by Toby Litt
I stumbled about, trying to get one foot and then the other into my underpants. For some reason I resented the idea of having to sit or lean on anything for support whilst I dressed. I wanted to get out of there without incurring any further debt – however minuscule.
‘Where are you going?’ said Josephine. ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘I have to be home,’ I said, then added unnecessarily, ‘I’m moving back into Lily’s old flat soon.’
Josephine reached over for the pack of low-tar cigarettes on the bedside table.
‘Won’t that be a little difficult?’ The understatement of postcoital camaraderie.
‘Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. I have my reasons.’
Josephine lit up and lay back.
‘I still can’t see what Lily saw in you – it obviously wasn’t sex.’
Struggling into a white cotton T-shirt, no answer to this insult came to me. Josephine was being underhand. Perhaps this had been her reason for going to bed with me (more correctly – taking me to bed): to gain power over me, to be more able to hurt me. As if I needed to be hurt. As if I deserved more. If so, it was a very adult way of going about things. Sex for motives other than sex. (How very unadult adult movies are.)
The fact that I’d kept Lily’s flat had clearly meant a great deal to her.
Suddenly, all our carefully contrived soft-focus was gone. Our Director of Photography had fallen out of love with our skins – with human skin altogether. The thing came up hard and cruelly lit: pores like holes in a greasy colander, areas of outlaw hair, bulges-to-be-politely-ignored, the silver snail-tracks of Josephine’s stretch-marks.
A few more thumps and bumps and I was into my socks and shoes.
Josephine watched calmly from the bed, letting her low-tar smoke rise up to the ceiling.
There was no way I could compete with Josephine: I was up against knowledge and knowledge of knowledge, knowingness. In my mind I had become the thirsty child, sleepless, in search of a glass of water, who meets the alcoholic dinner-guest in secret quest of the cooking sherry. We could whisper together for a while in the darkened kitchen. But as she tottered off – her breath smelling heavy-thick like flu and sweet like cherry-drops – her every stagger was in an idiom, a language, that she knew I didn’t speak: shame. I wasn’t ashamed, and so I hadn’t fallen into that degree of adulthood: mine were not yet the pained pleasures of grown-ups; I had still to suffer the disintoxication of all intoxication. I was being breathily included in a secret shame, and the very fact that I was being included proved just how far from true incorporation I really was. Maybe I could run upstairs with my water glass leaving silver splotches behind me on the hall carpet – and maybe I would go to bed big with the excitement of a shared lie and a humiliation not yet understood. But I would wake up the following morning a shameless child.
‘I’ll call,’ I said, last thing before I left.
‘Do,’ emphasized Josephine.
I got out of the house, not even asking her to call me a taxi. And so I had to wander around St John’s Wood for half an hour before an amber-lighted black cab stopped.
One car, which I thought at one time might be an illegal taxi, seemed to be following me. It was not a Mondeo. It was a Mercedes.
69
It was late afternoon by the time I got away from Josephine. Anne-Marie had been in my flat all day. I’d trusted her. I’d left the sports bag in the bottom of the wardrobe. Part of me was worrying about whether she’d snuck a look. But the greater part was dreading the return home. So far, we’d had sex every night we’d been together. Tonight, she’d expect it. Tonight, she might not get it.
I hadn’t really been unfaithful, I kept telling myself. Anne-Marie and I were a contingent fact: nothing had been settled upon, everything was goodwill and implication. Now, for me, the goodwill had deflated and the implication was already becoming suffocating: I wasn’t responsible enough, at the moment, for a real relationship. Fuck, I was on the rebound from Lily’s death and my own near-death – bouncing at high velocity towards the death of two other people. I didn’t want the excuse of therapeutic workings-out: I needed a bit of straight-time, not this double-back bendy-straw stuff.
Anne-Marie would have to take whatever peripheral pain was going round. I wasn’t going to tell her about it, but if she found out I wasn’t going to deny it. I was about to kill people: no-one should tell me how to behave; I was likely to spend the rest of my life in jail; no-one had the right to deny me the maximum amount of sex available. Perhaps I should ask the taxi-driver to drop me off at a brothel.
‘Excuse me, mate,’ he said, ‘but you’re not mucking around with me, are you?’
I thought he somehow knew the inside of my head.
‘It’s just,’ he said, ‘that car behind us seems to have some friends of yours in it – they’ve been following us ever since I picked you up. I don’t like people playing silly-buggers with me.’
I looked round. It was the two again, the albino and the black man.
‘They’re not my friends,’ I said.
‘Do you want me to stop, anyway?’ he asked.
‘No. Keep going.’
The car followed us all the way back to Mortlake. As I got out, they got out; as I walked to my front door, they followed me – faster – catching up.
‘Excuse me,’ said the albino.
‘Don’t make any trouble,’ said the black man.
‘Come with us.’
‘We’re going for a little drive.’
All of a sudden it felt as if someone were mixing low-grade cement in my bowels.
Although the curtains were drawn in the front room, I could see that some of the lights were on. Music was playing: the Amadeus soundtrack. Anne-Marie was inside – only a few feet away. It was even possible that she’d heard my footsteps on the garden path. She might look out between the curtains or come to the front door.
I thought about shouting, making a run for it. But the two would have caught me up in seconds – displeased, more likely to be violent.
Instead, as I turned round, I put my hand behind my back and gently tossed my keys towards the front door. (Hopefully, Anne-Marie would find them the following morning. If she did, she would know that something had happened to me. Something bad.) A moment later, I gave a loud cough – intended to cover up the chink the keys would make hitting the concrete.
It didn’t work.
‘Oi,’ said the albino.
‘Nice try,’ said the black man, smiling.
‘Now, pick them up.’
The two escorted me back to their car. It smelt of cigarette ash. On getting in, they both lit up immediately. I didn’t ask them not to.
The black man drove.
‘Aren’t you going to blindfold me?’ I said.
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ said the black man.
‘We’re just driving,’ said the albino.
‘We thought we’d take you on a little tour,’ said the black man. ‘Sites of local interest.’
And so they did.
One by one they drove me past a number of very unrandomly chosen places – and the two took turns in saying:
‘This is a graveyard.’
‘This is a hospital’
‘This is a funeral parlour.’
‘This is the river.’
‘This is the dump.’
‘This is the police station.’
After about six of these, the albino turned round to me and said, ‘Getting the idea, are you?’
Fear crackled in the back of my throat like electricity.
And so it continued:
‘This is another hospital.’
‘This is another graveyard. Nicer than the other one, don’t you think? Less crowded.’
We drove. We just drove. We drove east. Crossed the river. Drove further east.
‘You realize,’ said the black man, ‘that we can do this any time we like – take you for a lit
tle drive – take you anywhere we want: to a lake, to a building site. And if your maths is up to scratch, you’ll notice that there’s two of us whereas there’s only one of you.’
I didn’t react. Not outside, anyway. Inside, it felt as if my vital organs had just launched into the hokey-cokey.
‘We could have taken Tony out for a long drive, but we didn’t. We decided to leave him where he was. Somebody wanted Tony taken care of – but gently. And Somebody wants you to know that anything can happen – anything at all. You have been a minor irritation, so far; but you’re becoming irksome. Buying guns is not a good idea.’
I didn’t bother denying it.
‘You’ve been attracting too much attention to yourself. Now, this Somebody I’m speaking of, he’s a man who doesn’t like attention. He’s quite happy to see the law take its course. It saddened him to learn that you survived the shooting: that didn’t do his reputation very much good. He has a very good reputation. He’d chosen the right man for the job: he was a bit of a nutter – and maybe Somebody didn’t really mind that the nutter got caught. But Somebody did want to see the job done properly. So, you see, you’re really a blot on Somebody’s copy-book. And the more you make him remember you, the more likely it is he’s going to have you scratched out. What you must do from now on is let things happen as they are going to happen. Let the trial go ahead. Identify the man who shot you. Feel happy when he is convicted. Don’t open your mouth. Don’t mention us. Don’t push it any further. It’s not worth your while – it’s very not worth your while. Please let me emphasize: the Somebody I mention isn’t worried on his own behalf. If he’s guilty of anything, it’s of introducing one person to another. Of trying to help. One person who might be useful to another. That’s all. Nothing more than that. This may, in retrospect, have been a trifle ill-considered. But he really isn’t guilty of anything at all.’
‘Here,’ said the albino, turning round in his seat.
I thought at first he was going to hit me but he looked straight over my shoulder.
‘Someone’s on us,’ he said.
The black man checked his rear-view.
‘You see what I mean,’ he said to me. ‘This is unpleasant. I hope you understood what I just said. Now, when I stop the car, I want you to get out.’
He accelerated round the corner and did an emergency stop. I wasn’t wearing my seat-belt, so was thrown forwards against the back of the passenger seat.
‘Get out!’ the black man shouted, showing real anger for the first time.
I fumbled around the handle.
‘Shit,’ the black man said, and accelerated off again.
I looked out the back window. The car following us was a Mercedes.
For a couple of minutes the black man did his best to lose it, but he couldn’t manage – the rush-hour traffic was too syrupy.
‘Have you got the handle this time?’ the albino said. ‘You pull it towards you – down under the ashtray.’
I tried it, and the door popped out.
Immediately, the car did an emergency-stop. The door was flung forwards by the force. I was surprised it didn’t snap off.
‘Go!’ they both shouted.
Without hesitation, I jumped – and the moment I was out they were accelerating away.
The Mercedes slowed as it drove past. I had time to see a couple of men, one of them looking towards me inquiringly – seeing if I was still in one piece. Then they sped after the other two.
To my astonishment, a third car (a Rover) – also containing two men – roared past, paying a lot less attention to me.
I’d been dumped somewhere in the East End. I didn’t know my way round at all. I found a main road and then a phonebox. At least, I thought, I would now be able to give Anne-Marie a decent excuse as to why I was late and and why I didn’t – for the first time – feel like having sex with her. When I called, Anne-Marie picked up before the second ring.
‘Do you have enough cash to pay for a long taxi ride?’ I asked.
‘Where are you? I’ve been worried.’
‘Do you?’
She said she did.
‘I’ve been for a ride with some friends,’ I said – slipping easily into thuggy understatement. ‘I’ll be home as soon as I can: have the money ready.’
It took me another half an hour to find a cab willing to go south of the river. I’d walked a couple of miles by then, trying to think of what had been happening to me: who had the people following me been? Surely one lot were the police: the guardian angels that Tony Smart had mentioned. But who were the others?
Paradoxically, I felt safer now that I’d been warned off. I wasn’t going to make any more inquiries into the case: all I was after now was my revenge.
It worried me that ‘Somebody’ knew I had the gun. I’d hoped to keep that a secret: I’d wanted Dorothy to be the first person to know, looking up the barrel of it, realizing her stupidity – about to die, about to disintegrate, in the full consciousness of it. Bang.
But Somebody did know about it. And if this man – whoever he was – knew I’d got hold of a gun, then he probably knew I wanted to use it; and he must have a fairly good idea of who I wanted to use it on. Yet he hadn’t warned me off that – just off himself.
I assumed that Somebody was one of the men who Tony had put Dorothy and Alun in touch with, when they were assiduously researching how to be murderers. If so, then he knew that Dorothy was behind Lily’s killing. Must know.
And if I’d been followed even only part of the time, he also knew that I’d found out what she’d done.
He didn’t have to be a criminal mastermind (though maybe he was) to work out my intentions…
But maybe he didn’t care about my intentions: maybe they slotted in quite well with his other plans, whatever they were.
And so the warning-off had the opposite effect to that intended. It was quite clear that, if I left things to go their own way, if I allowed the police their day in court, if I behaved, then the hitman would get sent down – and nothing at all would happen to Alun and Dorothy. For some reason, the police were leaving them alone.
The hitman had kept his mouth shut, and with good reason. It wasn’t going to be worth his while – in prison – to ditch some East End crime supremo in the shit. As things went, he was probably cushdy for the next ten years. If he kept quiet.
70
Anne-Marie was very relieved to see me back – and I spent most of the first half of the evening lying to her about where I’d been and who I’d been with. The threatening drive now lasted three or four hours, and its route took in most of London. I omitted all mention of Highgate Cemetery and, of course, of Josephine.
I had a bath first thing after I came through the door; getting rid of all residual powder-smells – though my fear-sweat had probably covered them anyway.
Anne-Marie brought me a glass of red wine, and sat on the loo whilst I soaked. She wanted to hear what real criminals were like.
‘Do you think they had anything to do with that brick through the window?’ she asked.
It was something I’d been thinking about myself.
‘It seems a bit crude,’ I said. ‘So it probably was them.’
After we’d eaten some of Anne-Marie’s leaden pasta, she fetched all the responses we’d so far received to the Stage advert. I didn’t want to look at them. I was knackered. But I knew we had to do it as soon as possible.
We talked through the actors’ applications: grinning colour photographs (grinning glossies – 5” × 7”), all the different genres of actorly appearance – intense but chummy, lyrical but tough. About two hundred had replied.
The problem, if I really had been casting, was that all of them – without exception – looked like actors (and not ordinary human beings).
Lily had been artificial, too: but, I think, she had been aware of this. The world in which she appeared to be most at home was the world of her six cereal ads. Not on the actual set: there – when I had once
or twice visited – she seemed constrained by the fact that she was subject to very uneven levels of attention. Sometimes, when she was in front of the cameras, it seemed as if everyone on set was completely ignoring her – her as her– and concentrating on the one subdivided aspect of her that had immediate importance for them: her lighting, sound-level, make-up; her as compositional element. Sometimes, it seemed that everybody was all at once attempting to touch her, alter her. Sometimes, she would be in a one-on-one huddle with the director. Sometimes, she rewarded the crew with flirtatiousness – the suggestion that she really would meet them in the pub afterwards. But when this was all resolved: edited down and tweaked and made as saleable as possible, Lily seemed to have found a greater and more satisfied form of existence.
It hurt me to see how far away from her I was in all this: the process by which I might join her was so excruciatingly long – and I didn’t even have the beginnings of it. I didn’t have the looks, the skin, the talent, the desire: the terrible wanting that – destined for success or obscurity – shone like a bottle tan from each of these actor’s glossies. Even the falsest of them had something I hadn’t – and any one of them could have met Lily in that artificial world which she now never left.
There was one piece of video with both of us on: a spoof of the cereal ad from the joke-reel a friendly director had put together after wrapping the sixth cereal ad. In it, I was a dead piece of light: embarrassing to other people even more than to myself. It was like shooting a ninety-year-old’s eyes in extreme close-up; you felt there should be a law against it, winced away.
We worked through the three supporting roles, and then came to the star. I picked out, from the photos, anyone who looked vaguely like Laurence.
‘This is a possible,’ I’d said.
Then I glimpsed his glossy, sticking out half-way down a pile. Impatiendy, I waited for him to come through: delighted he’d bitten. But then Anne-Marie picked him out all by herself.
