The First Novels: Pay Off, the Fireman (47 page)

I stood in the middle of the room and looked around slowly but nothing else seemed to have gone. There had been no sign of forced entry, both the grille and the door had been locked and the sliding window leading to the balcony was firmly shut.

The bedrooms were just as I’d left them but I stopped dead when I walked into the study. It had been stripped clean of every scrap of paper and photograph, even the map had gone from the wall. There was no mess, no overturned desk or drawers strewn over the floor, there were no ripped-apart cushions, no torn up books, no signs of violence. All the drawers of the filing cabinet were closed but as soon as I pulled one open I could feel it was empty. Even the piece of paper that had been in the typewriter had been taken and there was nothing in her wastepaper basket.

There was something else wrong, something different, the room had changed, subtly, but it had changed. I was sure the typewriter had been on the left side of the desk, not in the centre where it was now. And the wastepaper bin was right in the corner of the room instead of by the filing cabinet. The filing cabinet had been moved too, there were scrapes in the polished wooden flooring. It was as if the room had just been spring-cleaned by a careless maid.

I went into the main bedroom again and was hit by the smell of Sally’s perfume as I sat on the bed and held Woofer close to my chest and rested my chin on his head.

‘What happened, Woofer?’ I asked, ‘who’s been here?’ because the last time I’d been in Sally’s room the daft blue dog had been sitting next to the wall with his tongue hanging out, not lying on his side by the pillows. I stayed on the bed for about five minutes but then I needed a drink. I had been sitting in the dark so I switched on the light in the lounge before filling a glass with a treble measure of gin and a dose of tonic. There was ice in the fridge in the kitchen but no room in the glass so I took a deep drink before dropping in a handful of cubes.

Drinking is part of the job, you learn that as a cub reporter on a weekly newspaper. People talk when they’ve been drinking so whenever you get the chance you take them to a pub and when you get to Fleet Street you graduate to wine bars. You keep the talk general and you make them laugh and you match them drink for drink and eventually you ask them the questions you really want the answers to and ninety-nine times out of a hundred it works. Sure, some stories come from press conferences and door-stepping, and there are plenty of contacts ringing in because they think you’re a mate or because they want a tip-off payment. But when it comes to meeting a stranger, someone who doesn’t know and trust you, or even a friend if you’re running the risk of touching a nerve, then alcohol helps, it smooths the way.

You have to learn to handle it though, and when you’re young and drinking pints of lager you often screw it up and end up being sick in the toilets and waking up with a hangover and no story. It doesn’t take you long to learn the tricks. Always eat before you meet a contact in a pub, or at the very least drink a pint of milk. You don’t drink lager or beer, even if he does, you drink a spirit and always take it with water or a mixer. Whenever you get the chance you just order yourself a mixer, but you mustn’t get caught because then he’ll know you’re trying to get him drunk and you’ve blown it. You stick to that drink, no having a gin then wine over a meal and then a brandy, you choose a spirit and stick to it. I drink gin and tonic and now I can drink it all night long without falling over and usually I wake up with a clear head and a settled stomach. Usually.

So you match him drink for drink, and usually you pay so he thinks you’re a great guy, and then you gradually nudge him towards the information you want, coaxing it out of him the way you’d fillet a rainbow trout, gently teasing the flesh away from the bones. Then when you’ve got the story you speed up the tempo and start drinking heavily so that he forgets what he told you and then you’re home and dry. The only problem is to remember what you’ve heard.

My method was to carry small pieces of card in my top jacket pocket, and at some point I’d go to the toilet and scribble down a few notes. The first thing I did every morning was to check the pocket to see if I’d written anything, it might just be a few key words or a name but it would trigger off the memories and I’d have the story.

Drinking helps get the stories, but after a while it becomes an end in itself. You go to press conferences where the story, like the smoked salmon and pâté, is handed to you on a plate, and you still drink, after which you go down the pub with the lads to wind down because the tension gets to you and the only people who understand, who really understand, are other journalists. And then after a while it doesn’t matter whether you’re drinking with other hacks or drinking on your own and that’s the point when you start buying a couple of bottles of gin in the supermarket when you do the weekly shopping and that’s when there’s always a six pack of Schweppes tonic in the fridge. I’ve got to that stage and passed it, and Bill Hardwicke had pulled me back and dried me out, but now I needed to drink to help dull the pain. That’s why I was sitting on the balcony of Sally’s too-expensive flat drinking a gin and tonic with too much gin in it. I could have sat on one of the chairs or one of the big plush cushions but I wanted to sit on the waist-high ledge that surrounded the balcony so that I could feel what little breeze was there in this God-awful town and because I could lean my head against the cool tiles that lined the wall. Woofer was sitting on my lap with his head against my chest and I ran my fingers through his artificial fur but I was past the stage of talking to him. The gin bottle was close by but I hadn’t bothered bringing the tonic with me.

I was five floors up and it was two o’clock in the morning but it was still noisy, cars were driving down the road below, insects were rubbing their legs together or doing whatever it is they do to make their chirping noise, dogs were barking and I could hear a bus grinding its way up the hill.

Framing the view of the ship-filled harbour were two tower blocks, tall and thin with just a couple of rooms aglow in each. Between them glinted the lights of Kowloon. I had trouble focusing and the orange dots seemed to move left and right and blur and I couldn’t tell if they were on the land or the lights of ships prowling through the polluted water. A taxi stopped below and its doors opened and slammed as a man got out and I leant over the edge of the green railing and then there were two taxis and then they merged to become one. The light on its roof went on and it growled back down the road and then something blue went spinning through the air, falling, falling and I reached to grab it but Woofer was gone, and I watched him spin slowly around until he hit the road below. There was no sound, no breaking bones, no blood on the tarmac, just a daft toy dog on the ground and I rested my head against the cold metal railing and held on tight to my drink and closed my eyes. When I opened them she was sitting in the chair opposite me, a smile on her lips and concern in her eyes.

‘What happened, Sally?’ I asked her and the smile grew wide and she shook her head slowly from side to side and gave a slight shrug of the shoulders.

‘Who did it? Who paid for this flat?’ I waved my glass towards the window, to the plant-filled room, and gin and tonic trickled over my fingers and onto the floor.

‘Who bought you the car?’ I asked, and she flowed out of the chair to stand in front of me, her hair swinging gently as her head tilted to one side. She shrugged again but the smile had been replaced by a frown and she crossed her arms across her chest and folded them, defensively hugging herself.

‘What happened?’ I shouted and then she was gone and my forehead was back on the tiles and I was looking at the road far below and there was a rushing sound in my ears and the balcony felt as if it was tilting sideways and then a hand grabbed my arm and Howard was there, pulling me to my feet and into the flat where he sat me down on the sofa in front of the coffee table. The glass was still in my hand and I raised it to my lips but it was empty and Howard took it from me and shook me. He had the toy dog tucked under one arm.

‘Jesus, laddie, how did you get in this state?’ he asked and I gave him the winning smile and dribbled.

‘Stay here, I’ll get you a coffee,’ he said and I watched two Howards walk out of the room.

I wanted to call something witty after him, like ‘you saved my life and now I’m yours forever’, but I couldn’t form the words and by the time I’d worked out how to say ‘you saved’ I’d forgotten the rest and I just let my head drop forward on my chest and closed my eyes. I fumbled with my left hand in my top j acket pocket for a piece of card but it was empty and anyway I couldn’t have focused enough to write so I concentrated as hard as I could before I passed out, tried to ingrain into my synapses one thought so that it would be in my brain when I woke up with a thick headache and a furred tongue. The one thought was that the front door had been shut and the lock was a Yale and I had Sally’s key but he’d still got into the flat to pull me off the balcony.

Howard took me to the hi-tech coffee shop on the first floor of the Excelsior and forced me to drink three cups of coffee as I slumped in a state-of-the-art chrome-legged chair. He made me drink it hot, black and with sugar, which was tough going for someone who was used to his refreshment coming cold, clear and with a slice of lemon.

The coffee went some way to sobering me up but I was still more than a little light-headed and I had to lean against him as we rode up in the lift, squinting at the two of us in the mirrored wall. I looked rough, all right, and I just hoped that the wet stain down my left leg was gin. The room was about fifty yards from the lift and we only banged into the wall twice as we tottered along the corridor like poorly co-ordinated contestants in a three-legged race. I stopped Howard halfway along and looked him straight in the eyes. ‘Howard,’ I said, ‘I must phone my mother.’ Then my legs went and he carried me the rest of the way. When Howard fumbled with the key and swung the door open I knew instinctively that my room had been searched.

Maybe it was the fact that all the drawers had been pulled out of the dressing table and were lying on the floor, maybe it was the fact that the mattress was half off the double bed, or the fact that the stuffing had been ripped out of the cushions on the window seat.

I also had a pretty shrewd idea who’d been rearranging my bed and it wasn’t Goldilocks or the three bears. I could lay the blame squarely at the feet of three guys, not because my deductive powers qualified me for MENSA membership, but because one of the pairs of feet was sitting cross-legged on the single bed while their owner was cleaning his fingernails with a foot-long switchblade.

Another pair of feet was standing by the lamp in the corner taking the shade apart, and as Howard and I stepped into the middle of the room the door closed behind us. I turned to see the third pair standing in the bathroom doorway.

‘Howard,’ I said, my head on his shoulder, ‘there’s a chink in the doorway.’

‘Jesus, laddie, don’t you ever stop?’ he sighed.

‘Never, Howard,’ I said. ‘Not when I’m drunk. Especially not when I’m drunk.’

I tried to stand up straight but I was still dizzy and felt like I was going to heave at any moment and then the bastard behind me kicked me hard in the middle of the back and I pitched forward, only just managing to break my fall with my hands and when I rolled onto my back I could see he’d grabbed Howard by the neck and I kept on rolling until I hit the wall and then I pushed myself up on to my knees.

The guy on the bed uncoiled his legs and rolled off it. He was young and looked fit with massive forearms and a strong neck. He had thick lips and a wide nose, it was as if he was pressing his face to a pane of glass, but he moved well. He had style, grace and a knife you could slice a telephone directory with. He made small, swishing movements with it and the blade caught the light, flashing like Morse code. I forced my eyes away from it, tried to concentrate on his face, to work out what he was going to do next, slash or stab or if I was lucky he’d throw it and maybe I could get out of the way. The handle was black with a chrome stud that flicked the blade out and I was watching the knife again and if I wasn’t careful I’d watch it go straight into my stomach. Look at his eyes, watch the face, the deepening lines around the mouth that’ll show he’s about to strike, the intake of breath just before he moves, the pull back of the arm before he lets go with the knife. I knew the signs, I’d watched the slow motion bits in the Sam Peckinpah films.

He was making circular motions with the knife now, widening circles, clockwise, around and around, holding it loosely by the handle, thumbs pressed up against the base of the blade, the sharp shiny hypnotic blade. I had my back to the wall, between the fridge and the dressing table, and the guy with the knife moved slowly sideways so that he was directly opposite me, his thick lips opening into a confident smile. The one by the lamp just stood where he was, hands on hips, a lazy grin on his face, waiting for the show to start. Both were dressed in open-necked shirts, denim jeans and baseball boots. Maybe they had the same tailor. The grip around Howard’s neck must have tightened because he grunted, but I couldn’t look at him.

I put my hands out to the sides, palms holding onto the walls at about waist height. I was sweating and it wasn’t the gin. Jesus, I needed a drink. Then the knife arm pulled back and I tightened the muscles of my stomach in a useless reflex action and then the guy by the lamp spoke quickly in Cantonese, jabber, jabber, jabber, hands still on hips, chin thrust up, legs apart.

The one with the knife kept his eyes on me as he listened, but the arm relaxed and I allowed myself to breathe out, slowly. I was shaking, and the more I tried to stop it the more my arms and legs trembled.

Howard shouted something in Chinese and the knife man looked at him, just once, a sideways glance, the sort I used to give Andy when she walked past my desk in a tight skirt, quick and furtive. The fear of what might happen if I did anything got the better of the fear of what would happen if I stayed still and I made a grab for the dressing table with my left hand, groping for something, anything, to throw at my attacker. I fumbled the can of deodorant and it clattered against the mirror, but by the time the knife man had turned to look at me I had it in my hands. I had some vague idea of squirting it in his eyes but I was shaking so much I couldn’t get the top off and then the knife started moving towards me. I screamed and threw the can at his face with both hands and tried to get my body out of the way of the blade. Both his arms went up to protect himself and without thinking I kicked him between the legs as hard as I could, still screaming. I was so frightened I had my eyes shut tight, sure that my stomach was about to be sliced open.