‘This is all very well and interesting but we don't really care about what's going on nearly so much as getting it sorted. So the real question is: what are you going to do about it?’
Karen answered this one. They had already established several procedures that they expected to have a significant impact on the situation within the next few days and resolution within a fortnight. She couldn't go into exactly what they were since they involved the use of several instruments that were protected by the Official Secrets Act.
She successfully suppressed her laughter. This had been Tariq's idea. ‘Remember, Kazza,’ he'd remarked. ‘You're a politician these days.’ The Official Secrets Act was a kind of unverifiable catch-all since she knew from experience that central government and the City of London never knew what the other was doing, let alone what MI5 were up to.
‘I'll take one more question,’ Karen said.
‘Karen, do we have any idea why the pigeons are fighting this… this war?’
This time Karen allowed herself a smile. It was a journalist she knew and a query she liked. ‘Of course we only use words like “war” and “armies” to explain what's been happening, Henry. We will investigate the birds' behaviour but the first thing is to bring this crisis to the swiftest possible conclusion.’ She paused and raised her eyebrows in a wry expression. ‘It's important not to get carried away with the anthropomorphisms. They're only pigeons, after all.’
As Tariq had predicted, the London Pigeon Wars now began to peter out; both in fact and in the city's consciousness. And if their brief dominance of London life was surprising, the speed of their passing into rarely spoken folklore was arguably even more so. There was still the odd incident – an attack on a pensioner, twenty-five pigeon corpses found on Peckham Rye – but press and public had lost interest.
As news hits the news section first before, depending on its import and momentum, working its way through the rest of the paper, so the reverse is true. While the pigeons were off the front pages in a matter of days, they did linger a little longer in features and comment. Some notable writers offered their explanations – occasionally fantastical, generally unremittingly turgid – of what had happened. But they slowly (as is typical of the self-appointed intelligentsia) cottoned on to the fact that public enthusiasm for the subject didn't match their own. As for Karen's promised investigation, it never materialized. And nobody noticed.
With the pigeon story swiftly evaporating, therefore, news editors (both print and broadcast) were like junkies who, after a fortnight of pure hits, would now settle for any kind of ropey fix. So they latched on to a minor high street bank robbery with a vigour that smacked of desperation. On closer investigation, however, it actually threw up several good hooks.
For starters, there was the fact that the bank's security system sounded for a full fifteen minutes before the police turned up. It transpired this was because the Met had become so used to the endless false alarms caused by rampant pigeons, that they'd assumed this was just another. Consequently the perpetrator had simply walked out into the street and disappeared among the shoppers with his bag full of money.
What's more, this lone gunman seemed like quite some character. He didn't bother wearing a mask or any form of disguise and the four CCTV cameras picked up clear images before he blew them out, each one with a different gun; an action which seemed like affectation since he was obviously already on tape. And what a sight he looked! He was wearing jeans and a baggy T-shirt which appeared heavily stained (‘dripping blood’ according to some eyewitnesses). He didn't walk so much as shuffled; as if every step were excruciatingly painful. But his manner was calmness itself as he munched on a box of KFC and apparently cracked jokes with staff and customers as he waited for his cash.
In fact he escaped with less than five grand. High street banks don't keep much reserve these days and, besides, a Securicor van had made a collection less than two hours before.
At one point, just before he shot out the last camera, it got a distinct snap of his face and it made for a ghoulish picture. His left eye was swollen and distorted and looked like it might pop out at any second. Below that, the flesh of his cheek was puffy and yet somehow… well… you couldn't make it out from the low grade film.
Of course, you could see his features quite clearly on the DVC footage secretly shot by ‘TV personality Ami Lester’ (as the papers dubbed her). And this was the best hook of the lot. A minor weather girl, cable presenter and music television VJ (this last, of course, a case of mistaken identity), she'd been working undercover on a pilot for a reality show and, with no apparent regard for her own safety, she'd filmed the whole thing. The media, who always found a joyous onanism in praising one of their own, trumpeted her as some kind of hero.
Naturally the police had taken possession of her camera as evidence and in any case she'd already sold the rights to the footage to one of the terrestrial broadcasters as part of the contract she'd signed within hours of the robbery (in alliance with her production company, TVX). Nonetheless, she was able to release a single frame of the criminal which fully revealed the grotesquerie of his face. Below his popping eye, his cheek was putrescent and scrobiculate, colourless tissue competing with pustules that were moist with yellows and greens. It was this gruesome likeness that accompanied the headlines to every news bulletin and stared out from every front page.
Despite the fugitive's horrific appearance, some readers thought they recognized him – among them a decrepit Catholic priest, and an alcoholic, vituperative poet – but they couldn't say for sure. One, the librarian from a London university, considered calling the cops but at that moment she was distracted by a tinny tune, impossible to pin down, that had bugged her at least weekly in the five years she'd worked there (‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot…’). An office worker from Kennington actually went through with it. But she was no more certain than the rest since she remembered him through a cloud of Bulgarian wine and could only recall his Christian name anyway.
In the evening following Murray's robbery of the Putney bank, the rest of his former gang met up at Emma and Tariq's. Every one of them felt compelled to do so because of what he'd done and yet what he'd done had also somehow released them from any feelings of responsibility. For this reason and several others the atmosphere among them was very peculiar.
Emma seemed almost somnambulant as she had for a few days now. It was another month before anyone (even Tariq) knew why when she finally acknowledged her pregnancy only by miscarrying. In contrast, her husband was all bounce and bumptiousness; full of half stories of his new business partners (‘a major sportswear company’ was all he'd say) and full of himself. When, with an absurdly expansive gesture, he threw open the front door to find Tom and Karen kissing on the step, he said, ‘And about fucking time too.’ And then, turning to the others, he announced: ‘Just to let you know, Tom and Kazza have finally got their bloody act together.’
After minutes of simmering, Freya reacted to this by telling Ami that she was seeing Nick Jackson. As intended, Tom overheard and he said, ‘Jesus, Frey!’ So she looked daggers at him and at Karen and back at him. Only Kwesi and Ami seemed oblivious to the rising tension.
When the news came on TV and its title music played, all of them patted Ami on the back and said things like, ‘It's the start of big things. The start of big things. Seriously.’ But Ami didn't seem particularly happy about it. Then the picture of Murray flashed up and they were all silenced. For those who'd been at work – Karen, Tom, Tariq and Freya – it was the first time they'd seen its full horror.
Tariq tried, ‘Do you think that's make-up?’
But Ami suddenly seemed to snap and her words came out in a rush. ‘It's not! I was there! That's exactly what he looked like! And why did he come in without a mask? Freya was going to make him a mask, remember? Where's he planning to go?’
Emma spoke up for the first time. ‘I know he's been sick for a while.’
‘It's not my fault!’ F
reya exclaimed.
Kwesi said: ‘Fuck. Why did he go through with it?’
‘It wasn't for us,’ Emma said quickly. ‘Not for Tariq and me.’
Tom looked between Karen and Tariq. ‘It was Murray-fun,’ he said. ‘It had to be finished.’ He sighed and studied the grains in the stripped beech of the floating floor. ‘Murray'll be all right,’ he began. At first he didn't sound very convincing but he carried on anyway. ‘Definitely. You lot don't know him like us three. Murray can get away with anything. You remember Knock Down Ginger?’
‘Or the Antiques Trade?’ Karen added.
Tariq said, ‘Strangers on a Train.’ And the other two both started laughing.
‘Murray will always be all right. The thing about Murray is… well… how long have you got? You never know what's going on with Murray so there's no point trying, know what I mean? The thing about Murray is he's a chancer.’
‘A social terrorist,’ Tariq nodded.
‘The thing about Murray is he's like a sprite,’ Karen said thoughtfully. ‘No really. I'm serious. There's something magical about him. He's like… I don't know, you know?… like the Fonz or something.’
They were all giggling now. ‘The Fonz?’ Tom said. ‘He'll love that. Shit. I could tell you some stories about Murray…’
Tom launched into an anecdote from LMT; about the time Murray pretended to be a blind man in the Arndale Centre. Apart from Kwesi and Ami, they'd all heard it before but they listened attentively and packed up at the right moments. Then Karen and Tariq joined in, trumping Tom with anecdotes of their own. Then Kwesi told the one about Der Vollbartclub Von Aachen and they all pissed themselves laughing. Suddenly they were all swapping anecdotes, stories, memories and Murray lived in their telling as surely as he had done for the last decade. Now Ami recounted the day's events – how Murray ate his chicken and shot out the security cameras – and now, recontextualized among selected recollections, they were safe, even funny.
If they knew in the back of their minds that they wouldn't tell these stories often in the future, they didn't admit as much, let alone what that might mean. And when Tom concluded, ‘Murray's fine. Murray'll always be fine’, they all agreed and they all believed him.
Tom almost believed it himself.
Some months later, Tom and Karen were sitting side by side on their sofa in their flat. It was the last night they would spend there and everything was packed up into huge cardboard boxes with clues scrawled across the side: ‘tom's shit’, ‘kitchen stuff’, ‘files and things’. With Big-In-Property's help (he wasn't so bad when you got to know him), Karen had bought a small Queen's Park cottage at three and a half times her salary (she was now heading up transport policy since Jared had left for the private sector) and they were moving tomorrow. They hadn't gone into it together partly because they wanted to ‘wait and see’ and partly because Tom had only been working for TVX (as a researcher on Ami's show) for ten weeks and consequently couldn't get a mortgage anyway. They were sharing a Chinese and had drained a bottle of Pinot Grigio.
For the first time in ages, Tom was thinking about Murray. Specifically, he was thinking about the night they tried to buy guns from Kush and Murray shot him dead. Specifically, he was thinking that this was the last time he'd seen his oldest friend. But Tom still couldn't talk specifically so instead he propounded an abstract and apparently unconnected theory (supported by several seemingly irrelevant examples) that human behaviour was primarily driven by fear of farce.
Unsurprisingly, Karen had little idea what Tom was getting at but she did suspect that he was getting at something before eventually concluding that he was getting at her. She responded spikily and they were soon batting balls of bile at one another until they were both embittered and bewildered by the turn things had taken.
They sat now in silence, side by side. This was a reprise of many evenings they'd shared over the last decade but they'd get through it. They each momentarily wondered if the new house was such a good idea. They each briefly thanked god that they hadn't been able to share the mortgage. Neither of them noticed how quickly their recently romantic reunion had reverted to previous and well-practised patterns of behaviour.
Karen wanted a distraction. She wanted to put on some music but the stereo was already boxed and taped so she switched on the TV instead (the rental guys were collecting it in the morning). They caught the tail end of the news. It was an updated report on a corpse dragged out of the river a couple of months previously. The Met spokesman said the body must have been submerged for at least a decade so police experts had used the latest techniques to create a scale bust of the victim. The editor now cut to this revolving grey plaster sculpture: face on, left profile, back of head, right profile, face on. A young man between the ages of twenty and twenty-three, they said. A free-phone number scrolled across the bottom of the screen and the public were encouraged to get in touch. ‘Someone must know this man,’ the spokesman concluded.
Tom was sitting forward on the sofa. ‘Fuck! Who does that look like?’
Karen gazed grouchily at the screen.
‘I said who does that look like?’
The urgency in his voice made her peer a little more closely. ‘Huh!’ she said. ‘Murray.’
‘Too right it looks like Murray!’
Karen turned curiously to her boyfriend. His voice was strained, his cheekbones hollowed and the tendons in his neck strung like rigging. ‘What's up with you?’ she asked. ‘That's not Murray. They said he'd been underwater for years.’
Tom looked at her and his eyes were glistening. ‘It's the spit of him,’ he said.
Karen burst out laughing. ‘Sure. But Muz can look like anyone. You know that, Tom. Muz can look like anyone.’
‘Right,’ Tom smiled and nodded. He shook his head like he was trying to rattle it clear. But now there was an old issue bothering him; one that had pestered him for the last few months and, of course, a decade more besides. He pulled a face that Karen recognized at once. ‘Can I tell you something?’ he asked.
At long last Tom confronted Karen about Murray's confession; the one that had led Tom to punch him, the first and only punch of his life. He told her that he knew what had happened on their last day at college and it didn't matter but, now that they were back together, he had to clear the air.
Karen said she had no idea what he was talking about so he was forced to explain.
Karen's reaction was not what he'd expected – there were no sighs and no rising hackles. Instead she shook her head so slowly it appeared that she was simply stretching the muscles in her neck. ‘Sleep with Murray?’ she said. ‘That never happened.’ And her very manner brooked no argument.
Tom said (pathetically, he thought), ‘But why would Murray lie?’
Karen shrugged; a movement so slow that it was as if she were casually loosening her shoulders. ‘Why does Murray do anything?’ she replied. ‘You know Murray.’
Again they lapsed into silence. It was the kind of silence that requires breaking but Karen didn't see why she should say anything and Tom's head was hectic with puzzling. Why had Murray lied? He'd said he'd always look out for them.
Vaguely Tom remembered something he'd once thought; about the clarity that was found in disappointment. Then he remembered an idea he'd had; how people were either prostitutes to their dreams or kept their dreams as retained courtesans. It sounded like a neat construction but he no longer had any idea what it meant. Perhaps he'd lost his clarity. Eventually he realized there was nothing else to do but lean towards Karen and take her hand. ‘I'm sorry,’ he said and she immediately leaned towards him and rested her head on his chest and stretched her legs out the length of the sofa. He wrapped a protective arm around her but he still wanted reassurance. ‘Are we all right?’ he asked. He heard what he thought was a sigh and he was momentarily dispirited. But in fact she was just enjoying the smell of him, her nose buried in his shirt.
‘Yeah,’ she murmured with a devotion he appreciated and, t
hough he couldn't see it, he could hear her smile. ‘We're all right. Really. We're fine.’
25
Of illumination
The thugalicious niks are beating them. They dragged them off the transparent, upturned nothingness and beat them with their bats and sticks until they silenced their calls. And they're still beating them – Lewisham6, Gunnersbury, Garrick and Regent. Or rather the indistinct assemblage of flesh, feather, bone and instinct that once gave those names meaning. Why are they doing it? Perhaps it's because us pigeons tried to be more than we are. Or perhaps it's because only humans can be so inhuman and that's the verity.
As for yours truly? I can't scope this scenario any longer and I take a vertical and hightail it away. Imagine! To watch your leader, the peachiest coochie your bead ever set upon, pummelled to a pulp. Can you illuminate such a thing? I can't; not since language now escapes me, words ruffling my feathers as they pass through me and away like the breeze through an autumn ash.
I take a wing west and south and find an overhang on Millbank where I can pause and perch. They say that a pigeon who doesn't clock the sky for too long descends into moonacy. But now I thirst for that and no mistake! What else have I to look forward to? What other hooks upon which to hang my hopes?
To be veritas, it's hardly hyperbole to suggest that nobirdy – neither niks nor pigeons – has ever felt this lonely. For I lack not just the friendship of the flock but even the potential for as much. Dead or dull: all my friends and foes alike. Why should language linger when there's not one geez to gather my gregariousness, no coochie with whom to coo coyly and not even a squib to squawk at? Trust me when I say, I long for oblivion as only a conscious bird can.
I have stopped in this spot for god knows how long. My consciousness is now like breaking waves at a receding tide. The waves still break and still cling to the shingle like a million fingers even as they gradually, inevitably, join the great sea. Now, in my moments of lucidity, I find disturbing details and fearful facts fronting my phyzog. For example, I have just found myself with a squirm in my beak and wet soil upon my toes. But I recall nut all of swooping for this squirm and returning to this roost. You can hazard that I'm disconcertion defined.
The London Pigeon Wars Page 35
