Dust and Desire

by Conrad Williams

  A couple of faces poked out from behind the curtain, couched in darkness beyond the range of the spotlight. They disappeared again. I relaxed back in the seat, accepting that I wasn’t going to get a summons until she’d swung around the pole a few times, getting goosepimples. She came on a few minutes late, introduced as Jazz Maggs by a limping spiv with greased-back hair and a face like an old woman’s elbow. She did her thing, and it was all right if you’re into that. She made an effort, at least, putting on a smile that didn’t look borrowed from something standing in a John Lewis window. And Neil Diamond had been replaced by The Girl with the Sun in Her Hair by John Barry, which was an improvement, in my book. The goggles on the front row chafed their helmets on the dais as they reached forward to slip fivers into her garter. She finished with one last twirl round the pole, and a wiggle of her arse as she disappeared behind the curtain. The spiv came on stage with an opened tin of baked beans and a catapult and asked everyone to put their hands together for Rhonda Valley but, before I saw who Rhonda was, Harold was standing in front of me again, telling me that I was wanted backstage.

  There wasn’t an awful lot going on back there. Clothes, for one thing. Half a dozen naked women sat in front of make-up mirrors under faulty strip-lighting, smoking or pouring brandy into plastic beakers. They didn’t spare me a flicker of interest as I moved past them to the end of the room, where Jazz Maggs was sitting, pushing her feet into a pair of leather, thigh-length boots. She wore a crimson thong and nothing else. Her boobs had been lightly oiled and they gleamed under the harsh light, firm as chilled blancmange, but up close she had tiredness lines under the warpaint. Her nails were varnished unevenly, and they’d been chewed into submission. She’d tied her black hair into a ponytail too tightly, so the skin around her eyes was taut, giving her a surprised look. Her voice was tobacco-scarred.

  ‘What’s with all the secret messages, then?’ she asked. ‘Help me with the zip on this – it’s fucked.’

  I wrestled with the fastener till it stumbled over the curve of her calf muscle, then she took over.

  ‘Gary Cullen is dead,’ I said. ‘He killed himself.’

  ‘I know that,’ she said. ‘You’re a bit slow to be going round offering counselling. What do you want?’

  ‘He was seeing someone recently,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, me,’ Jasmine said. ‘He wasn’t getting none off his missus and he had a bit of dosh to splash around, so me and him, we had a good time for a while. How did you find out?’

  ‘Friend of Gary’s. Girl called Nia told me.’

  ‘Nia? Nice girl, but you couldn’t nail her mouth shut.’

  ‘Did his wife know? About you two?’

  Shod, she sat back on the plastic chair and lit a cigarette, pulling on it as though it were the only way to stay alive.

  ‘If she did, he never said. I’m not one for wrecking marriages, but that one had hit the rocks before I was on the scene.’

  ‘Gary was on the rocks, too,’ I said. ‘Amphetamines. He had a couple of kids to look after too.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this? It’s nothing to do with me.’ She ground out the cigarette and lit a fresh one.

  ‘He tried to kill me. The same night he killed himself. He killed himself, I think, because he couldn’t kill me. Because, if he hadn’t, I’d have been able to squeeze some info out of him as to who put him up to it. I reckon he was forced into something he wouldn’t normally have done. I reckon someone reassured him that his family would be well looked after if he failed to kill me and then topped himself.’

  ‘What?’ she scoffed. ‘You’re saying he was brainwashed?’

  ‘It’s just a theory,’ I said. ‘I haven’t any hard facts.’

  ‘You’ve got some hard nerve trying to get me involved,’ she said. ‘You are involved. End of story.’

  The spiv hopped over and gave her a grin full of rot.

  ‘On again in five minutes, Jazz,’ he said. ‘What shall we spin?’

  ‘Robert Plant,’ she said. ‘“Big Log”.’

  ‘Right you are, love,’ he said, and shrank away. I hadn’t taken my eyes off her. She must have been used to that, in her line of work, but now it seemed to be unnerving her.

  ‘Do you ever blink?’ she said. ‘Get an eyeful, why don’t you?’

  ‘I’ll put a fiver down your knickers if that’ll make you feel better,’ I said.

  ‘You can leave through that door,’ she said, cocking her head towards the fire escape. She put out her fag and stood up in front of the mirror, teasing back invisible strands of hair.

  ‘When I said that Gary was seeing someone, I didn’t mean you,’ I said.

  ‘I thought not.’

  ‘He was seeing someone for therapy.’

  ‘Was he?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘according to his tattooist, he was. And whoever he was seeing was giving him money for some reason.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I reckon you do,’ I said. ‘I reckon you know who this therapist is. Gary comes round here and makes your knees tremble against the bog wall, all hugs and smiles like he’s got no cares in the world, I think you’d be forgiven for asking him what kind of happy juice he was drinking and where he found it. I reckon he told you.’

  ‘You reckon a lot. Good at maths, are you?’

  ‘Not really. But I know when something adds up, and this doesn’t. I’m right, aren’t I? He told you.’

  ‘If he did, then I’ve forgotten. He’s gone. Try to move on with your life. It’s what he would have wanted.’

  ‘I wonder if his wife is able to move on,’ I said.

  ‘Why don’t you ask her? She works here. You probably walked past her on the door.’ She finished touching up her lipstick and put a hand against my chest, pushed me gently out of the way. ‘Some copper you turned out to be,’ she said. ‘I’ll draw you a map, shall I, so you don’t get lost on your way back? Now, if you don’t mind, I’m flashing my rack for five minutes, and then I’ve got a nice warm bath waiting for me when I get home.’

  Back at the cloakroom, the woman snapping her gum had gone, replaced by the new shift, another equally disenchanted specimen who looked as though if she sucked a lemon, the lemon would pull a face. Henry was getting ready to leave, too. He was shrugging himself into a greatcoat. I beckoned him over.

  ‘Enjoy the show?’ he asked.

  ‘It was okay,’ I said, ‘but there wasn’t much of a plot.’

  ‘You caught them on a tame night,’ he said. ‘Sometimes they have acts up on that stage that would make your balls curl up and die.’

  ‘Spare me,’ I said. ‘But I’ll tap you for a bit of knowledge before you go. That lass on the coats, not this one, the one before – I need her address.’

  * * *

  Wood Green is an unwelcoming place at 9 a.m., but I’d have settled for that. Now it was 3 a.m. on Tuesday night… Wednesday morning. The exposed guts of Shopping City straddling the main drag and the multiplex cinema just beyond it, introduced in an attempt to tart the place up, have all the charm of a dog eating its own puppies. If you’re not in a motor as you tool up the main drag, then at least make sure that you’re tooled up. I was. And I was fucking freezing.

  By the time I’d got back to the car and found the front near-side tyre down, I was ready to kick a few windows in. I didn’t have a spare in the boot. That said, I was a bit too pissed to be driving, so instead picked up a lift off one of the minicab desperates hanging around Charing Cross Road by flashing my warrant card at him. But after a few of his questions, as we got up Green Lanes to Turnpike Lane, he got wary and told me to get the fuck out of his cab. I did as he asked and then, as he was powering away, gave my own face a slap: if I’d flashed him the Glock instead, I’m pretty sure that would have guaranteed me a ride to the doorstep of the house I was on my way to. My brains were as slow-moving as slob ice. I wanted a cup of tea and a hot bath and Melanie Henriksen brushing her hot mouth against my
neck, asking me to come inside, just for a little while.

  I hung around the tube station, hoping for another cab, but the streets were dead and it was getting later and colder. I started walking.

  It took me half an hour to get to Shopping City and it was like finding yourself in that part of the enchanted wood where the eyes are all fixed on you. I gave it some swagger and hoped that the sight of someone in their T-shirt in temperatures that were hovering just above zero would convince any would-be muggers that I was a lunatic not to be messed about with. I saw a gang of kids, in windcheaters and trainers the size of breezeblocks, standing around a black BMW with tinted windows at Wood Green tube station. But they didn’t do anything; they just watched me walk by. My heart, despite the fact that I was John Wayneing my socks off, felt like a kangaroo on a trampoline.

  Another ten minutes and I was turning into Sylvan Avenue. The house was a semi-detached job with a pebble-dashed façade and an unkempt lawn. In the centre of it was a bright yellow plastic pedal car. There was a light on in the downstairs window, turning the net curtains a filthy ochre. Two buttons on the doorbell indicated that the house had been split into a couple of flats. My hand, as I reached out to press the lower button, was pale as boiled chicken, the fingernails blueish. I sensed the curtain to my left tremor but I didn’t turn to look. A minute later, the letterbox flapped open and a waft of takeaway curry belched out at me. My mouth filled with juices. I hadn’t eaten since that morning.

  ‘What do you want?’ A female voice, tired, but its edge had been planed off with, I suspected, a couple of large jiggers from the jollies bottle. ‘It’s four o’bleeding clock. I’ll have the police round.’

  ‘I am the police,’ I said, and showed the flap my crayon and cardboard pass.

  ‘Bollocks you’re the police.’

  The flap dropped and I slammed my hand against the door. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m not the police. My name’s Joel Sorrell. I knew Gary.’

  A beat. The flap yawned open. ‘I’m very happy for you,’ came the voice, more circumspect now, maybe a little unnerved. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘Let me in, Carol. I want to talk about him.’

  ‘He’s yesterday’s news. We’ve done our grieving and we’re getting on very nicely now, thank you very much. There’s nothing to talk about.’ Another pause, and then she said: ‘How do you know my frigging name?’

  I told her I was an acquaintance of Henry’s and that I’d been at the club earlier that evening. The flap closed again and the door opened a crack, the security chain lengthening across the shadow of her face, giving her a dull, metallic grin.

  ‘Henry’s all right,’ she said, more softly. ‘You’d better not be shitting me.’

  ‘I’m not. You can call him now, if you don’t believe me. He gave me your address.’

  ‘Whatever,’ she said. ‘What is it you want to know about Gary? I don’t have to tell you anything, you know?’

  ‘I know. Look, can I come in? I lost my jacket and I’m losing the feeling in my fingers.’

  She didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then she pushed the door to and released the chain. She didn’t wait for me. I found her in the living room sitting by an electric fire with one bar on. The lamp I’d seen from outside illuminated just one cosy little corner: a tiny hill of cigarette ends in a stolen pub ashtray; a bottle of Grant’s with a Spurs mug to drink it out of; a couple of tinfoil cartons containing the remnants of a chicken tikka dinner. A copy of What’s on TV. The rest of the living room was uninviting. Paper was peeling away from a damp section of the wall. A corner of a carpet the colour of lightly toasted bread was mottled with mould. Some toys had been perfunctorily cleared away, but the tidying hadn’t extended to the plastic plates of congealing instant mashed potato and ketchup on an upturned cardboard box beneath the window.

  Carol Cullen sat in her director’s chair and motioned me over to the only other seating space in the room: a child’s bean bag decorated with scenes from Pokémon.

  ‘Kids asleep?’ I asked, trying not to look too ridiculous as I sat on it. I edged closer to the fire and wished she’d put the other bar on.

  ‘I’d be surprised,’ she said tartly, ‘after the racket you caused.’ She was chewing gum, still. Bizarrely, I found myself wondering if it was the same wad she’d been jawing at Tuzie’s. Her face was long and thin enough to do shifts as a spatula.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Drink?’ She picked up the bottle and poured herself another dose. There was another mug by my foot. I picked it up and had a sniff.

  ‘Just Ribena,’ she said, and did the honours.

  I’m not a big fan of whisky, but that mugful was the best drink I’d had in ages. I felt stiffness seeping out of my joints, the pain of the cold lifting from my shoulders and back, life flooding into my wooden hands.

  ‘Are you going to start chatting soon, then?’ she asked. ‘This isn’t a refuge for the homeless.’

  ‘I want to know where the person is who’s paying for you to stay in this five-star get-up,’ I said. That drew the salt out of her. She suddenly appeared hunted, as if she was a child caught putting a whoopee cushion on the vicar’s chair. She answered by lighting a cigarette and instantly putting it out in the ashtray.

  ‘It’s not for ever,’ she said. ‘Just till I get back on my own two feet. Then we’ll be moving on.’

  I chanced my arm. ‘I know it’s Kara Geenan,’ I said. The name made the holes in her face grow wider. ‘She had Gary hypnotised, or else she drugged him up with his favourite cocktail–’

  ‘That’s not fair! Gary was trying to come off the whiz. He was–’

  ‘Whatever she did, it doesn’t matter. Because somehow she got him to come and have a crack at me. And when that didn’t work, he killed himself. And I think he knew that, when he was gone, you and the little ones would be looked after. He saw his own death – was forced or tricked into seeing his own death – as providing some kind of key to a door for you, a new future. And here you are.’

  ‘Nobody said nothing to me about a killing,’ she said, trying not to lean too hard on the last word, so that it came out in a frightened whisper like that of a well-brought-up child trying out some four-letter curse for the first time. ‘Gary said he was going to do a job for someone, and it would mean us getting out of the miseries for a change. He never talked about suicide. Never.’

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t. He was conned into it, wasn’t he, by this Geenan woman? She runs hypnotherapy courses, and counselling for druggies. Only she does it on the quiet, right? So she can use her poor, desperate clients to do some dirty work for her, if needs be. Which is why she isn’t in the Yellow Pages.’

  ‘I don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Bollocks.’ Me trying to come the hard man, while sitting on a midget Pokémon beanbag. Carol was buying it, though. She went to refill her glass, but saw that she hadn’t touched the last tot. She put the bottle down.

  ‘If she finds out it was me–’

  ‘She’s not going to do a blind thing. I’m going to nail the bitch tonight, if you’ll pull your finger out. Nobody need know about you or your little stash of dirty bills, but if you won’t play Cluedo, there’ll be more coppers in this room than you’ll find in bumbags at a car boot sale.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, you bastard. Would you? For me and the kids, Gary was a good man.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I was thinking that, too, as he pulled a big knife on me the other night.’

  ‘The kids,’ she said again, but I just waited.

  ‘She’s out East somewhere,’ she said at last, and capped the statement by draining her mug.

  ‘Narrow that down for me a tad, will you? I could knock on all the doors between Homerton and Hoxton Square, but by the time I found her I’d be pointing at her with a wet stump.’

  ‘Spitalfields,’ she said. ‘I think that’s right.’

  ‘Better,’ I said. ‘Now all we need is an
address, and the next time you see me it won’t be in court.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Her eyes flared, spittle flying from between her lips. She wasn’t having me on. So that was that. I helped myself to another mug of whisky and thanked her anyway.

  ‘You won’t screw me over, will you?’ she asked. I didn’t answer. She needed a bit of excitement in her life. On my way out, I helped myself to one of Gary’s jackets that were draped over the banister. She wouldn’t notice, and I was doing her a favour. I reckoned that everything in this house that belonged to Gary would be burned or left on the doormat at the local Oxfam shop, before the end of the day.

  I was close. I was so fucking close to her I could smell her, but not quite close enough. I checked my watch: coming up to 5 a.m. Still dark outside, an unpleasant urban dark, fume-filled and uneasy as if the fevered dreams of the people sleeping beneath it were just hanging there, unable to escape. I felt the weight of it pressing down on me as I made my way back to the main road and lucked on to a night bus. As I drew closer to the city centre, the handful of shift-workers dozing in their seats around me grew restive, their breathing troubled, as if they could sense it too. London’s heart was being choked by its own excesses, palpitating with its ceaseless need for violence, as if it were the drug that kept it fast and loose: feeling alive when it was anything but. Nobody lived in London who didn’t look over their shoulder now and again. The pressure you felt here wasn’t anything to do with traffic jams or the nine-to-five. It was the barely suppressed question: Will I be next? I was asking that question now. As the bus roared along Camden Road, and I buzzed the driver to stop, I wondered if I’d ever really asked myself any other.