Candleland

by Martyn Waites

  Larkin put the report down and looked round. Suddenly the pub seemed grim, oppressive. He knew it wasn’t really, that it was Karen’s story affecting him. He ordered another pint and picked up the pages again, scouring through for something – anything – that might give him a lead. His chest gave a sudden heart-gulp as his eyes fixed on a piece he’d somehow missed earlier. It wasn’t much, but it was the nearest thing to a clue he’d seen.

  Police had been called to a disturbance at 5 Cromwell House on the Atwell Estate in Shoreditch. A fight had been in progress, presumably a drug-related turf war, and everyone in the vicinity had been pulled in. Karen Moir was among the list of people questioned but never charged. She claimed she was just passing and had been drawn into it, and this couldn’t be disproved. Reluctantly the police had let her go. That was well over six months ago and that was the last time her name had been recorded anywhere. Slim, admittedly, but all Larkin had to go on. He stuck the report in his pocket, drained his glass, got out his A to Z and, excited to be doing something positive, made his way to Shoreditch.

  In conclusion, we failed to find Karen Moir. Whether she is still living under that name, or whether she is still out there at all, is a matter on which we can only speculate.

  To get to Shoreditch, Larkin had to walk through Hoxton, the hippest, most happening part of London. A charmless stretch between Old Street and Shoreditch High Street, a no-man’s-land where the City ends and inner city urbania starts, it had been overrun by artists, media folk and their attendant terminally hip hangers-on. This wasn’t the gentrification of the Eighties City yuppie, however, this was a new kind of colonisation; the creatives carving out a new capital for themselves, literally in some cases, turning warehouses and old schools into lofts, studios. Everything had a neo-primitive look, as if the lack of amenities was something in itself to be proud of.

  Larkin walked south from Old Street tube, down Rivington Street onto Curtain Road. Everyone he passed seemed to be wearing regulation fleeces and cargo pants with trainers on their feet. They all looked to be well into their twenties and thirties and dressed like seventeen-year-olds, except not that many seventeen-year-olds could afford the labels on the clothing and footwear they wore. Cropped hair and goatees were de rigueur for the men and the women all looked like they had shares in the Severe Black Glasses Company. The bars and cafes weren’t just that, they were also galleries, film clubs and internet access centres. He caught snippets of converation as he went, overheard customers loudly declaim themselves to each other. For people who make a living from communication, thought Larkin, they didn’t seem to have anything to say beyond self-promotion. Larkin couldn’t talk: if spouting bullshit in pubs was a crime, he’d have been locked up a long time ago. There was a real buzz about the place, though, a happening vibe that was worlds away from the smug City wine bars that lay half a mile to the west.

  He crossed the road and walked over Hoxton Square itself. Leafless trees and threadbare grass, February-bleak. It looked like the kind of place where Sorenson and Sipowitz of NYPD Blue would find a dead body. Maybe the artists liked it that way, found it inspiring. He walked further and found the fashionable people thinning, and an unexceptional working-class area taking over. Shops, pubs, cafes. Nowhere near as hip as round the corner, but not that bad. It even had the Hackney Community College, a beige brick building done out in the architectural style of Modern Aspirational.

  Larkin began to wonder why Jackie Fairley’s people hadn’t followed up the lead – this area didn’t seem so threatening. Once he reached the Atwell Estate he had his answer. There would be no ultra-hip coffee shops here, no artists revelling in artfully arranged lo-fi surroundings. This wasn’t just a sink estate, but seemed to have been designed by the same architect who did the old Soviet gulags. It probably served the same purpose too, as a sinkhole down which had been poured all the undesirables in the area: problem families, fucked over-adults, fucked-up kids, misfits, outcasts and those who through no fault of their own were just plainly poor. Council flats whose inhabitants had slipped as far down the food chain as it was possible to go.

  Perhaps it hadn’t started out as a slum, but that’s how it had ended up. Police, local authority and social workers were afraid to enter, leaving the purest form of Darwinism to flourish. A warren of huge tenement blocks, bolted-together concrete slabs that managed to look both impermanent and as if they’d been there forever. As Larkin walked, he looked at the windows, wondered who was behind them, what wretched things had conspired to bring them here. The despair was almost palpable. Graffiti beginning to proliferate, wall-scrawled territorial, tribalist markings giving Dante-esque warnings to the unwary. Citizens stay out. Larkin entered.

  He went down the deserted street, feeling unseen eyes chart his every step, a sharp-edged wind blowing dust and garbage around him. He had memorised the route, not wanting to bring out the A to Z for fear of looking like a tourist, and was tensed and ready for trouble. Were the streets really curling, taking him further and further towards the centre, spiralling deeper and deeper downwards, or was it just his imagination working on him? A slice of fear lodged itself in his subconscious. Was this Hell? He tried to dismiss the thought, and kept walking.

  He turned the corner to Cromwell House and immediately knew which one was number five. The patch of earth at the front was decorated with strewn junk food cartons, discarded automotive parts and other forms of human waste. Shrivelled, stunted trees sprouted from patches of yellow grass, dying, starved of light and nutrients, wilting in the shadows of the concrete monoliths. The windows of the flat were boarded up and the door seemed to be made from reinforced battleship steel. Shit, he thought. Crack house.

  Larkin checked the street. There was no way into the flat and he doubted the occupants would be in a hurry to answer his questions. That was why the report hadn’t made such a fuss about the lead. With this kind of environment it was more of a dead end. Needing time and space to think of his next move, he had noticed a cafe opposite. It sat in a one-storey row of mostly boarded-up, graffitied shops. The ones that were still open had grilled and barred fronts, the cafe no exception. It looked more like a testing ground for various strains of germ warfare, but Larkin had no alternative. He called at the newsagents, picked up a couple of tabloids for camouflage and entered.

  He had seen them come and go; sidling up to the door, doing a coded knock, slipping folded money in, getting a poly-wrapped bundle in return. Some were even allowed inside. Occasionally a big flash car would pull up, Beamer or Merc, stereo bleeping and thumping fit to crack the tarmac, and a couple of young black guys dressed like wannabe gangsta rappers would get out, go inside then back in the car and away. Sometimes a young kid, who didn’t look to be in double figures, would ride up on a pedal bike, shove something through the slit in the door and zoom off again. Once, a young mixed-race guy, well-built with muscle, wearing a leather bomber, trainers, oversized jeans, with dirty blonde cropped hair, emerged from the flat. Despite the February cold, he wore nothing underneath the bomber, which was unzipped as far as his flaunted six-pack. His posture said he knew how to handle himself. Standing four-square and squat at his side on a leash and harness was a Staffordshire bull terrier, muscle-packed back-up. He looked up and down the street, his attitude expecting either armed police or paparazzi to come running, and when none did, strode off, leading with his dick.

  Larkin had read his way through the papers twice, eaten a full English that was surprisingly good, and drunk three cups of coffee that, while not winning any awards, were comfortably the right side of poisonous. He wanted to keep watching, but out of the corner of his eye he could see the sole worker in the cafe, a small, aged West Indian, eyeing him suspiciously from his perch behind the counter. He seemed to be the only person working there, but Larkin kept catching glimpses of shadowy figures in the darkened kitchen area which was cordoned off from the front of the cafe by an old beaded curtain. Larkin didn’t know what they were doing in there, but he doubt
ed they were dishwashers. The last thing he wanted was to outstay his welcome in an area like this. The night was begining to cut in, so Larkin decided to pay his bill and leave. He’d plan his next move later.

  Larkin moved to the counter, took out some cash from his pocket. The West Indian was dressed in a dirty shirt covered by an apron so multi-coloured with unidentifiable stains it resembled a mid-period Jackson Pollock. He never took his eyes from Larkin all the time he rang up the money in the cash register. Leaning across to give Larkin his change, he spoke.

  “Haven’t seen you in here before,” he drawled in a rich Jamaican accent.

  “No,” said Larkin.

  “You’re not from round here.” The man’s left hand played under the counter. Larkin speculated what was there: a gun, baseball bat, machete, or even a panic button that would bring two dozen steroid-pumped friends running. He decided to choose his answers carefully.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You givin’ a lot of attention to that place opposite. You police? Mr John Law himself?” The man’s posture stiffened. He was bracing himself.

  At least Larkin could answer honestly. “No, nothing like that. I’m just looking for somebody. Someone in there might know where she is.”

  Some of the man’s hostility dropped away. A look of intelligence, of calculation, entered his features. “They won’t tell you. Even if they know. They bad, bad boys.” Bitterness crept into the man’s voice.

  “I know, but that place is the only lead I’ve got.”

  The man stared straight at Larkin, genuinely curious. “Who are you, then? What you do?”

  “My name’s Stephen Larkin. I’m a journalist.”

  The West Indian’s eyes suddenly twinkled. A smile edged its way to the corners of his mouth. “A journalist? A newspaper reporter? You lookin’ for a story, man?” He puffed his chest out. “Don’t waste your time with those boys. Let me tell you the story of my life.”

  Larkin smiled. Why does everyone I meet want me to write their life story today? he thought. “I’m not working at the moment. I’m just doing a favour for a friend. Find his daughter for him.”

  “An’ take her home?”

  Larkin nodded. “Hopefully.”

  The man’s face became serious, as if he was considering something, weighing up a painful decision. Suddenly, decision apparently reached, he broke into a wide grin. His hand dropped from whatever it was behind the counter. “Let me tell you my story. And who knows? If you listen good, and pay attention to an old man, and I take a liking to you, white boy, I might just be able to get you in there.” He gestured towards the crack house.

  “Really?” Larkin couldn’t hide his surprise.

  “Really.” He looked round the cafe. “Now, my customers seem to have deserted me today, so what say I shut up early and find us something a bit stronger than coffee to drink. That sound good to you?”

  Larkin smiled. It certainly did.

  The man, whose name was Raymond, “but everyone be call me Rayman”, closed the cafe, took off his apron, poured two huge shots of Jamaican rum and began to talk. The shadowy figures still moved about in the kitchen, but since they posed no immediate threat, Larkin tried to ignore them and listen to the story.

  Rayman came to Britain from the Caribbean in the Fifties. “I was nine years old. Windrush. My parents thought there more jobs here, the land of opportunity.” He sighed. “Ha. My father was trainin’ to be a doctor. You not writin’ this down?”

  “I’m listening,” Larkin replied.

  The answer seemed good enough. Rayman continued. “Anyway, only work he could get here was shovlin’ coal.” He laughed bitterly. “Told him make no difference he wouldn’t get dirty. His skin already too black. This wasn’t the country we were promised, with fine buildings an’ good manners an’ all that. We were called wogs an’ told to get back to the jungle. I saw all this, saw my parents stick in there, saw their dreams just disappear. I wouldn’t go the same way. I’s goin’ make somethin’ of my life.”

  He told Larkin of his drift into petty crime, “the only openin’ for a black man in those days”. Stealing, shoplifting to start with, then it escalated. “I was earnin’ me good money, dressin’ well, had fine-lookin’ ladies on my arm. Good times. Then someone said he like to sleep with one of my ladies and pay well for it. So I got me a string of them, hired them out.” He paused to take a mouthful of rum. “But it was all fun, you know? Nothin’ heavy, you know what I’m sayin’? We all got somethin’ out of it. I wasn’t hurtin’ no one, the ladies got fine clothes, money in their pocket, I din’t beat them up or nothin’ …” His eyes misted over as he travelled back over the years. “Yeah, we all enjoyed it.” Larkin doubted that, but didn’t interrupt his cosy criminal history.

  Rayman had started to deal cannabis, “just weed, nothin’ stronger,” and run a shebeen. “Man, that was a success. High times for all. The black man loves to gamble, loves to drink, loves his women. An’ I supplied all three. But then the big boys, the gangsters wanted to take over an’ I knew it was time to get out.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Bought this place an’ a couple others round here. Good times a-comin’ Maggie said. So I listened. Became a businessman. Started some Caribbean restaurants, owned some property round here.” He looked around. “All I got left now is this.” He gestured towards the shadowy kitchen. “An’ my weed dealin’.” He shook his head. “Should have known better’n trust that white bitch.”

  Larkin agreed, and the conversation, fuelled by the rum, began to meander. Three glasses later, they had managed to sort out the majority of Britain’s problems, and had an enjoyable time of it, but Larkin was still no further forward to gaining access to the crack house.

  Rayman sat back, drained the last of his rum. “So, you like my story?”

  “Yeah,” said Larkin.

  “But you’re not goin’ to write about me?”

  “Not just yet.”

  Rayman laughed. “But you listened, an’ we talked an’ had us a fine time, an’ that’s good enough.” He leaned forward, suddenly conspiratorial. “An’ now you wanna know how to get in that crack house across the street?”

  Larkin leaned in too. Partners in crime. “Yeah.”

  “Lemme think about it,” Rayman said, sitting back. “Come here tomorrow for your breakfast an’ we talk again.”

  “You’ve got a great way of getting repeat business,” said Larkin.

  Rayman laughed again, pointed. “You’re not bad for a white man.” He stood up. “You better leave now.” He nodded towards the shadowy kitchen, his face suddenly serious. “I got me some business to attend to.”

  Larkin left, promising to return and made his way back through the estate. The darkness was full on now, and he attempted to stick to well-lighted areas, which wasn’t easy. The further he got from the centre of the estate, the more relaxed he began to feel. He was even relieved to see the trendsetters of Hoxtonia sitting in their bars, oblivious to what lay around the corner. He wished he could have joined them.

  He thought of Rayman and his promise. Could he trust him? Probably not. Should he be contemplating the course of action he was about to take? Probably not. Did he have a choice if he wanted to find Karen? Probably not.

  With a sigh of relief at making his way out of the estate in one piece but for little else, he made his way back to Clapham.

  Shelter

  By the time Larkin had reached Clapham, the skies had opened, letting squally rain join the cold and wind, perfect fag end of winter weather. Larkin wasn’t soaked by the time he reached Faye’s but he was certainly unpleasantly wet. That, along with being chilled and windswept, told him once again why most British suicides happen in February. Nothing to do with certain unfortunate people realising they couldn’t keep their New Year’s resolutions and they were condemned to live as failures, Larkin’s surly thoughts went, just the weather.

  Opening the front door, the first thing that struck
him was the smell. Wonderful cooking aromas coming from the kitchen. It made the house feel warm, lived in, welcoming. He could get used to this, he thought. He squelched into the front room. Andy lay stretched out on the floor, hooked up to the TV in a tangle of wires and plastic, fighting Duke Nukem on his Playstation. Larkin smiled.

  “Turned into an adolescent again now that you’re back at your mam’s?” he asked.

  Andy stood up, inadvertently allowing himself to die onscreen. He looked sheepish. “’Allo, Stevie, mate. Look, about last night …”

  Larkin began to walk away. “You don’t have to explain.”

  “No,” said Andy, “it’s not what you think.” He paused and thought. “Actually yeah, it is what you think, but there was a reason for that.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I mean, what could I do? She’s an old mate. And she’s a bit of a dealer. Whenever I see her we get together, it’s a done thing. I give her a bit of the old pork sword action and she gives me a discount on some blow and speed.”

  Larkin smiled, milking his mock-superiority for all it was worth. “Charming arrangement. I hope you took precautions.”

  Andy looked morally offended. “Course I did. What d’you take me for? Nice girl an’ that, but she’s been round the track more times than the greyhounds at Walthamstow, know what I mean?”

  Larkin shook his head. He was in no position to judge. Not after what he’d done last night.

  “I’ll make it up to you, anyway,” said Andy. “Whatever you want tomorrow, I’ll do it.”

  “Good,” said Larkin.

  “How d’you get on, anyway?” Andy asked.

  They sat down and Larkin told him.