Keeping Bad Company (7 page)

They stationed themselves by the wall and Red Leggings took out a pocket mirror and began to examine a zit on her chin.

‘Lookit that !’ she moaned. ‘They bloody know when I’m goin’ to work!’

‘You want to try that green make-up,’ advised Silver Jacket.

‘Who wants a green face?’ retorted Red Leggings, offended.

‘Honest, it’s foundation, but it’s green. You put your other make-up on top and it don’t look green, not when you’ve finished.’

‘You’re havin’ me on,’ said the spotty one, still disbelieving.

I could’ve told them both a thing or two about stage make-up, but Silver Jacket was giving me a funny look. She thought I was on the game, too, and had strayed on to their pitch.

I wandered off a little way out of their range and out of earshot of the strangled sounds made by the musical group in the bar. There were cars parked here. Perhaps they belonged to people living in the flats above nearby shops, or perhaps to patrons of The Rose. Among them was a blue Cortina with a long white-ish scratch along one side. I wandered over to it

There were probably dozens of them. But not all in this one corner of London. I stooped to peer through the window and met Garfield’s eyes peering back at me. Avoiding his outstretched paws, I made out what appeared to be a hole where there ought to have been a car radio. That wasn’t unusual for city life anywhere. Windscreen wipers, aerials, chrome manufacturers’ logos, radios . . . the absence, not the presence of these things, counts as standard if you leave your car unattended.

Despite the fact that the vehicle was in the old banger category and appeared to have been done over already, a little sticker in the window announced that it was protected by an alarm system. They didn’t depend on Garfield alone.

Not all such stickers were genuine, I knew that. I wondered, if I rattled the door handle . . . I reached out my hand tentatively.

‘Fran!’ Ganesh called. ‘What do you think you’re doing hanging round that heap of scrap?’

I beckoned him over. Without speaking I indicated the car. When he’d had time to absorb the make and the scratch, I said, ‘And it’s the right colour.’

Gan was looking sceptical. ‘It could belong to someone who lives up there.’ He pointed at the upper windows of nearby buildings. ‘And has it occurred to you that if it’s parked here regularly, Albie could have seen it? When he needed to describe a car for the story he spun you, this is the one he chose. It doesn’t mean it was used in a snatch.’

But I had that certain feeling. Certain, that is, this was the car. ‘This is it, Gan. The one we’re looking for.’

‘No,’ Ganesh said firmly. ‘
We
are
not
looking for it. You, possibly. Myself, absolutely not.’

‘Your mate Dilip,’ I said, ‘does he work this pitch regularly? If so, and the car’s a regular, he’ll have seen it, too. Go and ask him.’

Ganesh walked back to the van, hands in pockets. Dilip had clambered back inside and was getting his stock ready for the rush. There was an exchange of words and Ganesh came back.

‘Dilip doesn’t remember it.’

‘Then he’s in the pub, the driver. That means we can find out who he is.’

The wind was getting stronger. It tugged at Ganesh’s long black hair and knocked over Dilip’s placard, which landed face down on the pavement.

Gan went back to reposition it, wedging it between van wheel and kerb. He came back. ‘So, what’s your plan? We hang about here until chucking-out hour? We could be wasting our time and it’s getting colder.’

I indicated the warning notice. ‘If that’s genuine, there’s a quicker way of bringing him out here.’

‘Are you crazy?’ He was horrified. ‘What do we say when he charges out with a couple of his mates and accuses us of trying to break into his motor?’

‘We say we saw kids running off down the street. We were just standing by the hot dog van, chatting to Dilip. We didn’t notice until we heard the noise, then we saw the kids.’

‘No!’ said Ganesh adamantly.

Do you know, that little warning notice wasn’t fake? The old heap actually had an alarm and it went off. What I hadn’t reckoned on was that with the noise going on in the pub, no one could hear it in there. Result, no one came out to switch the thing off.

What did happen was that lights began to appear in the windows of the flats above the shops. Soon irate tenants were hanging out in varying stages of dress or undress and yelling for someone to do something about that effing noise.

‘You started it,’ said Gan. ‘Now what do we do?’

Dilip, behind his counter, opined, ‘Run like hell, I should. I’ll tell ’em it was kids.’

But we weren’t likely to get another chance. I told Ganesh to wait and pushed open the door into The Rose.

The place was a pall of smoke, totally airless. You couldn’t see across the bar. The stench of beer, cigs, cheap aftershave and sweat was awful. I stood there, gasping for breath and eyes smarting as blue clouds enveloped me.

Dimly, through the mist, I made out a raised stage at the far end of the room. The band was up there and had, thank goodness, finished their act. They were starting to dismantle their gear. The walls were yellowed with nicotine deposit and the net curtains (yes, net, no one could say The Rose didn’t know what was nice) were greyish-brown. The carpet was so discoloured it was impossible to tell what its original design or shade might have been. Crushed cigarette stubs littered it but with so many holes burned in it already, that hardly mattered.

I edged over to the bar and tried to catch the eye of either of the beefy barmen. Both ignored me. They had a rush of last-minute orders and I was at the end of the queue. Besides, they don’t like women going up to the bar at The Rose. They’re traditional. There weren’t so many women in the place. Those who were there were defiantly raucous, shouting to make themselves heard.

The first thing they teach you at any kind of voice production class is that if you yell, you distort. Voice projection, that’s the thing. Breathing. The diaphragm. On the drama course they taught us all about that. Every word to be audible at the back of the gods.

‘Who owns a blue Cortina with a scratch along one side?’

I’d given it the finest Shakespearean. Henry Irving would’ve been proud of me.

It worked. There was a fractional pause. Eyes turned my way. Faces were blank with shock. One of the barmen asked, ‘What was that, darlin’?’ Not because he hadn’t heard, but because he couldn’t believe he’d heard it – not from someone my size whose head was not much above the level of his bar.

I repeated my question in my normal voice, adding, ‘Some kids are hanging around it.’

To back up my story, in the lull, the repetitive squeal of the car alarm could now be heard.

‘Merv!’ yelled someone. ‘Ain’t that your motor?’

The crowd heaved and parted like the Red Sea. Between the ranks, a figure appeared and came towards me. I felt like a very small Christian faced with a very large and hungry lion.

Merv was tall, pale, and rectangular like a slab of lard. He was one of those who think it obligatory to go around in sleeveless T-shirts in all weathers and his muscular arms were tattooed from shoulder to wrist. One displayed a morbid interest in coffins, skulls and daggers. The other showed an old-fashioned cannon and the word ‘Gunners’ in capital letters, indicating that if he knew what loyalty meant, which I doubted, he’d given his to the Arsenal Football Club. He had pale yellow hair trimmed to a stubble and his round slate-coloured eyes lacked lashes or brows. It wasn’t the expression in them that worried me so much as the lack of it. Nothing. A pair of glass peepers would’ve had more life in them. No doubt about it: I was faced with one of the living dead.

It spoke. ‘What about my motor?’ it growled.

‘Kids . . .’ I faltered. ‘Joyriders looking for a – ’

He shoved me aside as he strode out. I staggered back against the bar and bounced off again painfully. The crowd reformed. The barmen went back to pulling pints and the band to unplugging the sound equipment. I trotted outside to see what was happening.

Ganesh had joined Dilip inside the van and was dispensing hot dogs to the tarts. The alarm was silent now but Merv, standing by the car, was exchanging insults with one of the flat dwellers.

‘And you!’ yelled the householder, slamming his window shut.

Merv, still ignoring me, padded along the pavement to the van, arms dangling, held away from his body and slightly bent, fists clenched.

‘You seen ’em?’ he croaked.

‘No, mate, we’ve been busy,’ said Ganesh. ‘You want a hot dog? Buy two, get one free. That makes three,’ he added.

He got a glassy stare.

‘You see nothin’,
no kids?’

Merv wasn’t as thick as he looked. He was suspicious.

Help came unexpectedly. The tart with the silver jacket said, ‘I seen a bunch of kids. They was round our way earlier. Joyriders, that’s what they are. They’re always hotrodding round there. Residents got a petition up to put them bumps in the road.’ She eyed Merv. ‘You on your own? Or you with a mate? ’Cos me and my friend, we know a nice little club.’

Merv gave his by now familiar growl and went back into the pub.

‘Well, I didn’t fancy him, anyway,’ said Silver Jacket.

Red Leggings saved dripping mustard from her hot dog by curling her tongue lizard-fashion to catch it. ‘He looked like a bloomin’ nutter to me,’ she said.

Ganesh was climbing down from the rear of the van.

‘Are you satisfied?’ he asked. ‘Now can we go?’

Chapter Four

Somehow I couldn’t get to sleep that night. 1 kept thinking about Merv, his bashed-up motor and Albie and all the rest of it. I had a bruise just below my left shoulder blade from my encounter with the bar and a personal debt to settle with Merv over that. It spurred my resolve but didn’t help me get my ideas in order.

There was another problem. I’d been right to worry about that windowless little bedroom beneath the pavement. Try as I might, I couldn’t relax in it. It was unnatural and there was no way I could come to terms with it. The air was stifling even though I’d left the door open. I also kept the door open because otherwise I was sealed in.

I tossed and turned as I stared into the darkness and juggled the oddly assorted scraps of information at my disposal. Like the kaleidoscope I’d had as a kid, each time I tapped my assembled facts, they reformed to make a different picture. The only thing the pictures had in common was that they were all lurid, all tangled and all vulnerable. There was no scenario that was simple, logical and unshakable. Nothing signposted the way to go with my investigations.

From time to time footsteps passed overhead and echoed eerily around my little room. The sense of being buried alive increased. Tomorrow, I decided, I’d make up a bed on the sofa in the living room. This was definitely the last time I’d sleep in a catacomb. Like a mantra, I began to mutter, over and over:

‘Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray Thee, Lord, my soul to take.’

That was keeping it simple and dealing with the basics. The words ran round and round inside my throbbing head. The feeling of being trapped and of being in danger increased. My brain was as scrambled as any kaleidoscope. I was afraid to go to sleep in case I dreamed. But despite that, eventually I must have dozed off.

I awoke with a start and a dreadful sense of claustrophobia, even worse than earlier. I didn’t know what time it was but I knew it must be after midnight. Despite it being so late, someone was walking up there, above my head.

I’d heard feet earlier but this was different. These feet didn’t march assertively or patter briskly past. This was a slow, even footfall and every so often, it paused. I wondered for a moment whether it could possibly be a copper on the beat. But coppers don’t pound the beat the way they used to. They drive round, in pairs.

The man above was moving again. I knew it was a man. The footfall was too heavy for a woman and men place their feet differently to the ground. He walked another few steps and stopped again, this time directly overhead, over the thick opaque glass of the skylight.

I knew he couldn’t see me, any more than I could see him. But I knew he was up there and he – I had no doubt of it – knew I was down here, in my cell beneath the ground.