He broke off before the middle eight. She thought he’d had enough until he brought his hands together and clapped to the beat. Then she knew what he was thinking. She twirled around and started shimmying, letting her hips emphasise the beats and arching her back to make her bottom seem rounder, her waist smaller. She put her hands on her backside and used her fingers to ruck the dress material Inch by inch she clawed the cotton upwards until the skirt ended only fractionally shy of her cheeks. She only let the material drop back as she turned to face him again. He conducted her with his hands, suggesting movements with short gestures. She followed him, bringing one leg into a slow, circular kick and then, as he reversed the direction, making the same swinging arc kick to her right. Each time her leg soared, the paler skin on the inside of her thighs glowed for a second. As George led her on, she let her hands flutter by the top buttons of her dress, easing the first three open and holding the lapels apart to show the freckled v-bone between the rise of her breasts. She turned away again as she slipped the dress off her shoulders, left then right, before letting it slide to the small of her back. Her fingers only had to touch the clasp of her bra for it to spring open.
George had either recognised the song or already memorised it. He began singing at a verse ending: “Can I make some more romance with you, my love.” The mock bass profundity never disguised how well he sang.
Susan turned again as the dress fell all the way to the floor, holding the bra in place with her cupped hands. George had the sense to give up singing before the very last verse, the one where Van got a burbling scat-thing going, and Susan used the few, free, bars to improvise a slinky shuffle. Her face glowing around laughter lines, a giggle parting her sweet red lips. As the music ended, she tossed the bra away… ta dah! George was already applauding.
She took her bows. George poured the celebratory gin, saying, “We can still work together.”
She agreed, standing in her panties, toasting with her glass: “To Soho. We own it.”
George said, “Frankie will be pissed off when he finds out.”
“And pissed off when he finds out I’ve left him. So what are we going to do? Could you arrange some sort of spectacular crash so it looks as if all the money has been lost?”
“And then we split it between ourselves? Yeah, I could do that easily. Except that a fund manager isn’t supposed to put all the money into one project He might sue for negligence.”
“That isn’t Frank’s style.”
“No, he’ll save himself the solicitor’s fees.”
Twice over. He wouldn’t bother with a drawn-out divorce either. Susan said, “I can’t believe the bastard once reminded me of Terence Stamp.”
George swilled the dregs of his gin around. He knew what Susan wanted him to say. She wasn’t even being coy. There was only one thing to do, they both knew it.
He said, “Okay, but what if Frankie kills us first?
TWELVE
Cheb snuffled back to the restaurant, empty handed but for a bottle of poppers he bought along the way. As he pushed back into the kitchen, he caught the flickering tip of a cigarette, glowing in the restaurant’s shadows.
“Who’s that?’
A slow drawl answered. “No, mate. Who’s that?”
It wasn’t a cigarette, Cheb could smell it now. He said, “Naz, you made it.”
Cheb heard a suck, long and smooth enough to burn through a whole joint in one graceful drag. When Naz eventually spoke, his voice came out in glorious monotone, playing at thirty-three: “Yeah, well it’s time I came down, took a look at the sights and shit: Big Ben clock and whatdya call… the bridge with flaps. Maybe try for a holiday romance with Mannie’s kid sister.”
“Yeah?”
Only I got a problem. Jools is a bit tense. It seems some idiot’s been saying her mum’s a slag.
Cheb said, “That was me. Is she still upset?”
Naz inhaled, bending the sound into an affirmative “Uh-huh”.
“She’ll come round, Naz I don’t know if you noticed but I’ve got a situation underway that could use a cool head.”
Naz said, “It fucking looks like it.” He banged on the light switch.
The body lay where Cheb left it, spread across the floor. Cheb said, “It’s pretty much like I told you on the phone.”
Naz nodded over to the corpse. “What happened to his arse?”
Cheb told him how it had looked, sat up on the stove top.
Naz walked towards the semi—dressed corpse. It was slumped face up, its head slightly turned. A young face with long blond hair. Naz asked Cheb if he knew him.
“No.”
“You don’t think he looks like your mate, the cook.”
Cheb had thought so. All he said was, “Well, he’s got yellow hair.”
“He’s about the same build. You didn’t kill him.”
Cheb was shocked. “No.”
“It’s what I’m saying: you didn’t kill him. If you had, I wouldn’t be helping. As it is, I guess I’ll do it.”
Good. That was good, it hadn’t occurred to Cheb that there could be a problem. He said, “Did you get Hogie’s car?”
“Yeah. It’s in a multi-storey, near a street with a shit load of Chinese restaurants.”
Cheb said. “What’s it doing there?”
“You think I’m going to drive for hours looking for a parking space?”
“Well, you’re going to have to get it. Bring it down the alley at the back here.”
Naz walked over to the fire doors at the far end of the kitchen. He pushed through and looked up and down the alleyway, it was pedestrian only but a car would fit. He nodded. He carried on nodding, thinking Okay. When he stopped, it was to shake his head. Out loud, he said, “This is really flicked up.” He turned and left.
Twenty minutes later, Cheb was back at the door, watching two red eyes glowing in the darkness as they drifted towards him: the reverse fights on Hogie’s Volvo estate.
Naz held the car steady as he reversed towards the open fire doors. Looking in the rear view mirror, he could see Cheb peering round a huge galvanised bin. He guessed Cheb had put the body back inside but he did not know how long Cheb had been waiting there, just a boy alone on a back street with his dead body. When he’d pulled level to the fire doors, he got out of the car. But he first gave the steering wheel and gear stick a wipe with his sleeve. When he closed the driver’s side door behind him, he wiped the handle of that too. He told Cheb that he was going to wait at the end of the alley, near the street.
“Why?”
“As the lookout. Also, if anyone stops to wonder what you’re doing with a dead body, I can run off.”
“How am I supposed to get the stiff in the trunk on my own?”
“You got it into the bin.”
Cheb nodded, okay he would figure something out. Naz handed Cheb the keys before he strolled away, “Drive the car up when you’ve finished and I’ll get in.”
He kept half an eye on Cheb from the far end of the alley. No one went down that way but there were enough passers-by walking across its mouth. If none of them noticed anything peculiar, it wasn’t Cheb’s fault. A metallic crash echoed along the twin walls of the alley; Cheb had pushed over the wheelie bin. A girl out walking, dressed in silver with cute knee socks, turned towards the sound. Naz looked her over, from bare thighs to exposed She didn’t seem bothered by the crash and he watched her walk away, swinging her bum a little. He turned back to Cheb. Reflected light from the kitchen glittered off the bin, lying on its side on the paving stones. Cheb was out of view, probably crouching. Naz heard a grunt, Cheb was hefting the body into the trunk. Naz resumed his look-out gig. There were few enough people around but he took care as he scanned around.
Another crash, Cheb had slammed the fire doors shut. Everything he did, the actions of a brain-addled English boy. Like the night lights of city traffic caught on a slow exposure, a ring of chemical confidence left glowing trails as he moved. Naz watched as he crossed
to the driver’s side door with gestures swollen large enough to fill the halo around them. Altogether too much front for such a little fucker.
Another crash, Cheb had reversed into the wheelie bin. The car stalled, retired and leapt a foot forward before stalling again. Naz heard the squeal of synchri-mesh and the car bounced a few yards towards him before jerking to the right. He hadn’t thought of this, Cheb couldn’t drive. Naz hared back down the alley-way. As the car stalled for the third time, he stuck his head through the open driver’s side window saying, “Get over. I’ll drive.”
Cheb smiled placidly, “If that’s what you want.”
Now in the driver’s seat, Naz saw the wheelie bin roll on its dented side in his rear view mirror. Ahead of them the quiet of the road running around Soho Square. Before they reached the end of the alley, Naz had got the needle up past forty. He took the corner by hauling hard on the handbrake. The car quivered slightly and straightened on the empty street, hardly slowing through the turn. He was going to shoot through, round Soho Square but he had a thought. He went into an emergency stop: “You did cover the body?”
Cheb swore he had. Through all the swerves and wheel spins, Cheb seemed to be getting more and more excited. Like he was enjoying himself. As Naz drove on, he was even bouncing a little in his seat.
It was another hot night. The shifting crowds around the Centrepoint building and the junction of Charing Cross Road were dressed for sun although it was way past midnight Dust blew along the gutters, fine and bone dry in the dervish gas fumes. Naz pulled ahead of a cab, passed Centrepoint and crossed through the next set of lights.
Cheb said, “Okay, we’re going south. Take a right.”
Naz swung the Volvo into a bus lane. At the next junction the signals forced him round into another right turn. Soon he was heading back the way he’d come, facing back towards Centrepoint. The building towered above them like a monstrous packet of breakfast cereal.
Naz said, “Does it look familiar?”
Cheb shook his head, “No. I don’t really know London.”
Naz turned again, completing his round-the-block tour. The next time he looked for a southbound road, he’d wait for a sign to point the way. “Just tell me where you want to end up.”
“All we have to do is follow the river. I checked out the A-Z already, it’s straightforward.”
They were spinning around another building now, weaving through six lanes until Naz threaded towards a.n underpass. Cheb had no idea: he was rummaging through the glove compartment with manic fingers.
“I thought there was some skins.”
Naz said, “You’re going to roll a spliff.”
“Yes.”
“It’s an idea. Then if the cops stop us, they do us for drugs as well as carrying a dead body.”
Cheb nodded, good point; “And you probably got a gun, too.”
Naz turned a slitted eye on Cheb. “Why would I? I only use it for business and this is your business not mine.”
Cheb could have said it was no one’s business: it was a trip. Instead, he swept his arm out of the open window and felt the wind lick through his fingers They were on a bridge now, the Thames was fat and sluggish below them. The lights reflected off the river like fried eggs floating sunny-side up. Cheb fumbled on the floor beneath his seat for Hogie’s box of CDs, looking for some kind of musical accompaniment to fix the experience. He picked out a disc, sunk it into the hole of the hi—fl machine and watched as the green arrows flashed his decision. In a start, the sound cranked into a high—speed chaotic ticking, a thin wail etched over the noise.
While they waited at a crossroaded roundabout, Cheb said, ‘Did Jools tell you I’m a Buddhist?”
Naz nodded, he believed Jools had said something about it. He had been trying to get her to speak when all she wanted to do was stay squat and huddled with a duvet wrapped around her, covering her to eye level. Trying to step lightly through her miserable sniffling, he’d waved a hand around the room and asked why there was tin foil hung over the bedroom walls. She had told him it was something Cheb had done: because he’s a Buddhist.
Cheb was expanding, “…kind of a Buddhist. You know, karma ’n’ kismet. I’m into a dissenter’s dharma.”
Naz said, “Kismet’s an Arab word.”
“Yeah, right. Are you watching the road signs, we’re going west.”
Naz took the fork towards Wandsworth. He asked where now and Cheb told him to look out for a nightclub called Comecon. When they saw a queue one hundred yards strong, Naz reckoned they’d found the place.
Cheb said, “Can you pull in behind those coaches.”
There were coaches on the left and right sides of the road, bringing in clubbers from the capital’s satellite towns Naz asked, “What now?”
“We’ll have to wait for the queue to die down. Cigarette?”
Naz took a smoke from the packet. Cheb flicked on his bic and leant over to give Naz a light. He asked Naz how well he knew Arabic.
Naz said, “Not much. My languages are Gudjurati, Urdu and English. Also a bit of Hindi.”
“Yeah? That’s some fucking list. What’s the Arabic for? Are you a Muslim.”
“Yeah, like you’re a Buddhist. Only I’ve been a Muslim like you’re a Buddhist for longer than you’ve been a Buddhist like I’m a Muslim.”
Cheb said, “Yeah? I tell you, though. I got no time for these dust bowl religions, me. The Bible-bashers, Hebes or the Towel-heads. No offense.”
Naz looked over to the queue outside Comecon. It was still no less than a hundred yards long. Whatever Cheb was planning to do, at least he had the sense to wait for the area to quieten.
Cheb was saying: “My problem is, all three are the same. They’ve all got this sad respect for senility and they’re all based on wheat farming. You’ve heard of the fertile crescent, right? The birthplace of civilisation? But the only thing it’s fertile for is wheat.”
He leant over to adjust the volume on the hi-fi, this was something people should know. “And if you look at wheat out in the field, the grains are microscopic and covered in spikes. Even before you grind them down, you could grow old just figuring out how to get any nutritive content out of the cunts. It doesn’t make sense.”
Naz coughed on a dry toke of cigarette. He’d seen a van selling soft drinks over by the far kerb. He interrupted Cheb, suggesting they score a drink of something. Cheb said, No they should keep low. It was better that way.
Naz said, “So I have to listen to you?”
Cheb didn’t have a problem with that, he was only getting started: ‘Yeah, dig it I was saying, wheat’s got disadvantages. But it’s also the healthiest of the staple food crops. Which is why wheat cultures have a surplus of old people. A bunch of crusty old farmers, worn—out but hanging on.”
Naz watched as the clubbers disengaged themselves singly from the queue and bought drinks from the van. They carried handfuls of bottles back to their friends who’d stayed to hold their place. At the back of the drinks van, a skinny boy in a hooded top stopped three out of every five shoppers and sold them wraps, probably speed, perhaps E or trips too. Naz saw the money and the drugs change hands and remembered the cash Cheb had promised him over the phone, earlier that day. He couldn’t complain about the pay, just the work conditions. Cheb was telling him nothing he needed to know, like what they were doing or why they were here, and everything he didn’t need to know. Cheb never stopped. Now he was saying that religion was the social face of food technology.
“You want to know why these religions are always looking for converts? To build trading blocks. You see, there’s different types of wheat, hard grained and soft grained, and to make a loaf of bread that’s not going to rot after a few days you need to get a balance. So wheat eaters have to trade half of whatever grains they’ve got for the other type. No farmer can afford to live far from a market. These fucked-up, senile farmers know their crop’s travelling all over the world but they’re pinned to their farms. They’re cons
cious of an expanding world, but they can’t understand it and it terrifies them.”
Cheb’s voice had grown spacey, or spacier. He used the burning tip of his cigarette to sketch the expanse. Naz had stopped watching the drinks van. Now he watched as Cheb described a rapidly expanding world and the paranoid freaks that it ploughed in its wake.
“The world of wheat neurotizes everything it touches, it’s a machine churning out pitiful self-obsessions. The wheat eaters close in on themselves because they’re scared of the world and scared of being cheated. They have to trade but trade terrorises them. At the sa.me time, the situation makes them rich. Or at least, it makes the old men rich. So it all ends with a twisted reverence for old age, coupled with constant dreams of patricide. It’s a sick way to live but it’s the basis of monotheism: God, most of his prophets and all his priests are old men; property is sacred, theft is wrong, killing becomes a crime, greed is condemned as a sin. At the sa.me time, the whole culture promotes greed and encourages murder because the only way to get ahead is to kill the old flickers and steal their land.”
Cheb laughed. Naz gave him a break, let him see that he’d caught at least half his attention. Maybe he’d nearly finished.
“Like the different kinds of wheat, there’s a million varieties of the religion but, currently, only three basic species: Islam, Judaism and Christianity. All three are necessarily multi-cultural, whether they admit it or not, all of them constantly sub—divide and every one is at war with the others, despite being practically indistinguishable. They reckon to despise each other but it’s only a symptom of the generalised neurotic buzz.”
Jello Salad Page 10
