Sonata of the Dead Read online

  ‘Is that like word association football?’

  ‘No. Not word association. Nothing so structured. This is completely abstract, but quite punishingly regimented. So we write for five minutes using a medium we’re unused to in order to keep it fresh, to take the brain unawares. So I might bring in a piece of wallpaper and write on it with a crayon. Or a piece of black paper and a silver outliner. No laptops. You need that direct contact between the paper and your brain. It must be physical. But it must be unconventional too. A shock to the system.’

  He was hunched forward now, bristling with enthusiasm. ‘No taking your pen off the page. No punctuation. No dotting of i or crossing of t. At the end of the line, a delicious scratch as you drag your pen back to the start of the next.’

  ‘Sounds demanding.’

  ‘If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.’

  ‘I can assure you, that’s not the case.’

  ‘It’s pretty tough at the start, but once you get into it, it can be quite therapeutic. You can lose yourself. I once wrote for an hour and I meant only for it to be a five-minute warm-up. And occasionally, if you can read back what you’ve written, you might find something, maybe one word, maybe a phrase or a sequence, that sparks an idea, and zoom! You’re off.’

  ‘Seems like a lot of work for little reward.’

  He considered this for a while. Time seemed to have slowed down. He was one of those people who make glue of all that’s around them. His slow, rich voice was part of it. The retarded blink of his eyes, which I realised with a jolt didn’t blink all that often. Outside, the traffic on Bloomsbury Street was muted and far away; its aggressive murmur couldn’t find its way in here.

  ‘I suppose you’ve summed up writing,’ he said. ‘Perhaps all art. But you tap away at the rock regardless, hoping to hit that slim seam of gold.’

  I was attracted less and less by this job but who was the clown? My own career was hardly what you’d call stellar or interesting. If writing was a fool’s job then I was scrabbling around underneath it in the great shit jobs pyramid.

  ‘Anything else you get up to?’ I asked.

  ‘There are loads of exercises. But all the best ones, I think, involve cutting. Writing is mainly all about editing, really. Kill your darlings, and all that.’

  Yeah, I thought. Kill your darlings stone cold dead.

  A woman poked her head around the frame of the door. She wore glasses with circular lenses. I couldn’t see her eyes through them for the windows’ reflection. Her short hair was teased out in little flicks around her face as if it had been the origin of some mild explosion.

  ‘Hello, Lou,’ she said. ‘Are we on?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘We were just finishing up here… that’s right, isn’t it? Or was there something else?’

  ‘No, I’m done,’ I said. ‘Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.’

  He walked me to the door. The woman stood back, scrutinising me with naked suspicion. ‘What’s all this in aid of anyway? Are you looking to start a group of your own?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m thinking of joining one,’ I said.

  I walked back to the main entrance. I was no writer, but I guessed that was kind of the point of joining a writers’ group: to improve. I read a lot; I was halfway towards being moderately intelligent – how hard could it be?

  All of which was academic if I couldn’t find my way into the Accelerants. Maybe they’d be more receptive to me if I had a reference, from a real, honest-to-God published scribe. I hurried back to Ferguson’s office. The door was open but he’d gone. His meeting had apparently ended, or was taking place elsewhere. But that open door suggested he would be back soon.

  ‘Hello?’ I called out. But this time there was no chameleon against the upholstery. I sat in his chair and waited. I thought, Sod it, just make something up. It doesn’t matter. There was a bulging bookshelf in the room, adjacent to a desk cluttered with the paraphernalia of the habitually disorganised: coffee cups bubbling with mould, towers of paper, Post-it notes petalling a small PC monitor. I thought it couldn’t harm just to check it in case there were any copies of Ferguson’s novels up there. It would help if I could back up my pretence with some bona fide titles at least.

  Here: ageing books with rubbed spines bearing his name. I pulled them out and checked the black-and-white author photograph on the back cover. His hair was dark, long, swept around his shoulders. He was resting his chin on the back of his hand, as all authors seem to need to do when the camera comes out. He wore the faint smile of someone who was looking forward to many years of good reviews and improving contracts and no idea that it would be over within the time it took to write a couple more novels. I thought about that for a while. Was it more painful to have tasted success, to have experienced the heady process of publication, than for it to be a tantalisingly unattainable dream, as it was for so many?

  I admired the titles. Suspense Motif. Ghost Notes. Zeloso. A brief scan of the various blurbs taught me they were all part of the same series featuring his pet detective, a concert pianist called Gala Blau. It looked like a modern-day Modesty Blaise reworking, with faintly ridiculous plots and cartoon characters with Flemingesque names: the villain in the first book, for example, was called Sebastian Shrike.

  I checked the dedication pages and acknowledgments.

  For Katrin – my love, my love…

  For Romy, Daddy’s sweetheart for ever…

  ‘A page-turner’, gasped the Daily Express. ‘Breathless, the year’s best thriller’, drooled the Sunday Times. ‘Watch your back, Mr Deighton’, warned the Daily Mail.

  ‘Professor Ferguson?’

  ‘Yes?’ I don’t know why I said it. Most likely it was because he was on my mind and I’m a bolshie bugger who likes putting himself in tricky situations and—

  Sorry. That’s a bunch of crap and you know it. You know exactly why I said yes. I mean, look at her…

  She was tall and lean, with a long neck and long, straight black hair, the colour of India ink. Her mouth was a broad cherry sweep. Big eyes, such a dark brown you couldn’t discern the pupil. She wore a knitted stone-coloured dress and knee-length black boots. She looked like Anne Hathaway, minus the flaws.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I was expecting someone—’

  ‘Older?’ I suggested, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I get that a lot.’

  ‘I’m here,’ she said, spreading her hands to show just how here she was. She had small hands, slender fingers, no wedding band, no engagement rock. ‘A little early, but better than being late.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Shall we get down to it?’

  ‘Lead on. I’m starving.’

  Right. Lunch. I could do that. I walked out of the office, retracing my steps to the exit, Ferguson’s books padding out my jacket. I made a mental note to phone him and apologise but I doubted he’d mind if it meant someone showing an interest in his work. Outside I bit the bullet and headed towards the Museum Tavern, one of Ferguson’s favourite watering holes.

  ‘Professor? The bistro is this way.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Force of habit. My, uh, club is in that direction.’

  Bistro. Who went to a bistro on a Monday? If it was the one I was thinking of on Montague Street, then you were looking at a bill of at least fifty pounds and that was before you took a sip of wine.

  She slid an arm through mine. I smelled the faint trace of her warm skin come at me from beneath that thick woollen barrier. Would she do that to a complete stranger? I thought perhaps she might. I’d heard enough of her voice to discern a faint accent – maybe French – to suggest a warmth and a boldness with strangers that doesn’t seem to be shared by us diffident islanders.

  ‘Was there anything in particular you wanted to see me about?’ I asked, wondering if that warmth would go south should I come clean about my imposture.

  ‘You asked me,’ she said, and gave me a conspiratorial wink.

  ‘How ar
e things in your department?’ I asked. The game was up. I could only hope she was stringing me along because she fancied lunching with me anyway.

  ‘All good,’ she said, ‘considering I’ve been in that department for a grand total of—’ she consulted her bare wrist, ‘—three and a half hours.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, thinking, first day. Maybe she didn’t know what the professor looked like after all. ‘I knew that. Just wondered how you’re settling in.’

  A slight squeeze of my arm. ‘I’m settling in just fine,’ she said. ‘Thank you for asking.’

  The midday light was brittle, as if the fledgling spring days were having trouble leaving winter behind. Exhaust vapours lingered in the street. I watched a man carrying shrink-wrapped boxes from a van to a printer’s shop door. He wore gloves of such an acid red it looked as if he had scalded himself.

  We arrived at the bistro and I held the door open for her. Inside we were greeted by a tall, immaculate waiter who showed us to a table by the window.

  ‘Could we perhaps take a table towards the back?’ I asked. I blamed the cold, but really, I didn’t want to risk being recognised by some off-duty plod, or any of the lowlifes I tended to find stealing oxygen from my personal space. I’d had a stomach full of innocent people suffering for the crime of knowing me, and being my friend.

  I ordered a bottle of Sancerre and asked for bread and olives. Suddenly I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten properly all weekend.

  ‘It’s good that we should have a little get-together like this,’ I said. ‘What with work and my involvement with the writers’ group, I get precious little time for any kind of relaxation. Any kind of “me” time. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘I might, if I knew who you were,’ she said, smearing a pat of cold butter on to her rustically sliced multi-seed snob cob.

  ‘Ah,’ I said again.

  ‘Mm,’ she said, and widened her eyes.

  ‘When did you see through my cunning ruse?’ I asked.

  At that moment, Louis Ferguson came through the door. The woman stood up. ‘Daddy!’ she called out.

  Right, I thought. Immediately.

  Ferguson seemed perplexed to see me. His confusion turned to glee when his daughter filled him in on my stupidity. I told him I wanted to just borrow some books and I seemed incapable of acting like a normal human being and I was ever so sorry, no damage done, lunch is on me and then—

  Tears hit me. Hard as an April squall. I felt myself bow under the weight of them. I felt Ferguson’s hand on my shoulder, lighter than air. There was only the mass of this sudden misery, sucking me down under the weight of its own gravitational force.

  I calmed down after a while. There was a brandy on the table in front of me though I had not ordered it. Possibly it was meant for Ferguson. I downed it anyway.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know your name,’ I said.

  ‘That’s nothing to get upset about,’ she said.

  I laughed. I liked that. I liked her.

  ‘It’s Romy, Romy Toussaint,’ she said. She gave me her business card. I gave her one of mine.

  ‘Snap,’ she said, perusing the text. ‘Private investigations? How exciting.’

  ‘Toussaint?’

  ‘It’s my mother’s maiden name. I think it’s a better fit than Ferguson.’

  ‘Ferguson is a strong name,’ said the professor, but there was a twinkle in his eye. They’d already had this argument long ago, you could tell.

  ‘Romy. Like in the book,’ I said.

  She seemed confused.

  ‘For Romy. Daddy’s sweetheart for ever.’

  ‘Ah yes. It doesn’t take much to make you cry, does it?’

  ‘That wasn’t it,’ I said. ‘Although yes, I suppose it was, in a way. I have a daughter I haven’t seen in a while and watching you and your father together…’

  ‘It’s a scene you’ve yet to have,’ she said, her fingers fluttering near her mouth in dismay. ‘Unless you’re lying to me again and it’s really because your pants are too tight.’

  I shook my head. ‘I won’t lie to you again,’ I said.

  Ferguson leaned towards me. ‘I took the liberty of hailing you a taxi,’ he said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

  I thanked him and apologised again and said goodbye. I got in the cab and thought for a moment. I said to the driver: ‘New Scotland Yard.’

  7

  I hung around outside, drinking overpriced coffee-flavoured piss. This was one of the downsides of no longer being on the inside. Half my time was spent skulking in the shadows waiting for someone, or for something to happen. The coffee seemed to be lasting longer than it ought but that was because the bucketing rain kept topping it up. My gaze darted around the windows where I knew Mawker had his office. If I was caught out here it would only give him license to tongue-lash me, the by-the-numbers prick.

  A flash of colour on Broadway: Phil Clarke, aka The Kingfisher, cut across to where I was moping outside St Ermin’s Hotel on Caxton Street, keeping the lion statues company. As I said, the pathologist had a bit of a thing for braces. I say ‘bit of a thing’ but it was more like an obsession. Or maybe even a fetish. I could well believe he’d wear them along with a leather thong and nothing else when he was back home in South Ken. These were emerald green, shining like wet electricity, beneath a two-thousand-pound Tom Ford suit.

  ‘What are you doing standing in the rain?’ he bellowed. He gripped my elbow and led me into the hotel foyer. ‘It’s drink o’clock. And I don’t mean that Styrofoam nightmare of yours. Lose the fucker. That’s an order.’

  He guided me into the bar, darkly lit with open fires and walls papered crimson. We sat opposite each other on expansive sofas. The cushions were patterned with little elephants.

  ‘Thanks for agreeing to meet me,’ I told him.

  ‘Pleasure’s all mine,’ he said absently, trying to catch the barman’s eye.

  He ordered cocktails for the both of us – whisky-based, unfortunately – and he tucked into his lustily while I held mine at arm’s length and eyed it suspiciously.

  ‘What’s this again?’ I asked.

  ‘Manhattan,’ he said. ‘Best cocktail there is.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said, and slid it over to him. ‘Too complex for me,’ I explained. ‘Too… brown.’

  ‘Racist,’ he spat, and gladly received it.

  Good barman alert: he’d spotted this drinks awkwardness and stepped over to ask if I’d prefer something else.

  ‘I’ll have a Vesper Martini,’ I said.

  ‘Christ,’ said Clarke. ‘No matter how much you try, the call won’t come.’

  ‘What call? I’d accept any at the moment, to get away from you, the mood you’re in.’

  ‘Barbara Broccoli. Drink your fanboy drink. Bloody amateur.’

  I looked at Clarke’s hands while he drank. They were small and neat and very pink, like boiled crab claws peeled back to the meat. I wondered if he smelled of anything under that bourbon – of his latex gloves, perhaps, or the juices that invariably coated them.

  ‘Shaken?’ the barman asked.

  ‘Stirred, actually,’ I said, pointedly.

  ‘Let’s get to it then, Double-O Seven,’ he said. ‘I’m having one more of these then I’m catching a cab home for lamb chops and a blow job.’

  ‘You know why I’m bugging you,’ I said. ‘Martin Gower. Anything you can tell me about him?’

  ‘Well, should I tell you anything, of course,’ he said, spearing olives on a plastic skewer, ‘upstairs would carpet me so fast I’d have rug burns bone deep.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. The same old game. The ego massage. The long, slow waltz towards a back-scratch promise. We did all that, but the theatre wasn’t over. He flourished a napkin and wiped his mouth with it, his eyes never leaving mine. He had slightly protuberant eyes that made him look perpetually surprised. He folded the napkin and placed it on the table. One more sip of his cou
gh syrup cocktail and:

  ‘Calling card. That’s what you’re after, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Just anything out of the ordinary. You know, anything exotic, anything that might give me some direction.’

  ‘Guy gets carved like a Sunday roast and you want exotic.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Why dismantle someone like that? It takes time. It takes effort. Was it done to disguise something? Conceal something? Or is the butchery its own message? A clue in itself?’

  ‘A come on? You’re assuming this guy wants to be caught?’

  ‘Not at all. But it crosses your mind from time to time.’

  ‘There’s been nothing like this. This is a first. It won’t be the last.’

  ‘No,’ I said, feeling a shudder work its way through my legs. ‘I know that.’

  I wondered if the business of the suits and the pricey drinks and the bluster and blague were part of an act. I thought Clarke one of those people who had to inhabit a character. If he’d been a reporter he’d have met me in a boozer wearing a raincoat. Maybe he was lonely. He never volunteered anything about his private life, beyond the broadest of brush strokes. Neither did I, and I didn’t because I didn’t want people to know how utterly desolate my life was. My grim little cycle of vodka and cat food and photographs of ghosts. Maybe lamb chops and a blow job was code for Pot Noodle and a wank. Maybe he was really, really good at yoga.

  ‘It’s interesting what you said about disguise. Concealment.’

  I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘Why?’

  ‘I found a puncture wound. Very small. Back of the neck.’

  I had a vision of a body on a meat hook, and gave voice to it.

  ‘No,’ Clarke said. ‘Nothing like that. This is smaller. Clean too. A meat hook would show tearing where the weight of the body has worked against it.’

  ‘Fatal wound?’ I suggested.

  ‘Again, no. This was designed to incapacitate. Not to kill.’

  ‘Incapacitate? How?’

  ‘It’s what’s called a C2 complete. By which I mean the spinal cord was damaged at the second cervical vertebra.’ He stuck two fingers against the skin on the back of my neck. ‘Right there. Total paralysis.’