I dreamed I was the guardian of a lighthouse in the midst of a terrifying storm. The rain was not rain but endless torrents of blood. Lightning was the finery in a network of veins, arteries and capillaries. Thunder, the combined screams of everyone on the planet who had ever succumbed to a killing blow. The beam of the lighthouse swept before a sea of tumbling bodies, and someone moved beneath it, in the cone of shadow, scuffling around the foot of the tower like a rat at a kitchen door.
The architect swung down from the ceiling like a giant bat, his face inches away from my own, inverted. He opened his mouth in a shocking smile; it looked like the horrible down-turned grimace of a great white shark. He said: I know all the best hiding places.
* * *
I jerked upright in bed and Mengele sprang away from me as if he’d been hit with a thousand volts. Breathe. Relax. Realise. Not bed. Tokuzo’s sofa. Not Mengele, a cushion. I heard the reassuring ticks of the refrigerator and the chuckle of the broadband hub. I heard the ebb and flow of measured breath in the bedroom. I checked my watch. Six in the morning. Not as much sleep as I’d have liked, but sleep was getting in the way. I could sleep all I wanted when Tann was back in the slammer.
I lay there for a while trying to imagine what Sarah might do or what Tann might do if they were to meet. I wondered if Sarah would be able to deal with it, with him. It won’t come to that, I thought. And she was smart. Street smart especially, but any other kind there was too. I thought of how she had made that den for herself on Silex Street. The nerve of her. I couldn’t have done that when I was her age. I don’t think I could cook at her age.
Thinking of Silex Street reminded me of what I’d found there. I fished in my pocket for my wallet and retrieved the train ticket. Bedford. What was in Bedford?
Lorraine had a bookcase given over to various Ordnance Survey maps she’d collected over the years. I picked one of them out and peered at the UK map on the back. Bedford. Bedford.
I felt myself go cold. Of course, whenever I’d visited, I’d gone by car. Sarah couldn’t drive, or didn’t have access to a car. So she went by train. From Bedford to Cold Quay was a twenty-minute taxi drive. Why else would she be in Bedford? There had to be some other reason. She wouldn’t go to see that fucker. Not in a million years.
Why not? You did.
I had good reason.
Did you? Maybe she does too.
What possible reason would she have to go and visit the person who put her mum in the ground?
To see his face. To make him see her face.
I showered and got dressed and raided Tokuzo’s fridge for breakfast. I had barely eaten a crumb the previous day. I was so hungry I could have eaten the arse out of a low-flying pigeon. I stuffed crackers and bananas in my pockets and gave head to a third of apple pie straight from its tray. Coffee I could grab on the lam.
I wrote a quick note and left it on the table.
Stay here. Stay safe. Call if aggro. I’ll come back soon. J.
At the bedroom door I listened to them breathing some more, and felt an ache at the thought that once upon a time I had lain with both of these women and my own sleeping breath had mingled with theirs. And because of me, they were together now. I’d caused an awful lot of the fear in their veins.
I needed therapy. How do people get on with their lives, when their colours are nailed to the danger mast? Maybe they didn’t. Maybe the domesticity was a sham. Because you can’t switch off. Switching off is inviting trouble.
I got down to the ground floor and stood at the lift door for a while, checking the area. I don’t know what I was expecting to find, but after last night’s lax showing, I felt I needed to demonstrate a touch more diligence. Nobody around.
I texted Mawker:
on my way 2 see u – at nsy?
He texted back:
like fuk u r fuk off busy.
I texted back:
tuff shitz
I added a grinning dog turd emoji and walked the two minutes to King’s Cross Tube. I was at New Scotland Yard within half an hour. At Reception I asked for my favourite detective chief superintendent and waited outside by the revolving cheese.
‘I told you I was busy,’ he squawked. He was holding a case file and a coffee. He was wearing a grey shirt with hoops of sweat under the armpits that you could have fit a basketball through.
‘You and me need a talk,’ I said. Maybe the way I said it, without any added snark for a change, caught him off balance. He gave me an odd look, as if I’d complimented him, and then he tucked the file under his arm and told me to follow him.
We went up to his office and he poured me a cup without asking. I’d seen that before. It was a gathering technique. He was creating a buffer of time in which to consider all possible angles and possibilities regarding this visit. But he knew why I was here.
‘I imagine you want to know how the manhunt is getting along,’ he said, offering me the steaming cup of ground winnets.
‘Yes and no,’ I said. ‘And I’m not drinking that. Put some down for the rats.’
‘What do you want?’
Muscles were jumping all over me. What I really wanted was to pick up one of his office chairs and launch it through the window.
‘Those words on the case file you gave me. Whether you wrote them or not. “GT visits”.’
‘If “visits” is what it meant.’
‘Fuck off, Ian. “GT visits”. And you know it. Because you made them.’
‘What?’
‘You were visiting Graeme Tann in Cold Quay. Admit it. Why?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘It doesn’t matter who told me that. I’m a private investigator. I investigated. I found something out.’
‘I might have gone to Cold Quay a couple of times. But not necessarily to see Tann.’
‘Not necessarily? Why then? It’s miles away from this little misery pit. What business did you have at a high-security prison? What possible reason could you have?’
He sipped his coffee, saw the light, grimaced and put it down. He put his hands on his hips. He looked like a shit supply teacher who’s had a bad day and is about to tear into the disrespectful kids he’s been trying to marshal for the past hour.
‘You don’t want to know.’
I shut my eyes and sighed. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t. Please, God, don’t let it be her. I opened them again and there was the red mist. I walked over to him, close enough to smell his coffee breath and the drenched polyester, ingrained with perspiration notes from years ago when he bought his shirt, quite possibly third-hand, from Corpse Reclamation Threads Ltd. My nerves were tighter than a porn star’s G-string.
‘I do want to know, Ian,’ I said. ‘And I want to know now.’
‘You don’t want to know now. Or ever.’
I got hold of him and he got hold of me. We wrestled like that for a while, trying to gain traction but we were both wearing shit shoes on a shit surface and we slid and grunted around like seals on ice in mating season.
‘Why were you at Cold Quay?’ I said. ‘On the day it burned.’
‘Leave it, Joel.’
I’d never hit him before. We’d always had those moments of close proximity pull me-push you. He’d headbutted me once. There was always a spice there, the potential for a ruckus. So I thought, Fuck it. Risk arrest. It will be worth it to see him walking around with gaps in his teeth and a black eye. Credit to him, as he sat there spitting blood between his lips, he didn’t threaten me with a cell. He got up and came for me. He’s sprightlier than you’d think, Mawker. He thudded a couple into my ribs, including the one that Henry had been playing notes on earlier, but it was fuelled with breakfast baps and p.m. pints. He was already out of breath and I’d suddenly lost the appetite for it. I just wanted his version of events and I wasn’t going to get it if he was having a coronary, or trying to speak through a mouthful of gore.
I slapped his fists away and slammed my forearm into his throat, pinned him to the wall. I planted my thigh between his legs so he couldn’t swing a limb at me.
‘Talk to me,’ I said.
He struggled against it for a while, his little eyes bulging like dumplings that had failed to rise in a pale stew, but he wasn’t going anywhere. I felt his straining muscles suddenly crumple.
‘Get off,’ he said.
I stepped away and he pulled back a chair and sat down. He dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a plastic bag. Inside was a large book, or what remained of it. It was partially charred.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
‘Visitors book,’ he said. ‘Cold Quay.’
I didn’t recognise it, but then the flames had been at it. My signature would be in there somewhere.
‘Quaint,’ I said. ‘What’s the story?’
He didn’t say anything. He took the book out and pushed it across the desk. The sour smell of carbon. The cover flaked a little under my fingers.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’s not evidence. Not really.’
I opened it up. ‘What am I looking for?’ but I knew full well.
He stood up and poured more coffee. He went to the window and looked down at Broadway. Sip and stare. He wasn’t saying anything else to me.
I flipped through the book. It was a hefty tome and had been initiated three years previously. First-page visitors included deliveries from Parcelforce, a visit from a local politician and a dentist. I flicked through the rest of the book. I found my name from the visit I’d made earlier in the year.
I turned pages. And here… of course. That date. That black anniversary. Sarah had come to Cold Quay prison.
I stared at her name and her signature. Sarah Sorrell. I felt a hit of happiness, despite the horror and confusion and hurt, that she’d kept my name.
‘Sarah came to see him,’ I said.
‘Yes, she did. It wasn’t the only time.’
Her name cropped up on the following pages. Weekly visits. ‘When did you find out about this?’
‘Not that long ago. You were still in hospital. When I came in to see you I overheard the duty sergeant talking to his shift replacement about a rumour that was knocking about. That Beauty was going to see the Beast.’
‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’
‘It’s none of my business. She’s an adult. She can do what she likes.’
‘It’s my business though, isn’t it? I’ve been searching for her for years, Ian. My life has been put on hold.’
‘I thought I was doing the right thing in protecting you from this.’
‘You couldn’t stop her?’
‘I told you, she can do what she likes.’
‘Ian… Jesus Christ.’ I threw the book on the floor. All the strength had collapsed out of me. I felt hollow, carved open like a Halloween pumpkin. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t… What am I supposed to do?’
‘Is this you asking me for advice?’
‘No. It was a rhetorical question.’
He put his shit coffee down and sat in his chair.
‘What a mess,’ he said.
‘What if he’s out there, looking for her? What if he’s found her? These visits… she could have inadvertently clued him up as to where she was living. And then the riot. He’s out and he’s got reciprocity on his mind.’
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said. ‘We don’t know where he is. We don’t know where she is. Everything is ifs and maybes.’
‘What about his other visitors?’
‘He had one or two, over the years. Nutters and freakshows in the main. A couple who were after mementos. One girl hitched down from Hull, fresh from college, wanted to marry him. We checked them all out. No joy.’
I sighed and the sound was the rattle of air through an old man. ‘What did she want from him? What could she possibly get out of visiting him?’
I stood up. I had to get moving. That I didn’t know where only made me more restless. I felt as though I’d been chasing ghosts, stains in the air, bruises in the memory. People who’d experienced some tangential involvement with Tann, like the way a moth will leave a tracing of its golden dust on the skin if it brushes you. This dust was coal black though, and it settled in the soul, a mark of Cain.
‘I should get back to them,’ I said.
‘Who?’
‘Romy and Lorraine. I picked them up from Heathrow last night. They worry they’re being followed.’
‘Let me take you,’ Mawker said. ‘I’ll arrange for a plainclothes to hang about.’
The thought of going back on public transport was pretty grim, grimmer than sitting next to Mawker and his collection of cheap food stains. But I thanked him, and I meant it, and we headed for the car pool. I was feeling pretty bad about strong-arming the guy, though I was sure I’d get over it pretty qui—
The plainclothes was a woman wearing Gucci, Kevlar and a Glock 26. She introduced herself as Officer Stephanie Bradley. She was twenty years in the force and looked tougher than a dog toy. East London, mainly, with the Territorial Support Group and, later, with various crime and intelligence squads before her current position in SCO19. We all said hello as we piled into an unmarked Volvo S60 in the basement car pool. The car was being driven by a guy called Creamer, po-faced and fifty-something in a black leather jacket.
When Creamer swung into York Way I told him to lay off the pedal.
‘Wait here,’ I said.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Bradley.
I led her towards the junction of Caledonia Street. There was a black Mercedes, a C-class coupé, positioned at the eastern end of it. Two figures inside.
‘I didn’t see them earlier,’ I said.
‘Black Merc,’ said Bradley. ‘Are you sure? There’s not a lot of them about.’
‘You’re right,’ I said, admiring her sarcasm. ‘Could be nothing. Black alloys though, see. Romy said the car had black wheels.’
‘Might be something, then. No harm in being ultra cautious.’
‘If they’ve been following me since Heathrow, why didn’t they follow me to Scotland Yard?’
‘Maybe they did.’
‘I took the Tube to St James’s,’ I said.
‘Maybe someone on foot.’
‘In which case we lost him coming back,’ I said. ‘Unless he followed us in a cab and that would mean he’d know which car we were in coming out of Plod Central… sorry.’
‘I’ve been called worse.’
I just wanted to go up to the Merc and tap on the window and ask them to stop playing silly buggers, let’s all be friends and chat about what was up. If only life was so simple. If only I was so reasonable.
‘How do you want to play it?’ she asked.
‘We can’t let on that we’ve spotted them,’ I said. ‘They’ll lose us or we’ll catch them. Either way, they’re not leading us to Tann. So how about I go in, tell Lorraine and Romy what’s what, then you can watch them and the entrance while I drive the twit twins around town for a few hours till they get bored. Mawker and his chauffeur can keep tabs on them from behind. At some point one or both of them is going to have to knock off. Maybe they’ll go back to the place where Tann is hiding out.’
‘I guess so,’ she said. ‘But if they’re here for you, what’s to stop them gunning you down in the street?’
‘Broad daylight. Busy. I reckon they’re waiting for their moment. They’ve seen what happens when they come at me blazing. Tann’s running out of goons. He needs to make it count soon otherwise it’s just him and me.’
‘You hope.’
‘There is an element of that, I agree.’
‘Everyone would feel a whole lot happier if I was with you.’
‘Sudden girlfriend? Since when? They’d notice something was whiffy and scarper. Anyway, you’re here for them,’ I said, tilting my head at Tokuzo’s apartment block. ‘Let Mawker know what I’m up to. Tell him to get another car out here in case they split up. He won’t like it, but then he doesn’t like anything. And then come up to the flat.’
‘I’ll speak with him, but I’m walking up that road ahead of you first. I’d rather I was the human shield than some innocent bystander, just in case they do think fuck it and start firing.’
‘Done.’
She moved off and I counted to ten and sauntered after her. She angled across the street and I followed, and then there was some more traffic turning in and a mother with a buggy and I was able to breathe easier. They were staying in the car. Unless they wanted tons of collateral and a shootout to the death, they were being careful. Which was nice to know. I could do with a break from legging it through construction sites.
I turned into the apartment block entrance and took the lift up to Lorraine’s floor. I let myself in and they were sitting together on the sofa watching TV. Tokuzo had packed a case that stood by the door in case they had to bug out fast.
‘Good thinking,’ I said. I told them about Bradley, that she was nice and good. Much more professional than me, at least. I didn’t hang about. I saw questions crystallising in their eyes and to talk was to instil doubt. The less they knew, the less they could fret. It wasn’t ideal, but we were beyond that. Ideal was long gone, if it had ever even been here.
I got back to ground level and sneaked a peek. Car still there. Figures still seated in the front. Too long now for them to be waiting for a mate who just wanted to nip to the cashpoint or buy a paper.
In the unpopulated basement I walked to the Saab, head down, thinking about Romy. For some reason, by the time I was at the door, I was fantasising about her in a green and yellow bikini, beckoning to me from a sun lounger, loosening the ties at the back, asking me to rub sun cream on her.
When this was over I was dragging her off on holiday with me. I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Tokuzo too, if she wanted to come and nobody thought it too weird. I went to grab the handle. And stopped. A spasm in the watch-it gland. Something. Not. Right.
I’d not believed a word of what I said to Bradley, about the people after me – the killers – and how they might not want to create a scene. I was trying to convince myself of something that they wouldn’t think twice about. Why was that? Maybe they were innocents after all. There were any number of reasons a car would hang about on the street. Maybe it had broken down and they were waiting for help. They were picking up their mum to take her to the seaside and she was still getting ready. Hell, they could be undercover cops themselves and we’d all laugh about this later over pints at the Two Chairmen.
I looked behind me, hoping to see a shadow duck down behind another car, but as I’d already observed, there was nobody around. The car park was empty. Something wrong with the Saab then. But it looked fine. I walked its length, running my hand over its lines. What was itching at me?
I peered through the windows into the back seat. I’d seen enough horror films to warn me about unwanted visitors lurking in the rear footwell, ready to pop up and have their wicked way before third gear.
I took a breath and walked back to the lift. When I got down here I was fine. By the time I got to the car I was edgy. Re-enactment.
Romy in a bikini. More curves than a pure maths textbook. Green and yellow fabric. I’d never seen her in a bikini before, let alone one that looked like a lemon and lime confection. A bit like that tiny piece of earth wire sleeve lying on the floor. Hello.
I picked it up and returned to the car.
I got to my knees and had a look underneath. I went at it from every angle. Couldn’t see anything attached. There was no obvious tampering going on there. I thought about the wheel arches and checked those, feeling softly with my fingertips. Passenger side front, nothing. Driver’s side front… fuck.
Something metallic that wasn’t meant to be there. Something that felt like magnets. Wires looping. I withdrew my hand and smelled my fingers. Oily, plasticky. I was put in mind of hot bitumen. But there was something sweet underneath it that reminded me of ripe plums. Whatever the fuck it was, it wasn’t supposed to be in the wheel arch of a thirty-year-old Saab.
I don’t know much about bombs, but I know they get very hot and very loud very quickly and tend to instantaneously shred anything meat-based within the immediate vicinity. I guessed the stooges in the car outside were waiting for some kind of evidence that their IED had me DOA. I guessed that the reason the bomb was on the driver’s side as opposed to, say, under the fuel tank, was because it was a focused device meant to detonate in a localised area, i.e. pretty much right under my arse, in order to ensure I wouldn’t survive the blast.
I called Mawker and told him my happy news. He swore for a while and I heard his muffled voice while he put the phone down and barked at Creamer, or someone on the other end of the police radio.
‘I say we go in hard on those clowns in the Merc,’ he said. ‘Get them in solitary and sweat some info.’
I thought about that. It might work. It might not. If it worked it might not be instantly; it might take hours that we didn’t have. And that was allowing for a peaceful capitulation. There was every chance an armed unit squealing on to the scene would be met with heavy resistance and possible injury to innocent bystanders. And at the end of it all I’d still be so far away from Sarah and so far away from Tann. I was in a perpetual state of running towards or running away. I was sick of running. I hated cross country at school and I didn’t see why I should still be doing it now, when I was a grown-up able to make decisions for myself.
‘Maybe I should die,’ I said.
‘Music to my ears,’ Mawker said, ‘but I don’t follow.’
‘Yes you do. Think about it. That bomb goes off, and we cart a body bag out to the ambulance. Let Laurel and Hardy think it’s me. Maybe they’ll go hurrying back to Master for their pat on the head.’
‘We can’t let the bomb go off,’ Mawker said. ‘People die when bombs go off. We have no idea how powerful it is.’
‘It can’t be that powerful otherwise they wouldn’t be sitting fifty feet away in a tin box twiddling their fingers. If they have anything to do with it. We still don’t know for sure.’
‘Then we channel the blast somehow. Angle it so it’s away from the street. Or time it so there’s no passersby, so the fucking ceiling doesn’t fall in.’
‘But we have to do it soon while the car park’s empty,’ I said.
I heard him on the blower, summoning bodies. ‘We’ll meet you in the basement,’ he said, and ended the call.
I was hopping about, unable to relax. I’d never been in close proximity to so many pounds of boom before, unless you counted the arse of Curryboy Caxton, who was an accident waiting to happen during my years at college. I tried to relax. Everything was in hand.
Presumably Mawker would get on to Bradley and have the concierge close off resident access to the car park and ensure the apartments above were cleared out. No vehicles to come in the front way unless IQs suddenly plummeted and helicopters swooped into the main drag carrying abseiling muppets wearing Bomb Squad T-shirts. Everything would arrive at the service bays to the rear.
The bomb couldn’t be on a timer because there was no knowing when I’d return to it. Ditto a remote trigger because they couldn’t see the car, unless they’d set up a camera or a microphone – and they hadn’t because they’d have pressed the button as soon as they heard me on the phone to Mawker. Which meant it was primed to explode when the door was opened or the engine was started or maybe when the accelerator was depressed or a certain speed was attained. If it was the latter, then this little ruse would fail. Maybe they were in the car in order to follow me, waiting for that magic number to be reached. Otherwise they might as well sit on a roof, or watch from across the street, anonymous among the dozens of pedestrians buzzing around St Pancras.
I wiped sweat away from my forehead and waited.
Mawker was the first to arrive. ‘You touched anything?’
‘I had a fondle, yes.’
‘And you’re sure it’s a bomb?’
‘On second thoughts it could have been an armadillo holding some marzipan.’
‘You touched it. Well that was fucking stupid. It could have gone off.’
He went on about various things, such as responsibility and keeping a cool head. I let him have his rant because he’s one of those people who needs to fill space with his Ian-ness, whether it be gob or gabardine. He wasn’t paying attention to me or what he was saying. His eyes were flicking all over the place as if he’d been given a thirty-second pass to the room of a hundred nude women.
Half a dozen EOD technicians in bomb suits filtered into the parking area. I was shepherded away with Mawker to the upper floor and told to wait while they were briefed with the plan. I watched various pieces of equipment disappearing through the doors including blasting initiators, protective blankets, bomb chambers, mirrors and detectors. A robot was wheeled in looking none too chuffed. A voice squawked on the radio that an ambulance was standing by. I saw a body bag stuffed to appear as if it was filled with a corpse dumped in the corridor, waiting to go on stage. A chill swept through me.
‘Let’s go,’ Mawker said.
We went to the ground floor and moved through service areas to the rear of the building where Creamer was waiting across the street in the Volvo.
‘What if there’s a third man watching out?’ I asked. ‘It would make sense.’
‘We have to assume not,’ said Mawker. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it now.’
I recced the drag nevertheless, as we hurried over to the car and got in. We drove around to the west end of Caledonia Street. The black Merc was still positioned at the other end. Patience of saints, or more likely ultra-thick yes-men.
Another ten minutes and Mawker got a call from the EOD guys that the bomb had been identified. It wasn’t a whopper. It wouldn’t bring the building down. But it would take my legs off given half a chance. They had taken the necessary steps to channel the blast so that it caused minimal internal damage without stifling its effect. They were waiting for Mawker’s signal to detonate.
‘We have to wait for the street to clear,’ Mawker said. ‘We’ve got civvies dawdling with cups of coffee and a cyclist at the moment. Give us a sec.’
Each time it looked as though we could patch through a green light, a car or a van turned into the street. We couldn’t create any kind of blockage or diversion because it was too risky. People stopped to look when that happened. Traffic started to build up elsewhere, which inevitably meant car horns. The moment a crowd gathered, the Merc men would notice and take off, no matter how thick they might be. Hence we’d evacuated people by dribs and drabs. They’d separate and scarper to one of any number of safe locations, well away from where we wanted them to go. So we sat on our hands, and we bit our tongues. And waited.
And then Mawker was on the radio, shouting ‘GO! GO! GO!’ but before he’d finished there was a great lick of orange fire that spurted from an underground grate, and a manhole cover came spinning out of the road like a coin toss by God, followed a split second later by the roar of the explosion.
‘Fucking hell!’ said Mawker, not unreasonably.
‘That was contained?’ I asked.
But he was on the radio, checking for casualties. Voices flooded back. Everyone fine. ‘Sounded worse than it was… That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?’
‘Keep an eye on that Merc,’ said Mawker to the driver. ‘As soon as he leaves you give it some welly.’
The figures remained in the car, and in position. That, at least, erased any lingering doubts that they might not have any involvement in the bombing. Sirens and alarms were going off all over the place. People were screaming and running away. People were standing around filming the fire on their mobile phones.
The ambulance tore past us and parked obliquely across both lanes.
‘The fuckholes,’ Mawker said. He was on the radio barking orders but the ambulance crew were in emergency mode. A fire engine turned up. Police cars blocked the road behind us. At the other end of the road I could just see enough of the Merc to know they had a clear getaway should they be satisfied that I’d died in the blast.
‘We have to move,’ I said to Creamer. ‘Get us out of this fucking jam.’
But he argued that if he took us on to the pavement we’d be right up the backside of the Merc and it might spook them.
‘Everyone’s fucking spooked,’ I said. ‘What does it matter? Do it!’
‘Hang on,’ Mawker said. ‘We have to wait for the body bag. Otherwise they might not see it.’
We waited for an interminable time, but I guess they had to play the fake right. If they wheeled ‘me’ out too soon, it would look wonky and they might smell a rat.
Ten minutes. Fifteen. Sirens descending like holy hell.
Movement. My stunt double came rattling out of the doors.
‘Shift it,’ said Mawker as the Merc’s exhaust trembled and breathed.
Creamer got the car on the pavement and we rounded the front of the ambulance just as another bunch of ambulance staff came rushing on to the pavement. Creamer stamped on the brakes. The Merc took off.
‘Jesus fuck,’ spat Mawker. ‘Could this day fill up with any more shit?’
It could, because Creamer stalled the car the moment the path became clear again.
‘You close that gap within twenty seconds,’ said Mawker, ‘or I’ll have you out of the force before you know it. I’ll make sure you have trouble getting a job cleaning cars, let alone driving the fuckers.’
Credit to him, Creamer sent the Volvo flying up the Caledonian Road.
‘There they are,’ said Mawker. ‘The grievous little cunts. Do not lose them.’
Creamer eased back as we came within five hundred feet of the Merc, three cars between us. ‘Shall I call a chopper in?’ Creamer asked. ‘Just in case?’
‘No,’ Mawker said. ‘No excuses for them to abort whatever it is they’re in the process of doing. You can atone for your sins, Mick.’
We followed them through Archway and Highgate towards Henlys Corner where the A1 meets the North Circular.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Mawker. ‘They’re going for the motorway.’
‘What did you expect?’ I said. ‘Tann in London? Hiding in plain sight? He’ll be in some rancid little panic nest in Luton or Toddington.’
I was saying it but it didn’t sound convincing to me. Part of me was kicking me in the pants telling me I knew exactly where he was, if I’d just cool my jets and apply cognitive reasoning. But I thought that about everything. My dumb brain gave me a kick in the pants to say Tokuzo could be tamed if I just gave her a back-rub and half a pound of Iberico ham.
‘Come on, Creamer!’ Mawker yelled. The Merc had scooted through the lights on red and we were stuck behind a conscientious driver with a green P sticker on the back of his Vauxhall. Mawker wound down the window. ‘Oi, P for prick! Shift it. Now!’ He sent out a few whoops on the police siren and the seas parted. By the time we got to Junction 1 the Merc was well gone.
‘How about I put you on a charge?’ Mawker blistered into Creamer’s face from a distance of around one millimetre.
‘How about I put you on your arse?’ Creamer said.
Frost filled the car. Creamer turned the car around at Staples Corner and we shifted back through the diesel-stained streets of north London in a fine mist of rain. The wipers on the windscreen flailed occasionally and I found myself lulled by their infrequent rhythm, trying to anticipate when they’d swipe again. I slumped back in the seat and watched the windscreen load with moisture and the eventual
beat
of the wipers while Mawker and Creamer stewed in their juices like an old married couple who have bickered with each other to the point of standstill and
beat
it became hypnotic, soporific, because the heat in the car had built from the tension and testosterone and I could go a five-minute nap, all things considered, despite
beat
losing the Merc and realising that my beautiful Saab was now nothing more than a ton of mangled memories. I closed my eyes and saw the shadow of the blade continue, left to right, then right to left. It reminded me of something and I was on a shingle beach and Becs was up ahead, hair whipping around her in the wind, her hand outstretched.
Come on, I’m fucking freezing.
The car’s totalled.
Probably for the best. You’ll have to make it up to Jimmy Two.
Shit. It was more his car than mine, really. He spent more time with it.
At the end of the day, it’s just a tin box that takes you places. Slowly.
What are we doing here?
You tell me. This is your fantasy.
What if it was yours?
Bit Ed Al Poe, isn’t it? Bit Twilight Zone?
My whole life is a bit Twilight Zone. How could it not be, with Mawker in it? I keep expecting his head to split open at any moment and some tentacled, many-mouthed thing to come slithering out.
You should go a bit easier on him.
See, this must be your fantasy. I wouldn’t think that.
I think you’ll end up together. Sitting in bed reading each other verses of erotic poetry.
Enough… We came here, didn’t we, early on?
Your idea of a romantic day out.
Dungeness.
The tide was some distance off, a seam of pale grey that stitched the lead of the sky to the dun of the beach. Fishing boats trapped on the shingle faced the sea, their bows raised as if impatient to return. Collapsed light. The air was thick. It seemed to coat the beach in something you could tease back from the pebbles. We had photographs of all of this, in an album gathering dust and cat hairs back home, under the bed. And some things I couldn’t collect. Explosions of static from the boats’ radios. Her footsteps crunching through the shingle.
I remember the sea was affecting the light in some subtle way I had not recognised before, but my camera couldn’t capture it. It erased an area above the horizon, a band of vague ochre that was perhaps full of rain, that shivered and crawled as if it might contain text, or the barest outline of it, some code to unpick. An explanation.
The beach was slowly burying its secrets. Great swathes of steel cable, an anchor that had lost its shape through the accretion of oxidant, cogs so large they might have something to do with the Earth’s movement. All of it was slowly sinking into the endless shingle.
Us too if we don’t keep moving.
Black flags whipping on the boats. They seemed too blasted by salt and wind to be up to the task of setting sail. White flecks on wave crests. It was getting rough out there. Small fishing boats tipped and waggled on the surf, bright and tiny against the huge expanses of blue-green pressing in all around them.
Rotting fish-heads and surgical gloves, thin, mateless affairs flapping in the stones like translucent sea-creatures marooned by the tide. You notice how the shingle creeps over the toes of your boots; always the beach was in the process of sucking under, of burying.
I kissed you and I could taste salt on your mouth.
It’s this way.
The strange, stunted vegetation like hunks of dried sponge or stained blotting paper trapped between the stones: sea campion, Babington’s orache. Weatherboard cottages. A weird sizzle in the air, maybe from the power station or perhaps it was the taut lines of the night fishermen, buzzing with tension as lugworm and razor clam were cast into the creaming surf.
She moved ahead rising above another dune of pebbles. She waited for me, pointing. The moon was behind her. I couldn’t see her face. And then I could. And then I couldn’t. She was pointing at the lighthouse. When I got to her, she was still swaddled in dark but I could see the beam of the lighthouse coming again. Her voice, full of liquid: Tōdai moto kurashi. I didn’t want to see her face this time. Because I knew it wouldn’t be her standing next to me. I knew exactly who would be here in her stead.
* * *
I flew up out of that, swearing, sweating in the airless confines of the Volvo. Mawker and Creamer were gone. We were parked in a layby. I could see them up ahead standing in front of a caravan with a sign inviting motorists to try their breakfast bap’s, tea’s and cofee’s. Mawker no doubt trying to wangle a free cuppa.
They came back and Mawker apologised, said he hadn’t got me anything because I was sleepy bye-byes.
I waited until they stopped giggling about that, and then I said: ‘I know where he is.’