London Noir

by Cathi Unsworth

  You will incapacitate your first attacker by crushing his windpipe. The second you will see reflected in the white tiles of the bathroom. That will give you enough time to turn and shoot him in the chest. Twice.

  He will fall toward you, fingers trailing blood across the walls and floor.

  You will call down to room service to have someone come and clean out the human grease.

  “This better not show up on my bill,” you’ll say on your way out.

  “I’ll be sure to note that,” the girl at the reception desk will reply and smile brightly. “Thanks for asking.”

  Things dazzle here, but they don’t shine. Everything has a hard reflective surface to it. The dominant color is a stormy green. You walk to the end of the block. There must be people in these buildings, but the interiors seem empty and devoid of life, despite the glass and the open structures. The sight of clouds in a vast blue sky moving across the straight edge of a building will give you a slow sense of falling.

  You pause for a moment. Motorway. Distant sirens beyond the towers, the strange silence of cars passing, cold ragged wind generated by the close proximity of tall structures to each other, planes passing overhead.

  Some of the buildings have names. HSBC, Citigroup, Bank of America.

  Have your pass ready for inspection.

  You feel like you’re in transit.

  A woman appears around the windswept corner of an office building. Long black hair, a swing to her hips. She must be an office worker: trim black skirt, black sweater, black patent-leather high heels. You wonder how she can walk in shoes like those. She carries a file of documents. The stiff breeze disturbs the hem of her skirt as she walks.

  She will stop and nod toward the ambulance pulled up at the back entrance to your hotel. Two bodies strapped to gurneys are being wheeled out, their faces covered.

  “What happened over there?” she will ask.

  “Got in the way,” you’ll reply.

  She watches the paramedics load up the ambulance, her file of documents held up to shade the side of her face.

  “Wrong place at the wrong time?” she will ask.

  “Not really,” you will reply, then after a long pause: “Some people don’t know it’s over till they see the inside of a mortuary drawer.”

  “You sound like a trailer for a movie no one wants to see,” she will say.

  “I’m told I have that effect.”

  “And would it kill you to smile?”

  “Why don’t we find out?”

  The faintest of smiles will appear on her face instead. “Okay,” she’ll say.

  2.

  Once you get outside the neat arrangement of precincts around Canada Square, things come apart very quickly. You can see how thin, how artificial and transparent, this shining cluster of buildings really is. You sit at a café table and think about ordering something. Someone has written Public Enemy No One on a nearby wall in spray paint. Beyond that is the river: rusting cranes, empty sheds, and disused landings. Worn concrete, green with age.

  You will look across at her long black hair and wonder why she came with you so readily. Even so, you made it look like she didn’t have any choice. CCTV cameras are everywhere, turning the entire area into a series of flickering electromagnetic shadows.

  “They never tell me who I have to kill,” you’ll remark. “Usually I’m left to figure it out for myself.”

  “Is that what you meant by those people getting in the way?” she’ll ask.

  You slide a blurred black-and-white photograph across the table: a snapshot of a man with graying hair, smiling enigmatically, eyes black and closely focused.

  “Look at the picture,” you’ll say. “He had a different name then.”

  A waitress in a green coverall will then come over. She’ll be wearing a white plastic badge with her name on it and the message, I’m going to help you, printed underneath. She will look more like the kind of woman who’d have her first name spelled out in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs on a gold charm around her neck. You order coffee.

  “How do you take it?” the waitress will ask.

  “Straight out the jug,” you’ll reply. “Like my mother’s milk.”

  A silent pause accompanied by a blank stare. Last time you saw a face like that, the word before was printed below it.

  “Black, no sugar,” you’ll reply. “Thanks for asking.”

  She will later hand you a cardboard cup covered with a plastic lid. You stare at it. A newspaper lies on the next table. You notice the headlines out the corner of your eye. Mars Robot Goes Insane. Weapons of Mass Destruction Found in New York.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” she’ll observe as the waitress walks slowly away.

  “Is anybody?”

  The blurred black-and-white photograph still lies on the table between you.

  “It’s not what you’ve done that poses the biggest threat these days,” you’ll say. “It’s what you owe. We want to extract our money before war breaks out in the ghost galaxies.”

  “And for that you have to find this guy, this …? ” She’ll pause, waiting for a name.

  “John Frederson.”

  She’ll frown.

  “I don’t think I know him,” she’ll say. “Where’s he from?”

  “Standard Oil New York,” you reply. “The Ryberg Electronics Corporation of Los Angeles, Phoenix-Durango, Islam Incorporated, the Russian petroleum industry …”

  “He gets around.”

  “Beijing, Moscow, Tokyo, London … It’s amazing how much damage the system can take while still sending out signals.”

  “So it’s up to you to track him down and …”

  “Make him see reason.”

  “All you’re missing is a raincoat and a gun,” she’ll say, a smile playing on her lips. Then she’ll take another look at you.

  “Well, maybe just the raincoat,” she’ll add.

  “Is that a problem?” you ask before peeling the tight-fitting plastic lid off your cardboard cup and taking a sip.

  “I don’t like guns,” she’ll reply. “Guns kill people.”

  “Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?” you’ll say, pulling a face. The coffee tastes like weed-killer. “Come on,” you’ll say. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Total Information Awareness and the Policy Analysis Market focus upon high-level aggregate behavior in order to predict political assassinations or possible terrorist attacks.

  “Where are we going now?” she’ll ask, taking a pack of cigarettes from her black patent-leather purse.

  “Do you have to?” you’ll ask. “Cigarettes kill people.”

  Another scratchy subtitle appears before your eyes: Ordinary men are unworthy of the position they occupy in this world. An analysis of their past draws you automatically to this conclusion. Therefore they must be destroyed, which is to say, transformed.

  “Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?” she’ll reply.

  * * *

  Welcome to the Royal Lounge of the Baghdad Hilton, the sign says. No caps, no hoods, or tracksuits after 7 p.m.

  You stand together inside the entrance of a cheap hotel, watching tired-looking girls appear and disappear behind a threadbare red-velvet curtain. Their movements are subdued and discreet: all shadows and cellulite.

  A door in a dark side passage will open briefly onto a scene of Al Qaeda suspects kneeling manacled in their own private darkness, eyes, ears, and mouths covered, held captive behind a chain-link fence that runs down the center of the “Gitmo Room.”

  Prostitute phone cards in reception show high-contrast pictures of female GIs in camouflage fatigues leading naked men around on leather leashes. Each one of them reads: Call Lynndie for discipline and correction. All services. Open late. Thanks for asking.

  “Well, you certainly know how to show a girl a good time,” she’ll remark.

  “Keep quiet and follow me,” you’ll say.

  You push your way throu
gh the velvet curtain, but a man in a dark suit puts an arm out to stop you.

  “Hey, you can’t do that,” the man will say.

  “I just did,” you’ll reply. “Get used to it.”

  Then you snap his forearm just below the elbow joint, breaking both bones instantly. You watch the blood leaking out from his sleeve.

  On the second floor you stop outside one of the rooms.

  “What are you doing?” she’ll hiss at you. “Trying to start trouble?”

  “Another operative was sent here a few months ago,” you’ll reply, tapping gently on the door. “He was supposed to contact me when I first arrived. He didn’t show.”

  “Maybe he forgot.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Maybe you forgot.”

  “I know when I can’t remember something.” You sound dismissive. Impatient. Almost brutal.

  “Okay. I have two things to tell you,” she’ll say after a pause.

  “Yes?”

  “One: I don’t really appreciate you talking to me in that tone of voice, especially if you’re still expecting me to help you.”

  “And two?”

  “And two: There’s some guy behind you pointing a gun at the back of your head.”

  You always know what you’re doing.

  You’ll turn around and grab him by the throat. There will be a blind spasming of the flesh, and in another second there will be just you and the girl in the corridor again.

  “See if he’s got a pass key on him,” you’ll say.

  “As dumps go,” she’ll remark, looking around at the room, “this is a dump. Who do you suppose did the decorating? The Three Stooges?”

  But you’re already staring at the body on the bed.

  “Is that your contact?” she’ll say.

  You’ll nod.

  “What happened?”

  “Electrocuted.”

  “You can tell just by looking?”

  The closets and drawers are filled with the worn smell of clothes long unworn. There’s dried shaving cream on the bathroom mirror.

  “It stinks in here,” she’ll say, a flat statement delivered in a flat tone. “Should I open a window?”

  It can be a small event: like a window opening in a nearby apartment block or blood sluicing onto the dock from a rusty outlet in a harbor wall.

  “No, leave it.”

  She’ll pick up a plastic entry pass from off the floor, its chain swinging gently from her long slim fingers. She’ll point at the photograph on it.

  “Looks like John Frederson’s got a new face and name,” you’ll say, staring closely at the man in the picture.

  She’ll turn the entry pass over, examining it carefully on both sides. “This will get you into his private suite of offices at One Canada Square,” she’ll say. “I can take you there, if you want.”

  Outside the contact’s hotel you’ll be approached by a young Thai kid wearing a T-shirt with Listen to Dr. Hook printed on it. He’s selling DVDs out of a black Samsonite case. Homo Abduction: Series Red, Teenage Revolutionary Martyrs. Handcuff Party. Necktie Strangler Meets the Teenage Crushers. Baby Cream Pimp IV.

  No one’s around: just the late afternoon glare.

  “Anything I can’t get anywhere else?” you’ll ask.

  The kid opens a back compartment in the case. These DVDs show people doing things that seem meaningless to you.

  “Interested?” the kid will ask hopefully.

  But you will just walk away.

  3.

  The tower at One Canada Square is not open to the general public. It has 3,960 windows and 4,388 steps, divided into four fire stairways linking all fifty floors. It is 800 feet high. Seen through glass, the sun leaves long white streaks across the sky.

  You wander through crowds of people in the underground mall directly beneath Canary Wharf, checking entrances and exits, noting the location of cameras, sensors, and security points. Cities have scenes of their own destruction programmed into them. The world is in hock to itself.

  You hear voices all around you, children playing, the rattling of cups on saucers, heels on tiled walkways. You notice frosted glass tables outside cafés, bars, and restaurants. Curved metal and plastic chairs. Music playing. Laughter. Everyone has a sleepy tranquilized look. As if they’ve been caught too far from daylight. The only things that seem familiar to you down here are the names on the brightly lit storefronts: Starbucks, Krispy Kreme, The Gap, Mont Blanc.

  People have become slaves to probability. You’ll assume you’ve been on CCTV since you first arrived. A woman takes your photograph with her cell phone. She will have blond highlights in her feather-cut hair and wear a gold plastic leather jacket, bleach-washed blue jeans, and black Cuban heel boots. You will have come to expect this kind of thing by now.

  Chemical tests indicate that Prozac is now seeping into the main water supply.

  The woman leans forward unobtrusively to get another shot, revealing a portion of flesh so suntanned that it looks almost gray when exposed to the strip lighting in the mall’s main concourse.

  You’ll also notice that she has a tattoo at the base of her spine. They all have tattoos at the base of their spine. Or on their ankles. It’s a form of protection.

  “Against what?” you’ll ask.

  At one minute past 7 on the evening of Friday, February 9, 1996, a bomb concealed inside a flatbed truck wrecked an office complex at Canary Warf, killing two and injuring over a hundred. The device was detonated in an underground garage near Canada Square. It tore the front off the building next door, damaging the roof and shattering the glass atrium. Windows were sucked out of buildings a quarter-mile away. Bystanders were thrown to the floor and showered with flying glass. Things just kept on falling.

  You search up and down the concourse again, checking the benches, the artificial displays of greenery, the rest areas and waste bins. You look at faces, gestures: arrangements of groups and individuals. Families are a bland nightmare when seen out in public: a series of aimless and incessant demands. The entire underground mall is designed to keep them moving. They look well fed and cared for and pink from the sun. As if they are all brand new.

  You will think you can stay and rest for a moment, but you can’t. You remain on the outside of everything that’s happening down here, watching and waiting. But that’s never really been a problem for you, has it?

  You see people with laptops, people with wires trailing from their ears.

  You wonder where she’s got to: what can be keeping her.

  Suddenly she’s there again. Walking toward you from across the mall. You recognize the long black hair, the swing of her hips, the clicking of her high heels on the tile floor. At first she doesn’t appear to be with anyone, but you quickly realize that she is not alone. Two security guards in dark suits will be following at a discreet distance. They’re almost invisible, but they never move too far from her side.

  A third subtitle flickers before your eyes: It would not be logical to prevent superior beings from attacking the other parts of the galaxies.

  The tower at One Canada Square consists of nearly 16,000 pieces of steel that provide both the structural frame and the exterior cladding. It is designed to sway thirteen inches in the strongest winds, which are estimated to occur once every hundred years.

  She will now be standing before you, the security guards taking up position on either side of her.

  “Search him,” she’ll say. “He’s got a gun.” She’ll smile as they pat you down. “I told you I didn’t like them,” she’ll say.

  You call her a name. She won’t like that either.

  The guards step in a little closer. “Another word out of you and we’ll slice your heart in half.”

  They find the gun. You’ll let them take it away from you.

  “You’re coming with us,” one of them will say.

  Crowds of shoppers move past you in a dream.

  “Or what?”

  “Or a bullet’s goin
g right through your head, so which will it be?”

  They won’t try anything here: you’re fairly certain of that. All the same, you will go along with them.

  Fujitsu high-definition screens read out Bloomberg averages on the ground floor at One Canada Square. A market analyst sits back and talks on camera against a weightless array of numbers. “The shares as you can see here are just digesting reactions to that conference call, although their profits next year, he said, are set to grow by as much as fifteen …”

  The lobby contains over 90,000 square feet of Italian and Guatemalan marble. It’s the color of spilled blood and gray veins.

  Percentages flash by on-screen: Omni Consumer Products, LuthorCorp, Heartland Play Systems, Wayland Yutani. Nothing arouses pity and terror in us like an unsuccessful franchise. It’s the same as watching the commercials in the middle of a murder documentary on television: showing you things that the dead can never see and will never know about.

  You keep walking, trying to look casual, feeling the gun that’s been pushed into the small of your back ever since you were first escorted up the stairs and into the lobby.

  The tower at One Canada Square has thirty-two elevators divided into four banks, each serving a different section of the building. They form a central column just beyond the main reception area. A heavy security cordon is in operation around them at all times. Access to any of the upper floors is impossible without a valid entry pass.

  You’re in a world made up of names and numbers now. Reception, thirty-first floor: Bank of New York, Tyrell Corporation; reception, forty-ninth floor: Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, Computech, Stevenson Biochemical, Instantron.

  A nearby sign reads: For your safety and security, twenty-four-hour CCTV surveillance is in operation.

  Outside the wide lobby windows, a deep red sunset shines through empty buildings and sheets of mirror glass, high-rise floors glowing scarlet in the far distance.

  You will go where they take you in the sure and certain knowledge that you aren’t the first and you certainly won’t be the last. There will be a brief shadowy movement behind you just before the elevator doors open. Then the gun will come down hard on the back of your neck, catching you unawares.