‘You don’t mind Darren looking at this stuff?’ I asked.
‘Why not? It stops him from pestering me. I wish he’d take up some of these penis enlargement offers, though. Don’t look so self-righteous. He got most of the dirtiest links from Gordon.’
‘My Gordon?’
‘That’s how all the husbands in this whole neighbourhood spend their evenings, duh. They don’t have the technology to build robot women so this is the next best thing. No ‘Cleo’ here. You sure it’s an English site? Wait, there’s a search engine for hardcore stars here somewhere. I used it when I was planning my hen night cake thing.’ Lou had once tried to set up a company specialising in novelty iced genitals, but before the company registration came through she had been sent a lawyer’s letter by Greggs bakery, who had discovered that she was using their sponge bases.
Lou typed and waited. ‘My God, there are thousands.’
There was no way of refining the search by country. The people who used the service clearly weren’t interested in demographics. I only ever went online to buy from discount designer outlets. I had given up after realising that even the most sophisticated technology was ultimately reliant on a relief postman hammering a package through a letterbox that was clearly too small for it.
There were seven girls listed by the name of Cleo. ‘There are two registered to the UK, but only one represented by a London company, SlavStar. They specialise in Russian, Ukrainian and Hungarian performers. There’s a web address for them.’
‘Can you go to it?’
The page scrolled down. ‘It’s not a free site,’ warned Lou. ‘You’ll have to enter credit card details.’
‘I can’t, you know that.’
‘Let’s put Darren’s in, then. I know the number and expiry date of his VISA gold card by heart.’ Her fingers flew across the keyboard. ‘We’re in. We enter his name, like so. He’ll be getting Viagra ads for the rest of his life, big deal. If you want to see what Cleo looks like, there’s a picture of her further down, look.’ She moved aside to show me. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve become a lesbian and fallen in love.’
I found myself looking at the girl who had collapsed on the floor of Azymuth’s flat.
‘Jesus, listen to this. ‘Cleo is a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian queen, and treats all men as her sex slaves. Demanding and passionate, her commands must always be obeyed. In her spare time, Cleo loves to reveal her private kingdom on the internet. “Just like my horny ancestor, I have met some very wild men,” Cleo tells us. “To me, every man is my Mark Antony. If you want to see the pleasure I give them, you’ll have to enter my sacred site.” Oh, this is good. “Mark Antony, adult actor”. I love the way they call them that.’ She tilted the screen toward me. The image showed a burly, tanned teen leaning on a Greek pillar in a laurel wreath.
‘What on earth’s that sticking out of his toga?’
‘Whatever it is, he conquered Gaul with it. Adult entertainment is no longer technically illegal in the UK. We’re following European guidelines now. Legitimise the business and you eliminate the criminal, that’s the thinking. Obviously they hadn’t met my son.’
‘The real Cleopatra was Macedonian, not Egyptian, and she had a huge hooter,’ I pointed out. The present-day Cleo could have had that fixed. Azymuth hadn’t mentioned rhinoplasty. ‘Has she got an email address?’
‘You’re joking. Of course she doesn’t list her address, imagine the nutters she’d get. Look, you can buy her film
Cleopatra’s Pyramids,
and she has a fan club. You want to try her chatroom? You won’t talk to her, just some employee in Djakarta, but you might find out something more.’
‘Show me how.’
Early on Sunday morning turned out to be the perfect time to chat online about pornography. No wonder the local church was empty. Twenty minutes later we had an address. Not where she lived, and no location for SlavStars, but one forlorn-sounding online stalker going by the hotmail name of kooldude352 knew the central London address of the minicab company Petra used, and confessed to having waited outside for a glimpse of her on numerous occasions. I made a note, Argosy Street, then ran it through Google maps.
‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ asked Lou. ‘It’s kind of deep water, especially for a housewife who’s been getting out less than Stephen Hawking.’
‘Harsh, Lou.’
‘There’s an Argos House in London SE8 and loads of Argos Roads, but no Argosy Street, Road, Crescent or anything else. It’s just a stupid name made up by some creepy fan. I don’t know why I’m even listening to you. The whole idea is idiotic.’
‘But the girl exists,’ I assured her. ‘Maybe there’s another way to trace her.’
‘Okay, that’s it.’ Lou was tired and in need of a drink. ‘I demand to know what this is all about.’
So I told her everything, including my part in Azymuth’s death and the kitchen-gadget-stabbing of Stitch-Head.
‘Christ, June, how could you have become involved in something like this? You mean this was why your house got smashed up, they were looking for you? Why didn’t you go to the police?’
‘It’s easy for you to say that, you’re on familiar terms with them, but I’d never spoken to a policeman in my life before this weekend. You always told me they were nothing but trouble, and look at the mess you’re in with Hadrian.’
‘Well, you have to give yourself up. They’re bound to have got your fingerprints on the... what was it...’
‘An apple corer, although it may have been a combi-potato peeler.’
‘Even muggers have rights now. He’ll probably want to sue you if he’s still alive. It’ll be easy enough to trace you.’
‘But not to find me,’ I insisted. ‘There’s one safe place I can go.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Malcolm’s apartment. They have no reason to look there, why would they when it’s the wrong flat to begin with? Azymuth was attacked back in his own flat. I’ll find out where Petra was living somehow. Maybe the street is just spelled wrong.’
‘And then what? What are you going to do, walk in there and make tea for them, ask them to cough up the address of a strangled porn star? And suppose they did, would you then go around there alone and walk in on a bunch of gangsters? I don’t know this side of you, June. You got yourself into a panic when one of your salad servers got stuck in the dishwasher, and now you’re planning to do a Travis Bickle. I’m sorry, but this is where I bail out. I have to mix a drink and take it back to bed with me. I can’t be part of this paranoid fantasy.’
‘I thought you were a friend.’
‘I am also a wife and mother, and as a family we’re pretty screwed up at the moment, something I’d quite like to sort out.’
‘I never heard you say that before. You told me you hated your life.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Lou lit a cigarette, embarrassed. ‘I talk a good game,’ she said. ‘You’d better leave before Darren wakes up.’
I hated losing my only real friend, but I had to see the weekend through. As I was leaving Lou’s kitchen I saw her mobile and purse lying on the counter, and slipped them into my pocket. I had left my shoulderbag at the Ziggurat. With only loose cash and a handful of cut-up credit cards left, I needed money to get back to town. Besides, Lou would always be able to borrow from Darren. It was a good job he hadn’t left his wallet; I’m not sure I would have been able to resist his credit cards.
I was walking back to the house when I thought of Stefan. He would at least be able to warn me if anyone had come back to the Ziggurat. I decided to head into town and ask him for help.
When I put my hand in my jacket pocket, I realised I still had the tiny key from the floor of Azymuth’s apartment. Now I took it out and examined the faint engraved letters. The word MOM made no sense, so I turned it upside down. WOW.
I’d seen the logo dozens of times before.
World Of Wood.
The name on the only card I still possessed. We’d bought our dining room furniture there. The World Of Wood was a discount megastore that people like Azymuth would never have heard of. I felt sure that the key was Petra’s, and that it would unlock something purchased from there. The good thing about megastores is that they’re open on Sundays.
I admit it now, I got distracted.
I should have been heading for Stefan’s container, but somehow I was sidetracked into a shopping trip. This is what comes of not having a properly thought-out plan. The bus stopped right outside the outlet, one of a series of depressing corrugated-steel boxes built on the outskirts of Hamingwell next to a vast ugly mall. The place was empty; the credit crunch had cleared out browsers.
I made my way through arrangements of
Thanet
leatherette swivel-chairs in search of someone who could help. I suddenly realised how long I’d been deprived of shopping. A baggy brown velvet sofa the colour of elephant dung looked positively inviting. I dropped into it and eased off my shoes.
‘Can I help you at all?’ asked a beautifully spoken young black man who looked like he’d recently been polished. Beneath his gaze, I became aware that in my all-black action-figure outfit I no longer resembled other housewives from the Hamingwell area. I produced the key and handed it to him.
‘I wonder, can you tell me what this opens?’
The young man, whose badge identified him as Sholto, presented me with a fabulous helpful smile before accepting the key.
Sholto,
I thought,
your mother must have had high hopes for you, and look where you’ve ended up. You should be angry, not cheerful
.
‘This could belong to any number of products,’ he explained. ‘Do you have a record of your purchases?’
‘If I did, do you think I’d be asking you what it’s for?’
‘If you’d like to come with me.’ He led the way to the rear wall of the store, which was lined with fake dining rooms and lounges, like little theatre sets. ‘I’d say it’s from one of our older models. These keys are pretty much interchangeable. They’re not security keys. They’re more for decoration.’
‘What do they fit?’ I asked, looking at the rows of dark cherrywood shelves.
‘Bookcases,’ he shrugged. ‘This is a bookcase key.’ He stopped before a glass-panelled case with double doors and fitted the key in the lock. One twist and the front of the case opened. ‘See?’
‘That wouldn’t keep anyone out, though, would it? I mean, they could just break the glass and put their hand through, or pull at the door until the lock smashed.’
‘Er... I suppose so, yes.’
I’m behaving abnormally,
I thought,
I sound like a B-movie detective.
The salesman left my side and leaned into a cupboard to flick a rack of switches.
Every lamp in the store came on, an illuminated mirror-maze of gilded soft furnishings. I stared about myself in a state of retail hypnosis. The World Of Wood card in my pocket glowed with an inner warmth, as though it was responding to the life of the store.
‘Is there anything else I can help you with?’ asked the salesman.
I tried to fight the feeling, I really did. I took a long, deep breath and held it. Then I released a carefully controlled smile.
‘I’d like to see your standard lamps,’ I told him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Relapse
T
HE NEXT TWO
hours were, frankly, a blur.
All I knew was that I had done it again, after I had sworn not to. Worse, I had betrayed a friend. It turned out that Lou kept a plastic wallet of credit cards in her purse along with – foolish woman – her pin number.
I bought a fat-legged
Georgiana
table, four burgundy velour cushions with piped gold stitching, the
Alicante
foldaway dinette unit with built-in carriage clock, a dozen double-Damask dinner napkins hand-stitched by Sardinian nuns and a limited-edition ceramic sad-faced clown. At that point I hit my limit in the wonderful World Of Wood.
Fatally, the slip that came with my receipt offered me discount credit at Fabulous Fitness, which happened to be next door. Lou’s VISA came out for the Electro-Stim Facial Spa, a pair of invisible shoe infill height maximizers and a flesh-coloured back brace.
This was my old stamping ground. The mall was crowded with angry-faced girls bulging out of tight shocking-pink tops, the kind of premature mothers who looked feral and cornered by life. Everything was within easy walking distance, and you were encouraged to keep walking; guards kept moving teenagers from benches.
Despite my recent conversion to minimalist understatement in the Ziggurat apartments, I slipped back into my former cluttery lifestyle as though I had never left it. With eyes wide and tubes unblocked by so many glittering retail opportunities, I set off to smack up Lou’s American Express card.
Before I went spending, I always liked to case the joint online, like a burglar. That way I could work out how long it would take me to get from mixed separates to designer eveningwear, just in case they decided to evacuate the building suddenly and I hadn’t finished shopping. Department stores try to distract you with perfumes and cutesy gold fiddlebobs, but it never works with us professionals. I can cover most malls in under an hour without a bathroom break. You have to be able to do these things properly. The staff smell bonuses and follow me like starving wolves. Most can be lured into performing the function of human clothes-rails with a pleasant smile and a teasing hint of retail frailty.
Two doors along from the designer clothing outlet I discovered PC World, Toys ‘R’ Us and Adventure, where I bought a tent and several scuba accessories. By the time I reached Spangles, the discount jewellery outlet, I was being trailed by two store detectives and a suspicious security guard. The assistant refused to let me open an account there because I became confused about my home address and foolishly presented her with three options, my old Hamingwell home, Lou’s billing address and for good measure, Malcolm’s apartment in the Ziggurat.
When I eyed an Emeralique necklace with a centre pendant big enough to choke a walrus, the store detective pinned me over a display case and rummaged through my pockets. When the cops showed up I was convinced they would somehow connect me with the murderous path I had blazed across London, but they seemed more interested in discussing the previous night’s football with each other.