to pick him up by and pour. Directly above him in the luggage rack is a very long turquoise nylon holdall, long enough to contain a human body. The young woman to my left is asleep – or pretending to be. A copy of Flaubert’s Parrot lies closed on the table in front of her.
Across the aisle are two further women – fifty-ish. Blue stocking literary types; loud voices… Loud enough to compete with the disembodied voice of Karl. We know it’s Karl because he said so before he began his painstaking list; ‘a wide selection of teas, coffees, hot and cold drinks, cakes, sandwiches, baguettes…’
‘I’m going to a funeral…’ I didn’t ask you where you’re going but I can see why you’re in a hurry to talk to me. It’s to get away from the Human Amphora who is tilting dangerously in your direction and wants to pour out information you don’t wish to receive. Funeral talk may be the great social dampener but you can’t ignore it, you have to engage. To ignore the dead is akin to killing them again.
‘Anybody close?’
‘…My mother.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘…Inevitable…Tempus fugit.’ There’s a pause, fatal as it happens because the Human Amphora has tilted beyond the critical angle of lean and his information comes spilling out.
‘I’m going to a Queen fan club reunion in Stoke.’ You gawp, I gawp; the Bluestockings gawp. ‘It’s fancy dress…’ He gestures upward with index finger towards the turquoise holdall as if introducing us to an offstage character. ‘…My costume, I’m going as a smurf.’ He smiles from lug to lug while I attempt to swing the pendulum back towards solemnity by asking you…
‘Have you any siblings?’
‘No.’
‘So… you’ve been doing all the organization?’
‘Yes, the worst thing is wondering whether anybody will turn up. The old girl fell out with just about everybody. I mean you can’t exactly send invitations out for a funeral.’
‘I like funerals. It’s amazing how much you find out about people – the deceased I mean.’ The Human Amphora attempts philosophical mode.
‘Why didn’t you bother to get to know them when they were alive?’ I retort curtly.
‘It was the Pastrami-on-Rye literary festival…’ Bluestocking no. 1 is explaining to Bluestocking no. 2. ‘Nearly all Sci-Fi… Not my thing having to press the vinyl with the Mind Wizards of Callisto – but we had a very nice little stall on the ground floor where it was quiet. Then would-you-believe in come a young couple dressed as pirates – man-and-a-woman, you know – terribly well done, bristling flintlocks, creaking leather, rattling doubloons that sort of thing, and they’re both carrying live parrots – lovely creatures…’
‘I’ve decided to go for curtains drawn.’
I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about… Oh yes, the funeral!
‘…For the committal? You mean curtains open?
‘No, curtains closed. No one wants to see the coffin trundling through the doors to the furnace, do they?’
‘They don’t do it straight away you know…’ You look so worried. ‘…And the smoke you see coming out of the chimney isn’t necessary your loved one. They stack them up – like planes ready to land.’
‘Burning burning; quiz question. Your house is burning down. What three things do you save?’ Talk of burning has got the Human Amphora agitated. ‘…Take your time, take your time, it’s a tough one.’
‘“No flowers,” I said to the undertaker, donations to Alzheimer’s.’
‘Here’s an even tougher one. You have a stroke – lose your power of speech. What three things would you choose to display by your bedside that would best describe your character to your carers?’
‘The woman was carrying the male parrot – the smaller one, lovely black and white markings. The man had the female – twice the size of the male and you know what he was doing with it?’ Bluestocking no. 2 shakes head. ‘…French kissing!’
‘“You’ve got the cutest ass…” You have to admit that Freddie Mercury writes the greatest lyrics; pure emotion, just look at me; listen to the quiver in my voice.’ The second item is true. The Human Amphora has become maudlin, wipes moisture from his cheeks with the back of his hand.
‘Have you chosen the music?’
‘Jesu Joy of Man’s Desire, at the beginning and What a Wonderful World at the end. She loved Louis Armstrong.’
‘Have you ever wondered why pirates are linked with parrots?’ asks Bluestocking no. 2 as no. 1 stops to draw breath.
‘Yes… Long John Silver of course and the Caribbean.’
‘Wrong!’
‘Wrong?’ BS no.1 clearly isn’t used to being challenged.
‘Robert Louis Stevenson wasn’t just inventive. He was a humourist, and he liked wordplay. Pirate and parrot are almost the same word – particularly if you’re from the West Country… “poirot and porot”, go on say it!’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Go on, watch my lips; pirate, parrot, can’t tell them apart at all.’
‘RLS created one of the biggest literary myths. Take the wooden leg for start. Do you know how many people actually survived an amputation in the 18th century? …Near zero, prosthetics were virtually unknown. So, the whole culture of parrots, pirates, peg-legs, plunder, and Python has got nothing to do with history or life, it all came out of RLS’s head. There aren’t ’alf been some clever bastards.’
‘What did you just say? …Oh, never mind!’
‘Now then, now then, houzabout that then. Now then, now then, houzabout that then!’
It’s Karl with the trolley. The young woman next to me who’s just woken up asks for a tea with milk. I look across to see if you’re going to have anything but you’ve gone.
Twenty-four
This time I’d taken the precaution of booking a hire car. That would give me full control over the ten-minute drive from the railway station to Brazzers… and back of course. The ‘and back’ was an ominous point for consideration.
What I was doing was probably seven parts mad and one part sane. Lauren’s message was unequivocal; Laurie could be in danger, Patrick might be seen as a threat to him. But the two pieces of evidence I had to that effect could turn out to be no more than bizarre coincidence. If the link was genuinely sinister then I needed to establish a pattern.
My must have
was further names, and more Dalston type telephone numbers. If Patrick was responsible for the death of Freia and her boyfriend, had used the services of a professional, and if he were thinking of repeating the process it would be logical to use a similar – if not the same – source. It was my duty to scour that noticeboard once and for all, and I almost felt that I was somehow being willed by Lauren. ‘You could make a difference.’
I got off the train and walked along the platform. As I crossed the Station concourse the words of an Echo and the Bunnymen song coming from a coffee stall made me wonder whether I too was burning my bridges.
Why couldn’t I let things be? I walked out of the station and made my way towards the hire car pick-up point. There was a future for me at Lloyd Lewis Associates, and there could be a future for Lauren and me – together. I had to admit to myself that the things that were driving me forward were those which are beyond logic, beyond intellect. The dream and the subsequent drip, drip, drip of the ephemera of déjà vu. My odd hallucinations on the train. Had I witnessed my past, my present, and was I going to foresee my own death? Because make no mistake, if things didn’t go to plan I might very well not come back. I’d left a written statement in my flat, but that wouldn’t save me.
I’d allowed a day’s interval between the conversation with Lauren and my trip north to make preparations. I’d told Lauren and Patrick that I had a dentist’s appointment in the morning. If things went okay I could be back in the office by two o’clock. I could have found an excuse to visit GI Group but I wanted Patrick – and Lauren – to remain ignorant of my presence in the north.
I walked over to the car hire stand, signed, and the young woman handed me the keys. With any luck, I would be back in half an hour and she would be thinking I was very strange indeed. It was a Rover 3500 – wasted on a slowcoach like me.
I drove down street after street of desperate pink terraces, past high walls that looked like prisons, through a wasteland of demolished buildings, past factories with castle-like towers, past cranes, past smoking fires. I could see the moors in the distance and I felt a sudden need to go to the lavatory.
I’d taken the decision to park the car some distance from Brazzers which would allow me to approach relatively anonymously. The street I chose was a hundred and fifty yards away and there were high red brick walls on either side which would afford me a certain amount of cover. But the problem was that there was nobody else on the street, I was the only figure for miles around.
The road sloped down, away from the club and I chose a spot to park twenty-five yards from a junction with a road which appeared to be exactly like this one, and with not a house in sight. I locked, looked around me, it was deserted. The land behind the walls a waste of dusty brick rubble where mills had been demolished and the sites awaited redevelopment. I walked slowly and carefully back up the hill towards the main road where I’d caught the bus on my last visit. The giant mill building with its menacing tower loured down on me. I was keeping close to the wall but feeling conspicuous. There would be no quick getaway. I prayed that it would not be necessary.
As I emerged from the road, which consisted of nothing but two high brick walls rising either side of me, I could see the bus stop to my left, where opposite stood the main door to the club with its beguiling crescent of pink neon. To my right, the road sloped upward towards the moor, the route the black Mercedes limousine had taken. Almost opposite me was the gap in the wall where the taxi driver had entered and where the black limo had appeared.
At last, I forced myself to leave the cover of the wall, sprinted across the road and, leaning against the wall of the club, peered into the gap. It was the now familiar scene of desolation; the pit head rusted wheel, the stained and scratched line of steel containers, and underfoot the black carpet of damp cinders. It was just gone 1100hrs, the sky had turned an industrial grey and I could hear crepitation of approaching thunder.
Somewhere, buried deep within the fortress-like mass towering above me was that coliseum of a dance floor, a stage upon which within a matter of hours thousands of the sons and daughters of the city would be rolling, trembling, and thrashing. As I passed through the breach in the wall and tiptoed over the muskeg of damp slag I too had a feeling that I was on a stage.
I stopped short. Three yards from the stone steps and, standing by the edge of the subterranean passage that led to the metal door, I could see the bulk of a ready mix concrete lorry. Its zeppelin-shaped superstructure seemed at home with the other rusted, scraped, and smashed artefacts. Its engine was idling. As I headed towards the stone steps leading down to the side entrance, a wave of rain propelled by a gust of wind hit me.
I jogged down the steps into the saliva-coloured brick trench which was already awash with black water. When I reached the open metal door I had to step over what appeared to be a thick snake which hung down the side of the trench, lay stretched across the stone floor, and disappeared inside the office. I was tempted to stamp my wet feet as I crossed the threshold but the last thing I wanted to do was to draw attention to myself. The industrial hum from the ready-mixer and the office door standing wide open gave the place the air of a building site.
I took the wad of fake mail out of my shoulder bag and waved it towards the ceiling.
‘Post for Mr Hood, I’ll put it on his desk.’
I noticed straight away that things were different. The girl on the desk wasn’t the redhead; it was the blonde quiffed girl who’d been at the Railway Club. There was an atomic nudge of recognition from behind her impressively mascaraed eyes.
‘Yoo can leave ’em thurr.’ Her voice cut through the engine noise coming from the ready-mixer as she brushed the air in front of her with her beringed hand.
‘I need to get them straight on his desk.’ I shouted back and was amazed at the sound of my own authority.
‘Yoo’l ’aftoo go that whey!’ This time she formed her hand elegantly into a pointing finger which reminded me of one of those enamelled Victoriana wall signs. It was aimed at the other door from the office, the one that led to the toilets which I’d used on my first visit. I could see why the need for a diversion. The entire floor of the corridor leading to Hood’s office had been excavated to a depth of four inches and was being filled with concrete, the tube depositing the contents of its tank in rhythmic belching noises like a boa constrictor attempting to vomit back its prey.
I dived across the office, through the door and into the corridor beyond. On the right was a sign which said Gents, and opposite, the Ladies. Should I pause to take a pee? This was the question. How long, two minutes? But supposing that Hood was on the premises, and that if I’d been two minutes earlier I’d have missed running into him? It could just as easily work the other way, and I blundered on to the end of the corridor where there was a half-panelled painted wood door with a stippled glass window. The glass twinkled as if lit from behind, and I tried to look through, but the scene beyond appeared no more than a fractured cubist jumble. I opened the door two inches, alert, ready to run.
As I swung the door open I found I was in what seemed to be a lost property office. The corridor continued, but on either side of me were double height rails containing a mix of garments; slacks, jackets, suits, uniforms, skiwear, and riding habits. The diversity of clients here seemed remarkable. There was a predominance of mackintoshes of various types. Everywhere was lit by fluorescent light and the pale macs hung there like rows of ghosts.
I made my way down the central aisle between the hanging garments and through a door into a much wider space – shallow to my right, but much deeper on my left. Here the rails were triple height and there were several gangways leading off crossways. More mackintoshes, for males and females; they were unused but possessed a curiously old-fashioned look to them. There were hundreds of them, gabardine, that’s what this place had been – or still was – a gabardine factory and these were the finished products… A world of singeing,
shearing, surface fibres, warp and weft, of fuzz and nap… An environment of tilling picks, right hand twist, warp-faced and warp yarn. An establishment which must have contained a hierarchy from owner, to manager, to sub manager, to weaver, to loom basher, to clerk, to cleaner, right down to the lowest of the low, the schloppers and schmearers.
Ahead of me was a pair of those grubby flexible plastic doors that you get in factories. I thought I might have missed a turning but there was no other path to follow. The doors led into a short blockwork-lined corridor at the end of which I could see a second pair of double doors, wooden ones with circular vision panels. The light behind them was bright and as I opened one of the doors the noise was deafening. It was a huge kitchen. Under my feet were red quarry tiles interrupted by islands of stainless steel. There were rows of shelving, racks, bain maries, bouillabaisse, gandy brassacers, deep mustard, clam chowder, frau hochstrasser, intolerance and fanti bocchananits.
Two white-coated, white hatted men were flash-grilling meat, one loading up the griddle, the other slamming it into the stainless-steel tower in front of him with a noise fit to waken the dead. Two others were standing by a copper cylinder which was suspended above a jet of flame. One man was stirring its contents with a long steel ladle, the other was about to stir, as if the contents of the vessel were so tiring to work that it needed two men doing it in relays.
‘…Which way to Mr Hood’s office?’
The stirring man jerked his left thumb backwards, and the standing man lunged with his ladle. It seemed that my way was to be through a door in the same wall through which I had come but ten yards to the left. I was in serious danger of entering into a state of panic. How would I find my way back? What happened on the other seven floors? Was there a basement?
It was a relief to get away from the noise. This time I was in a corridor which I thought I remembered; sticky lino floor, walls recently plastered, and the smell of mortar. It dawned on me that I had right-about-turned, and that the shape of the route I had travelled resembled a hairpin in plan. The next door confirmed it. It had been here when on my last visit I had seen the shadow of the cat and heard Hood’s voice. Stretching in front of me was the corridor which led back to the Formica clad office and there on the left was the door leading to Hood’s office.
The Gilded Ones Page 17
