by Will Self
'Worst,' Dave croaked aloud, 'the worst thing in the world is to kill yourself, Tiger, but not if you do it to stop yourself killing someone else.'
In the Trophy Room of the Swiss Cottage Sports Centre – group rental £25 per hour, pick up and leave the key at main reception the Fathers First group did laps in liquid anger, thrashing up and down the lanes, the chlorine of hatred stinging their eyes. 'I'm gonna fucking kill her!' bellowed Billy O'Neil. He was standing in spotless Timberlands, his manicured fists were clenched, the sweat stood out on his tousled brow. 'Calm down, Billy,' Keith Greaves said, 'please calm down.' Billy couldn't hear him – nor could the other premier-division dads. They watched, appalled and yet entranced, as the big man was manipulated by the dextrous fist of rage. Rage that pulled on the strings threaded through all their lives, so they poked their own little fists into others' faces, kicked their feet into kidneys, and slammed car doors so hard the glass disintegrated into 'ackney diamonds. Dave Rudman's face was in his hands; his fingers sought out the shameful scars of his failed hair transplant. 'Calm down, Billy,' Keith said again – while Dave began to cry.
Carl understood that it was part of the whole expensive package. Along with Cal Devenish came Beech House, the Range Rover Vogue, the Tuscan holidays and of course the poncey fucking school Privilege sucked – he longed for his dad. Longed for Dave, who took him out in the cab and showed him parts of the city Wormwood Scrubs, Lea Bridge, the Honor Oak Reservoir – which the 'ampstead wankers would never see. In the past three years, as he'd seen Dave less and less, so Carl's idea of his father had come unstuck, detaching itself from both any foundation in the past and the increasingly disturbing reality of the man.
In Carl's view, Dave was a knight of the open road. He knew the city and he knew its people. Dave was as at home up West in a fancy restaurant as he was in Muratori's, the cabbies' King's Cross cafe. Everyone knew him – cops, bartenders, fellow cabbies, waver-uppers – knew him and respected him. 'Orlright, Tufty!' they sang out as the Fairway squealed to a halt and chip and block got out. So on the fateful day, last October, when Carl came out of the elaborate wrought-iron gates of his new school and there was his dad, hunched down at the wheel of the cab, unshaven, white gunk at the corners of his peeling lips, oily patches under his burnt-out eyes, it was a dreadful shock. 'Cummear, son,' Dave growled, 'cummear.'
Carl's first instinct was to run. Boys in his class had already spotted the odd apparition: a London taxi cab parked in Frognal at four in the afternoon. Not dropping off or picking up, poised five feet from the kerb, but deep in the gutter. Worse still, the Fairway – which, in the days when his father had pride, had never carried any kind of advertising – now sported Supersides. The driver-side one showed a blonde in her bra and knickers tearing a strip from her own inner thigh; below it was the double-entendre PAINLESSLY OFF, PLEASURABLY ON. Puerile eyes sucked this up.
Why's he cummear? Why … ? Carl was torn between anxiety for his father, who he knew wasn't allowed within half a mile of Beech House, and anger that he was shaming him in front of the other boys. He hurried over, wrenched open the back door of the cab, slung his school bag in, leaped in after it and called to his father, 'Drive on, cabbie!'
Dave went along with him, saying, 'Where to, guv?' Flustered, Carl replied, 'Savernake Road.' Which was round the corner from Dave's flat. Carl thought they'd go and have a cup of tea together, or kick a ball around on Parliament Fields for half an hour, but his dad was too mad. He drove – leave on left Frognal. Left Arkwright Road. Right Fitzjohn's Avenue – and ranted: 'Fucking this and fucking that, fucking coons and fucking Yids, fucking young slappers and fucking old boilers.' It was as if, by impersonating a fare, Carl had exposed himself to the deepest, darkest, most atavistic stream of cabbie consciousness. Too shocked to say anything, Carl sat as his dad's voice crackled over the intercom. At the junction with Roderick Road the cab pulled over. Dave opened the back door and said, 'Op aht, sun.' Carl came forward but before he could say anything, Dave cried, 'No charge on this one!' And roared away.
Carl lay for a long time on the slope of damp grass that stretched up to Parliament Hill. He didn't care about his poncey striped uniform – or anything else. He couldn't cry, but his belly was tight with misery. When at last he'd risen and begun his tramp back through the dusk, the Heath itself was his confidante. He'd reached consciousness on this peculiar island, a couple of square miles of woodland and meadow set down in the lagoon of the city. He wavered from copse to tumulus, from felled old elm to crunchy bracken patch, making his way up to the sandy crossroads, where a single Victorian lamp standard stood, its homely glow illuminating the dark holly hedge that marked the entrance to Kenwood. In touching this roughened trunk and clutching that mossy bole, the lad connected with his past. Kite-flying on blustery days, the kamikaze nylon aircraft diving for the ground; family picnics among the house-high tangle of dead trees felled by the Great Storm of '87; and in the dead of winter, hurling ice chunks across the frozen surface of Highgate Pond, his woolly paws burning with cold fire.
In the sickening disparity between the affectionate enclosure of his early childhood and the loveless thicket of the present, Carl saw the person he would henceforth be: a young man expelled from Arcadia, an exile, driven out and forced to live on the fringes of society, his only bible a collection of arcana derived from a distant past, a time of loyal chaps and gaudy royalty. Shouldering his school bag, Carl slithered down the hill past the little reservoir and rejoined the path that led up to Well Walk. It was mummy time once more. His clothes were filthy, Michelle would be frantic with worry, he was late for supper at Beech House.
Dave Rudman lined up his pathetic row of male toiletries on the sink surround and resolved to make himself presentable. He washed his remaining hair, he shaved his muddled face, he ironed his trousers and put on a shirt, a tie and the tweed jacket he'd bought to fit in with Michelle's friends a decade before. She'd laughed at him – they'd laughed at him as well. Big-arsed Sandra, psycho Betty and doormat Jane. Dave could hear their laughter still as he drove down to Paddington. Hear it as he ranked up off Cleveland Terrace, hear it as he walked into the building where Gold's man had an office. Dave heard it together with Gold's friendly warning: 'This guy is good, very good, in fact – he's the best, but all he'll say to you is "I don't handle divorce."'
'I don't handle divorce,' the Skip Tracer said, picking his nails with a very sharp penknife. He hadn't even bothered to face Dave while the potential client was stating his business.
'It isn't divorce,' Dave protested to the close-cropped back of his head; 'we're divorced already, this is about the kid.'
'Whatever.' The Skip Tracer played an absent-minded arpeggio on his computer keyboard. 'Kids, divorce, whatever, I don't do nosebag neither.'
'What?'
'Sniff-sniff, chop-chop.' The Skip Tracer chopped out imaginary lines of cocaine on the desktop. 'YerknowhatImean, barley, rows of, nosebag. Don't touch it, never have, never will. Despise it – despise people that do.'
'I didn't say anything about … nosebag.' Dave shifted in his plastic chair and looked uneasily towards the window, where vertical louvres sliced up the nondescript terrace opposite.
'Didn't say – thought.' The Skip Tracer got up, turned around and jumped up so that he was sitting on his desk, a utilitarian steel unit that was pressed against a large map of the Dutch Antilles. He brandished the penknife at Dave. 'I'm quick on the … on the … quick on the uptake, see. Quick – that's me.' He ran his free hand through his thick grey-blond hair, which was very straight, long at the front and architecturally layered at the back. 'I'm so fast people jump to the conclusion that I'm doing nosebag. You did – didn't you?'
'No, not especially, you do seem a bit wire – '
'Wired, right, wired. Fucking wired, right. Nosebag, that's what you're thinking, right?' Fucking mental is more like it, I don't get this geezer at all. He looks like a toff, with the Gieves and Hawkes whistle, the braces, the black-bloody-brogues. Chinle
ss as well, gold signet ring, gold cufflinks, but he talks like a bloody space cadet. 'I don't mind, I can handle it. I don't care what you think.' Gold said he did mostly financial stuff, chasing money, so that's good for me. Gold said it's all a grey area, this sort of work, and this fellow will do a B & E or a wiretap if he has to – not personal but he has people. 'I've just got a fast metabolism. See this shirt? Fresh on at lunchtime … this morning's' – the Skip Tracer leaped up, went over to a perforated metal cylinder in the corner and plucked up a limp rag – 'in the fucking bin. My cufflinks rust if I wear 'em two days running, 'coz the sweat's just lashing offa me, lashing offa me … I'm that fast, see, but it ain't nosebag. Now, what ya got for me?'
'I thought you didn't do kids?' Dave got up, ready to leave.
'A man's kiddies is different, daddies is different. Ya see, divorce business is ninety per cent women, ninety per cent. Why? 'Coz they're cats, ain't they, cats … curiosity gets 'em every time. Minute hubby's gotta few items on his Mastercard bill he can't square, they wanna know the colour of the bint's pubes he's tomming around with. Gotta know – haveta know. It's not about love, it's not about money, it's not about kiddies – it's just bloody curiosity. You're different – it's your kiddie. Call me sentimental, go on, call me sentimental' – the Skip Tracer skipped over to a grey filing cabinet on top of which were lined up five full bottles of single-malt whisky and yanked from behind them a silver-framed photograph of a teenage girl with a mouth full of orthodontistry –'but I love my kiddie, wouldn't want to be parted. No way, no way … Anyway, Gold says there's a money angle, which is?' He slapped the photograph back down and closed in on Dave, still waggling the penknife.
'This.' Dave handed him the card. 'I had this Brice in the back of my cab; he works for the bank that are handling the buyout of my ex's new bloke's company. His name is Cal Devenish – '
'Oh him!' The Skip Tracer was delighted. 'I've heard of'im, well, whassthe beef?'
'I heard this bloke on his mobile saying he didn't think Devenish was kosher, thought he was spending more money than he could possibly have –'
'I like it, I like it – liking it, liking it. You wanna know how much he 'az? I'll tell you!'
The Skip Tracer leaped for his desk, yanked up the receiver of one of the four phones on it and punched a string of digits without even looking: 'Channel Devenish, that's right, love, D-E-V-E-N-I-S-H. I dunno, Charlotte Street probably, yeah, yeah … Hello, Channel Devenish? Yeah … Barry Forbes here, City Desk at the Standard, we're doing a thing on your buyout, can I have a word with the Financial Director … and that is? Bob Gubby … sure, thanks … Mr Gubby? Barry Forbes here from the Standard, yeah, yeah, just a short item on the buyout, and, well, you actually … people are impressed … we all know FDs are the real deal makers, juss wanned to check some facts, no time to look up the clips … corporate bankers … I see, yes … in the Haymarket, and they're the seniors? Excellent. One other thing, d'you have a photo? Black and white preferably, bike it over if you could, mark it for my attention and I'll pass it to the picture desk. Barry Forbes, that's right, F-O-R-B-E-S. Brilliant, brilliant…' He broke the connection and redialled while hissing at Dave, 'Carrot, see, mug thinks he's gonna be in the evening rag, carrot, give 'em carrot, it's like nosebag for desk jockeys – hello?' he said, returning to the phone, 'Bob Gubby here at Channel Devenish, could I speak to our corporate manager? Mr Hurst, that's right… he's at lunch? Well, his secretary will do … Hello, Bob Gubby here at Channel Devenish, yes, I know he's at lunch, I just need to check something quickly … is that a Barbadian accent? Really, I love Barbados, I was on holiday there last year, no, near Speightstown …'
The Skip Tracer's chat-up was like hypnotizing someone with a pendulum: the trick lay in its very obviousness. From the secretary he elicited Cal Devenish's personal bank details: 'We're worried a payment hasn't gone through and everyone's at lunch at this end. Yes … a big payment … I thought I might have the account number wrong … it looks like a five, but it could be an eight … 'Digit by digit he extracted the account number, without the young woman on the end of the line even realizing that he'd provided her with no accreditation at all except holiday snaps and a false name. 'Carrot, see, big dick Barbadian one!' he snapped at Dave when he'd broken the connection. Then he called Devenish's bank and pretended to be a manager from another branch: 'He's applied for a loan here … nothing large, but I felt I ought to check it out …' With each call he made, the Skip Tracer morphed astonishingly: from City Editor to Financial Director, from FD to Bank Manager. His voice changed, his accent changed, his wiry body coiled and stretched across the desk. 'I see, really?' He scribbled a number on a pad and chucked it over to Dave while still on the call. 'Well, that is strange, but very rich men can be, can't they? And it's all business for us, no?'
Dave was looking at the number, which had six digits. The Skip Tracer hung up. 'Carrot, see, loan, get it, nosebag, banker nosebag, that is – a loan.'
'He's got over seven hundred grand in his current bloody account!' Dave expostulated.
'£743,485 to be precise,' the Skip Tracer said. 'He's fucking loaded. But I don't do pro bono, my son, no way Jose, I'm not some fucking ambulance chaser. You'll have to cough up, on the nail, on the nail. And no borrowing to pay me.' He wagged a finger. 'I know those sharks, I know the vig.'
'Aren't you worried about them tracing all of that?' Dave put in. 'All those dodgy calls?'
'Cummear.' The Skip Tracer pulled Dave to his feet and tucked his arm around the bigger man's neck. Dave smelled sweat and aftershave – both of them were lashing off him. 'I'm gonna like you, son. I'm gonna enjoy doing stuff fer you, b'lieve me. B'lieve it. Cummear … see the flex, see the phone wire, lets follow it …' The Skip Tracer three-legged Dave out the door and in through the open door of the adjoining office. It was empty save for a pile of phone directories and smelled of new carpet tiling. The phone wire snaked across the chequerboard and disappeared into a wall. 'There it goes into its little hole. Company that rents this gaff' – he laid a crooked finger against his tip-tilt nose – 'I've never seen 'em. They'll be one of those nosebag fronts with their name on a plate in an accountant's office on the Isle of Man. Ironically it might be the same bean counter who fronts up for your man Devenish. Geddit?'
Dave was renting Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the full-flat. The open-top, straight-six Bentley was a pig to handle, and the wings were mostly useless in Central London. The flying car grunted and squealed at the rank under the heavy steel joists of St Pancras. A fare came flapping out of the greenish aviary of the station, a tall stick of a man, his white beard and black robe giving him a vulturine appearance. 'Where to, guv?' Dave asked him, and the fare replied stiffly, 'Parl-men-till.'
The fare was a tedious old fucker, who couldn't forbear from lecturing Dave on London's architecture. Dave hated birds – especially old human ones; he hated their alien stare, their hollow bones, their greasy feathers, their hard, pointed lips. The fare's thesis was simple: the city had ceased to evolve after the Great Fire. The last three hundred and fifty years were only a series of recapitulations, the erection of new-old buildings, tricked out in the styles of lost civilizations. He pointed out the neo-Gothic station frontage, its triplets of lancet windows complete with quatrefoils, its angled and flying buttresses, its iron pinnacles and gabled niches. Despite himself Dave craned to look up and piloted Chitty Chitty Bang Bang into the gulch being excavated for the Channel Tunnel terminal. Luckily, its wings spontaneously unfurled, the huge car swooped back up on to the roadway. The fare was unfazed. He discoursed on the wooden, barrel-vaulted roof of King's Cross, then directed his attention to the neoclassicism of the terraced houses lining Royal College Street – their snub facades alluding to the possibility of stately porticos, their anorexic pilasters referencing temples long since crumbled. 'Vares nuffing nú unnersun, mì sun.' The fare spoke the broadest of cockney, vowels crushed to death by rumbling lorries on the Mile End Road. 'Doan ask wy ve öl daze wuz bé
-er van vese, coz U aynt gó ve nous fer í. Lemme tellya, no geezer az a fukkin clú abaht iz oan tyme, yeah? Ees juss lyke a fukkin sparrer – '
'The sparrows are nearly all gone in London,' Dave put in.
'Eggzackerly!' In the rearview mirror Dave saw the old man's bony digit waggle. 'Eggzackerly, lyke a fukkin sparrer aw a bitta bá-erred cod.'
'They're going inall.'
'Rì agen, gawn, cort inna eevul fukkin net, mayt, an eevul fukkin net vat juss cum aht uv ve fukkin sky.'
Coming up Highgate Road, Dave used the steep slope after the railway bridge to take off, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang unfurled its wings once more, and soared up over the redbrick, 1930s blocks of Lissenden Gardens. He banked the flying car and came in on a flat approach to the summit of Parliament Hill, touching down on the path with hardly a bump. They rolled to a halt, and the fare got out. Dave searched the dash for a meter but couldn't find one. There was hardly any point in trying, for when he looked again he saw that the old man had done a runner, pelting off down the hill towards the Highgate Ponds, his long black robe streaming behind him. 'I s'pose I'll just have to wipe my mouth on that one,' Dave muttered to himself.
Dawn was silvering the mirrored buildings of the City – further to the east the bridge at Dartford floated above the riverine mist. The streetlights were still on, phosphorescent trails in the oily swell of streets and buildings. Dave felt an aqueous queasiness when he saw the long line of the North Downs to the far south – they were distant islands, uninhabited and uninhabitable. At his back he sensed the ridges of Barnet and then the Chilterns rising up, wooded shores against which London lapped.
Carl and his mother were sitting on one of the benches that looked out over the city. As Dave drew closer, he saw that they were both in their nightwear. He sat down, putting his arm around his son. 'Are you going to do the baddest thing in the world, Dad?' Carl asked, and Dave replied, 'Yes, son, yes, I think I will.'
