They ate in a Pizza Express, surrounded by young men in wire glasses and suits, a handful of neatly dressed women who would have qualified as office ladies in Japan, and a raucous table of students whom the first two groups would obviously rather weren’t there. The only people to interest Kit were a couple who came in late, so obviously trying to be anonymous that it was impossible not to notice them.
“Famous?”
Amy shook her head. “Just two people having an affair. Soho’s full of them.”
“That what happened to you?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” said Amy. “But I was the one who climbed into the wrong bed. Also goes with the job, apparently. So Steve told me.”
Steve must be the ex-husband, unless he was the ex-lover.
“You want anything else to drink?”
Amy glanced from the empty Soave bottle to her almost-empty wineglass. “I think we’ve had enough,” she said. “Well, I have.” A margherita pizza flopped virtually untouched on the table in front of her. “Should have eaten some more if I was going to drink that much.”
Kit shrugged. “It’s not every day I meet an old friend.”
“Is that what I was?”
Something about Amy’s voice demanded an answer, so Kit provided one. “I think so,” he said. “But things move on.”
“Which is what we should do,” said Amy. “Or they’re going to shut this place around us.”
Alcohol reduces inhibitions. Other drugs do it better, but alcohol works when these are unavailable. The man who walked up Charlotte Street, turned left opposite the print shop, and cut through a narrow alley behind a pub, knew all about drugs and inhibitions, having shared his life with both.
The woman who walked beside him also knew, though Kit was coming to realise her knowledge of both was mostly hypothetical. A dozen snatches of conversation came and went, signifying nothing but thinly shared memories. It was hard to say exactly when lust crept into Kit’s mind, but creep in it did, arriving somewhere between a child’s cry and the sight of two men scuffling outside the doorway of a 1980s concrete block building.
“I should find you a taxi,” said Kit. It was late, Neku was at home, he’d already missed supper, and Kate O’Mally was bound to phone before breakfast.
“Yeah,” said Amy, nodding. And somehow her nod invited a kiss, the kiss turned into something more serious, and Kit found himself with one hand on her breast and Amy’s fingers holding him through his jeans.
“You know,” said Amy, “we could always go back to Mary’s flat.”
“No.” Kit shook his head.
Amy took a step back. “I thought you’d want…”
“The kid’s there.”
She stared at him, eyes uncertain. “I didn’t know you had a kid.”
I don’t. Well, thought Kit, maybe I do. Only not in the way you think. “It’s complicated,” he said.
Hotel3 was what you got if a London property company bought the gap between two Georgian town houses on the eastern edge of Fitzrovia, then in-filled with a thin cage of ferro-cement clad in smoked glass. The glass was mostly gone, replaced with panels of reconstituted limestone chosen to match the walls on either side, something the hotel’s original façade had failed to do.
In fifteen years Hotel3 had gone from uber chic to has been, and was now half way back, thus occupying a far more enviable place, as a comfort zone for those who’d originally made it fashionable.
“I’m not so sure that…”
“This is a good idea?” Amy smiled. “Of course it’s not. You should be at home, I’m meant to be writing a report on you, and we’re both drunk. But since when did Kit Nouveau worry about things like that?”
Since always.
“Come on,” she said.
Their room was tiny. A chocolate-coloured box, with burlap walls that were either a retro joke or the cutting edge of new design. The bed was a hand-made cherry wood futon, while the kidney-shaped basin came from Syracuse in Italy and was cut from the same horsehair marble as the bath. A sign by the door told them so.
What the sign didn’t mention was that their room looked out onto a fire escape, where kitchen staff gathered to smoke dope and swear loudly about the chef, the sous chef, and the unbelievably shitty pay on which the rest of them were expected to live. When the litany of complaints began for a second time, Amy shut the window with a bang.
“You want a shower or something?”
Kit shook his head. “You?”
“Not really,” said Amy, “unless you think I should…”
Her hair stank of cigarettes, anchovies and garlic from a shared bruschetta, and grease from not having been washed in a while. Without even realising he’d made the comparison, Yoshi floated ghost-like and squeaky clean into Kit’s mind.
“What?” Amy demanded.
“Nothing,” said Kit.
“Good,” she said. “You might want to kill the lights.”
Amy stayed standing while he undid her blouse, finding each pearl button by touch before moving to the next. After the blouse he unzipped her skirt and discovered through touch that she wore a thong. Her bra was pale in the half dark, underwired and unhooked at the front, because some things in life never changed.
Feeling one nipple harden, Kit cupped his fingers under a full breast, until she hooked her hand behind his head and pulled him close. Their kiss was deep and lasted for as long as it took him to slide his hand towards her panties.
Amy groaned. A second later, she said, “Don’t smile.”
“Why not?” asked Kit.
They kissed again, his fingers trapped between her thighs and her hand still wrapped in his hair. And then, as Amy broke for air, Kit edged aside the silk of her thong and slid two fingers into her.
“Fuck,” said Amy.
He grinned. “In a minute,” Kit said.
The kitchen staff came back sometime after midnight, to stand on the metal grid outside the closed window, insult each other and bitch about the chef. Although, after thirty seconds of listening to Amy, their bitching was reduced to the occasional whispered comment and stunned silence.
It was an impressive performance.
Having wrapped both arms around Kit’s neck and hooked her ankles over his, Amy clung so tight that every time Kit tried to pull back, he simply lifted her off the mattress. Yelping turned to something more urgent, as Amy grabbed his hips, jammed her nails through Kit’s skin, and began to ram him into her.
Spitting on his fingers, Kit reached under to spread Amy’s buttocks and eased one finger inside. So far as Kit could tell Amy’s orgasm was real. Her scream certainly was.
“Shit,” she said, when she got her breath back. “So that’s what closure feels like. I always wondered.” And before Kit had time to think that one through, she rolled him onto his back and dropped her head to his lap.
CHAPTER 43 — Saturday, 30 June
The dirt tracks and dunes of his original dreams had gone. Where once trucks had been driven by skeletons, a ragged matrix of dimly visible silver threads patterned the bowl of a silver sky.
Kit didn’t believe in souls or eternity, but was still blinded by both as they pulled tears from his sleeping eyes. His own soul had been lost in the sands, a voice told him. The last life taken in the cross-hairs had been his own, each shot splintering a little of what made him alive, until finally there was nothing left to splinter at all.
He had blown through Middle Morton that summer like a ghost, hungry for forgiveness and angry at the weakness this signified. The voice told him nothing that was new. He’d heard it all before. The voice was his.
Trapped in a half world between waking and sleep where everything was possible only because common sense refused to object, Kit opened his eyes to a tiny hotel room in Fitzrovia and tried to remember how he got there. And then he remembered.
The same way he usually did.
Amy lay across him, naked and snoring
. A crumpled sheet was thrown back to reveal heavy breasts, a soft belly, and a butterfly tattoo on her hip. She still stank of unwashed hair and cigarettes, only now sex and sweat had added themselves to the mix.
About the only thing they’d missed out was tying each other to the bedstead, and that was only because Amy shrugged it off when Kit hesitated, offering him something far filthier instead. If Amy had bruises on her thighs, then Kit had scratches across his back and a vicious bite below his neck. Kit was wondering whether to wake Amy, or just start again anyway when a shrill buzz from his phone rewrote his day.
Only three people knew the number—Kate, Pat, and Neku. It was 8.00 on a Saturday morning, and even Kate would think twice about calling him that early.
“Me,” he announced, as he rolled out of bed.
All Kit got was silence.
“Hello?” he said.
“Hi, is that Kit?”
“Yes,” said Kit, realising he didn’t recognise the voice. “Who’s—”
“It’s Charlie. Are you still in London?”
“Of course I’m—” said Kit, then hesitated. Fire and ice, ripped sails where stars should be, the naked woman in the bed behind him, all irrelevant. He’d just remembered what the screen read when Charlie’s call came up.
Neku.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” said Charlie. “But she’s not here.”
“You slept over?”
“In your room,” he said, sounding instantly defensive.
“I’m not bothered about that,” said Kit. “How did you…”
“What is it?” Amy demanded. When Kit turned, he found her sitting up in bed behind him, arms folded across her breasts.
“Trouble,” said Kit, returning to his phone. “Look,” he said. “Charlie…how did you discover Neku was gone?”
“You had a delivery,” said the boy. “I went to get Neku because it needed a signature. The roof door was open but her hut was empty. This was about an hour ago.”
“An hour…”
“I thought she’d gone out. You know, to buy milk or something. So I waited to see if she’d come back. And then I noticed her bag on the floor of the little hut and thought I should call you.”
Charlie’s voice had grown formal and it took Kit a couple of seconds to realise why. He’d heard Amy. So now he knew Kit had missed supper to spend the night with someone. Since he’d gone to meet a police Inspector and not come back it didn’t take a genius to…
Kit sighed. “I’m on my way,” he said. Grabbing his trousers, he found his shirt and struggled into both. Yesterday’s socks were in a corner and his pants on the floor. He was just kicking his heels into his shoes when he caught sight of Amy’s face in the mirror, all hurt and hollow eyes. Someone else bailing out of her life.
When did he get to know this stuff? wondered Kit, turning back. “You coming with me?”
Amy shook her head, but some of the emptiness left her eyes.
“Look,” said Kit. “The kid’s gone missing. Think you can do something for me?”
“Maybe,” said Amy.
“I need the name of a police officer,” said Kit. “Large, slightly fat with a moustache and greased back hair…What?” he demanded, seeing her smile.
“Describes half the guys I know.”
“He was in an unmarked car on the M25 with whoever made that call to the DVLA. Pulled me over a few days back. It wasn’t the first time. A couple of days before that he came by Hogarth Mews asking about Mary O’Mally.”
“Section 44.”
“Yeah,” said Kit, “that’s the man.”
“I don’t suppose you got his registration plate?”
Kit gave her what he could remember, which was the year, the make of car, and a guess for the first two letters of what the plate might be.
“You want to know who he is?” Amy asked, jotting the details on a hotel pad by the bed.
“Also what he thinks I’ve done.”
“Maybe,” said Amy, “it’s what he thinks you’re going to do. You know, a lot of people are surprised you came back.” She hesitated on the edge of saying something else. “Take care,” Amy said finally.
“Say it,” said Kit.
“I just did.”
Peering from her flat, Sophie gave Kit one of the strangest looks he’d ever received and slammed her door without saying a word. A second later, she turned on her sound system and yanked up the volume, until whichever Rai mix she’d put on was loud enough to shake the stairs. Mixing with the enemy was obviously an unforgivable sin.
“Mrs. O’Mally just called,” said Charlie, when Kit opened the door to the flat. “I promised you’d call her back.”
Kit groaned; it was entirely instinctive. “What did you tell her?”
“Nothing,” said Charlie.
“She want to know who you were?”
The boy looked sheepish. “She already knew. Pat had called her last night. But I didn’t tell her about Neku,” he promised. “Well, not really. I said Neku was out shopping.”
“At 8.30 on a Saturday morning? What did Kate O’Mally say?”
“You should call her back. It’s in here,” Charlie added, nodding to the kitchen. “I signed for the package when I realised Neku had gone.” The teenager was torn between being cross with Kit and being worried; so far, worry was winning.
Kit left the box where it was, on the breakfast bar in the tiny kitchen, and went to look at Neku’s hut and the roof garden. The ivy on both sides of the door outside was undisturbed and none of the smaller pots had been knocked over. Neku’s sleeping bag had been left open but the zip still worked. When Kit checked the bottom of the bag a passport, an A–Z of London, and $1,500 fell out.
“Take these,” he said, giving the lot to Charlie.
A cheap laptop in the hut fired up the moment Kit turned it on and proceeded to download pages from Asahi Shimbun, news from BBC Asia, and half a dozen e-mails, mostly from Micki.
Stand off continues in Roppongi…Civil matter, says Tokyo’s new mayor…Opposition demands use of riot police…Dear Neku, No Neck and Tetsuo and Micki say hi…
A lift-up latch had let Kit into the hut and the latch still worked. There was no sign of anyone trying to force the door.
“What are you trying to find?” demanded Charlie.
“It’s what I’m hoping not to find.”
Charlie stared at him.
“Blood,” said Kit. “Torn clothes, broken fingernails, ripped hair, signs of a struggle…” He bent to pick up a bead from the boards. Blue, not threaded but held on a short length of silver wire by a complicated knot that allowed the bead to shift within a mesh cage without allowing it to fall free. It was the first sign that Neku had put up a struggle. At least that was what Kit thought, until Charlie told him otherwise.
“I don’t remember Neku wearing a bracelet,” said Kit, considering.
“It broke. She said you gave her the beads back.”
“I thought those came from her wedding gown,” Kit said, and found himself explaining about cos-play and how Neku used to dress.
“She hangs them from her phone,” Charlie said. “Only they fall off…she said so,” he added, when Kit looked doubtful. “Shouldn’t we open the parcel?”
“In a moment,” said Kit.
No one packed a box that big with something so light unless they were making a point. Taking a kitchen knife, Kit sliced away one side of the box, ignoring the tape holding the package shut.
“It might be a trigger,” he said, answering Charlie’s unspoken question.
Inside the box was crumpled paper, pages from a South London free sheet, and in the middle of these was an envelope. The envelope contained a photograph and Neku’s flat key. She was standing against a red brick wall in the picture, dressed in her jeans and black jersey and her eyes were open.
“Good,” said Kit.
“How can you say that?” asked Charlie, then stopped. “Oh fuck,”
he said. “What were you expecting?”
Neku naked. Neku dead. Neku in chains.
“Nothing specific,” said Kit. “But I can think of half a dozen shots that would be infinitely worse.”
The message on the back was simple, a telephone number and a time. A handful of words warned Kit what would happen if he went to the police. “Are you planning to go home?” Kit asked Charlie, who stared at him.
“How can I leave now?”
“Good,” said Kit, “because I need you here.” Someone had to be around to answer the phone and keep Kate at bay. “But are you meant to be somewhere else?”
Charlie shook his head. “My mob are in Italy. Mum might call the house, but she’ll be cool if I’m not around to answer. She’ll just call my mobile to find out where I am.”
“And you’ll lie?”
“Obviously.”
“Right,” Kit said, stripping off his shirt, choosing a new one, and shrugging himself into one of Ben Flyte’s old jackets. “Keep the flat door locked. Don’t answer the buzzer, and if Kate O’Mally calls back tell her Neku and I have gone shopping.”
“That’s what I told her last time.”
“Well, tell her again.”
CHAPTER 44 — Saturday, 30 June
It was hot, the air was sour, and London stank of fried onions, too much aftershave, diesel, and dog shit, maybe it always did. Saturday morning shoppers filled Oxford Street, mostly tourists and teenage girls, every second one of whom reminded him of Neku.
Men in jeans and black tee-shirts crowded a table on Dean Street, talking into their phones, checking their mail and skimming the headlines in that day’s papers. The sun was out and people were smiling, as the city changed into something more relaxed and less English, which it always did at any pretence of good weather.
Tomorrow would bring thunderstorms or smog to send everyone back to their shells, but most Londoners had grown blasé about the meteorological equivalent of mood swings, though that hadn’t stopped a newsagent running his own news board for last Wednesday’s Standard that simply read, Weather Buggered.
End of the World Blues Page 23
