Dust and Desire (6 page)

I put up with it, joshing him about his inferior marks during training back in the late ’90s, and the time I walked in on him in his room while he was trying to persuade a girl, visible through her bedroom window opposite, to take her top off for him. He left, but not before comically warning me to think twice about ‘leaving town’. I could still hear him tapping his pencil against his teeth long after he’d taken himself and his grubby Columbo mac outside.

I dialled Kara Geenan’s number and got a long, uninterrupted tone. I don’t know what was worse: wishing that the guy had hammered me another five times and done the job properly, or realising that I was going to have to speak to Barry Liptrott again. I swung my legs out of bed. Not too shoddy. I stood up. Pain crawled up and down my back but it was manageable.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

She must have put a silencer on those nylons. ‘Nurse Ratched,’ I said, ‘what a pleasant surprise.’

‘It’s Nurse
Rasheed
,’ she said flatly, not getting it at all. ‘Get back under that blanket.’

‘You’ll have one hell of a bedbath on your hands if you don’t let me go where I need to go.’

‘We have special implements for that.’

I eventually talked her out of it, but she accompanied me to the toilets and told me to hurry up. I was about to announce that I was going to discharge myself, but behind her, standing on the other side of a pair of swing-doors, I saw that Mawker had left behind a police guard. I wouldn’t be able to fart without him making a note of it.

I looked out of the window. There was a drop of ten feet or so, but it would be into a drift of snow. I couldn’t see how thick it was, but it was better than nothing. I squeezed out through the gap and jumped into a patch that looked the most forgiving. What could be the worst that lay under that white blanket? It wasn’t as if hospital security had planted landmines.

I disappeared up to my knees in water.

It’s not the easiest job in the world to flag a cab when you’re dressed in pyjamas, less so when those pyjamas are sopping wet and streaked with mud. Eventually though, a taxi driver pulled up in front of me and took me home. He was violently anti-hospitals, due to his mother having to wait for a replacement hip that was inserted the wrong way round, so he had no problems about me trying to escape. When we arrived at my flat, I nipped inside to get some money to pay him. I found the door was hanging off its hinges. Just outside the front door is a hatch that leads into the attic. This too was gaping. Inside the flat there was a hole in the ceiling and a pile of plaster and floorboards on the floor. The footprints from a pair of trainers were smeared on the wall where the burglar had reached to gain purchase as he dropped in from above. Because the door had been locked from the outside, he’d had to break
out
; so a number of knives, including my favourite – an eighteen-inch Japanese vegetable knife that I used for chopping everything – had been snapped in his desperate attempts to get the door open. Mengele was nowhere to be seen. Nev, when I called him, was as shocked as I was. The place had been fine when he came to feed the cat as recently as the previous afternoon. I thanked him and rang off, grateful, at least, that he hadn’t walked in on the loonies while they were redecorating.

Although there had been quite a bit of stuff shifted around or knocked over, there didn’t seem to be anything missing. Maybe the burglar had been freaked by the lack of televisual booty.

‘Jesus Christ.’

The taxi driver crunched his way into my flat, his mouth sagging as if his chin had been swapped for a ten-kilogram weight.

‘Don’t step on anything,’ I said. ‘It’ll all have to be dusted for prints.’

‘I thought you’d forgotten about me,’ he said.

I gave him his fare but he was reluctant to leave. I ventured into the kitchen. The drawers were hanging open like thirsty mouths, their contents junked on the floor. I saw Mengele’s tail whipping about outside, and opened the door on to the balcony. He was sitting on the roof, having presumably escaped through the small sash window above the sink once the ceiling had begun to be smashed open.

‘Good boy,’ I soothed, looking up at him. However, he was intent on a pigeon that was rooted to a single spot up on the chimney. The bird was eyeing Mengele as if it couldn’t quite believe the size of him. I left him to it and went back inside. The cabbie was putting down the phone.

‘Just called the police for you, mate,’ he said, in his best ‘tip me’ voice. I thanked him, forcing a smile, and ushered him out, then I sat on the sofa and tried to force some thoughts. I had to get out before the plods arrived. It was unlikely that Mawker would look upon this as leaving town, but you never knew.

I got dressed, packed a small rucksack with some clothes, and dragged Mengele off the roof and into his cage. I made sure I had my keys and my wallet, before I went to the freezer and rescued the bottle of Grey Goose. Then I called a handyman mate of mine, Jimmy Two, and asked him to come round soon as he could, to board up and padlock the doorway. I went downstairs and stood on the pavement for a long time, wondering where the hell to go to next.

When a police car turned into my street, I made a decision. Away was good enough, for now.

6

B
arry Liptrott worked lunchtimes at Lava Java, a club in Vauxhall, pulling pints, mixing margaritas, watching pissed office types try to salsa. That was what he did when he wasn’t holding up old age pensioners or shoplifting, trying to impress someone in the underworld, trying to get a leg up to the rarefied climes of… I don’t know, maybe twocking tricycles or beating up blind septuagenarians who had been unfaithful to their partners.

I got there at around 1 p.m., long before the joint started kicking, and found my entry barred by a phenomenally ugly bouncer. He was so ugly it was like he was really trying at it. He’d have frightened chimps out of a banana factory.

‘Hi,’ I said. The bouncer seemed put out by monosyllables. He leaned against the door and crossed his arms. Well, I say arms but they were more like legs. His legs were like legs too, but the kind you find on a rhino.

‘Is there an entry fee?’

He looked me up and down with the speed he might read
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
. My hair went grey waiting for him. ‘You ain’t comin’ in.’

‘I need to speak to Barry. Barry Liptrott.’

‘Oh, really, what about?’

‘I wanted to ask him where he buys his shoes.’

He actually gave my feet a look.

‘What are you?’ I said. ‘A bouncer, or his secretary? Or his bumboy? What, exactly?’ I wasn’t altogether sure he was human, but he had opposable thumbs, so I was ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

His face collapsed like a pie crust with too much air underneath it. ‘You say one more thing, I’ll fucking wear your face for a mask.’

‘I just–’

He had a good punch on him, I’ll give him that. I landed on my arse and rocked back till I could see the coils of rust swooping across the sky, where exhaust fumes were reacting with the sunlight. I stayed there for a while. It was quite pleasant, until blood began to leak down the back of my throat. I sat up and felt my teeth. Still there. My lip was split, though, and the pain was so sharp, so intense, that I could feel it a couple of feet in every direction from the epicentre.

Just then, Jonathan Dayne swung into the car park in his Jaguar XJS. A sticker on the boot read:
How’s My Driving? Dial 0-800-EAT-MY-SHIT
. Jonathan Dayne, aka Knocker, owned Lava Java. And he had more form than the Inland Revenue.

‘Knocker,’ I said, jovially, as he stepped out of the car, the cheeky glottal part of his name helping to pebble-dash my shirt with blood. I was almost happy to see him.

‘What do you want, scummo?’ He slammed the door and the car rocked unsteadily on its ancient suspension.

‘I want you to call off this no-necked bison-fucker and then invite me in for headache tablets and vodka.’

‘I don’t work here any more, dickhead,’ Knocker said. ‘I sold it last year. I’m just here for a salsa lesson.’

I groaned and drew myself up to my intimidating five foot nine and a half as the single-cell organism in a suit came at me.

‘It’s okay, Errol,’ Knocker said, holding up his hand. ‘I’ll deal with him.’

‘You’re such a good Samaritan, Knocker,’ I said, ‘but I can take care of myself. Muscle-bound fuckers like that, they go down easier than perished elasticated knickers on a skeleton.’

‘Comedian,’ Knocker said, entering the club and not hanging around to see if I was following. ‘Always so fucking quick, no wonder someone gave you a pasting. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.’

‘Touché,’ I said, and decided to stop talking for a while, at least until I got some eighty-proof analgesics down my neck.

* * *

I waited at the bar for him to finish his lesson. They had Grey Goose, which was a surprise, so I ordered a vodka martini. I stared at my bloody mouth in the mirror, and got the first one down me quick. I like it in a chunky glass with two blocks of ice and a sliver of lemon peel, if I’m not drinking it straight from a shot glass, but here I was glad to have it how you’re supposed to have it.

I checked out the other frugger-buggers who were gearing up for their dance lessons. Some of them even wore the proper shoes. There were a couple of nine-to-fivers reading their newspapers over a beer and a sandwich, before heading back for another four hours of Rich Tea, Facebook and group memos. Not the kind of place that actually needed a bouncer, but after midnight anything was possible: fights, bloody dance-offs, salsa slayings…

‘Another?’ the bartender asked. I nodded, to save my mouth, and he mixed the drink. He gave me a napkin for my mushed-up mush, and I nodded again. Good bartenders don’t just serve you drinks; they’re all about comfort. They know the right things to say, they know never to say too much, and they do the right things.

This bloke was a good bartender.

I sipped my second VM of the afternoon and watched him work, preparing a Bloody Mary mix that he stored in a two-litre plastic bottle; making sure there was enough ice – more than enough ice – in the buckets; slicing lemons and limes; arranging his bottles so the labels faced towards the customer. He had a well-stocked cocktail bar: liqueurs (maraschino, crème de menthe, framboisette and so forth) on the left hand side of the cash register; syrups (grenadine, falernum, orgeat, etc.) and cordials on the right. Up above, on glass shelves in the centre, was the hard stuff, none of it, I’m glad to say, in optics. These bottles were flanked by a huge number of cocktail glasses, some 2 ounces, most 3 or 3½ ounces, and all of them with long stems. You drink certain cocktails without a long-stemmed glass, you’ll fuck up your cocktail. They have to be cold from first sip to last, and that isn’t going to happen if you’ve got your clammy mitts wrapped around a beaker. I recognised some of them: Pousse-Café glasses, Delmonico glasses for Sours, a couple of Julep mugs, and the straight glasses for Highballs and Collinses. At one end of the bar were the glasses he used for Old Fashioneds, the chunky ones, 4 or 5 ounces. I keep a couple of cocktail glasses at home, for when I can be bothered. Seven-ounce bastards. And one fifteen-ounce behemoth for when my intention is to rip my tits down to the bone.

All of this guy’s glasses, his pitchers, stirring rods, strainers and shakers were so clean they could have passed for mint. I sipped my drink and nodded some more. This bar was a nice bar and I was enjoying sitting here and admiring a man who liked his work.

A woman came in wearing a smart black dress. She ordered a glass of Chardonnay and opened her purse. She smiled at me, said something about the weather, about not knowing what it was going to do, or something; I wasn’t hearing her too clearly because the smart black dress and the Grey Goose were kicking around in my head, and I was thinking,
no, please, no, not now
, but you can’t push it away. You must never push it away, not when it wants to come so strongly, not when, some day it might never come and you’ll wish for it to come back so hard that you’ll pull a muscle, and so:

It was the best day we ever had. And for no crazier reason that everything between us clicked. There was no cinema, no special meal, no day out at the beach. It was just an ordinary day, an ultra-ordinary day, but it was the day that bolted her incontrovertibly on to what it then meant to be me; bolted her so securely that it seemed she had never had a past of her own, never been anything other than mine. The day that, for the first time, I realised I was dumbly, joyously, cripplingly in love with her.

I’d known Rebecca what? A couple of weeks? We’d clashed together a few times after drunken pub nights, or visits down to the woods with bottles of wine and ghetto blasters playing, Christ, what were we listening to back then? In 1994.
The Holy Bible, Grace, Hips and Makers
. And this particular night we’d been on the cheap Bulgarian red since the afternoon had withdrawn into one corner of the sky. We’d been talking about culture: it had been the buzzword of this particular day. We didn’t get past a couple of sentences without crowbarring it in. We decided we needed to improve ourselves with a bit of culture, so we dressed up. Shirt and tie, smart black dress… Jesus, Rebecca. Jesus Christ.

* * *

It begins.

On to the stage, to the understated applause that only gatherings of this sort can produce, comes a kind-looking man and a wolfish woman wearing a red dress. She sits at a grand piano. He takes an age over the position of his cello before smoothing his hair and taking in the audience while exhaling levelly. Then, with a disconcerting flurry of movement, the instruments find their voice, driven by manic stabs and jerks of arms and hands. I can’t equate the disarray of their employ with the sublime rapport of their strings.

Their sound creeps around the slotted pine panelling, stealthy as oil, settling against the skin during slow phrases, spirited away like a rising helix of bubbles during the fast ones. In this moment there are only two spheres of being: the music, and your presence; a silent proximity exerted by the loose arrangement of your clothes, the way your leg climbs over its partner, your left hand gently grips the right. I can smell your perfume (and, if I turn my head a little, I see the wet flash of your eyes and the threaded chunk of metal jolted by your pulse in the gulley between your breasts).