Final Demand (24 page)

‘She lives here, next door to me,' replied the child. ‘She lives with the murderer.'

A stocky young man opened the door.

‘Hello,' he said. ‘Nobody phoned me, but never mind.'

‘No, I didn't phone,' said David.

‘Come in anyway.' He stood aside, to let David through. ‘That's the lounge.' He pointed.

David went into the room. He paused for a moment, and then sat down.

The young man stood in the doorway. ‘Nice room,' he said, and gestured round. ‘Built-in shelving, built it myself . . . Feature fireplace.'

There was a pause. ‘Is that a phone ringing?' asked David.

The bloke shook his head. ‘Crickets.'

He remained standing in the doorway, his large hands hanging at his sides. David became conscious of a curious smell in the house.

‘Want to see the other rooms, then?' asked the young bloke.

‘Why?'

‘Most people do.'

There was a pause. ‘Sorry, I haven't explained myself,' said David. ‘I'm looking for a Natalie Taylor.'

‘Natalie?' The bloke stared at him. ‘What do you want with her?'

‘I just need to speak to her.'

‘I thought you'd come about the house.'

‘What?'

The bloke pointed out of the window. There was a FOR SALE sign outside.

‘Oh,' said David. ‘I didn't notice. Mind if I smoke?'

The young man brought him an ashtray. ‘You from the police then?'

‘No.'

‘She's gone away.' He sat down heavily. ‘Two months she's been gone.'

‘Where?'

‘Why do you want her?'

‘Just – unfinished business.'

The bloke stood up. ‘Want a cup of tea?'

David followed him into the kitchen. It was stacked with empty cardboard boxes. ‘Getting them ready for hibernation,' said his host, filling the kettle. ‘Put 'em in, take 'em out, put 'em in, take 'em out . . . sometimes, know something, er—'

‘David.'

‘Colin.' He shook his hand. ‘Sometimes I've been thinking: what's the ruddy point?'

Colin fell into a reverie. A tupperware box stood on the draining board. Inside, its contents were heaving.

‘Would you be wanting a biscuit with your tea?'

David shook his head. The kettle boiled but Colin took no notice. He seemed to have run out of energy, too. They stood there for a moment, lost in thought.

‘She cheated on you too?'

‘In a manner of speaking,' said David.

‘You an old boyfriend or something?' he asked bitterly.

‘No. Nothing like that. Where did she go?'

‘London.'

‘London?'

‘Leeds was too small for my Nat. She had bigger fish to fry.'

‘
Fritto misto
,' said David vaguely.

‘Nobody'll find her, she's too darned clever. She'll always be one step ahead, will Nat. Know why? Because she looks after number one. That always came first with her, number one.' Colin gazed at the Fairy Liquid bottle. ‘Shouldn't be telling you this. Thing is, I got nobody to talk to. They'd all say
I told you so.
Specially my mam. Even if they don't say it, they're thinking it, and that's just as bad.' His eyes filled with tears.

‘I read about her in the paper.'

‘She was in all the papers. The local ones.'

‘She altered cheques?'

Colin nodded. ‘Altered them to Taylor and pocketed the
money. See, she only married me because . . .' He broke into sobs.

David's eyes filled too. This startled him. He gazed at the steaming spout of the kettle. ‘You don't happen to have anything to drink in the house, do you?'

Colin fetched a half-empty bottle of gin. ‘This is hers. Didn't touch the stuff, till I met her.' He poured the gin into tumblers. Five measures each, at least, David noticed.

‘Got any tonic?'

Colin shook his head. ‘It's dog eat dog in this world,' he said, taking a gulp.

‘And you didn't realize?'

Colin shook his head again.

David doused his cigarette under the tap. ‘I presume the police are after her.'

Colin nodded.

‘They don't have any leads?'

‘They know she's gone to London but I could've told them that. She paid by credit card on the motorway. Bought some petrol.'

‘They're useless,' said David.

‘Trail's gone cold since then.'

‘Bloody useless.'

Colin drained his glass. ‘When I heard her putting away the pots and pans, making the kitchen into a home, I thought: I'm the happiest man alive. I pinched myself to see if I was dreaming.' He turned his streaming face to David. ‘I thought – one day I'll wake up and she'll be gone. The house will be empty, like she's never been.'

David paused. He knew he should feel sorry for Colin, in fact he could feel a stir of sympathy, but he hadn't the energy for it. ‘What does she look like?'

‘She's got these freckles . . . all on her shoulders and all d-d-down her front . . .'

‘I'm not going to be looking down her front.'

‘She's just so p-pretty,' he sobbed. ‘She's like . . . the prettiest lass you ever saw.'

‘What sort of places would she go to?'

‘She liked shopping,' he said. ‘And clubbing.'

‘She got any friends in London, anybody she could be staying with?'

Colin shook his head. ‘Not that I know.' He wiped his nose with his huge hand.

David, who had been propped against the kitchen unit, eased himself into a standing position. ‘I'll find her.'

‘What, in London?'

‘I'll track her down. I've got nothing to lose.' They had finished the bottle of gin, he noticed. ‘I'm out of a job next week, got nowhere else to go.'

‘You'll never find her.'

‘Give me a photo.'

They stumbled out of the kitchen, knocking over the cardboard boxes. Everybody seems to be packing up, thought David. What had the bloke meant by hibernation? It sounded a sensible idea to him.

Colin, gripping the banister for support, went upstairs. David followed him. The trilling phones grew louder.

Chloe! Where are you?

Pixies. Can you come and collect me?

The smell was more powerful up here – a pungent, corrupt odour.

Come and fetch me, Dad.

Colin led him into the bedroom. ‘Bit cluttered,' he said, ‘but now she's gone I can bring them inside and keep an eye on them.'

The smell clogged David's nostrils. He felt sick.

You can't just sit here, rotting away
 . . .

David sat down on the bed. He gazed at some boxes, filled with straw.

‘Something fell on them in the hold,' said Colin. ‘Half of them, their shells are cracked. Imagine anyone doing that to poor defenceless tortoises. It's murder, that's what it is.'

Rotting away.

He looked at David. ‘You all right?'

David didn't reply. There was a silence.

‘Some of them, they'll recover, honest. A little TLC and they'll be as good as new.' Colin rummaged in a drawer. ‘Most folk, they're not like you, they don't get upset. They think, ugh, creepy slimy things, which is just plain wrong. Slimy's the last thing they are, in fact their skin's drier than our skin is . . .' He took out a photo and looked at it. ‘This is her and me in Paris. We went on a weekend break, a Japanese bloke took it.' He carried it over to the bed. ‘Feeling better?'

David pointed to a poster on the wall. ‘My daughter liked them too.'

Colin followed his gaze. ‘Oh, O-Zone. Nat was their biggest fan, got all their records, once she went all the way to London when they did a gig.'

‘She was crazy about the lead singer, what's-his-name . . .'

‘Yeah, but I bet she grew out of it,' said Colin. ‘Natalie never did.'

David got to his feet. ‘No, she never grew out of it.' He took the photo and put it in his wallet.

‘Good luck,' said Colin. ‘You need it.'

One after the other, they filed down the narrow staircase. ‘If I find her, what do you want me to do?' asked David. ‘You want her back?'

Colin opened the front door and shook his head. ‘She's dead to me now,' he said. ‘Dead and gone.'

I
'
M WALKING THE
streets, looking for you. It's funny, I never get tired though I walk all day, and when darkness falls, which is does early now, I'm still walking. Along Oxford Street the shops are lit, bright lights, and there are girls in there just like you, they're standing at the racks of clothes, their heads tilted, considering. They pull off their gloves, because it's chilly now, sometimes they take them off with their teeth, and they stretch out their hands and feel the blouses. They turn and laugh soundlessly to each other, I see them through the glass.

I could stand there for hours. ‘What's your problem?' a voice once said. Thought I was a Peeping Tom.

Sometimes it's a girl alone and she selects items and lays them over her arm and on the way to the changing room she hesitates. I know what she's thinking because you thought it too: Am I too big? Will somebody love me one day? I feel close to these girls, through them I'm closer to you because their dreams are your dreams, they're living your life, the life you should be living now.

I know where you'd go, all the kids go there – Covent Garden, Soho, streets where girls like you walk arm-in-arm, knots of men eyeing you and you're tossing your heads pretending to ignore them but that's why you're out on the town, you're there to be watched. And sometimes you wear such thin clothes, on these cold nights, that I want to be a father again . . . ‘Wrap up or you'll catch your death.' I want to tell you to be careful, it's a wicked world out there in the shadows where I'm watching you, biding my time for however long it takes.

In Old Compton Street, despite the cold, you spill out from the pubs on to the pavement, and suddenly I catch sight of a profile and my heart leaps but it's always the wrong girl. Once I heard your name called and I swung round but she wasn't you, she wasn't
anything like you. There are these Japanese eating places now, they must be new, I haven't been to London for years, the kids like them, rows of kids sitting at long wooden tables shovelling in the noodles. I thought I saw you then, at the far end of a table, but this big bloke blocked the doorway and wouldn't let me in.

‘
Hey, pal,' I said, ‘I'm just looking for a girl.
'

Who did he think I was? I'm just a person, I've got as much right to be there as anybody.

Then there's another voice behind me. ‘You want a girl?' it said. ‘I can find you a girl, no problem.
'

I cross and re-cross the heart of London, I must have walked hundreds of miles by now though the city feels no more familiar to me than when I began. I see nothing, that's why. I'm just looking for your face.

Sometimes I sit in a pub, I've become one of those sad bastards I used to serve. I sit there with the
Evening Standard
and watch the door, willing it to open and for you to come in. It's only a matter of time, you see, sooner or later our paths will cross. Somewhere – in the street, in a club – I'll find you. I don't care how long it takes, like I told Colin I've got nowhere else to go, all I possess is locked in the boot of my car. I haven't even unpacked and put it in my room, that's how rootless I am in this city. I'm just a pair of eyes and a pair of legs.

It may take months, it may take years, but time means nothing to me any more; the clock stopped one night in April. I'm looking for you and sooner or later I'll find you. Then we'll talk. For now, at last, I have so much to say.

IN JANUARY
,
DAVID
'
S
money ran out. He got a job as a barman in a pub off Leicester Square. It was a great barn of a place owned by Allied Breweries. In the future, however, he would remember little about it. In fact, ten years later he walked past the place having forgotten that he had ever worked there at all. For during those dark winter weeks he absorbed little, performing his duties as if wound up like clockwork. That the job was too menial for a man of his age and experience scarcely registered. He was civil to the other staff and to the hordes of strangers who crammed the place in the evenings, out on the town for a night Up West, out to get slaughtered. He was alert to only one thing. The chances might be one in millions but he had to believe in it, otherwise . . . otherwise it didn't bear thinking about.

Nor could he remember, in later years, any other life beyond walking and working.
You're such an obsessive
, Sheila had once said – Sheila his wife, whose face he could scarcely remember. He planned his walks with the thoroughness of a general plotting a campaign. Dividing the Inner City by postal districts, he marked a grid on his
A-Z
map and patrolled the designated streets, not stopping until he had covered his allotted route. Hammersmith Broadway to Shepherd's Bush, Kensal Rise to Kilburn . . . He walked fast, a man with a purpose, the photo of a laughing girl in his wallet. If for some reason he didn't complete the route he returned at the earliest opportunity and finished it before embarking on the next. This gave him a small feeling of satisfaction.

Of course he was aware that this plan had no logic to it, he wasn't stupid, for why should she be in one place rather than another? That wasn't the point. And as there was nobody to argue with him, it hardly mattered, did it?

Nor was he entirely inflexible. Some days he rang the changes, transferring his attentions to the underground. This was more a freewheeling kind of thing. He simply consulted his tube map and rode round and round on the Circle Line or took the Northern or District to its final destination – High Barnet, Upminster. He sat there, watching the faces, ready to pounce. Sooner or later, he believed it in his bones, sooner or later he would spot her. He sat there, biding his time like a murderer.