George didn’t know what he’d expected. He’d kind of quit the club scene lately but in the eighties he would occasionally let himself be dragged to places like Heaven or The Fridge. He knew about house music and even quite liked it To him, it was nothing other than Boy’s Town, Hi—NRG disco stripped to its essentials. Maybe he’d thought a rave would be something like that: up, up-lifting, up-for—it, up in the air hand-waving with everyone glamming it. But this was something else entirely. It wasn’t even house music. This was, according to a word he’d heard but never quite believed, the Jungle. And he hadn’t seen anything like it for thirty-five years.
Back in the early sixties, he couldn’t get enough of the mod clubs round Soho. This scene recalled the frugging amphetamine dancing of the R&B boys: times—ed by about five in size and intensity. The dancers had the same look: the mad staring eyes, the gallons of sweat running off their faces and washing their heads away to grinning skulls. Ecstasy was an amphetamine. He could only half remember the formula but liked the sound of it when he first heard it: 2, 3, 4 Metadioxymetamphetamine. Something like that. The numbers at the beginning made it sound like an R&B track, the count-in followed by the blurring rush of the words. George had dropped an E on a few occasions but each time in private loving company. He could see now, he’d missed half the experience. But coming on it like this, it was a toxic shock. He couldn’t even control his breathing. It was speeding up, threatening to match the 200 beats per minute of the noise around him.
He turned away from the barrier, mumbling “Time for a cig?” Naz nodded, Okay.
He searched through three pockets before he found his pack of cigarettes. He pulled out two Gauloises, ripped off the filters and stuck them in his ears, glad he’d switched from filter-free a few years back. He turned one of the cigarettes around, put it in his mouth and passed the other to Naz who said, “Thanks, bud. Any time now.”
The cigarette was lit, George just couldn’t suck the smoke down his throat fast enough.
“A fucking Jihad. You up for it, bud?”
He finally got it out “This is crazy. We can’t go through with it.”
Naz slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Don’t even think about it.”
George looked straight at him. “Why the fuck are you so calm?” His voice sounded steady but that was nothing but hopelessness.
“Like Cheb said, we just stick to the plan and it’s sorted.”
He had nothing left. But he tried to read Naz: What was sorted?
Naz put an arm round George’s shoulder, like he understood how the man must be feeling. He said, “I’m not stupid. I’m not gonna walk in a place and just get killed. But Cheb’s got it sorted out. He’s spread dissension among the enemy. Now that Frank Ball knows who really killed his son, we don’t have a worry.”
George didn’t believe a word of it.
*
Cardiff was nothing but a wet patch on the floor, smelling of disinfectant. Frankie had told his boys to wrap the rest of him in plastic sheets and bundle him away. Half an hour later, they were clanking back in the elevator, as cheerful as when they left. Liam saying, “He sleeps with the fishes, Uncle Frankie.”
Frankie gave them a grin. “Nice work boys.”
They dumped him in the river, like he told them. They’d done a good job swabbing Cardiff’s mess off the floor, too. But they’d had no luck tracking Susan, despite what they’d done to her Malteser friend.
The two boys were taking it easy, now, sat on the joist where they’d found Cardiff, just smoking and gassing about their holidays. Frankie had to hand it to them, they had stronger stomachs than most of the men he’d worked with over the years. Because it was a fact, Cardiff was a mess when they found him. If his time ever came, Frankie only hoped there’d be a true geezer around to put him out of his misery, like he’d done for Cardiff. The guy had gibbered and pleaded but, deep down, he had to know it was for the best The state he was in, what else could he do? What you got if you ain’t got a colon? It was over in a second, bang, and he’d put one right between the cunt’s eyes.
He took another swig, drinking to Cardiff. Here’s to you, son. You weren’t much but you took a bullet without running. Not that you could run far with an RSJ stuck to your ring.
Across the room, Sean was saying, “Katmandu.”
“Du what?”
“Katmandu, guy. You wanna try that.”
“Yeah? I been fancying a bit of that. Get my head sorted.”
Frankie watched them, separated by twenty yards of compound floor and by the half-drained brandy bottle in his hand. Separated by how many years? He wouldn’t have said it was possible but they’d been talking about dope and holidays for around four hours. The way things stood, he almost began missing Cardiff. No, what he really missed was peace and quiet.
When the music started, Frankie considered sending one of the boys out for earplugs. But he’d rode it out, just continued squinting out of the window and gritting his teeth. A few hours ago the queue was so long it started at the far side of the river and snaked over the bridge to the warehouse doors. It was gone now. A few minutes back, he’d seen three tramps walk by, the clowns wrapped up in overcoats in this weather but he guessed if that’s all they owned, then that’s what they had to wear. Now the only people left down by the dock were the hired security. They stood in a circle, recognisable by their black T-shirts. He knew the logo across the front read London Rainforest, but only because Sean and Liam were wearing the exact same shirts. That was just one of the new ideas that Liam had to explain to him. Something to do with the law, the advantages of a charitable status and the importance of a corporate identity: so the punters knew they were getting quality. “Caring environment, quality sounds and quality gear.”
They’d told him there were around fifteen hundred people down there, all of them dancing, drugged to the sockets. At twenty quid a head, not counting what they spent on drugs, that was serious coin. He couldn’t fault the business, only the fucking industrial health.
Liam was asking whether Katmandu was that place the Beatles went to chill out? Sean seemed to think it was.
Liam said, “I tell you what, someone who’s been given a hard time. That Yoko fucking Ono.”
“Yeah?”
“Too flicking right. Everyone giving her this, giving her that, saying she’s the tart what broke up the Beatles. But I tell you, I’d give her one.”
“Yoko Ono?”
“Yeah I’d give her one. And another thing, I reckon she’s a good singer. I mean, she’s not your Aretha fucking Franklin but she gives it some stick. There’s this track on Some Time in New York City, that tears your fucking heart out.”
“I heard that one, guy. It’s a shocker.”
Yeah, they were a cheerful pain. They were wrong about Yoko Ono though. It was McCartney who finished the Beatles.
TWENTY SEVEN
The programme was over. Hogie was back in the hospitality suite, standing at the centre of the bar and trying to entertain as many people as he could. A girl beside him was doing her best to decorate his arm but he liked to wave his hands when he spoke and she kept slipping off. With the pressure off for a week, the room was packed—not just with the guests and their people, but also technicians, researchers, friends, whoever. It was a wrap, it was a party.
Hogie’s one aim, as he was trying to explain, was choosing a drink. He was mainly complicated by the range of optics on offer but a subsidiary distraction was the fact he knew the barman. They’d worked together in a Four Seasons hotel out West but the big surprise was that the guy still seemed to like him. He asked why Hogie didn’t just have the usual.
“I don’t know. What did my usual used to be?‘
“Cider and brandy.”
“Shit man, you’ll blow my cover. They still think I’m a fucking gourmet.”
The girl on his arm was a skinny media chick, looking extra bright in the strip—lit party room. She was asking, “Did you really turn up to that
Liverpool show off your face.”
He told her, “Yeah. But I was straight this time.” It was a barefaced lie and she seemed to appreciate it.
Looking at the bottles above the bar he remembered Susan drank gin. He thought he could go for that but before he said anything the show’s producer swept up behind him shouting, Hello Genius.
They double kissed for about the fifth time since they’d got off air and she ordered a round of beers. “Is that alright?”
Hogie said, “Uh-huh. Sweet.”
She was dragging some of the other guests around with her. Not, thank Christ, the geek TV shrink. But all the other ones: a pop star who Hogie believed was Scandinavian and a comedian who might as well have been.
“Hogie’s got a new restaurant and it’s just fantastic. I was at the opening. Fabulous.”
“Yeah?” Hogie sucked at his beer. “I thought it was a bit fucked up, you know?”
A few beers down the line, Hogie remembered he was carrying Susan’s cocaine. He had doubts about the security of the house she was staying in, so he’d taken it for safekeeping. Now he broke open a bag, tipped it into a saucer and started laying out a few modest lines on the bar. Everyone ahead formed a queue. All of them panting round, asking if they could have a blunt. He stood there, saying Sure, giving it big smiles all around and listening as the comedian repeated, word-for-word, the exact spiel he’d used on the show. Hogie began to suspect the producer had deliberately dumped the guy on him. She Wm quick enough to disappear on another circuit of the room. He could hear her still, lapping up compliments everywhere she went. Apparently the show was a great success. She’d got a scoop, an exclusive post-murder interview and she could expect to be in all the papers in the morning.
Everyone was getting louder, wilder. Different strangers were constantly coming up to him, asking him personal questions about Jools. The comedian was head down in a plate of his cocaine, cracking on about the quality gear in a frankly schizoid accent. The pop star was throwing a sulk, a cameraman had asked him to sing “Fernando” and when the guy claimed not to know the words had insisted on reminding him. Over in the far corner, the producer was screeching about her night at the restaurant’s opening party, telling everyone she was actually there the very night the people got killed. She admitted it, she was getting so fucking hot, she swore she had a news antennae. If you wanted to confirm her brilliance, you just better get into line.
There was nothing louder than the producer. Not until the screaming started at the door. But this was another woman entirely. Her voice, reaching higher and higher, battling it out with a security guy. She was saying, “I’m his Aunt fucking Susan and I need to see him.”
*
When Susan finally broke through the door and pushed towards the bar, Hogie didn’t stand a chance. He never even saw the punch, just took it in the head and slapped forward, bouncing off the bar top. It was then that Susan noticed he‘d laid out a little bowl of cocaine. She thought, Jesus, no phone call or note but he managed to remember that.
He shook his head clear, giving her a goofy smile. “Susan?”
“What the hell are you doing here, Hogie.”
You could have pushed a knitting needle through his ear, it would have come out the other side as clean as it went in. He stood there and said, “I’ve been on TV. It was a contractual obligation, you know?” He nodded his head at a thin girl stood next to him. “She’ll explain it She’s a researcher here.”
The girl was staring at Susan, recognition clicking through. The only thing in Hogie’s eyes was dizziness.
Susan said, “You’ve got coke hanging out of your nose.”
He wiped the residue away with t.he inside of his wrist and handed her a rolled tenner. She looked down at it. She might have slapped it out of his hand but she didn’t. She elbowed the researcher and the comedian out of the way and picked up the whole saucer.
“So where’s the rest?”
Hogie pulled his satchel off the floor and showed her the neat rows of plastic bags, all perched together on top, only one of them ripped open and spilling its white powder. She took them all, emptying the saucer into the open one as she transferred them to her handbag. The grains of cocaine that stuck to the edges of the saucer she wiped away with her finger and made a pass under her nose. Her eyes didn’t water, she didn’t even blink. When she looked up at Hogie, her final, nose-clearing, sniff came out as a snarl. “We’re going.”
Hogie nodded, Okay. He had a coat and a couple of carrier bags at his feet. He fumbled them together, saying: ‘Maybe I should say goodbye to the producer, you know, out of courtesy.”
She didn’t think so. She hurried him along by driving the edge of her handbag into his head and keeping it up all the way to the elevator lobby. Behind her, she could hear the researcher shouting, “I’m sure that’s her. Susan Ball. The mother.”
Then another woman’s voice, much louder, screaming: “Get on the fucking phone, then. Get a crew after her.”
The voices faded as the elevator doors slid closed. Just fourteen storeys to the mezzanine. Susan used the time constructively, letting the cold of the air conditioning drill through her until her spine was frozen rigid. Hogie just carried on swaying. He didn’t even lose his stupid smile.
It was all action in the lobby. Susan grabbed hold of Hogie’s arm and steered him around the big wraparound desk. She tuned out the noise of the receptionists and the guards, even though they were pointing directly at her. Their mouths moving, saying It’s Her, but the actual words lost in the blank fuzz of the TVs screens that lined the entrance hall. Susan didn’t pause. She dragged Hogie into the revolving doors and spun him inside. Outside lay the jacked-up piazza that overhung the Thames. They were almost there. But as the doors finished their revolution, the flash bulbs started popping.
She still had one hand on Hogie. She flung the other to her eyes. Shielded, she saw the pack of photographers scampering towards her. Most of them were shouting her name, some were trying variations like Suzie… Sue… Suzie Ball.A voice to her left, louder than a megaphone, yelled Piss Flaps. She turned to see a huge fat man in mid-lumber, holding a camera to his eye. He got a perfect, full-on expression: a look of shocked surprise soaking across her face. She glanced at Hogie, the surprise was there as well. She got a better grip of his arm, if she hadn’t dragged him through the paparazzi dogs, he would have stayed rooted. She hissed, “Keep your fucking head down.”
They ran ahead of the pack, down the ramp to where the car was waiting, lit by the sickly pearls of the street lamps. Hogie seemed only to recognise it as she pushed him into the passenger seat.
“Is this mine?”
Susan nodded, pointing towards the backseat, “Cheb gave me the keys.”
Cheb stayed huddled to the corner, invisible until the interior light came on with the open door. As Susan pulled away from the kerb, he kept well back, out of range of the photographers that crowded to the windows. Even when she broke free of the scrum and pointed the car at a ramp leading up to the Bullring, he kept still. If anything he looked worse than when she picked him and the car up in Camden, worse than he had all day. His eyes were set into bulbs the colour of ripe eggplants, splitting at the centre. He had pricked his lips to reduce the swelling once he realised she could barely understand a word he said. Looking at him in the rear—view mirror, Susan could see the blood trickling at the corner of his mouth. But he was moving and that was a miracle. She’d asked him earlier, How are you coping? She soon found out; the boy had his pockets full of prescription drugs: assival and morphine and the syringes to go with them. Like he said, Drugs weren’t just for fun. When she asked how he’d got them he’d told her Naz had seen him right: “He looks like a Paki gangster to you. When he goes into a chemists, he comes on like an Indian doctor.”
Hogie was up on his knees, now, facing backwards in his seat so he could stare at Cheb. He choked when he first saw the state of him. All he could say when he found his voice was: “Oh fuck, fuck
Cheb. Fuck.”
Susan never once took her eyes off the road. She told Hogie to get down and do the same. He caught the edge in her voice and turned to drop into his seat and turned his eyes on her, all puppyish and pleading. Be Nice.
“I said, Look straight ahead.”
He flinched away, fixing on the bridge and the city rising up beyond. “Don’t even breathe.”
Cheb rose up for the first time, looming out of the dark to club Hogie once across the head with the butt of a gun. Hogie slumped. With one hand on the recliner lever and the other fisting a wad of his long hair, Cheb dropped the seat and pulled Hogie out flat.
She asked, “Is the bastard unconscious?”
Cheb shook his head, “Not yet but he soon will be.”
Susan turned and saw the outline of the hypodermic syringe. Cheb was holding it clamped between his teeth, like a dog with a bone. Keeping his hands free as he pinned Hogie’s neck to the headrest with one arm and used the other to pull up the sleeve of his chef’s smock and slap up a vein. She said, “Do you want me to slow down.”
“Better not. Keep ahead of those reporters.” Cheb had found his vein. Susan flinched, wishing she hadn’t turned at just the moment the needle disappeared into Hogie’s arm. As Cheb pushed on the plunger she heard him say, “Mother-fucker.”
“He really slept with your mother, too?”
“Yeah. And I don’t think he even liked her very much.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m just jealous.” He said it with a grin, turning his head so she caught it framed in her rear-view mirror. He was almost where he wanted to be, a true-life monster. His face all the colours of shadows: green, purple, black and blue. He had his knife in his hand now. She couldn’t look in the mirror without seeing the glint of the blade, flashing in the dark as he got to work on Hogie’s face.
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