Dust and Desire Read online

  When I got back to the flat, I poured myself a drink and turned on the radio. I don’t have a TV. Get away? No, really. Get away? No, really. I prefer Late Junction on Radio 3. They have some weird shit on there – warbling Finns and people who pluck and bow the inside of grand pianos – but it helps me to relax.

  Mengele deigned to lift his head from his favourite bit of rug and blink at me with his amber eyes. Mengele is a silver tabby Maine Coon cat, and he is a big bastard, a stone and a half. I swear he looks at me sometimes as if to say: I could take you… I know I could take you. I feed him tuna on Saturdays and some dry stuff called Fishbitz throughout the week. Dry stuff is better for his teeth and his pisser, apparently. In return he dumps half his body weight into his litter tray every night, and uses my legs as a scratching post. Otherwise he sleeps and that’s it. That’s cats for you, I suppose.

  I opened the back door and stepped out on to the balcony. I’m on the top floor, so it’s an all-right view. I can see the roof of the Woolworths building on Marylebone Road, and the clock tower at the Landmark Hotel. If I crane my neck to look past the chimney pots on Seymour Place, I can see the top of the BT Tower. Directly opposite me is the back of the Stanley Arms. Sometimes I can see a young girl who sits in a room and plays guitar. Or a plump, middle-aged woman who cleans like she’s sold her soul to the Devil in order to be allowed to do so. Sometimes I watch the guy who does the lunches preparing sandwiches and jacket potatoes and shepherd’s pie. I don’t eat at the Stanley Arms.

  I drank my vodka and thought about Barry Liptrott. I didn’t like the way he had tracked me down like that. I must be getting old. Getting careless. Back when I brought Liptrott down for selling knives to kids involved in some nasty school wars, I was on top of my game. If he could nose me out – and Liptrott was not a player; in fact he wasn’t even worth a place on the bench – then presumably the more dangerous people in this sordid city could do the same. That wasn’t good. I wasn’t up to it. I took another gulp of Grey Goose, and that helped a bit. Poured some more: easy way out. This was what was slowing me down, taking away my edge. I had never been much of a drinker, previously, and I prided myself on that. I’d loudly order a glass of orange juice when everyone else was getting the pints in. But that was before a lot of stuff happened, stuff that I found I didn’t like remembering too clearly. Booze is instant fog for the brain. Booze is great in that way. Booze is just great.

  Christ, why did he have to use that word: desperate. I’m a sucker for desperate people. Perhaps because I’m one myself. In helping them, perhaps I’m hoping that I might find the key to how I can help myself.

  When it grew too cold to stand outside, I came indoors and took off my jacket. Quick thumbnail now of the flat, and it won’t take long. One small bedroom with a sofa-bed permanently extended. One bathroom. One kitchen that is visited occasionally by a family of oriental cockroaches. A living room. No pictures on the walls. Bare floorboards. A couple of shelves with a couple of books. My trusty old radio. Mengele’s rug. Mengele. A yucca. The view. A vodka bottle. Me.

  * * *

  I woke up smartish, found it was still dark. The Grey Goose had stripped the insides of my mouth away; it felt raw, tender. The bottle was still in my lap. I stuck it back in the freezer and turned off the radio. Now I could hear what had disturbed me: voices were steadily rising from next-door west. I hardly ever hear anything from next-door east, and I don’t know if that’s worse, but the guy there lives on his own so what can you expect? Westside, when they aren’t screaming at each other, they’re fucking each other senseless – either that or they’re playing their BBC wildlife videos at full whack; I can’t tell the difference. Now it sounded as though they were in fighting mode. From her – pure Estuary English – I heard: ‘…I’ve had to put up with free facking years of this…’ His voice was lyrical Highlands, impossible to goad, and he was going: ‘If you’d just sit down and let me explain…’

  At midnight. Christ. I took a shower and put on a fresh shirt. I chucked a handful of Fishbitz into Mengele’s dish and grabbed the car keys. Then I left them to it.

  * * *

  It’s a Saab V4, since you’re wondering. Maroon. K reg. I bought it in 1985 for three hundred and fifty pounds and it’s been in constant service ever since. It’s seen some action, this car. It’s been driven to places I will never take it again. It’s been pushed more than a car of this age and class ought ever to experience. But there have been some good times, too. A lot of them on that back seat. It’s been to Dungeness and Durness, known fresh air and foul, but it’s never let me down. The steering wheel knows my hands so well, I’m convinced it’s altered its shape over the years to accommodate them more comfortably.

  I started her up and took her along Crawford Street, first left into Seymour Place and then left again up on to the Westway. I love driving at night. Obviously, the traffic’s pretty much non-existent at that hour, but that’s not the main appeal. London, for me, comes alive at night, seeming to breathe and seethe with possibilities. It flexes its muscles, this city, when everybody is asleep, perhaps working out the cramp from the previous day, with so much filth clogged in its airways, so many dirty feet shuffling along its streets. Regenerating itself, sloughing off its outer skins, the dark is this city’s friend. They feed off each other, London and the night. As do the few who emerge at this hour, who know how to read its secrets.

  I drove the car hard until I reached the White City turn-off. Then I eased her down to forty and cruised to the Holland Park roundabout. A minute later and I was in Shepherd’s Bush. I parked the car on Lime Grove, outside the house I used to live in – we used to live in – when everything was all right. Do you remember? I wondered. Do you think about this place, Rebecca, from time to time? But, of course, she didn’t. The house was dead, just like her. Venetian blinds kept whatever now went on inside there a secret from me. We had built a den for Sarah in the cellar, painted its walls in bright colours, to be her own little place. The nicks on the wooden supports would still be down there, ticking off the inches as she grew taller. Sarah, giggling, as I tried to hold her still, while Rebecca reached up with a penknife.

  I sat in the car looking up at the windows while my breath formed some more ghosts to keep me company. Then I gunned the engine and eased out into Goldhawk Road. By the time I got back to my flat, there was silence from the flat next-door. I had another drink, took another shower, and got my head down. Kip was what I needed: a long, hard, X-rated session of hot kip.

  Yeah, right.

  2

  I don’t remember the last time I had an unbroken night’s sleep. Sometimes I can blame it on Mr and Mrs Decibel next door; sometimes on Mengele, who sings in the night, or claws at the closed windows (I don’t let him out – he cost me two hundred and fifty quid for Christ’s sake, far too much money to just let him end up as cat jam on the road), or else likes to sand-dance in his litter tray. Mostly I have to blame myself: drinking too much, thinking too much. Once I grasp the tail of a thought that’s slinking out of view, I can’t let go. It’s like a crocodile; if I let go, it will turn around and bite my hands off. So I mull stuff over until it starts getting light, and then it’s too light to sleep and I get up, not having resolved anything, really. I’ve resolved to murder the cat a few times, but how could I when he looks at me like that? Should have got myself a fucking lizard instead.

  She needs to see you, Joel. Tonight. She’s desperate.

  Liptrott told me she’d be in Old Compton Street, in one of the all-night coffee bars. He said she’d be there for as long as it took. If I showed, I showed: if not, big coffee bill. I walked it, needing the spank of cold night air to clear my head, and wondered, not for the first time, about how many desperate people there were out there. It almost made me want to stick my name in the Yellow Pages and have done with it, come over as a proper outfit instead of a cheapo prick with a printer, on a par with those kids selling lemonade from their front gates at twenty pence a pop. But I like my
privacy. Jesus, I love my privacy. I love it so much I want to marry it and provide it with children. The stuff that turned up in my PO Box told me I was doing the right thing.

  She was the only she in the place, and she was sitting by the window, watching everyone who walked past the entrance. When she saw me come in, her face was so expectant it might have given birth to quins. She asked me if I wanted coffee and I said no, I wanted sleep.

  ‘There’s no need to be snippy,’ she said. ‘You didn’t have to come.’

  ‘I came because I don’t want Barry Liptrott staining my doorstep any more.’

  ‘Barry’s all right.’

  ‘Define “All right”. He’s a fucking man-frightener of the first order.’

  ‘He’s all right. He’s okay.’

  ‘He’s not when he’s skulking round your bins at midnight.’

  ‘Can we talk now?’

  ‘How do you know Lippy?’

  She was wearing a hooped rugby top with the collars turned up, a black tulle skirt, leather leggings and biker boots. I can only surmise that she’d got dressed in the dark. Her make-up was sparse, which was good, as she didn’t need much with such clear skin. The mascara emphasised her blue eyes, which were her best feature. She hardly blinked. In her right hand she clasped a clutch bag. Or clutched a clasp bag. Whatever they’re called. No handles, no straps. You know, helpful things that can carry maybe a single spring onion, or three carefully folded tissues. In her left hand she held a mobile phone, which she put down whenever she took a sip of her drink. When the sip was finished, her hand was back on the phone.

  ‘I’m a freelance journalist,’ she explained. ‘I got talking to him one time when he was doing some work round at my flats, and I asked if he’d mind being included in a piece I wanted to write on small-time crooks. We got on.’

  ‘Really? Either he’s been to charm school recently or your judgment of people is seriously knackered.’

  She sighed theatrically. ‘Look… I need to talk to you.’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe I’ll have some coffee now, after all. Actually, would you mind if we went somewhere else? I need a grown-up drink.’

  The pubs were shut, of course, so I took her to an unlicensed bar off Cambridge Circus. A black guy on the door took a ten-pound entry fee off me and shepherded us inside. A girl behind a plank of wood resting on two stacks of telephone books charged me a hilarious amount for a can of Tennant’s that she wrested from a carton bound in shrink-wrapped plastic. It was warm but when has England ever done cold? Ice bucket? Ice, fuck it, more like.

  A couple of staggeringly pissed guys were seated on empty kegs at the back of the room, having an argument that consisted of them swapping increasingly voluble ‘No’s. There was nowhere else to sit, but she was into her story by then. She wanted me to find her missing brother. Missing? Great. My fillings reacted as if I’d just chewed on a bit of tin foil, but I got a grip on myself. After all, a job was a job. In my line, all jobs are shitty. It doesn’t matter what amount of shit is involved; the fact is that somebody else’s shit is just the same as any shit of your own, and you come out of it at the end smelling exactly the same.

  My alcohol levels were edging towards the red zone, and I was super-tired, but I was on top of it enough to pull on her reins when she came out with a little piece of nonsense.

  ‘Just rewind a little bit, sorry, what’s your name again?’

  ‘Geenan. Kara Geenan.’

  ‘Okay, Kara, just rewind that segment and turn the volume up a little.’

  ‘I said, he seemed okay when I dropped him off at home last night.’

  ‘Funny, it still sounds like you said he seemed okay when you dropped him off at home last night.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So you saw him last night?’ She was okay-looking, this Kara Geenan, I had decided: nothing to write home about but maybe worth a postcard to a mate. Big blue eyes. Really, quite magnificent eyes that bored into you, sucked you in, chewed you up and spat you out. Caramel hair cut short, lots of shape, lots of body to it, like hair out of an advert. The rest of her was as plain as the packaging on an economy-price bag of plain flour. What elevated her from the ordinary, of course, was the fact that she was crazier than a purse full of whelks. And did I mention her eyes? Bloody good eyes. They didn’t stop doing what they were programmed to do.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, showing me now how exasperation ought to be done.

  ‘So how do you know he’s missing?’

  ‘I called him this morning and he wasn’t there.’

  ‘Shit,’ I said, ‘that’s serious. Maybe you should get a stakeout at his place of work. Jesus, what if… Oh God, if he went to the newsagent’s, then that’s it, he’s toast.’

  ‘Are you trying to be sarcastic?’

  ‘No. I am being sarcastic.’

  ‘Barry was right. You are a cunt.’

  ‘Yep, I’m with Barry on that one, too.’

  ‘Look, I know my brother. He’s missing. You have to believe me.’

  I finished my beer, and took out a second mortgage while I ordered another. ‘Go home. Check out the places you’d usually find him. The pub. The footy. Pat yourself on the back when you track him down after one nanosecond.’

  ‘I can’t. I don’t like the places he goes to.’

  ‘Kara, this is madness. He is not missing.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘Look, everyone goes missing at some point in their lives. You don’t even have to go anywhere to go missing. Me? I don’t know where the fuck I am half the time.’

  ‘He’s in danger, I know it.’

  ‘Then explain it to the police.’

  ‘I can’t go to the police.’

  She was scared rigid of cop shops. Apparently a little matter of ripping off a plod who got frisky with her one night. Drugged him with some Rohypnol and pocketed his fat wallet. She was convinced she was on their shit lists, public enemy number one. I checked that my zipper was done up tight.

  She was looking at the floor by now. Her hands wormed across the mouth of her clench bag. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘prove to me I’m only being hysterical. You’ll get paid for it. What risk is it to you?

  ‘Name.’

  ‘Jason Phythian.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘He’s eighteen.’

  ‘Eighteen?’

  ‘Please.’

  I looked at her. I wanted her to say please again.

  ‘Please,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay, I’ll find him.’

  She looked up, her face like something you might see on Christmas Day. I told her my daily rate and, credit to her, her eyebrows stayed put.

  I finished my beer and was about to stand up, when she put on a few extras: a smile, a huskier voice, and her hand, on my thigh. She suggested we go back to her place. It wasn’t so much a mood swing as a mood tsunami. ‘I’ve got a bottle of wine that needs drinking. Filthy night like this, why not?’

  I said, ‘You’re nice-looking, and ordinarily I’d be up for it, but I don’t fuck my clients, Kara.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’m lonely and scared. I need some animal comfort. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I don’t do comfort.’

  ‘You’re a hard bastard.’

  ‘I need to be. And you’ll thank me for it, before long.’

  ‘Just a drink, then?’

  ‘I’ve just had a drink. I’m tired now. I want to go home.’

  ‘I’ll come too, then.’ Another glimpse of that smile: that same smile that suffered a heart-attack and keeled over before it reached her eyes.

  Jesus Christ, I thought. I said: ‘No.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ she asked.

  Again, I said: ‘No.’ A little more forceful now.

  ‘Okay, okay. You don’t know what you’re missing, though.’

  ‘I’m missing a whole barrow load of strife, Kara,’ I said. ‘You’re very sweet, but I’m not interes
ted.’

  ‘All right,’ she snapped, and her eyes lit up as if they’d been splashed with petrol. I backed off and shut my mouth.

  She opened her clamp bag and pulled out a purse that was only slightly smaller. She handed over the first day’s wad, and promised me a week’s pay in advance once she could get to the bank the coming morning.

  ‘Tell me, what’s his weakness?’ I asked, cautiously.

  ‘His what?’ Her temper had abated, it seemed, the spunk gone from her eyes.

  ‘His weakness, what is it? Women? Men? Drugs? The horses? Macramé?’

  ‘Women? That’s not your weakness, is it?’ she replied.

  ‘We’re not talking about me.’

  ‘He likes a drink, I suppose,’ she said flatly, back to her straightforward, businesslike self. I’d blown my chance, so now it was polite talk with Ice-woman.

  I nodded. ‘We all like a drink. Do you know how many pubs there are in this city?’

  We stood on the street corner looking dumbly at each other. ‘So tell me where he lives,’ I said. ‘Tell me about these places he goes to that you don’t like.’

  I went home. What risk is it to you? I thought.

  What risk? Plenty. Plenty fucking risk.

  3

  I was going to call Kara in the morning but I find that in order to do such things you have to get up before noon. I got up around 4 p.m. I then called her but there was no reply. I don’t know what I intended to say, probably something along the lines of an apology for the way things had gone the previous night but, sod it, what did I really care about people’s opinions of me? I thought about having a shower but realised I’d have to get out of bed first, and I really didn’t want to do that yet. The flat was cold and my head was treacly with vodka and beer. I lay there wishing I smoked, and wishing that Mengele could fix his own fucking breakfast. He was at the end of the bed, stabbing at my toes with his claws and trilling like some magical bird.