Darling Sweetheart (40 page)

He dreamed he was in Iceland, where a snake was wrapping itself round his face. He knew it must be a dream, because they don’t have snakes in Iceland and because Annalise was nearby, dressed as a soldier, smoking a cigarette, cradling a machine-gun
and watching as the snake forced itself into his mouth. He wanted her to help, but she just smiled. And he couldn’t move his hands to pull the snake off his face, so he made himself wake up.

Hospital – he was still in bloody hospital.

He went to reach for his glass of water. He grunted. He still couldn’t move his hands and there really
was
something wrapped around his mouth. The painkillers! Those stupid bitch nurses have fucking paralysed me, he thought. He rolled his head and moaned. His reading light snapped on. He blinked. He expected to see a nurse, but instead there was a man by his bed: a man with very thick eyebrows, a beanie hat and a golden earring in one ear. The privacy curtains were fully drawn but, from the silence on the ward, Lockhart could tell it was the small hours. He raised his head. His wrists were lashed to the metal bedstead with heavy black gaffer tape and, of course, his legs were encased in plaster. The same tape must have been fixed across his mouth, because he couldn’t speak. He moaned again, but the man grabbed him by the hair, showed him a penknife then held the sharp tip close to one eyeball. It hurt to be grabbed by the hair, but what really scared Lockhart was that the man wore surgical gloves and a doctor’s uniform. For a stomach-turning moment, he thought he was about to be blinded in some grotesque, unscheduled operation. But slowly, the man withdrew the knife, released his hair and raised a rubber-sheathed finger to his own lips. Lockhart understood – he was to be quiet. He nodded, in terrified agreement.

Apparently satisfied, the man then extracted a large manila envelope from his tunic. From this, he took a handful of A4-sized photographs. He held one up to Lockhart’s face. It showed a bland, brown-brick building. Lockhart met the man’s eyes in desperate puzzlement, but he then held up a second photo, a close-up of a sign on the building. It said ‘St Catherine’s High School’. The next photograph showed a group of girls leaving
the school. There were three of them; they wore drab, petrolgreen uniforms and looked about thirteen or fourteen. The next shot was a close-up of their faces. One had red hair, the other was blonde and the third Asian. Lockhart’s heart stopped as he remembered a Bristol hotel room. He became vaguely conscious of a hot liquid that filled his pyjama bottoms and spread across his sheet. But the man was relentless; the next photo showed the three girls entering a corner shop. In the next, they stood at a bus stop, eating crisps. This one was held up to Lockhart’s face for quite some time. Children, the photograph said – these girls are children. Lockhart closed his eyes but felt the point of the penknife against his cheek. The man tapped the photo with it – he was not allowed to look away. His eyes filled with tears. It seemed an age before the man finally set the photo down. Then, he lifted a newspaper. ‘
LOVESICK LOCKHART
’, the front page said, with snaps of him, Annalise and Harry Emerson. The man wagged a rubberized finger and shook his head, before putting his finger to his lips once again and holding it there. Even through his tears, Lockhart got the message. He nodded again. The reading light went out. There was no further noise except the sleepy breathing of the other patients. He had no idea at what point the man actually left. Thinking all sorts of awful thoughts, he lay awake in his cold urine until the duty nurse made her first round. She had to use scissors to remove the tape from his wrists and pulling it off his face really hurt, but no matter how many times she asked, he refused to explain how it had come to be there or why his bed was covered with photographs of schoolgirls.

About eighteen hours later – just before dusk the following day – a well-dressed woman in her early thirties parked a Saab convertible in a street off Clapham Common in south London and, carrying a Waitrose shopping bag, admitted herself to a large detached house. She closed the door and the ground-floor windows
lit up. Proctor stepped out of the shadow of a chestnut tree opposite, walked up to the door and knocked. The woman opened it suspiciously, keeping it on a chain. Proctor spoke to her, nodded apologetically, then hurried back to Annalise, who waited under the tree.

‘Shit!’ he cursed. ‘I really thought that was it! But she’s Louise Miller and she’s never heard of any bastarding Leon.’ Disappointed, they ambled off across the common. Annalise consulted a piece of paper, tucked inside a
London A–Z
. ‘Just one left, in Clapham North.’

‘I can’t walk another step – my legs are fallin’ off.’

‘Come on, I know this area, it’s downhill all the way.’

‘You said it.’

‘You’re the one who insisted on walking all the way from Euston. Not that it bothers me – I like walking.’

‘So you keep reminding me. But the second we step into a taxi, a bus or a tube, we’re toast. People know you.’

‘No they don’t. They only think they do.’

‘I meant, they know your face.’

‘Sorry.’ She reached for his hand, pulling him to a halt. ‘The new dispensation: we don’t fight, okay?’

‘Bugger the new dispensation!’ Froggy called from her belt. ‘I haven’t had a fight in ages!’

Annalise fastened her cloak and raised her hood. ‘sorry,’ she repeated. ‘But you must admit, he’s been very well-behaved all day…’

Proctor rubbed his forehead, as if he had a blinding headache. He hadn’t, but he felt as if he ought to. Instead, his mind whirred like a washing machine on permanent spin cycle. Annalise, on the contrary, seemed calm, accepting, matter-offact. He wanted to kiss her again, but he couldn’t tell from her demeanour what she wanted, except to find Leon bloody Miller. However, every so often during the course of that day, she had casually touched him in a way that she hadn’t done before – extending
her hand to be helped down steps, brushing up against him as they waited to cross a road, sitting that bit closer when they stopped to drink bottled water. Things had changed between them and Proctor was torn between the torturous anticipation of new intimacy with a fabulous-looking woman and the sure and certain knowledge that he should not be getting involved with her. That knowledge, of course, only heightened his anticipation further. He also knew that he was dog-tired and that all he wanted out of life was a hotel room, a hot shower, a huge joint, a bottle of brandy and Annalise Palatine naked in his bed. Oh, and that stupid frog locked in a soundproof cupboard or, better still, stuffed in the nearest incinerator. Yet, here he was, in the chilly gloom of Clapham Common, fruitlessly searching for someone he didn’t particularly want to find.

At eight o’clock that morning, after leaving the relative safety of their sleeper carriage in Euston Station, Proctor had deposited Annalise in a quiet corner and visited an internet café, where he had printed off a list of all the L. Millers in the Clapham area. There’d been five. Using a payphone, they had eliminated three. The fourth didn’t answer; the fifth was ex-directory. They had spent most of the day walking across the city. They had crossed the river at Waterloo and followed the South Bank, past the buskers, the human statues and the crowds queuing for the London Eye.

When they had finally reached the expensive-looking street off Clapham Common, Annalise was sure of a result – it looked exactly the kind of place where a wealthy old film producer might live. But there was no one home, so they had watched the house for nearly three hours before the woman in the Saab convertible arrived to shatter their expectations. Now, they trudged wearily down Clapham High Street, towards the much less salubrious Clapham North; grass and trees gave way to cheap double-glazing, gaudy neon and dreary brown brick. The moon edged out from behind a black sponge of cloud, pale as a used
slice of lemon. Following their
A–Z
, they entered a large, rundown complex of apartment blocks, littered with half-wrecked cars and knots of hard-faced youths in baseball caps and hoodies. They attracted stares but no direct challenges, looking, Proctor supposed, pretty rundown themselves – he too wore a baseball cap and Annalise a hood.

‘So how come you know this neighbourhood? It doesn’t seem your sort of style.’

‘Before my father died, I lived in a bedsit not far from here. I had nothing, but it was the happiest time of my life.’

‘Hmm. Reminds me of home – the poverty, that is, not the happiness part.’

‘I know you think I’m a spoiled brat. Because of my father, everyone always does.’

‘I don’t think you’re a brat,’ he sounded sincere, ‘but I don’t think any film producers live here either. So let’s just leave it, eh?’

She stopped by one of the blocks. ‘This is it: Heston House. We want number nineteen.’

‘Och, why bother?’

‘What’s the matter? Now that we’re here, we may as well check it out.’

‘Fine, fine.’ He started up the rough concrete stairs. ‘I recommend skipping the lift – unless you’re partial to knives and piss.’

The third-floor balcony overlooked an abandoned children’s playground. Corrupt black paint peeled from the door of number nineteen. The window beside it was boarded with cheap ply.

‘Great,’ Proctor muttered, ‘I bet this L. Miller turns out to be an unemployed body-builder or a Yardie drug-dealer. You best stand well back.’ He knocked at the door and stepped back himself, as far as the balcony would allow. The figure who eventually opened it was slender, big-nosed and had close-curled grey hair; he was in his sixties or early seventies, wore grey slacks
burgundy carpet slippers, an off-green cardigan and a stained cream shirt buttoned up to the neck. He peered out fearfully.

‘I don’t want any!’ His eyes bulged. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want any!’

‘Err…sorry, Sir, we’re just looking for a Mr LeonMiller. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘I am.’ Annalise lowered her hood.

The man’s expression changed. ‘Well, well, well, look who it is!’ He studied Annalise from head to toe as he held the door open. ‘You are most welcome to my humble abode! Deeply humble, I’m afraid!’ Proctor followed Annalise across the threshold. As he did, the man stopped him. ‘Do I know you?’

‘I doubt it, pal.’

‘Funny. I’ve normally got a good memory for faces. Never mind. Princess Palatine!’ He closed the door and shuffled after Annalise, rubbing his hands together. ‘Well, well, well!’

The flat was a meagre two-up two-down and as claustrophobic as a tomb. The narrow hallway was stacked with cardboard boxes; these brimmed with metal film canisters, crumpled paper, video tapes and faded magazines. The living room was worse: added to the jumble were mounds of books, crooked towers of DVD cases, a smelly little dog and a blazing electric fire, both bars of which radiated a sickly pink glow. The dog leapt up and began to yap frantically, spinning around amongst the mixed-media detritus. One corner of the room was entirely taken up by a gargantuan flat-panel television which Miller turned off. It emanated a hideous blankness.

‘Quiet, Brutus!’ he barked at the dog. ‘shut up!’

But Brutus yapped even more loudly so Miller lifted it with a slippered toe and propelled it towards the hall. It yowled, then sulked. Annalise froze. Her father looked down at her from every wall, wearing an assortment of monocles, black-tie evening wear, uniforms and silly ethnic clothing. The room was plastered with
old film posters.

‘DAVID PALATINE IS…FANSHAWE AND GROVEL.’

The artwork varied from hand-painted seventies-style to eighties Bond pastiche, replete with dolly-birds and exotic backdrops.

‘Holy shit!’ Froggy remarked from under her cloak. She slapped her stomach hard.

‘Pardon?’ Miller asked.

‘She said,’ Proctor leapt in, ‘she needs to sit!’

Miller wheezed as he cleared newspapers and magazines from a low, uncomfortable-looking sofa. It took them a few seconds to realise that the sound coming from his chest was laughter – at least, his mouth stretched in a rictus-like grin. His teeth were so regular, they had to be false.

‘Bit of a shock, eh? Seeing the old man after all these years?’

‘Y-yes…’

‘Original posters are quite rare; collector’s items, most of ’em. I get a lot of collectors, writing to me, looking for stuff.’ He indicated a messy mountain of mail, spread across a dining table. What looked like a week’s worth of dirty dishes fought the correspondence for space; more assured in its squat occupancy was a dirty, cream-coloured computer. Awkwardly, Annalise and Proctor sat down. ‘Drink!’ Miller announced. ‘This definitely calls for a drink!’ He shambled off towards the kitchen, throwing them another vampiric smile before closing the adjoining door. The kitchen, they assumed, was so bad he didn’t want them to see it. They heard the clatter of cupboards and glass, then what sounded like their host talking to himself. Brutus exploited the opportunity to launch a second offensive, slinking in from the hallway and growling at them from the far side of the room.

‘Come over here and do that,’ Proctor growled back, ‘ye wee shite. Jesus, I hate ratty dogs – where I come from, they get thrown off high buildings.’

Annalise opened her cloak.

‘This place is bad ju-ju!’ Froggy rasped. ‘Bad ju-ju!’

‘For Chrissakes put him away!’ Proctor snapped, before lifting a DVD case, which he flicked at the dog, hitting it square on the nose. It yelped and slunk off again, defeated. With his unnerving smile, Miller clanked through the kitchen door bearing a tray with three not-very-clean glasses and a half-bottle of white wine. The wine was warm and cloyingly sweet. Miller sat opposite them in an upright armchair and raised a toast. Annalise wanted to spit the wine back into the greasy glass, but Miller’s eyes devoured her. Proctor sank lower and lower into the sofa.

‘Well, well, well,’ Miller gloated for the third time. ‘Shooting in London?’

‘Shepperton,’ she nodded. ‘Sorry for dropping in on you like this.’

‘Oh don’t apologise!’ His eyes gleamed, black like a bird’s. ‘A most welcome honour! As you can probably see, I don’t entertain much these days. Hahh!’ He started to wheeze again. ‘That’s a good one, isn’t it? Entertain! I used to entertain audiences all over the world…’