Dust and Desire

by Conrad Williams

  I scurried across the road and got into a cat-friendly cab. The Harrow Road was a nightmare, but that kept my mind from wandering on to what might have happened to Melanie. I had to keep hold of the possibility that she was alive, that Kara and Phythian had only done this because they wanted to lure me in, to make me expose myself. If that was true, then that was fine, because I wanted that too.

  Keith was happy to take Mengele off my hands. He said he needed a mouser although, from his concerned searching of my face, I could see that he was just being charitable. I gave him a twenty and told him about the Fishbitz and the tuna, and tiger prawns, how he wouldn’t eat anything else, and left him to it. In the few minutes I’d been inside with him, the sky had closed up around the city and turned the air thick. The first spots of rain were dropping, real fat bastards. Some storm was riding in.

  I rushed back to my flat and picked up the Saab. Lights switched on, wipers working, I toiled along the Edgware Road to Marble Arch, by which time the remnants of the light had collapsed to form a narrow tunnel in my rear-view mirror. Everything seemed possessed with subtle electricity, with a secret, vibrant colour. It was beautiful, all of it, from the gloss on the scraggy pavements to the cheap neon signs, and the people bent into the wind with their shopping bags. Somewhere, among all these people, he was struggling in the teeth of the storm just like everyone else. It empowered me, thinking of him tamed by the weather, as vulnerable as anybody else. He was no different, really. He got scared, he got pissed, he got injured. We all carried our wounds with us, and he was the same.

  I took the first left that I could manage, and jinked left and then right, running parallel to Oxford Street till I hit Great Titchfield Street. I parked in my res zone, as close as I could get to Berners Street, and switched off the engine. The lights were instantly spoiled by the play of rain on the windscreen; detail became something that might never have mattered. Find her, I thought, thinking of Kara Geenan, her strange aloof manner, her crocodile ways, and you find him. And I knew that when I found him I would end it. I wouldn’t wait for any explanations: there wouldn’t be a pause for pity or second thoughts. I would rub him out as quickly and as hard as I could, or I’d be slab meat myself.

  I got out into the rain and crossed Oxford Street. In Dean Street people were using the downpour as an excuse to take an early dinner. The windows of the Crown and Two Chairmen were fogged up with condensation. Outside, sitting up against the wall, a girl in a sleeping bag was trying to keep her puppy from getting wet.

  ‘Do you need help?’ I said. ‘And if you did, would you know where to get it?’

  ‘Get lost,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know Gary Cullen? He’s got a tattoo on his throat, of a cobra.’

  Dismissive shake of the head. I stopped on the threshold of the pub and felt in my pocket for a coin. I was just handing it over when I stopped and got my wallet out instead. I gave her a tenner. All I had by now, bar a fistful of shrapnel. She gazed at me as if I was looking for something extra, but I just smiled and told her to keep well. I didn’t need money where I was going. You can’t take it with you.

  17

  ‘Less than three hours, but you can paint me black and call me Mabel if you think I’m getting on it sober. I don’t do sober on planes. I just don’t. I’ll be three sheets to the wind, and then I’ll get another sheet and peg that one up too, just to make sure…’

  The word gobshite came to mind, but I kept grinning because it kept my teeth tight together. If I stopped, I might try to chew his boring bloody heart out.

  His name was Muirhead and I don’t know what he’d done to piss his chin off, but it looked as though it had left him for another man. He had one of those deeply offensive thick bottom lips, liver-coloured and always wet. It flapped around, staying right out of touch with the top lip, like that of a camel eating a toffee. What he wore could have been chosen from a catalogue called Things Not to Wear: a checked granddad shirt smothered by a tight-fitting green tartan waistcoat, trailing off at a pair of charcoal trousers with a neon-bright pinstripe. And a pair of fucking sandals. With socks.

  He had one of those braying voices that increases in stridency whenever someone else tries to say something, pummelling them into silence. Whatever school he’d attended had been seen right with the readies from his pater’s wallet, I’d put my mortgage on it. I grinned away, like a dumb grinning thing. He was getting them in, after all.

  But it wasn’t Muirhead I was interested in. There was a girl standing next to him, someone whose name I hadn’t caught properly when Bertie Wooster introduced us. Something like Ria or Tia. Something ‘–ia’ anyway. She was well out of his league, or he was out of hers, but neither of them seemed too bothered by it. I doubted he’d be whisking her off to see his relatives down at the country pile in Surrey any time soon. She leaned on him for another rum and Coke, and I drained my pint just in time for him to waggle his twenty at my empty glass and raise his eyebrows.

  ‘So where are you off to?’ I said.

  ‘Perth,’ he said. ‘But the Perth in Australia, not the one in Scotland.’ He started cackling at this, and –ia and me swapped a look. Encouraging, I thought. I wanted to talk to her, but she looked timid, suspicious of everyone. I didn’t want to show her how keen I was. I chewed some invisible nails and bided my time. If I rushed this now, then Melanie might end up dead and I couldn’t deal with that, so softlee, softlee, catchee monkey…

  ‘And your flight is when?’

  ‘Eleven-thirty. Thiefrow. Malaysian Air. Now you know everything about me. Shall we dance?’

  He’d been putting the gin away like an enthusiastic trainee at the Beefeater warehouse, but he didn’t yet look as if it was getting to him. That said, he must have been half-cut to be crashing every round of drinks for a couple of complete strangers.

  ‘Mia going with you?’ I asked, gambling on the consonant.

  ‘Nia,’ she said.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ said Muirhead, passing me my lager, ‘but I was hoping she might give me a send-off, if you know what I mean.’

  What remained of Nia’s slashed left eyebrow went north, crinkling her forehead. The light caught in her buzz cut, the shortness of which made her eyes look huge. She resembled Sinead O’Connor, but without the polish. I then knew that he didn’t have a chance, but I didn’t want her exit scene to come before his. I had to start knocking nicely on her front door.

  ‘Would you mind, awfully, holding my drink for me, old man?’ Muirhead said, passing me his gin and tonic and reaching into a waistcoat pocket for his cigarettes. He put his free hand around Nia’s shoulder. She shrank a little, and flashed me an aghast look, but she didn’t fend him off. I dropped his glass and it shattered on the floor.

  ‘God, man,’ he said, ‘what’s wrong with you?’

  ‘Nothing. You said to awfully hold your drink, so I did.’

  Nia started laughing. Muirhead turned on her, and I was impressed: I’d never seen a concave chin jut out before. ‘You drink my bloody rum and yet you find that funny? Put that down and let’s go.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Nia said.

  ‘Either drink that or leave it. We’re going.’

  Nia shook her head, slowly enough for him to understand. ‘I’m going nowhere with you. What made you think I would?’

  ‘You drank my rum.’

  ‘You offered it to me.’

  ‘You were flirting with me all night, you bitch. If you don’t come with me, I’ll give you such a slap–’

  ‘That’s enough,’ I said, and stepped in between them. He smelled of the kind of aftershave that was a distillation of Barbour jackets. He looked as if he might wear a shirt and tie whenever he had his parents round. ‘There’s the door. It’s closing time for you,’ I said.

  ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘It’s a fact. Your plane leaves in three hours. You shouldn’t miss it. My daughter would hate you to miss it, too.’

  �
��She’s not your bloody daughter,’ he blustered, as Nia stepped up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. He didn’t look too sure about it, though.

  ‘You didn’t even know her name.’

  I said, ‘I’m aphasic. I have trouble with my worms sometimes.’ I moved closer to him, tired to my bones of this Land Rover-frotting individual, and showed him just enough of the Glock to make him decide pretty quickly that he didn’t want to argue the toss any more. He took off.

  ‘We’d better go,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, fuck, not you and all.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. It’s just that I reckon there’ll be coppers crawling all through this pub in ten minutes. Listen,’ I said, ‘let’s you and me have a bet. If I’m right, you owe me five minutes of chat. If I’m wrong, you can have my coat to go home in, because it’s bucketing down out there.’

  ‘Five minutes of chat?’ she said. ‘What’s that a euphemism for?’ But she was smiling. I smiled back, and gestured for her to follow me.

  We stood across the road from the Dog and Duck, trying to shy away from the worst of the rain in a doorway that smelled of stale urine, with a mush of nightclub fliers underfoot. Melanie and the need to find her had bloated in my head like a super-tumour, and I felt my palms grow slick with sweat. I just wanted to grab this aloof bitch and scream questions at her until her skin blistered off. But I bit down on it. I sucked it in. Six minutes later a couple of squad cars turned up, followed by a police van. Armed plod scurried into the pub; the place started emptying like a bag of rats chucked into the canal.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ Nia said. ‘What did you do? Call them yourself?’

  ‘Muirhead,’ I said. ‘He overreacted. Now, about this chat.’

  ‘Go on, then.’ She tilted her face up to me. She could only have been seventeen, eighteen tops. A few years older than Sarah. I almost asked her if she knew her, but then I tore my mind back to the here and now. I must have sounded harsher than I meant to, then, because the humour went from her voice and she stood up straight.

  ‘Phil Hibbert did that for you, didn’t he?’ It was a long shot, but I had nothing else. The hooded cobra on her wrist, in the classic strike attitude, was enough like Gary Cullen’s to make me interested enough to ask this question, at least.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. She wouldn’t look at me now. Instead, she glared up and down the street like a sullen kid being told off for spitting. She probably had me down as a plain-clothes – a very plain-clothes – copper about to nick her for the eighth of resin in her pocket. She said, ‘So?’

  I thought about all the things I could ask her, to try to tease some information out of her, but it all came down to one question. She either knew the answer or she didn’t. I tried to get rid of the need in my voice. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘do you know Gary Cullen?’

  * * *

  I gave Nia my jacket anyway, in the end. I had to tuck the Glock away under my T-shirt and felt woefully exposed, wandering around with a bit of hardware that I wasn’t used to gradually being revealed by the wet. But it was the least I could do: I didn’t want her going off thinking I was a complete wanker. It might mean that at least one person in London might put a tick against my name.

  I pounded along Old Compton Street, glad that I was in Soho because nobody was going to give me a funny look because I’d dressed for the beach in the middle of winter. The pubs were spilling out on to the streets and people were now heading for clubs or kebab houses. There was the odd scuffle. Someone in a top-floor window told someone in the street to ‘Cock off home, Randy’. I saw some names go into the Groucho, and some names go into Soho House. Some more names came round the corner from Shaftesbury Avenue, maybe having just left Teatro. Jude Law – was that his name? – and that guy McGregor who I’d once seen eating two apples for breakfast on his way to Belsize Park tube, before he did Star Wars. I didn’t give them a second look, despite my celebrity checklist looking healthier than it ever had done. The only name I had on my mind was Melanie Henriksen. It was good that it was a long name, because it filled my head completely. Anything shorter and some other stuff might have squeezed in around the edges, started shouting at me for some attention. Anything else got my attention tonight, and she’d be dead. I could feel it in my water.

  ‘Hold on,’ I implored her quietly, as the rain plastered my hair to my head and trickled down the back of my jeans. My boots were already waterlogged. Butch Boots, they were called. Yeah, right. Maybe they were when I bought them a decade ago, but now I’d have had more protection from a pair of crêpe slippers. As I ran, I thought: Hold on, hold on, hold on.

  Tuzie’s was a crappy little strip joint on Brewer Street. Like there are any classy strip joints? Maybe there are, but I haven’t seen any. And not in this neck – this arse – of the woods. I was scrabbling through my wallet, trying to find a fake warrant card – if I couldn’t I’d have to get the shooter out and beggar the consequences – when I recognised the doorman. In this game it’s a good thing if you can cultivate a few friendships among doormen, and Henry here was okay. I’d helped him a couple of years before, tracked down a bent business partner of his who’d stung him for a couple of grand, legging it with the business loan after they’d rented premises they wanted to turn into a gym in the East End. People tend to go out on a limb for you if you do that sort of thing for them, even if it is what earns you your daily crust.

  ‘All right, Henry? Not seen you for a while.’

  ‘Mr Sorrell. Yes, it’s been a while. You dressed unwisely tonight, it would appear.’

  ‘I gave my jacket to a damsel in distress,’ I said.

  ‘Not your old leather number? I’d have paid you good money for that old beauty.’

  ‘No, the other one – some tatty thing I bought from Oxfam for threepence ha’penny, years back. From now on, mortal men shall know me as Joel One Jacket.’

  ‘Get inside,’ he said, standing clear of the entrance. ‘If they start pinching you to buy a drink, give them this and it’s on me.’ He handed me a raffle ticket with a stamp on the back. He has very small, very well-manicured hands, Henry Herschell. In fact, all of him is pretty small and well turned out. He can’t weigh more than nine stone, but I’ve seen him lift more than twice that in the gym. Fewer people will mess with a guy who doesn’t look as if he should be a doormen than they will with the Errols of this world. Which only goes to show you that there a quite a few wise punters around. Henry is also a master of Tessenjutsu. That pretty-coloured fabric poking out of his top pocket isn’t a hankie, it’s a fan. And he can kill you with it. If he can do that with a fan, imagine how tasty he’d be with a big stick.

  I thanked him and headed down the steps into the club. At the bottom I was greeted by another bouncer in a dark-green suit and matching teeth. He was going to frisk me, but I showed him the ticket and he let me through. The girl at the cloakroom desk was flicking through a copy of Condé Nast Traveller; she snapped her gum when I said ‘Hi.’

  Lucky me, I’d stumbled into the last place on Earth where you could hear Neil Diamond songs without the benefit of restraints. Up on the pole, a woman was down to her leopardskins, trying to look sexy while that dull, gravel-voiced twat whinged on about telling some lies if you’d only pour him a drink. I wish somebody would, a big one to keep his mouth occupied for a long time.

  I sat in a booth and waited for the waitress to come over. The place was deader than an abattoir conveyor belt at down-tools. I flashed her Henry’s ticket and she went away again. When she came back, she put a wine glass and half a bottle of fancy-named vinegar on the table.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I said.

  ‘What do you want it to be, darling?’ she said, with all the passion of a doll with a draw-cord sticking out of its back.

  ‘Harold,’ I said.

  ‘Cute,’ she said, and turned to leave.

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, and she did a slow-motion twirl, embellishing it with a big sigh. ‘Will Jasmine be on tonight?’

&
nbsp; ‘Jazz? Yes,’ Harold said. ‘She’ll be on at half-twelve.’

  ‘Will you give her a message?’

  ‘It’ll cost you.’

  ‘Henry said it would be all right.’

  ‘Henry isn’t my boss.’

  I ground my teeth together because it was more polite than grinding them against her fucking forehead. I dug for my wallet and showed her the warrant card. It was the kind of dog-eared thing that you might find at the bottom of an infant’s school satchel. An infant could have done a better job on it, but it was all I had on me. She swallowed it though.

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What are you, plain-clothes?’

  ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it, Harold?’

  ‘You might have made an effort, coming to a place like this. Management doesn’t like jeans.’

  ‘Neil Diamond does,’ I said. ‘Take your eyes out and give them a good wash. You work in a toilet with a dance floor.’

  She shook her head as if deciding I wasn’t worth the bother and I scribbled a note on a piece of paper. I folded it up and handed it to her. She unfolded it.

  ‘“The cobra’s had its throat cut”. What does that mean?’

  ‘If it was meant for you, Harold, you’d know. Now, will you fucking well give it to her, or do I have to take you down the nick for obstruction?’

  She huffed off and disappeared behind the big purple curtains at the rear of the dais. I sat and watched the turns and drank my drink, acid reflux pistoning up into my throat whenever I belched. The crackle of a needle hitting the groove, the hackneyed songs and the buck and weave of undernourished bodies winding around the pole. In its weird, greasy reflection, I saw my face warped and bent into something alien. Maybe that was how I really looked. And then a bush shaved into the shape of an infinity symbol dinked down in front of the pole, and Melanie was another few seconds closer to death. Or another few seconds beyond it.