Nirvana Bites (6 page)

You may well be wondering why Frank was chosen for this particular mission. The fact is that I could look quite normal wearing my navy interview suit and a bit of slap, but two of us were needed for this job and, believe it or not, Frank was the only other possible candidate. With his short hair gelled close to his head and his bony frame encased in some of Stan's designer duds, he could just about pass as presentable – if he played his part right.

We took deep breaths and nodded at each other as I pushed open the door. I was greeted by a massive foghorn blast. It took an instant or two before I realised this was Koi Korner's version of those tinkly door chimes. Inside was pure Jacques Cousteau. Massive tanks flanked each wall, filled with goggle-eyed fish of every conceivable shape, size and colour. Hidden lighting suffused the shop with an eerie underwater glow and speakers spilled out whale song, dolphin clack and sonar blip.

Halfway along one wall there was a desk shaped like the prow of a ship, behind which sat a woman clad entirely in aquamarine. I felt faintly nauseous, and hoped Frank's ex-junkie brain would be able to handle this aquatic overload. The woman, who had shoulder-length blond hair held back by a velvet hairband that in itself would be enough to denote the class of the wearer, smiled a welcome at me, showing large teeth. She asked if she could help. I told her I was just browsing. I recognised the plummy voice I had heard on the phone the previous day. She turned back to her computer screen.

A moment later, Frank came in. He hung back by the door and peered intently at the nearest tank while I wandered further down one side of the shop.

‘Can I help you, sir?' she asked in a chirpy voice.

‘Yah,' Frank replied. I closed my eyes and offered a short prayer. Don't overdo it, Frank. ‘I was wondering about the fish in this particular tank…' he warbled.

Ms Plum rose and crossed the shop towards him. I wandered over to the other side, behind her desk. Frank began asking intelligent-sounding questions fed to him earlier by Stan, while I gave the desk the once-over. There was a tank immediately behind it, so if she looked round, I wouldn't appear too suspicious.

The foghorn blasted as the shop door opened again. I swivelled round to gaze in the nearest tank. I stood eyeball to eyeball with a puffer fish who looked as startled as I felt. In the reflection, I watched as two smart blokes in suits walked straight through the shop and disappeared through a door at the back. Ms Plum didn't waver in her patter extolling the virtues of sharing your space with cold-blooded companions of the piscine variety.

I turned back to the desk. At the front a rectangular plaque bore her name – Harriet Pugh. On the desk itself there was a computerised till, a phone, a terminal and some odd bits of stationery. On the computer, a screensaver – an inevitable underwater scene – wobbled gently. I nudged the mouse and the fish floated off, to be replaced by two rows of playing-cards. Ms Pugh wasn't overworked then. There was nothing else to be gleaned there, so it was time to move on to Plan B.

I caught Frank's eye and gave him the thumbs-down. He shifted gear seamlessly. Bless him, I couldn't believe how well he was doing.

He explained to Harriet that he wanted something special, possibly customised – in terms of size, shape and atmosphere – to fit into a particular room.

‘Money's no object,' he trilled.

Easy, Frank. Don't blow it now. I darted him a warning glance, but he was on a roll.

‘We do offer a consultancy service,' Harriet replied, almost as though she had read the script.

‘Super,' Frank gushed as they walked over to the desk.

Harriet settled on her perch and I continued to hover, as though fascinated by the fish in the tank behind her.

‘This is most helpful of you, Ms Puff,' Frank said blithely.

I saw Harriet's aquamarine shoulders stiffen. I shook my head at him wildly.

‘Oh, er, sorry,' Frank stumbled. ‘Of course – it's Ms Pug.'

I watched her ears go pink as I cast despairing glances at the ceiling.

‘It's
Pugh
, actually,' Harriet reprimanded in tones that could have chilled the water in the tanks. ‘Now if I can just take some details, Mr…?'

‘Arsehole,' Frank spat out.

I could imagine what was going through her head. Was this a genuine customer with an unfortunate name or a designer-clad wind-up merchant? She decided not to take the risk. She closed out of the solitaire programme and clicked the mouse several times. I was barely breathing as she opened up the programme she was looking for. To my utter disappointment, it was a blank template, with columns for name, address, etc.

‘And how are you spelling that, Mr Arsehole?'

‘A-R-S-E-L-L.'

I exhaled slowly. Maybe Frank could redeem this after all.

‘And your first name?'

‘Titus.'

Things went downhill from then on.

By the time we stumbled out of Koi Korner and back on to dry land we were forced to confront the fact that we had achieved nothing. Maybe that's not entirely true. We had surely set new records for bumbling incompetence and wasted effort. But as far as Koi Korner was concerned, we had learned nothing of value that could either confirm our suspicions or justify eliminating them from our enquiries. At this rate, Stan would be shifting the decimal point a couple of places westward on that £150-a-day fee he had offered. I could only hope the others had fared better.

As for Frank, he had deflated faster than Richard Branson's balloon. Which meant that not only could I not be seriously pissed off with him, but also that I had to work hard to make him feel OK. And I definitely, definitely couldn't head-butt him, which was the Pavlovian response he always expected when he fucked up. That victim shit is a self-fulfilling prophecy, which might explain why Frank had been physically and emotionally damaged so many times and by so many people.

‘So what happened, Frank?' I asked. ‘You were doing so well…'

‘Shit, Jen. I was fine until she turned all frosty on me,' he wailed. ‘Then she somehow turned into one of those wankers at the housing association who turned me down that last time. It brought it all back.'

When we first met Frank, he had been sleeping rough for ten years. The accumulated abuse was taking its toll and he doubted if he would survive another winter on the streets. In desperation, he had approached a housing association he'd heard had a quota of hard-to-let flats they were using to house people direct from the streets. He sat in their waiting room five days a week until they were sick of the sight of him and offered him a place. He went to see it. Just a bedsit, but warm, dry and safe. Living here he felt he might, just might, have a future. If he'd been more accustomed to dealing with bureaucracy, he probably would have known better. At the interview with whoever these people were, he blithely admitted to his smack habit. Heads shook. Papers were shuffled. Briefcases snapped shut. The offer was withdrawn on the grounds that he had shown no commitment to coming off the drugs and would therefore be a bad risk.

Frank was devastated, but somehow dragged himself back up. He went to a GP, registered as an addict and was put on a Methadone programme. Then he approached a different housing association and tried the same in-your-face harassment technique. Again his persistence paid off. They offered him a bedsit in a huge converted Victorian house in Camberwell. This time at the interview, he was ready for them. When the subject of drugs came up he produced his Methadone prescription with a triumphant flourish. Heads shook. Papers were shuffled. Briefcases snapped shut. Apparently, there were junkies living in the same house. It would be unfair to place him with practising addicts at this vulnerable time.

Frank lost it. Did they think he'd be less vulnerable on the streets? He cursed and cried and tore his clothes. He stumbled from the office into the carpeted lobby, where he took a long piss in the corner, under the horrified gaze of the receptionist. Then he hit the streets gasping and ran back to his bash. He turned the corner from London Bridge on to the walkway and collided into me and Ali, who were running full-tilt in the opposite direction.

Ali and I had been flyposting the area round the
Financial Times
building with some cool posters that at first glance looked like the front page of the
FT
. When you looked closer you saw the heading was actually
FINANCIAL CRIMES
and the main headline screamed
BURN THE BLOOD-SUCKING BANKS
. Anyway, we'd been spotted and were in the process of legging it when we'd exploded into Frank. We all fell sprawling to the pavement. And that's how we met.

Three cups of tea from a greasy spoon later and we all had that feeling you get when you know something momentous is happening and your future is doing its chrysalis thing. The flat upstairs from Nick was empty. Its previous occupant, Mange (that's Mange as in Mangy, not as in Mange Tout), having gone off to ‘do' the Far East a couple of weeks earlier.
Voilà
. New co-op member. And though we sometimes took the piss, that was just to keep him on his toes. In reality we were fiercely protective of him. That, ultimately, was his talent.

When Frank and I arrived home from our close encounter of the koi kind, Bob Marley was pounding out from Mags's stereo. We knew she must be feeling either seriously up or seriously pissed off. Knowing where she'd been, the latter was more likely. Mags always gets rootsy when she's angry. As her part of the investigation, she had gone to see a friend, whose brother had died in police custody. As the cops told it, he had choked on his own vomit. Needless to say, his family had a different version.

Mags wasn't in the mood to talk. But she did tell us that the families of people who'd died had been co-operating fully with the programme makers and were furious – not to mention suspicious – to be told the plug had been pulled. There was no way they would have been involved in sabotaging the series. The cops would have the most to gain, especially as another of the scheduled programmes was to have dealt with police corruption, but it was hard to link them with Stan's personal dilemma. We left Mags to her righteous anger.

My flat turned out to be Stanless, but I assumed he would be at Gaia's, as her task had been to continue his cross-examination, in search of further leads. Robin had washed his hair and plaited it neatly before setting off into the Den of the Beast (i.e. Surrey) to consort with the enemy (i.e. his mum). If Catherine Highshore had been receiving any unsolicited gifts in the miscellaneous-office-stationery line, Robin's mum would be sure to know.

Nick's task had seemed to me the least likely of all to get results. He'd volunteered to go to Soho to ‘get the low-down on the Mafia', as he called it. Yeah. I had visions of him hanging out in Bar Italia drinking cappuccino with no chocolate on top in the hope the staff would think he was Italian (in spite of his appearance, which shrieked Reconstructed Home Counties Crusty). They would lead him into a darkened room where a Marlon Brando lookalike with cotton wool in his cheeks would be sitting counting money and shooting family members. He would, of course, welcome Nick with open arms and confess all.

Anyway, Nick and Robin were still out on their missions. Ali wasn't home either. He'd gone out ‘networking' – whatever that meant. He had failed to expand, so he might well have been sewing fishing tackle for all we knew. Or maybe I was getting just a teensy bit fish-obsessed.

Gaia led me and Frank into her heavily scented nest and cooed enthusiasm over Stan's rejuvenated spiritual presence until I mentioned his physical absence. She told us he had been 100 per cent co-operative and had charmed her with what sounded to me like stomach-churning flattery. Poor Gaia had taken it at face value and had rewarded him with an aromatherapy massage accompanied by burning of Hopi candles and taped womb music.

‘He was totally chilled when I left,' she wailed. ‘I assumed he was in a healing trance state. Now you tell me he's gone walkabout. The scumbag. When he gets back send him round to me for acupuncture, will you?'

‘I didn't know you had acupuncture training, Gaia,' I frowned.

‘I haven't,' she muttered darkly.

Frank, meanwhile, looked more relaxed than he had all day. He obviously reckoned Gaia had fucked up sufficiently to rival our own singular lack of success.

By midnight there was still no sign of Stan. I rang his mobile. It was turned off but I left a message on his voicemail.

‘Stan? Where the fuck are you? Wherever you are, you'd better get your arse back here so fast that sparks fly out of it. Or at least phone!'

You never call. You never write. Would someone mind telling me exactly how and when I metamorphosed into Stan's mum?

Soon after, I heard Nick arrive home next door and popped round to see how he had got on. But it wasn't him after all. It was Robin. He was flustered when I said we hadn't seen Nick since he went off on his mission to Soho. While Robin was hyper-hopping from foot-to-foot, I heard a knock next door, and there he was – Stan the Man. Looking more like Stan the Naughty Schoolboy. I opened my front door – not altogether smoothly as I was busy glaring at him. We went straight into my front room and I assumed my position on the cushions while Stan stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.

‘Well?' I demanded.

‘Um. We need to talk,' he mumbled.

‘Hey, that's my line.'

‘Look, Jen. I don't know quite how to say this…'

‘Try,' I interjected.

‘OK.' He took a deep breath.

‘Jenny, I'm incredibly grateful for everything you've done. I don't know what would have happened the other day if you hadn't been there. And then putting me up. And putting up with me–'

‘Just get on with it, Stan,' I interrupted. ‘I'm not Gaia. Don't try to flannel me.'

‘The thing is – I want you to call off the investigation.'