Creed (11 page)

6.48, the clock said. For a moment he panicked. Morning or evening? He surely couldn’t have slept the night away.

He hadn’t. There was no morning chill and the atmospherics were all wrong for the beginning of a new day. He lay back in the bed, an arm like a lover’s around the pillow at his side. Gotta go to work, he told himself. Nightshift. What was it tonight?

He remembered the challenge and groaned. Why the hell hadn’t he told Blythe into which sunless region he could shove his little assignment? There was a time when Creed would have been turned on by the prospect of a night’s ducking and diving, but nowadays it all seemed like too much bloody bother. No, that wasn’t quite true: the spark hadn’t fizzled out, it was just that it spluttered occasionally. This was a time of spluttering.

He showered, he even shaved (if he got inside the Grosvenor, he’d have to look halfway decent); he spent ten minutes sitting on the loo reading the next two pages of Hawking’s
A Brief History of Time
to blank his mind completely. He burned a French Bread Pizza, drank three cups of coffee and smoked four cigarettes, checked his cameras were loaded, opened a tin of food for Grin, who seemed to be keeping well out of the way, either because of guilt (the cat had nearly killed him on those stairs) or from common sense.

The doorbell rang around 8.15.

For reasons he wouldn’t care to admit even to himself, Creed opened the bedroom window and stuck his head out rather than go downstairs.

‘Yeah?’ he called, unable to recognise the figure down there in the poor light.

‘Hello, it’s me, Cally,’ the figure called back.

‘Yeah?’

‘Oh.’ A short pause. ‘Can I see you for a moment?’

He remembered how good she looked. ‘Down in a sec.’

She was growing on him fast, he realised when he opened the front door, for that little quirk in her features – the slightly crooked front teeth – now seemed in perfect harmony with the rest of the picture. Her hair was different tonight, parted on one side and falling in a loose-curled bob. He gave her the Mickey Rourke, forgetting for a while that night’s mission impossible.

‘The swelling’s gone down,’ she observed as he stepped aside and waved her into the hallway. He plucked the list she had left that morning from the windowsill and held it behind his back.

‘Hardly hurts at all,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go out soon, but if you’d like a quick drink . . .?’

‘I won’t keep you. I know how busy you are and you were a bit involved in other things earlier, but I wondered if you’d had a chance to glance at the list of Daniel’s activities for the rest of the week.’

‘Of course I did – I know it’s important to you. I might be able to get along to something.’

‘I thought the zoo would be a good one.’

‘Yeah, I thought so, too.’ What could Lidmap be doing at a zoo?

‘They used to bring the chimps to the studio to shoot the commercial. With this new campaign they’re taking the tea-bags to them – at the zoo. You know, chimps watching a chimps’ tea-party?’

‘Ah. How about that drink?’

‘I don’t want to hold you up.’

You could be worth it, he thought. ‘I could skip the arrivals – I’m supposed to be covering a charity bash at the Grosvenor. Things won’t get cracking ’til well after ten. Come on up.’

He let her lead the way, mainly for the view, but also so that he could tuck the notepaper containing her list into a pocket.

‘Did the police get back to you?’ she asked over her shoulder.

‘Are you kidding? Do you know exactly how many break-ins there are in the London area in any twenty-four-hour period?’

‘No, how many?’

He gave a shake of his head. ‘A lot. The police won’t be getting back to me. Turn left,’ he directed.

She went through to the sitting room and Creed stood in the doorway. ‘What would you like?’ he asked.

‘White wine? Dry, if you have it.’

She looked around while he went off to fetch the wine. The room was untidy, but there wasn’t enough in it to make a mess. Over the mantelpiece were two Henri Cartier-Bresson prints, both black-and-white, one depicting a man leaping over a large, seemingly fathomless puddle (and obviously not going to make it), the other of a small kid proudly carrying home two bottles of wine.

On the wall opposite was another chrome-framed photograph, this one, according to the 12-point type beneath, by Elliott Erwitt. It showed a dog lying lazily beneath a car, the wheel threateningly resting against its head. All three photographs seemed sombre with their harsh shadows and grainy greys; yet each one was warm in subtle humour. A television with a fourteen-inch screen was on a stand in one corner and on the lower deck was a small hi-fi system with cassettes, some without their plastic cases, scattered before it. On the mantelshelf were several opened envelopes, their messages peeking out as if returned once read, a carriage clock showing the wrong time, a box of matches, and a red candle in an ornate silver holder.

A glass-topped coffee table littered with magazines stood between a sofa and an armchair, neither of which matched, although their loose cushions were of the same design and colour. She sank into the sofa and continued her inspection of the room.

There was no ceiling light, but lamps were in opposite corners, their glows (he’d switched them on before leaving the room) subdued by plain shades. One rested upon a waist-high yew bookcase which, instead of books, was filled with old, if not antique, cameras. A rubber plant whose leaves were brown around the edges shared space with a full ashtray on a tiny square table by the sofa.

Nothing matched apart from the cushions, not even the carpet and curtains: the former was a bland, patternless beige, and the latter a kind of dark yellow ochre that might not have been so dull in daylight. Most of what was there looked as though it had been acquired for function rather than for any design congruity.

The sound of a cupboard being opened, glasses clinking, came from the kitchen across the hall. A cat, the weird one that looked as though it was permanently grinning, looked round the open door at her. It studied her for a few moments, refusing to venture further in despite her soft encouragement; it disappeared, not in the least bit interested in her.

A thump as though someone had stumbled, and then Creed came through carrying two glasses and a bottle of Vouvray. ‘I’ll kill that cat,’ he muttered.

‘Are you sure I’m not holding you up?’ she said, taking one of the glasses from him.

‘I’ve got plenty of time. Besides, I need something to get me through the night.’

‘Why, what are you up to?’

‘You don’t want to know.’ He touched her glass with his own and slumped into the armchair. ‘Have you got a thing going with Milchip?’ he asked, and from the tone you’d have thought the question was completely without guile.

Her shoulders jerked. ‘With who?’

‘Your boss, the director.’

‘Daniel Lidtrap? What makes you ask that?’

He shrugged. ‘You’re so keen to make him a big name.’

‘He already is in advertising circles.’

‘Small stuff. You wouldn’t be pressing me if that meant anything in the real world.’

‘Yes, you’re probably right. But wrong on the other count. Daniel isn’t into women.’

Creed smiled and sipped wine.

‘Are you – were you – married, Joe?’

‘Was. She took most of my worldly possessions, including my kid.’

‘You must miss him.’

‘Not much. Most of the time he’s a snotty little brat.’

She hid her surprise behind her glass. ‘Do you see him at all?’

‘I do my duty once a fortnight. At least, I try.’ He proceeded with the ritual of sounding each other out. ‘What about you, Cally? If you’re not involved with your boss, how about others?’

‘Nothing significant. My job’s more important than—’

Somewhere outside the room a phone had begun to ring. Creed murmured something under his breath and put his glass down.

‘Won’t be a minute. Help yourself to another while I’m gone.’ He moved the bottle closer to her on the coffee table, nudging magazines aside. A brown ten-by-seven envelope that had been lying on top slid to the floor.

When he had left the room, Cally finished her wine but didn’t help herself to another glass. Instead she retrieved the envelope from the carpet.

There was no hesitation when she looked inside, and very little reaction when she drew out the two different photographs of the same ravaged face.

Time to interrupt for a very sketchy rundown on our hero’s career before the plot (such as it is so far) begins to thicken.

Joseph Creed had seen a lot and experienced a lot, and so he fancied himself as something of a world-weary cynic; which, to give him his due, he was, and the fact that he played up to the image to the point of boorishness didn’t make it any less so.

Part of that cynicism came with the territory, so to speak. As a photo-journalist, to give his trade a more respectable title, he’d ambushed the private moments of the eminent and not-so-eminent, often exposing situations that the party concerned would rather have kept discreet. When scandal was in the air, Creed and his kind – no apologies to the boys for saying this – were like vultures waiting for their prey to stagger and fall so that the pickings would be easier; and fall they generally did. At its most innocuous, Creed’s job was merely to catch the celeb wearing a goofy expression, with his or her latest fling, or maybe even taking a swing at the camera; if the subject were female, then a shot of over-exposed thigh or cleavage was always a favourite. But, working for so many years with the maxim that ‘good news is no news’, it had become natural to look for the darker or seedier side of human nature and the shot that might bring that into focus. In a way it was a shame that Creed was rarely disappointed in his searches.

He’d spent his late teens and early twenties bumming around America, working where he could, moving on the moment it felt like routine, making his way from the East Coast to the West, from New York to L.A., stopping to catch breath and earn bread at various points along the way – Charleston, Knoxville, Nashville, Salt Lake City, and quite a few places you might never have heard of. The route wasn’t direct and the stayovers never planned: a conversation with a pretty girl at a bus station, a casual beer with a local who would, after the fourth or fifth, become a bosom buddy, a
HELP WANTED
sign in a store window – any interesting ‘connection’ was good enough.

Sometimes it was circumstances rather than desire that kept him in these places, other times it could be the reverse (a ripe female body was always worth lingering over). Often he was requested to move on rather than taking the initiative himself.

In Los Angeles he worked for a time in a recording studio – more as a gofer than an arranger – then hustled his way back across the States after an incident involving a black session vocalist, her equally black-tempered boyfriend, a damaged tape deck, and a wrecked Plymouth Fury (the latter due to Creed’s hasty and careless departure). It took him under a month to get back to New York where a job as a messenger for a fashion magazine got him interested in photography. He picked up what he could from the mag’s staff photographers and freelancers, but ended that particular career (which could have been promising, who knows?) when one day he borrowed a Leica from the studio to do some freelance work of his own and someone he didn’t know on the street ‘borrowed’ the camera from him. He wasn’t such an accomplished liar in those days, so he was collared soon enough.

Around the same time the authorities became interested in his activities, wondering why Joseph Creed didn’t appear to exist on any of their lists, particularly on those appertaining to work permits. The decision that he should return to England wasn’t his alone.

Within three months of his being home, his mother died miserably of a slow-failing heart (his father was long gone, but with a secretary, not an ailment) and with the small inheritance left to him, Creed bought himself the mews house which proved to be the wisest, not to say the only, investment he’d ever made. He had just enough left over to buy a few sticks of furniture and basic photographic equipment (like a camera and two rolls of film).

He took to life as a paparazzo like a duck to water or a pig to slime, finding he had an aptitude for the right moment, the right shot, in a profession where bravado was all and the photo-thief was king. A few lucky snaps got him under way and he soon established a certain reputation for himself with one or two pieces of derring-do. He took chances, he trod where devils feared to tread. He inveigled, he lied, he cheated. He gave his word and broke it. He had no regard for anybody’s –
anybody’s
– privacy. He was a pro. And so help him, he loved the smell of sleaze.