‘Yes, that was just after your mother died,’ I said casually. ‘I was looking for you, in fact.’
‘Well here I am, you’ve found me.’ I heard him laugh. What was funny? The fact that he had followed me that night? He had watched and waited.
‘It’s a shame you didn’t call round sooner,’ I said. ‘You could have told us what you wanted for the funeral.’
‘I don’t like funerals.’
‘But you said …’ I bit my lip. ‘You could have insisted on a burial at least, if that was what she wanted, if you’d only come to us. We didn’t know, Mr Woods – Roy. We just didn’t know.’
‘It’s all right, Lulu, don’t upset yourself. Father McKenzie, wiping his hands on his shirt as he walks from the grave,’ he sang. ‘No one was saved. Abuse,’ he finished. ‘Abuse.’
Unable to stop myself, I started to cry. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s just Liverpool. It takes me back.’
I saw my brother clear as daylight in the room, his chapped and wizened face, old before its time, bent over me in a bright eyed leer. Bright eyes and white lace tights, ripped and bloody at the knee. I looked down at my tea, feeling the hot steam burn my face.
‘You can’t choose your family, Louise,’ Roy said matter of factly, then he began to sing again. It was disconcerting. ‘Hello, Louise – you look so good.’
‘That’s the Human League,’ I said, ‘not the Beatles.’
‘You’re not really a day tripper, are you Louise?’
‘I hope not,’ I said. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this.’ I indicated the box of ashes. ‘My colleagues are really pushed right now. They wouldn’t have meant to be insensitive.’
‘Don’t worry about it. You say sorry too much, Mz Moon. Life is very short.’ He wagged a finger at me. ‘No time for fussing and fighting, my friend. We can work it out.’
‘I hope so,’ I told him.
‘You come and find me in the park.’ He got to his feet. ‘We’ll work it out. I’m there every day, it’s my line. We’ll get together to discuss my mam’s memorial. But not today. Sam Veil’s on the radio tonight. He said he’d play Blackbird for me. There’s good reception in that room they’ve given me, I will say that.’
‘What time’s it on?’ I asked, wondering how Veil would come over if the studios banned smoking. Would he resort to a nicotine patch while he turned the tables?
‘Nine o’clock,’ Roy said. ‘I never miss it.’ He was still fidgeting, I noticed. Was that the medication? Had they given him those psychotropic – psychoactive drugs that Chas had mentioned? Was that why he was so calm and composed in his mind, apart from the twitching knee that was? I wondered if he wanted to use my bathroom but was too polite to ask.
‘What is your line?’ I asked him but he shook his head mysteriously. Then he picked up the carrier bag. The door was still ajar. I hadn’t locked it behind us.
‘I’ll see you soon then,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow maybe. I can maybe make some enquires.’ As if, I thought. Why lead him on like this?
‘Tomorrow never comes,’ he said. ‘You say goodbye and I say hello. Ta-ra, Louise.’
‘No, I will come,’ I said, determined. ‘I told you, I’ll try and work something out about the memorial, I promise.’
‘I know you will,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the tea.’
When he had gone, I washed up the tea things and took two more painkillers. I badly wanted to talk to my counselling supervisor, to tell her about these meetings with Roy, to hear her tell me sensibly to drop it, to hear this advice from a person who practised empathy, rather from a clinician like Dr Veil, a pathologist like Chas, or a cold-hearted jobsworth like the Bully Bubba, but Cassie was in India until the first of October. I would have to trust my own lights to show me where my empathy should end towards a relative of someone I had helped remove. To show me the right way to go.
Debating both the sense and the logistics of carrying out my promise to Roy Woods, and finding myself going round and round in circles, I decided to go out for another walk, dawdling my way up to Primrose Hill to look at the useless objects in the shops in Regent’s Park Road. Fifteen years ago, when this street had been merely up and coming, it still had useful places like a fish and chip shop and a butcher, but now it formed a closed rank of estate agents, tastefully themed cafés (no Starbucks though: there’d been a petition to keep them out), and boutiques selling expensive odds and sods. Chas often talked of moving out of the area, to buy into another up and coming part of London and still afford to do up his country retreat from the change from the Primrose Hill sale, but he still showed no signs of shifting. Harley-D’s were ten a penny here, the recreational vehicle of media stars and advertising executives. There were three of the bikes at rest outside Chas’s building now: his own touring bike (with expensive customised death’s head), a silver and green Electroglide, and the sporty bike they called the Fat Boy, sprayed a shocking pink. This had to be a woman’s bike, but no woman resided here to my knowledge. The females who slept in these flats were all flotsam and jetsam, the fluff of the alpha males who owned the building, who could pick and choose the hours they wanted to sleep with them. Push button sex, I thought, you said it, professor.
Fired by the recollection, I went up to the house, pressed Chas’s bell but heard a woman answer. Thinking I must have pressed the wrong bell, I lined the name Androssoff up with my finger and pressed again. The voice spoke once more, irritated this time, American.
‘Is this Chas Androssoff’s bell?’ I asked, although it had to be, unless someone had swapped the names around for a joke.
‘He’s in the shower. Who wants to know?’
‘It’s push button,’ I said tartly.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Push button,’ I said. ‘P-u-s-h push, b-u-t-t-o-n, button.’
‘Push button,’ she sounded sceptical. ‘That would be a hyphenated name, right?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s triple barrel. My last name’s sex.’
The entryphone went dead.
I was halfway over the Hill before I turned around, still doubled up with my own audacity, although trying not to show it because joggers were starting to look at me strangely. Chas was catching me up, his hair still damp, a benign sort of expression on his face. I sat down on a bench and waited.
‘No need to run after me,’ I opened. ‘No need for explanations between friends.’
‘I’m not here to explain. You came to see me.’
‘You knew it was me then?’
‘I was watching you out of the window, Louise. There was no need to have a go at Caroline like that.’
‘She doesn’t do push button then? Hasn’t she got a sense of humour? You can see for yourself,’ I went on, not letting him remonstrate. ‘Roy Woods was round again this morning. He’s isn’t all that cracked either, nor is Dr Veil quite the incompetent bastard you make him out to be. He’s got Roy a room in Hammond House and is playing his tune on the radio show tonight, so …’
‘The sheep gave a leap,’ Chas said. He sat down next to me. I could feel the heat of the shower on him still, smell faint traces of patchouli oil.
‘You should have told me about the Fat Boy,’ I said testily. ‘You should have turned me down honestly. I’d have understood, you know. No need to treat me with kid gloves. But that was always the problem, wasn’t it, with us I mean? The gloves stayed on.’
‘Her name is Caroline. She’s just a friend. You wouldn’t look right on a Fat Boy, Louise.’
‘Backseat driver, you mean? Yes, you always said I was too passive.’
‘There’s no need to take it so personally. We’re just going out on a ride-out today. I met her at the reunion the other week. It’s no big deal.’
‘The reunion in Brighton?’
‘That’s right, she’s a friend of the friends who were doing the Pacific Rim.’
‘The night you cut up Edith Woods.’
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
‘
You know what I was doing that night?’ I said, remembering how lousy I felt about my day removing Edith, about him coming round to fill me in on the fine details of her autopsy before riding off into the night to meet this woman on her Fat Boy. I couldn’t switch off from my work like Chas. He could switch off and on. That was ever the problem.
‘You had better get back to her,’ I said.
‘Come and eat with me tomorrow.’
‘No thanks. I don’t want to play wallflower.’
‘Caroline won’t be there. She won’t be staying over here, she lives in Docklands. She works for Dow Jones.’
‘Bit corporate for you, isn’t it?’
‘Why should I care what she does? It’s not as though I’m going to marry her or anything.’
‘You should be so lucky.’
‘What do you want, Louise?’ he asked. ‘You pushed me out. Things were never the same after that business with Eddie Kronenberg. You never got over that guy. I still don’t think you’re over him, you know that?’
‘I knew you’d bring that up,’ I said. ‘It’s you who won’t let me forget it. It’s obviously not in your interest to let me move on.’
‘You’ve lost me there.’
‘I’m not going to spell it out for you,’ I told him. ‘But it starts with a c and has a double m’s and t’s in the middle …’
‘In the middle?’
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘But don’t think I’m short of offers.’
‘I never doubted it.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Wouldn’t that be like Sam Veil, for instance, though I hope to Christ you won’t be taking him up on it. You deserve better than that, Louise.’
‘You think that’s my level, Sam Veil?’ I got up, feeling something press into my skull like a red hot wire. I reached out to steady myself on the slats of the bench.
‘Are you OK?’ Chas frowned. ‘You should be resting. When are you seeing the neurologist?’
‘Hadn’t you better get back to Fat Boy?’ I tried to rub the dizziness away. ‘It must be quite a novelty to go out with somebody rich for a change.’
‘I’d say you were jealous, if I knew it wouldn’t really piss you off.’
‘Since when have you pulled any punches with me? You said it anyway. I’m just a bit insulted that you didn’t think to tell me about it last night.’
‘There is nothing to tell.’
‘You had sex with her the night after you cut up Edith Woods. She stayed the night with you, she must have, or why were you in the shower?’
‘There’s no causal link between these events. It’s only speculation anyway. I don’t know why I’m even defending myself. I can take a shower whenever I like.’ He shrugged. ‘I didn’t hare off back to Caroline last night if that’s what you’re implying. I was set to spend the evening with you, remember?’
‘But not the night, right? Hence that remark about push button sex. A quick in and out for the Coroner’s investigator. It’s OK, don’t explain yourself. I’ve got to go.’ I started to walk away.
‘Hope this new guy treats you better than I do,’ he called. ‘You deserve it, Louise. You deserve to be handled with kid gloves.’
I carried on walking.
‘I’m serious about taking it easy,’ he called. ‘Don’t get physical.’
‘I’ll leave that to you,’ I said, without turning round. ‘Make sure you press all the right buttons.’
***
Chapter 9
I walked up the hill and over it, but saw no rainbow, no pot of gold on the other side. I had lost Chas, I thought, just like that, in the twinkling of an eye. The future seemed blocked and sullen. Eventually, I found myself at Finchley Road, staring in a shop that sold new age artifacts, bongs, paraphernalia, assorted sticks of highly coloured incense. A deck of Tarot cards also lay fanned out in a promotional spread. I went inside.
The cards cost fifteen pounds, but I bought a book as well, which claimed to explain the mystery of the Tarot. Chas, I knew, would demystify it for me in one short word. But I had to stop myself from thinking about Chas. I had to train myself to think otherwise. Besides, Chas only looked at the material brain, the electrical circuitry. You didn’t need a scalpel to cut into the soul, or gloves either. You had to take the gloves off.
A bus was drawing up, a rarely spotted Number 39 that would take me back to Camden Town. I had not boarded a bus since my accident, but this one was a single decker, with doors controlled by the driver. I gripped the partition that separated him from the passengers queuing to pay, waiting till he’d pressed the door-close button before handing over my money, and treading warily down the aisle, making sure I touched no other passenger as I chose my seat. I did not look at anybody, fearful of conjuring that woman again, the one with the terrible eyes and foul mouth, spitting insults. At last we reached the stop near Hammond House, which was just as I remembered it, the same pale yellow bricks, the same clutch of derelicts hanging about in the street outside, aggravating the traders on the vegetable market that spilled around the corner. I stopped to buy some apples. If someone were to train a webcam on the building, some reality-TV producer from the studios up the road, I was sure the clutch of derelicts would make scarcely perceptible shifts, like a still life painting shifts when you blink at it for too long. The plastic carrier containing the book and the Tarot cards was sticking to my hands as I pushed through the reinforced glass entrance doors and found myself corralled inside a bullet-proof reception area. We had removed dead paupers from this hostel, though I had never come to check them out myself. Mr Byrne took care of all that for us. It was right on his pitch.
‘Can I help?’ came a voice behind a double-glazed partition.
‘I’ve come to see someone you have staying with you,’ I said, in my best bureaucratic voice, an officer of the City, not quite retired.
‘We’ve got over four hundred, love, at the last count. And you are?’
‘His name is Roy Woods,’ I said. ‘I’m a colleague of Dr Veil, who made the arrangements for Roy to stop here. I just wanted to check if he was settling in OK.’
The concierge looked me over indifferently and located Roy on his screen. ‘Woods,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a Bernard Woods, and Arthur Woods a Sash … Sasheverall Woods – what kind of name is that? Yeah, Roy Woods – I’ve got him. He came in late last night. Who do you say wants him?’
‘I work for the Coroner,’ I said, which was still true, technically, because Mr Carey would not receive my notice until Monday. ‘I processed his late mother.’
The concierge took this disclosure with the same expression of indifference as before. His features were softened by flab. He held a double cheeseburger in one hand and a roll-up in the other, in spite of the Smoking Kills sign.
‘You’ll need to sign in as a visitor,’ he said. ‘He’s in Room 397, if he’s in. Sign here.’ He glanced up at the clock, which had a Christmas decoration still taped to it, last year’s probably, unless they were incredibly precipitate in here. ‘Four fifty nine.’
I scribbled my name and he buzzed me through the security door. Inside, the place had a high sort of smell: stale cigarettes, underpinned with notes of disinfectant and the unmistakable miasma of indifferent maleness – stale sweat and unwashed clothes. There was no one in the tiled lobby, but two staircases on either side led up to the residents’ rooms. One side was numbered Nos 1 – 200, the other Nos 201- 400. Roy was one of the penultimates. Two more double doors, in the same heavy, fire-proofed glass led into the canteen. I knew what that would smell like: stewed tea and old food. Voices rumbled from inside, punctuated by coughing. Gingerly, I began climbing the stairs. I passed an old man lying on the first landing, mumbling to himself. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked, but he told me to fuck off, twice, in a thick Irish brogue. Maybe he came from the same charmless school as the woman who pushed me off the bus. A vocabulary of four letter words, privileging Anglo-Saxon. A viscous trail smeared the tiles around the old man’s backside. He looked as though he
had pissed himself, the urine sticky with sugar, like all the alcoholics who hung around here.
I carried on up, hearing quarrelsome voices behind the shut doors, more coughing. The place had a tubercular feel, like an old sanatorium. It didn’t quite smell like death, although it was worse in a way, because death had an excuse. Death couldn’t help it. This place was a monument to misspent life.
Outside Room 397, I ran my hand through my hair and tried to rationalise my impulse for calling in on Roy Woods like this. He was in, I was certain. Tinny transistor music came through the poorly insulated door. I knocked lightly, but half a minute went by before he opened it a crack. When he saw it was me, he nodded and opened wider. He wore fewer clothes now, almost underdressed in a faded T shirt blazing the glory of Liverpool FC, and worn out jeans, which he had rolled up several times to show thick red socks. His right hand was bandaged up and there was a whiff of disinfectant on him.
‘Hey-la,’ he said. ‘Hey hello-a.’ He motioned for me to go in. There was a single bed, placed next to the wall, a cupboard, table and chair. The Tesco carrier was on the floor next to the cupboard. A small radio was sitting on the table, tuned into some pop channel. A wire snaked upwards towards the empty light socket.
‘I’m saving my batteries,’ he said.
‘Isn’t that dangerous? You could blow up the whole building.’
‘Not if you know what you’re doing,’ he said. ‘Besides, it would probably do them all good. Mad schizo-Roy, ridding the world of tossers with his mighty electric thunderbolt. Sam Veil would love that.’
‘I know nothing about electrics,’ I said, for something to say. But I often I felt I knew nothing about anything at all, and certainly nothing useful. I knew anatomy, thanks to Chas, who had trained me on the corpses at the morgue. I could now reel off the textbook definition of schizophrenia, a family romance gone wrong, but I couldn’t know if Roy Woods was really being delusional in talking about a bolt from God, or simply laughing at me.
Grave Truths Page 8
