But Pete did not appear the following afternoon, or the one after that, and when he had still not turned up on the third afternoon, Coughlan felt his fragile resolve start to waver. Then one lunchtime, as he was looking for some tinfoil to wrap a half-eaten sandwich in, the ongoing tension had made him lose his appetite, he found something that fired him up again.
Standing on a chair in the kitchen, he was reaching into the top cupboard where he was sure there was some tinfoil, when he felt a cool plastic bag there. He could not see into the cupboard so he shifted his arthritic fingers around, attempting to make out what it was. An old carrier bag, stuffed with some linen napkins, perhaps. He tried to find purchase on the bag but his fingers kept slipping off. After a few failed attempts, he managed to catch hold of a corner of the bag and started to ease it out of the cupboard. Moving it a couple of inches at a time, he pulled it toward the edge of the shelf. And then there was a shift and a tumble, and a cascade of small plastic bags and little foil envelopes fell out onto the floor in a solid splash. A black bin liner followed like a winded kite. Coughlan looked at the mess in astonishment. There must have been at least two or three hundred little bags and envelopes spread across the kitchen floor.
It took him a minute to get there, but Coughlan had seen enough police shows on TV to know that he was looking at drugs. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of pounds worth of drugs. He climbed down from the chair and sat for a moment looking at the hellish pile on the floor, wondering what to do with it all. He checked his watch and saw that it was almost 5 o’clock, Pete’s usual time for coming around. Sighing at the situation, he levered himself down onto the floor, scooped all the small packets back into the bin liner, and hefted it up onto the table.
Fifteen minutes later he heard Pete’s voice out in the hall, and then another voice behind the first. Coughlan held his breath, his heart beating loud in his chest, as he waited for them to walk along the hall and into the front room. He heard the TV being switched on, a quick pulse of canned laughter, and then seconds later a kid with black hair stepped into the kitchen. He saw Coughlan sitting at the table with the full bin liner in front of him and his pupils went dark and wide in anger.
“What the fuck d’you think you’re doing with that?”
“I might ask you the same question,” replied Coughlan.
“It’s none of your fuckin’ business.”
“It’s my flat,” said Coughlan. “It’s my home.”
At that moment Pete walked into the room, lured in by the raised voices.
“Did you know anything about this?” asked Coughlan, pointing at the bin liner.
Pete glanced at the other boy, looking for the right words.
And then without warning, the other boy stepped up to Coughlan and punched him hard in the face.
Coughlan felt a great bolt of pain shake his spine and nail him to the chair. Tears sprang across his face and diluted the blood that bubbled from his nose. His head spun for a second, and then he fell unconscious face-first across the bag of drugs.
“You’ve killed him,” squealed Pete. “You’ve killed him.”
“He’s not dead,” said the other kid, poking Coughlan hard in the shoulder so that his head lolled back and forth. “Look, he’s still bleeding. Dead people don’t bleed like that.”
“But he might be dead soon,” said Pete, his face turning white and his tongue sticking in his throat.
“Don’t be fuckin’ stupid,” said the other kid, stepping forward and giving Coughlan a hard shove. The old man slid off the table and dragged the bag of drugs onto the floor with him, spilling its contents across the battered linoleum.
Pete just stared at the old man, the spread of drugs.
“Well go on then, pick ’em up,” said the other kid.
Pete hesitated for a second, his limbs telling him to run, but then did as he was told. He gathered the drugs together and tried to see if Coughlan was breathing all right.
“Come on, come on,” snapped the other kid, tapping Pete in the side with the toe of his trainer.
Pete hurried to scrape up the remainder of the packets and stuff them back into the bin liner. He gathered the neck of the bag together and then tried to hand it to the other kid. But the other kid just told him to put it back in the cupboard.
“But what about Mr. Coughlan?”
“He’s not goin’ to be telling no one,” came the response.
Coughlan came round moments later, more shocked than hurt. Drifting back into the here and now, he remained on the kitchen floor for a short time, listening for signs of other people in the flat. It all appeared to be quiet, and he was sure that it had been the slamming of the door that had stirred him. He ran a hand across his upper lip, wiping at the blood there. It had started to harden and it felt like his nose had stopped bleeding. He climbed to his feet and shuffled across to the sink. He turned on the tap and let it run until it got as cold as it was going to get. Cupping his hands together, he filled them with water, and then held his nose in the water until it had all leaked through his hardened fingers. He repeated the action. As the center of his face started to numb, the numbness spreading out from his nose, he felt his strength returning and his mind clearing. He knew that he should go to the police, but he also knew that would be a mistake. He had seen what had happened to people who stood up for themselves, and he did not want to go through that himself. Rather than bringing an end to their torment, it had more often than not meant an escalation.
He shuffled through into his bedroom and changed into a fresh shirt, throwing the bloodstained one into the waste bin behind the door. There were a few splashes of blood on his trousers, but as he had just bought them a few weeks earlier, he was reluctant to throw them out too, and decided to keep them on. Once he had finished dressing, he walked into the bathroom to inspect his injuries in the mirror. He used a flannel to wipe the dried blood from his skin and then leaned in to the mirror to get a closer look. There was a small scratch on the side of his nose, and the beginnings of a bruise, but apart from that the damage appeared to be minimal, at least on the outside.
He went back into the bedroom and put on a thick sweater. Despite the warmth of the evening, the assault had left him feeling cold and he had goosebumps on his arms. Then he went back into the kitchen and looked at the blood on the floor, the bloodied handprints from the floor to the sink like the footprints of some great lost beast. The sight of it made him feel a little sick, and he told himself he would clean it up later. He turned and left the flat, closing the door behind him.
He walked through Camden Town, through the streets he had walked since childhood, feeling that he no longer knew them. His mind was all over the place, dislocated and lost within the familiar maps of his life. Earlier he had been quite prepared to confront Pete about letting his friends use the flat, but now he felt like he just wanted to forget that he had ever met the boy.
He tried to eat an omelette at a café on Chalk Farm Road, pushing it around his plate until it got lodged in the cooling grease, and then walked up to Parliament Hill fields. There, he sat on a bench overlooking the athletics track, watching a group of girls messing about in the long jump pit. At one point, one of the girls ran across to the steeplechase water jump. There was no water in it, but she still jumped in and pretended to be drowning, waving her arms around and screaming. Her friends just ignored her and at last she returned to the sand pit.
The girls left when it started to get dark, but Coughlan felt too tired to walk home just then and stretched out on the bench to rest for a few minutes before setting off. The brittle summer stars spreading across the darkening ceiling of the world reminded him of a time during the war when he had dragged his mattress onto the roof of the outhouse to listen to the bombs dropping on the East End. Despite the noise and the threat of the bombs getting closer, he remembered it as being a time of calm for him, a time before he had met his wife, a time before the neighbor’s house had been crushed. He let his lids fall, so tired and wit
h a persistent headache, and when at last he opened them again it had started to get light. Surprised, he rubbed hard at his face to wake himself up and then climbed to his feet. His back ached but the pain eased up as he started walking toward the gate. When he checked the clock outside the jeweler’s store on Kentish Town Road he was surprised to see that it was 5 o’clock in the morning.
He let himself into the flat and stood for a few moments in the hall, just holding his breath and listening. Minutes passed but all he could hear was the regular sounds of the flat creaking. He appeared to be alone, but to make sure he went round each of the rooms, checking in cupboards and behind doors, before going back to the front door and locking it. Then he went back into his bedroom and climbed into bed, still in his clothes.
When he woke again it was after 4 in the afternoon, a dull rectangle of orange light spread across the bed beside him. For a moment he did not know where he was, and then he remembered falling asleep on the bench and it all came back to him. But in that fleeting moment of not knowing, he had felt at peace with the world. And now the knot was back in his stomach. He looked at his watch again to check the time. Pete or some of his friends would be around soon and he did not want to be here for that. He went into the bathroom to check on the wound, and then back into the bedroom to dress in a set of thicker and more comfortable clothes. In the kitchen he took his pension book from the drawer, slipped it into the back pocket of his trousers, and headed back outside. He took a quick glance at the drug dealers sitting near the phone booths, then turned and headed back up toward Parliament Hill fields, calling in at a corner shop to purchase a couple of small pies and a carton of milk.
There were a few pensioners out on the bowling green, and a middle-aged couple were struggling to hit the ball over the net on one of the tennis courts. Coughlan stopped for a moment to watch them, aching inside at their casual grasp of the ordinariness of their lives, and then continued on to the bench where he had slept the night before. As he turned from the fence bordering the court, he started to panic at the thought that someone else might be sitting there. But when he reached the top of the rise and saw that there was no one else there, the feeling of relief that flooded his senses was just as great as if he had returned to his flat and found that Pete and his friends had decided to leave. He stepped up his pace until he reached the bench, took his seat, and then looked around, blinking in the high afternoon sun. There was no one on the athletics track, no one messing around in the long jump pit, nothing for him to watch and help pass the time. But on the main path there was a woman out walking her dog, and when Coughlan offered her a cheerful hello he was rewarded with a brief smile. It was the greatest reaction he’d had had in a long time, the greatest acceptance.
Through the birch trees on the far side of the track and the cranes that seemed to be forever stalking the streets of London, Coughlan watched the sun go down until he became shrouded in darkness. The shroud felt a little colder than it had the night before, so he pulled his coat tight around his chest. A slight wind had also started to blow across the hill, and he thought that perhaps he might be too cold on the bench. He tried to think of somewhere else he might be able to sleep. There was a small café near the tennis courts, and he thought that perhaps he might be warm snuggled up there at the back of the kitchen. But then he remembered the bandstand further back. Not the usual kind of bandstand with a wrought-iron railing circling the stage, but one with a solid wall facing the path. Whenever the bandstand was in use, the audience would sit on the hill to watch. If he crept in there he would be sheltered from both the wind and people passing on the path. Taking one last look across the track toward the failing light, Coughlan bundled himself up inside his coat and headed for the bandstand.
Within an hour he was asleep. He dreamed of black-and-white creatures diving from a concrete island and swimming free, at ease with both themselves and their surroundings. From the opposite bank he stood and watched them for a long time before summoning up the courage to dive in and join them. His arms and legs felt awkward at first, stiff and making little progress, but soon he too was swimming free. At first the other creatures kept their distance, but after a few minutes he was accepted into their fold, and when the swim was over the creatures let him climb out onto their concrete island. When he looked back at the place from where he had dived into the water, it had disappeared.
The following morning he awoke feeling like he had just had the best night’s sleep of his life, and he set off back to the flat with something approaching a spring in his step.
Walking across the estate, he saw that the door to his flat was wide open. Fearing that he had been burgled, he picked up his pace and hurried up the stairs. But as he approached the door, the fear was replaced with something else: huge relief that at long last he had no responsibilities and could do just as he pleased. On reaching the door, he stopped and listened for a moment, and then pulled it closed and carried on walking.
PART IV
London Calling
SHE’LL RIDE A WHITE HORSE
BY MARK PILKINGTON
Dalston
A hundred wary eyes watched his approach through the yellow-stained sodium twilight. The cats were all around him, frozen as if ready to pounce, though whether toward him or away from him, he couldn’t tell. Heldon considered himself a cat lover, but their stares forced a shiver of unease.
The pinpoints of light punctured the night—under trolleys and cars, on corrugated roofs, though most of them, attached to near-identical scrawny brown bodies, surrounded an overturned plastic barrel that had spilled a neat chevron of part-frozen meat and bone onto a torn newspaper headline: Iran: Allied Generals Are Ready.
By day, Ridley Road Market is the heart of Dalston. A heaving babel of traders and shoppers—East End English, West African, Indian, Russian, Turkish—squeeze past each other in a permanent bottleneck. The stalls—Snow White Children’s Clothes, Chicken Shop, Alpha & Omega Variety Store—offer exotically colored fabrics and cheap electrical goods alongside barrels of unidentifiable animal parts, unfamiliar vegetables, and unlocked mobile phones.
But at night the market belongs to the cats. They are everywhere. They don’t need to fight, there’s always plenty of food to go round; they just wait their turns in the shadows.
At least they keep the rats away, thought Heldon, in a transparent attempt to console himself. A foot-long rodent scuttled behind a wheelie bin. The cats’ eyes remained fixed on the larger intruder. “Don’t mind me,” he said out loud, “just keep eating your dinner.”
“Ignore the cats, they’re just keeping an eye out for troublemakers.”
The deep, careful African voice came from a closed stall within a concrete shell on the other side of the road; a tired-looking sign above a closed wooden door read, Bouna Fabrics Afr, before trailing off into decay.
The cats returned to their business. Heldon crossed the road and opened the door.
“Hello, Ani. You’ve got yourself a few more cats since I was last here.”
“Yes, my friend. At least they keep the rats away, eh?”
Aniweta smiled and the men shook hands. A Nigerian barrel of a man with a gold-ringed grasp to match, his strong dark hand engulfed Heldon’s puffy pink-white flesh. He claimed to be in his forties. But his watery eyes and leather-tan skin made Heldon think he was older than that.
“It’s good of you to see me,” said Heldon.
“Well, it’s not as if I have a choice, eh? Come, let’s go out back, this place gives me a headache.” Aniweta turned, pushed his way through the lurid yellow and green fabrics hanging from the ceiling, and disappeared.
A thick black curtain veiled a door leading into a small, dimly lit room. Lined shelves held rows of unlabeled glass jars containing dried plants, powders, and things too deformed to be identified as animal, mineral, or vegetable. A heavy wooden desk, its surface covered with what could just as easily be scientific or magical debris—scales, tongs, a pestle and mortar, stains, scorc
h marks, and candle wax—stood near the wall facing the entrance.
Aniweta sat down on a sturdy wooden chair and looked expectantly at Heldon.
The sickly aroma of faded incense, over-ripe vegetables, and old meat reminded Heldon of the first time he’d been down here. That was almost five years ago. Then he had been a little afraid, though he would never have admitted it at the time. Now he was just angry.
“There’s been another one, Ani. But I suppose you know that already.”
“Yes, I know. A girl this time. No doubt you will call her Eve.”
Heldon knew the market well. You had to, working in this neighborhood. Mostly it looked after itself, a closed system, and it was best not to get involved. The force had their own people in there, and the market presumably had its own people in the force. Recycled mobiles and other stolen goods were one thing. They could be dealt with quietly. But there were other things that could not be ignored. As the trade in guns and drugs got a little too casual, like it did every year, a few stalls were inevitably raided, as was the old pub on the corner of St. Mark’s Rise, which was now less popular, though more peaceful, as a beautician’s.
But all this was regular police work, and so no longer Heldon’s business.
At first, bush meat was his business. Chimps mostly, but also the odd gorilla, brought in from the Congo and Gabon. An Italian punk girl had almost fainted on seeing a huge, dark, five-fingered hand fall out of brown paper wrapping as it was passed to a customer at the Sunny Day Meats stall.
The raids found no whole animals, only parts—heads, feet, genitals, hands—most too precious for food and sold only for muti or juju. Medicine. Magic. They turned up something else too. The squad at first thought the bag contained parts of a baby chimp: fingers stripped of skin, a dark and shriveled penis and scrotum, teeth. But forensics found otherwise. They were human.
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