‘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 interested.’
‘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.
In the end it was either get out of bed or face the rest of my life with whittled feet. I poured him out some fresh water and a pile of Fishbitz, and pulled on a shirt that didn’t have too many stains on it. The arse of my jeans was so thin I was in danger of losing my cheeks through osmosis to the outside air. My boots could have passed for two cowpats. I stood in front of the mirror, wishing I’d worn some shades first because – whoah, watch out, London – the world’s most stylish walking cadaver was about to hit the streets.
But I’m not that bad. At least, I hope I’m not. I
will
be, no doubt about it. Another ten, fifteen years and my face will look like something that’s been knitted from a heap of overcooked noodles, but for now, well, I’m bearing up. The mirror shows a guy in his mid-thirties with good hair, if a little unkempt, bluey-greeny-grey eyes – good eyes, if a little hunted – and a mouth that, in a novel, would probably be described as cruel. In a certain light I can look gaunt, but maybe I’m doing myself a disservice; it might just be that I’ve got a pair of killer cheekbones. I always wanted a scar, you know, like the one the eagle-eye Action Man had – a slash down the cheek, probably from a dagger, or a bayonet – but the only scar on my face is a three-stitch job sustained when I fell over against the rear end of my dad’s Morris Minor van, aged four. It’s a younger-looking face than it ought to be, considering all the vodka and sleepless nights, never mind the smoky death-pits I patronise. It doesn’t look lived in yet, but it will. It will all catch up with me in the end.
Outside it was cold enough to freeze the juice in the corners of my eyes. It was depressing to be going out when it was dark again, thus not seeing a moment of daylight for over twenty-four hours. I pulled my jacket – a black, nubuck job that’s on its last legs but still able to keep out most of the bad weather – more tightly around me and stuffed my hands in the pockets. Then I headed off in search of hell.
You don’t need a map for hell, I suppose. I think that, to know it, you just have to have lived it a little at some point in your life. London knows hell so well, it might be asked to be godfather to its child. And it isn’t necessarily always in the places you’d expect, although a lot of it is. You can find hell in the most exclusive parts of the capital, if you know which streets to cut down, which doors to knock upon. So it was, tonight. Some of the places on Kara’s jolly little list I knew already: the strip clubs, the pubs that were so violent that the management served beer in plastic glasses, the amusement arcades and the snooker halls. But here was one little corner of Hades I had yet to patronise: Stodge, a restaurant in inoffensive Hampstead. I took the car round, and parked it on Gardnor Road, between an Aston Martin DB7 and a Porsche Boxster, where I’m proud to say, though it didn’t gleam quite as much as its neighbours, it did not look out of place one bit. I walked up to Heath Street and hung back from the restaurant a little, just watching for a while who was going in and coming out.
Stodge is one of those new restaurants that is unashamedly British in its outlook, professing to have been at the vanguard of British cookery’s reinvention and offering a menu larded with pies, puddings and rib-sticking dumplings. The guy who runs the place is called Danny Sweet, an ex-boxer who had brought his pugnacious attitude into his kitchens. He’s in the Sunday supplements now and then, apparently, spouting off about how he hates to be referred to as a celebrity chef, and then a week later he’s on
Celebrity Masterchef
.
What the public don’t know is that he’s still into boxing, but not the friendly kind with padded gloves and Queensberry Rules. What is even more incomprehensible, considering his clout in the industry, and his media exposure, is the fact that he hosts bare-knuckle bouts in the cellar of his restaurant.
I strolled up to the nosh shop, gave the menu some attention, and clocked the beanpole doorman, his eyes so hooded he made Salman Rushdie seem startled.
‘Hi, how are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Don’t tell me, I should have booked in 1903 if I wanted a bite to eat tonight.’
‘Private party, anyway, sir,’ he said, turning said hoods in the direction of a sign in the window that said just that. ‘By invitation only. Unless you know the password.’
‘Monosodium Glutamate,’ I said, trying to make out some of the shadows that moved behind the glass.
‘Spot on, sir. May I take your coat?’
We looked at each other for a long time, my watch-it gland reacting in extreme spasm. ‘“Monosodium Glutamate” isn’t the password,’ I said.
‘No, sir. But I’m feeling charitable. I’ve been opening doors all day for stiff collars who didn’t even thank me for doing it. At least you had the basic human decency to say hello.’
I stared at him a while longer, wondering if he was someone I’d helped to put away in the past, but I’d recognise a basketball player like this. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What kind of private party is it?’
‘Swingers,’ he said, giving birth to a smirk. ‘You look like you could do with a little fun.’