Lionel Asbo: State of England (25 page)

‘Threnody’ narrowed her eyes at him. And with that mouth, like the zip on a lady’s purse: for a moment she looked like a rock-hard oil-rigger recalling some murderous offshore blaze. ‘Hear that, Lionel? I got to have a fucking
baby
now!’

And away she scissored with her swift, fussy stride – and Des thought of Gran, coming back from the shops that time, with egg and bacon for Rory Nightingale. That same determination, and yet with something precarious in it. That same determination to thrive.

‘Love you,’ snapped ‘Threnody’ over her shoulder as she pushed on the door.

Mournfully Lionel called out after her, ‘Not the “Aurora”, “Threnody”. Take a Merc.’
A Mer-cuh
. ‘Or a BM! … Ooh Des,’ he said, with decided admiration, ‘remember that bird in that prison in Iraq? Lynndie England? That’s what I call “Threnody”. Lynndie England. She’s
torture
. It’ll take about a year, she says. Then we’ll both have what we want … Okay, any other business?’ Not for the first time he looked intently at his watch. ‘Jesus, it’s always later than I think. Tick-tock goes the clock. You better be on you way, boy.’

‘There’s all these barebacked plugs and the fire doors are all jammed. She’s got rope burns on her wrists. And frozen joints and pressure sores. And I saw a tin of Whiskas on her bedside table.’

‘Whiskas?’

‘She needs better care, Uncle Li.’

‘Well it’s not for fairies, is it. Old age.’

‘She’s just turned forty-five.’

‘Then what she expect? Comes to us all. And anyway, why bother moving her? It’s all one to Grace. She’s past caring.’

They were now in the domed entrance hall – the size of a quarry, with its sluggish echoes, and the chutes of sunlight coming through the fleur-de-lis windows up above the orbital gallery. Des said,

‘I see Ringo – I see Uncle Ring’ll be in the
People
. Next Sunday.’

‘Yeah, Megan told me they was flagging it. Who cares. Let him spill his guts for fifty pee.’

‘Still, that might get picked up on, Uncle Li. All over again. You and the five brothers. They might want something on Grace. And they could make it look bad. You here – and her there. Picture it.’ Des pictured it: a Shock Issue of the
Daily Mirror
, on Gran’s home. ‘You on your lounger by the pool. Grace strapped to her mattress in the attic. Could make it look bad.’

‘… They could and all. Yeah. They’d distort it and make it look bad. That’s what they do, Des. Consistently. Distort it and make it look bad … Christ, how come Megan never thought of that? She costs enough. Or Seb fucking Drinker.’

‘There’s a better place, Uncle Li. I went up there. Couple of miles out of Souness. On the promontory. Called the Northern Lights. It’s dearer, mind.’

‘How much dearer? Jesus, you a one-man Black Monday, you are.’

‘It’s up on Clo Mor Bluff. There.’ He reached into his shoulder bag and handed over the sleek brochure. ‘Looking down on Lochinvar Strand.’

‘… All right. All right, I’ll have it taken care of. Well. I can’t be angry today, Des. No I can’t be angry today.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘It’s not often, Des, it’s not often you get you chance to right a wrong. To strike a blow for justice. And to do it
nice
, Des. With a bit of style.’

‘… Uncle Li, is that dogs I can hear?’

‘In the cellar. Jak and Jek. They good boys, but they pining for me now.’ From deep in its alcove a grandfather clock struck four. ‘Okay. Off with yer. Back to you crime desk. On you cheap return.’

‘Got some news for you. From the crime desk,’ he said boldly as they headed off towards the vestibule. ‘About Rory Nightingale.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Lionel, his breeziness in no way compromised by this turn. ‘What about him?’

‘They found a body in an allotment in Southend. Uncovered by the rains. It wasn’t Rory. It was another kid. But he had Rory’s school ID on him. And his gold toothpick. They did the DNA. Guess what else was in there. Wigs.’

‘Wigs … You know, Des, I haven’t forgotten. Rory – he said something.’ And here Lionel produced his rictal false smile. ‘
Des did it and all
, he said. What he mean by that?’

But Desmond was more or less ready for this. Careful to keep a faint smile on his lips, he said, ‘Probably just meant I set him up. Don’t you remember? You had me finger him. Had me fink him. Remember?’

There was a moment of stillness. Then Lionel violently applied himself to all the locks and bolts, all the chains and ratchets that shackled the front doors.

‘Rory Nightingale got off light. He gave my mum one. Take care, boy.’

Des went forth.

‘Uh, hang on.’ Lionel was looking at his watch. ‘Quick. Show you me cars.’

7

IN DISTON – IN Diston, everything hated everything else, and everything else, in return, hated everything back. Everything soft hated everything hard, and vice versa, cold fought heat, heat fought cold, everything honked and yelled and swore at everything, and all was weightless, and all hated weight.

In Short Crendon, on the other hand, everything contemplated everything else with unqualified satisfaction. As if the whole village was leaning back, hands on hips, and lightly rocking on its heels. Or so it seemed to Des Pepperdine as he made his way to the train station, feeling exotic and conspicuous among the whites and greys, the farm voices, the bicycles and hatchbacks – tea shop, greengrocer, family butcher. Two illustrated road signs caught his eye. One showed a pair of stick figures edging along, with infinite difficulty, all jagged and aquiver, as if in mid-electrocution (ELDERLY PEDESTRIANS). The other was an uncaptioned mugshot of a cow.

The idiocy of rural life
. Who said that? Lenin? And is it idiocy, he asked himself (in his new editorial voice), or is it just innocence? What he sensed, in any case, was a bewildering deficit of urgency, of haste and purpose. And, somehow, a deficit of intelligence. For it was his obstinate belief that Town contained hidden force of mind – nearly all of it trapped or cross-purposed. And how will it go, he often wondered, when all the brain-dead awaken? When all the Lionels decide to be intelligent? … Meanwhile, here was Short Crendon and its pottering and pootering. I suppose I’m just a creature of the world city, he thought, and walked on.

Up ahead a battered blue Mini rounded the corner, shuddered and veered, and rolled to a halt with brown smoke funnelling from its hood. Traffic – and there was at least no shortage of traffic – started to accumulate in the blocked lane, and a horn or two tentatively sounded. As he passed by, Des took a look at the young couple in the front seats: they were yelling inaudibly at each other while trying to nudge the car forward with spasmodic jerks of their loins. And it was Marlon and Gina Welkway! Gina all in white, with those slender ribbons in her hair, as she was on the day of her wedding. And the little Mini (extracted, perhaps, from the forecourts of the late Jayden Drago) did in fact jolt gamely forward, and the traffic duly stirred and oozed free and eventually caught up with itself.

As he approached, and as he took in the childish scale of the station (he was used to the termini that you shared with millions upon millions), Des was struck by an unpleasant thought. A tedious thought: he had left without his bathers (now he remembered the bench by the plunge pool and the parallelogram of sunlight where he had laid them out to dry). Habits of thrift and good order made him at once turn on his heel. He now faced the minor idiocy of retracing his steps, steps that would then need to be re-retraced, for the five thirty-five.

On the way he diverted himself by going over his uncle’s deeply conflicted response to the news about the
Daily Mirror
. Writing about law and order for the
Daily Mirror
was in a way much worse than writing about law and order for the
Diston Gazette
, because of the greater reach (
You be doing you narking on a national scale!
); as against that, though, Lionel argued, the
Mirror
was a traditional friend of the working class, and was therefore comparatively soft on crime.

Are you telling me the
Mirror’
s
pro-
crime, Uncle Li?

Don’t talk stupid. They not pro-crime as such. But they not going to make a to-do about a little bit of theft. It serves equality, Des. The uh, the redistribution of wealth
.

And how pro-theft are you? With your guards and your razor wire?

Ah, but that’s on me own initiative
, he said. They were in the echoing entrance hall, and Lionel was standing in one of the pools of three-petalled sunlight.
That’s different. See, I don’t use the law, Des. And I get threats all the time! They say
, Guiss ten million quid or we’ll fucking kill yer.
I say
, Come and get it. You welcome to try.
And if some bleeding thrusters fancy they chances, then we’ll take it from there. See, Des, this is it. You don’t let money change yer. You don’t let money change you deepest convictions. And I
never use the law.
This is it. This is it
.

No, it couldn’t have been a coincidence. The old Mini, which now had a flat back tyre, was cravenly slumped alongside the imperial contours of the ‘Aurora’ … Des was silently admitted by Carmody (who soon withdrew). He advanced to the library and was halfway across the darkened room before he noticed Marlon, on a low settee, with a glass in one hand and a decanter of brown liquor in the other.

‘Marlon.’

‘Ah. Little Des,’ said Marlon thickly.

And the air itself was thick. Thick and weak, as if the room was about to faint. Des recognised this atmosphere – its wrongness, its deafened, bad-dream feel.

‘I, I left something next door. I’ll just pop through and …’

‘No. Don’t do that, mate. Don’t do that.’

Marlon dragged a hand across his forehead, which was frosted in sweat, and grey-pale against the damp black blade of his widow’s peak. With a heavy tongue he said,

‘You, you’re like a canary. A little yellow canary. You fucked me in court.’

‘Well so did Yul and Troy.’

‘Yeah, and look what happened to them.’

With his adapted vision Des now saw that there were items of white clothing strewn across the black carpet, white ribbons, a brassiere, a pair of knickers, a slip, a stained trousseau …

‘Little yellow canary.’

Marlon was making an attempt to suffuse his smile with menace. But then came Lionel’s reverberating bawl from beyond (
Get you fat prat in that sauna!
), followed by the blast of a whistle and Gina’s scandalised screech.

The wide door swung open in blinding light. And there was the stippled, mottled nudity of Lionel Asbo. Des’s eyes sought what they could not but seek: and Lionel was rawly and barbarically erect … Beyond him, through the curved glass, greenery trembled, foxtail, flowering rush, the leaves of trees and their shadows.

Obliviously Lionel pushed past him (what after all was Des doing in this dream?).

‘Marlon! You all right in the dark there, Marl? I’m not neglecting you needs?’

There was no answer. Lionel moved forward.

‘Look up, son.
Meet me eye
. Meet me eye. And see this? See the lipstick on it? See it?’

Marlon looked up – then dropped his head. And Des again was gone.

8

‘NICE. I HOPE you’re proud of him. That’s really nice, that is. Charming.’

‘Can we change the subject for a minute? I’m still in recovery.’

‘Okay. How about … Matthew?’ she said. ‘Matthew. Mark. Luke. John.’

‘John,’ he said. ‘John, Paul, George, Ringo. Please. No names.’

‘Yeah. No names. No more names … I hate names.’

He had just come in (train delay caused by a suicide on the sunken tracks a mile or two from Liverpool Street), and Dawn was about to serve up dinner. In the meantime he was enjoying a saucerful of pickled onions.

‘Rachel. Delilah. Gaw, you should’ve seen his cars, Dawnie.’ Des listed some of the makes. ‘And he’s got this mammoth SUV. It’s called a Venganza. Spanish for
revenge
. Carbon-black – no shine. It’s like an Armoured Personnel Carrier. For Special Forces. And it’s split-level! You press a button and this little steel ladder comes down. Headlights the size of dustbin lids. Does three miles to the gallon. Esther. Ruth.’

‘Nahum. Solomon. So you reckon he was at it with Gina in the sauna. Peter.’

‘Looked that way. Not Peter. Peter Pepperdine? That’s like Peter Piper picked a peck of … Giving Gina one in the sauna. There he was. Mother-naked.’