Sonata of the Dead

by Conrad Williams

  ‘Why not just knock them out? Use a cosh?’

  Clarke drained his glass and stared at it as if wishing it was self-replenishing. ‘My guess is that would have been too risky. You bash someone over the head and you could kill them. And this guy obviously—’

  ‘Wanted to keep him alive.’

  ‘For a while at least, yes. It would seem.’

  He left then, but not before warning me again that this was strictly off the record and that if it should get back to his bosses that he’d been sharing delicate information I’d wake up short of a kidney or two.

  * * *

  Still no word from Craig Taft. I had to be patient. This was no ordinary writing group. This wasn’t ‘What I Did in My Holidays’ or ‘Tonight, boys and girls, we’re going to write a poem about autumn’. Nobody in this group was over thirty-five, which meant it wasn’t a thinly veiled lonely hearts club, or a support network for the romantically crippled. If you belonged to a gang of any sort at that age you were committed. There was a camaraderie, and a sense of competition; I remembered as much from my days playing Sunday League football as a teenager in the north-west. It was a savage kind of loyalty, a dangerous sort of love, even, existing for as long as the match lasted, or the training session. You felt, in moments of extremis – a goal down; the loss of a teammate to a dirty foul; a sending off – a kinship that went deeper than what it meant to be friends. You felt you might die for these people. You felt you might kill for them.

  I felt an old, ill-defined rage come over me. It was too wayward to be part of what I had experienced after the death of my wife. That was tied up in complex emotions connected to frustration and impotence. This was connected – I was sure – to those trench warfare brothers of mine. I had not enjoyed that level of intimacy or involvement any time since; certainly nothing like it had existed at Bruche when I was undergoing police training, or at Walton Lane nick, my first and last posting after I’d passed out. Family engendered it – to some extent – but at a level of reserve. I missed it; pure and simple. I missed having someone in my life who meant something.

  It was getting late; all day, for one reason or another, I’d been a coil of nervous tension. I needed to relax. Too often these days, no matter if I went to bed early, or – miracle of miracles! – without a drink in me, I’d wake up the next day feeling as though I’d been ploughing a field with a bent fork. I ached everywhere. My teeth ached. Once I’d decided it couldn’t be Mengele beating the shit out of me with the cricket bat in the night, I realised it must be stress. I was going to bed with more knots in me than a sailor’s practice rope. Sleep was failing to unpick any of them. Wake, angst, repeat. It didn’t help, I suppose, that I had the posture of a wanking monkey.

  I’d meant to walk home, but it was another beautiful London evening, so I strolled north-east, enjoying the warmth in the air, and the purpling sky. I wondered what Romy Toussaint was doing, and with whom she might be doing it. And a tender thought turned to a sour one and I remembered how it had gone with Melanie Henriksen.

  Don’t do that again, I thought. You can’t do that again.

  I was on the Strand, heading towards Aldgate. The sound of traffic had reduced to a murmur so I was able to hear the call of birds roosting in the buildings above me. Melanie had done nothing to deserve what had happened to her. Her only crime had been to be receptive to my overtures. She had become a target, a fulcrum for a bad person to lean on in order to get to me, because I cared about her. The monsters in this city are not stupid. They know the best way to harm you, or stop you from getting to them, is to find out who you love. Love is a killer, in this business.

  Melanie was somewhere in Cornwall now, looking after animals, trying to bury the horror of what happened to her under whatever layers of normality would work. That and the love of her family, which was more robust than anything I could throw her way. You could only hope to bury it. You couldn’t ever expect to forget.

  My phone was in my hand somehow, my finger hovering over Romy’s number.

  I’d known her for what? An hour? I stopped myself from dialling; I wasn’t thinking straight. Every woman I met was a rebound for me – no matter how long Rebecca was dead.

  The phone rang and vibrated in my hand; I almost dropped it. Craig Taft.

  ‘They’re meeting tonight, well technically tomorrow morning,’ he said. His voice sounded old, cold, disgusted. I wondered if he’d wrestled with himself over sharing their plans with me; whether he saw this tip-off as him selling them down the river. ‘Two a.m. The Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens.’

  I felt my heart lurch. A crazy moment when I wondered about what I should wear; what Sarah would be least unhappy to see me wearing; and then my voice, steady and confident. Autopilot: ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘I’m coming too,’ he said. Now I could read something else in his voice, something I’d initially suspected was disdain. It wasn’t; it was fear.

  ‘I don’t need my hand to be held.’

  ‘It’s not about holding anybody’s hand,’ he said. ‘If the Accelerants are at risk, they need to be told.’

  ‘If you go there and tell them that they will go to ground and I’ll have no chance of finding my daughter.’

  ‘With respect, Mr Sorrell,’ he said, ‘fuck your daughter. How would you feel if someone else died?’

  I pulled hard on anger’s leash. To lose it with Taft was to risk everyone’s silence. I didn’t want to have to return to relying on Mawker for crumbs. And anyway, I sensed that he wanted me to talk him out of it. He didn’t have the belly for this kind of thing. He was looking for an excuse to lie low.

  ‘I’m in this to stop whoever it is from killing again,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t put Sarah in any unnecessary danger now, would I?’

  A long, shaky sigh rattled through the receiver.

  ‘When you go tonight,’ he said, ‘you’ll be expected to deliver my code name.’

  ‘Code name? Are you fucking kidding me?’

  ‘No joke. Prospective new members can only be referred by current, or ex-members. If they’re not there in person to vouch for you, you have to provide a code name, to prove endorsement.’

  ‘Christ,’ I said. ‘What is it? Tinker? Beggarman?’

  ‘This isn’t a game, Joel,’ he said, and the warning was delivered in another voice; crisper, tighter. He was a regular voice-over artist, was Craig Taft. ‘The Accelerants have been proved right to be suspicious. Their recruitment policy is necessarily thorough. It isn’t just any old writing group. We don’t do automatic writing exercises—’ I felt a jolt, as if he had read my mind from earlier. ‘There is… an agenda. They… skate close to the wind. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police had files on us… them, or had kept one or two under surveillance at some point.’

  ‘What the hell goes on at these meetings?’ I asked. ‘Shoplifting with added verbs?’

  ‘You’ll find out,’ he said. Another voice change. Purring this time.

  ‘Thanks for the tip-off,’ I said.

  ‘Not at all. One more thing. You’ll need to take a piece of writing with you.’

  ‘Great,’ I said. I hadn’t written anything creative since I pissed FUK OF into the snow outside the headmaster’s office.

  ‘Handwritten. Or use a typewriter,’ he added. His voice had certainly warmed up a bit. He seemed to be enjoying himself now. ‘They all use fountain pens. Or manual typewriters. Have you got one?’

  ‘I have, as a matter of fact,’ I lied, enjoying the sound of his bubble bursting.

  ‘Right then. I hope for your sake your scrivening skills are as colourful as your telephone manner.’

  I was about to ring off when I remembered the code name. I asked him what it was. He assumed his final voice of the night: tired, sad, perhaps at the knowledge that he’d never have any more use for it.

  ‘It’s President,’ he said.

  * * *

  The shops were still open on Marylebone High Street. I found a fancy littl
e gift shop and bought some nice paper. Cream. Textured. I spent the best part of fifty pounds on a fountain pen, and bought some violet-coloured ink with a fancy name (Poussière de Lune) to go with it. I sat in a bar with a glass of Reyka and defaced the first page with the words ‘you pathetic twunt’. Screwed it up.

  On the next page I wrote ‘What I Did in My Holidays’. Screwed it up.

  On the next page I tried Ferguson’s automatic writing exercise but realised I’d reached level futile when all I could write was ‘shitshitshitpissshitshitshitcockshitshitshitfuckshitshit’. Screwed it up.

  On the next page I tried writing a haiku.

  ‘Hello, Ian Mawker

  Would you mind if I punched

  Your punchable face?’

  But I couldn’t work out if ‘punched’ counted for one syllable or two. Screwed it up. By this time I had ink all over my fingers and the vodka was gone.

  I covertly dropped the rest of the pages and the pen into the bag of a student who was making her half of Guinness and black last for as long as she was able.

  I’d turn up and just scare some answers out of these exclusive pricks. After an hour of trying to force some kind of sense from my mind I felt twisted and hot, like a shorted wire. I got home and fed Mengele then had another vodka on the balcony. The guy in the pub kitchen opposite was doing things to a shepherd’s pie with a piping bag. He had his back to me and he was showing off the crack in his arse. I remember Sarah telling me once that she’d seen a photographer at a pop concert she went to who sported a bum crack that reminded her of a fanny from the seventies. I’d laughed so hard at that – she could have only been eleven at the time – that I earned a hard rebuke from Becs for ‘encouraging’ her.

  By the door was a plastic recycling tub where I put all the free newspapers and circulars and menus that were pushed through my letterbox. I plucked a circular from a cancer charity, one of the free gift mailings that include a biro. I felt a pang of regret at dumping the fountain pen, but this felt right.

  I started:

  Dear Sarah

  Screwed it up.

  I started again, on the back of a large envelope. I couldn’t call her Sarah. And though it felt a little as though I was disowning her, it meant I could maintain a little distance, a certain perspective. It meant I could write the damn thing without having to reach for the bottle or the tissues or the razor blade.

  A car went by; there was a short blast of music, but I nailed it, sad child of the eighties that I am. ‘Rosanna’ by Toto. Or maybe it was something else, but Rosanna it was that stuck in my head.

  Dear Rosie

  Or let’s just go with Rosie. Cut the ‘dear’. Dear is for nice old ladies who make pots of leaf tea and provide a plate of biscuits to go with it.

  So.

  Rosie.

  I won’t go on about what happened, and what I did or didn’t do to make you leave. I don’t want to bleat about how much I miss you, and how I regret my behaviour, and wish you were back in my life. I’m just going to write about your mum, your amazing mum, and the day you were born. I don’t think we ever described that day to you (I certainly didn’t) though I remember your mum once answered (truthfully) your query regarding where babies come from. You were five (I think), and you collapsed on the bed, you were laughing so hard.

  You were born at exactly one o’clock in the afternoon on Monday 6 September 1999 I know this because we had music playing (we were listening to Classic FM) and I was determined to remember what was playing at the time you were born (I intended to buy a copy of it for you). You appeared at the exact time the news jingle was being played. Typical you.

  Your mum was so beautiful in that moment, among the shit and sweat and blood. But she was tired; my God, you put her through the wringer. You should have been born in August (your due date was the 25th), but you were late. In the end, your mum had to be induced (you just did not want to come out). And the first thing she did, when you were born – the very first thing – was to ask that you be passed to me so that I could hold you before she did. She’d carried you all that time, but her first thought was not for herself. It never was. So I held you while your mum had a shower. I held you for – I don’t know how long, but I cradled your perfect little head in my hand and stared into your eyes. I was with you in a small waiting room and there might or might not have been anyone else in there with us – I have no recollection – because I didn’t, I couldn’t look away. Your eyes wouldn’t settle. They drifted and swirled, unfocused, the most beautiful blue I have ever seen. You sneezed and yawned and I was rapt. Just so fascinated by every tiny movement. This little person, suddenly there, formed, evident, in my hands. And I was overwhelmed because everyone else I had ever met that I cared for in my life, I had had to grow into the love that developed. It took time. I’d always been sceptical about this idea of instantaneous, unconditional love – but there it was. Immediate. Irrefutable. I would have died for you. I still would.

  Rosie. Come home. Please come home. Rosie.

  Sarah. Sarah. Please come home.

  Sarah. Sarah. Sarah…

  8

  I only stopped writing her name when I got to the bottom of the envelope. You know how some words you say over and over seem to lose their meaning and become more and more alien? The more I wrote Sarah’s name, the more real she became, the more sense it made, until I became certain I was upon the brink of writing her into my material surroundings, as if the persistent writing of her name was acting as some kind of invocation. I could smell the baby skin under the soap, the shampoo – something coconutty – she liked to use. I put the pen down and tore off the last lines containing her real name. I wasn’t going to read it all back. If I read it I would not submit it. Which would mean absolutely no chance of an audience with the Accelerants. It was from the heart – as Craig Taft had warned it must be – and if they didn’t like it, it didn’t matter. I didn’t want to be a writer. There were about a million other ways of becoming destitute I could try first, without any hard work involved.

  But despite that… something had happened to me. It wasn’t just this perceived proximity to Sarah (although that was part of it). That was an illusion, of course. No. The act of writing something down, an event I had thought about many, many times over the course of the past eighteen years, had somehow fixed it in time and also liberated me from the punishment I took whenever my thoughts turned to my dead wife. My mind felt unburdened to some extent. I felt great. For the first time in a long time I felt much the same way as I did in my late teens and early twenties when I went for a run. Back then I didn’t run to keep healthy; I ran for the extraordinary buzz it gave me, that rush of natural opiates, the flood of serotonin and endorphins into the bloodstream. Usually, before heading out on some dumb-arsed mission – often involving the threat of bloodshed (more often than not mine) – I’d swallow a few healthy slugs of vodka. Now I didn’t want it. At the risk of sounding like some big jessie writer, I’d exorcised a demon or two. I’d mined a seam of writing called therapy. Pass me my smoking jacket. Pass me my beret.

  I was itching to get out. I stuffed the letter in my pocket and set off for Kensington Gardens.

  9

  I’d spent many hours in Kensington Gardens pushing Sarah around in her buggy. I knew which bits of the park she liked best; the Peter Pan statue had been one of them. She loved to wave at Peter, and always seemed certain that this time he would come to life and wave back.

  I’d climbed the fence into the Gardens near Lancaster Gate, after an age waiting for the traffic to peter out so that I would not be observed. I was careful once I’d moved past the Italian Gardens at the head of The Long Water – I knew some of the guys who worked for the security firm charged with guarding the area; they were no slouches. The Gardens closed at dusk, but enforcing those hours was difficult, if not impossible. The police patrolled the Gardens and the adjoining Hyde Park but it was pretty easy to dodge them if you kept your wits about you. I saw some guys cruis
ing for action, and sometimes you’d see the pickpockets and muggers who preyed upon them. It was dark but the night was made of that strange, summery, roseate grain. Tiny light sources – candle flames, lighters, cigarette coals – smouldered like fireflies. The air was warm and dry and bristling with energy. I hadn’t noticed but I was almost skipping along the path; I felt new, excited. I couldn’t say if that was down to the therapeutic benefits of my writing session, or the thrill of positive action. There was every chance Sarah might be a part of this group meeting by the statue – I could see a lantern up ahead, and hear male and female laughter – and if she was there, then my little charade would be over before it had begun.

  I reined in my optimism; nothing was guaranteed. Danger was here. I’d do well to pay that heed even if it was hard to acknowledge in this soft, buttery air.

  They had arranged themselves on blankets around the statue. Someone was pouring wine from a bottle into glasses. Jazz was playing through a portable speaker. Three figures. Two men. One woman. She was blonde, her hair cropped. She was short, petite. Silver glittered in her face. Her lips were chapped. It wasn’t Sarah. It couldn’t be Sarah. Can someone change so much?

  ‘This is civilised,’ I said.

  Nobody responded just then, but they all looked my way. You get to recognise hostility churn beneath apparent calm, and it was coming off one of them like heat from a full-on radiator. I kept an eye on him, without making it too obvious. He wore a black jumper and black jeans. His brow had the look of permanent furrow, and his mouth was flat and broad, unimpressed, like a frog. His hair was a luxuriant scoop of shining black. You could smell the product in it from here.

  The rest of them seemed curious, expectant even. One of them, the girl (not Sarah; voice coloured by the north-east), stood up and said: ‘You police?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Reference?’ This from ostensibly the oldest member of the group, in Taft’s absence. He sat with his legs extended, his back ramrod as if he was demonstrating a yoga pose. The wine bottle was clamped between his thighs. He wore a Joy Division T-shirt over a long-sleeved top and a white knitted beanie from which salt and pepper hair sprouted.