Fade to black.

forget the detective

——

Death defying acts. He was awake, he knew that, but not quite. He was hovering in that space between full wakefulness and sleep. Random acts of senseless violence. One of us. One of us. All I can taste is airline food. Now I hate the taste. Through his half-closed eyes, Great Windmill Street. Outside the Pink Pussycat, a white girl standing with her arms crossed, her hair the same blonde as the black girl who was there before. Angels of Christian mercy watching over him. He groaned.

Fade out.

Awake again. Suspended in a bright white world. The ground beneath him soft, the air perfumed: disinfectant, sweat, patchouli. The sweat his own. The world soft, like a bed. Half-closed eyes: his client, leaning towards him, her face filling his vision. Lips tight, eyes wide. Voices in the background, softly, softly. Something in his arm. A machine pinging. ‘I think he said something. Did he say something?’ – and fade.

When he awoke the street was dark and a group of Japanese business men in dark suits were piling into the Pink Pussycat. He groaned again and felt the back of his head – there was a large, painful bump there. He blinked, once, twice, tried to sit.

‘Sorry, didn’t see you there –’ A man pushing a shopping trolley, looking startled, hurried away. Joe looked at the junk poking out of the cart and thought of a life. He turned his head, slowly, this way and that. No sign of Mo. Behind him the pub was shut, the window boarded up. No sign of the men who assaulted him. He groaned again and thought of a drink, fished in his pockets, withdrew a crumpled packed of cigarettes, put one in his mouth. His hands shook and it took him several times before he managed to light it. He took a deep drag and felt the smoke burning his throat, slipping into his lungs. He sat back, against the wall, and smoked. Bright lights flashing. People walking past, night people, no one glancing in his direction. He blew smoke and knew he was in over his head.

How long had he been out?

It was night time. And no one had come for him, and the men didn’t get him, and the window got repaired and Mo removed while he was out cold, it was as if the world was cleaned around him while he slept. He said, ‘No,’ and tasted smoke. He pushed himself up. He was shaking. He stood bracing himself against the wall. Bright flashing lights, a windmill of neon spinning. 7/7 sprayed against the wall up the road, and a Bookshop sign. Fuck it. He pushed himself away and went downstream, towards Shaftesbury Avenue.

They might be waiting for him at the hotel, but he didn’t care. When he pushed his way in through the doors of the Regent Palace, the first thing he heard was loud Irish music coming from the hotel’s pub. Noise, a blast of warm air, the smell of booze and cigarettes. The doorman took one look at his face, shook his head, said nothing. Joe walked in.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Perfume, smoke, laughter. My-name’s-Simon on reception, sitting behind a large brass adding machine, the buttons gleaming. Extra pillow. A flash of something hovering at the very back of his mind – white sheets, the ground soft as a bed, ‘I think he said something –’ No. He staggered into the pub, ordered a whisky, straight, no ice, drank the first one at the counter, ordered another: he felt better after the third, paid for a beer and a fourth, took it to a dark corner, sat down. Irish music and loud voices, faces walking on the pavement outside, lives blowing in the gutter-wind – no. He drank from the beer: it cooled him down. The whisky had burned through him, warmed him up – he hadn’t realised how cold he’d felt. Oscillating temperatures.

In too deep – that’s what it amounted to. He should relinquish the case. Forget the Castle, forget the Mike Longshott trail – it probably led nowhere in any case. Let go of Papa D, of the girl outside the Gare du Nord. Let go of Mo, drink a toast and forget the detective. Do what the men from the CPD said, and stay away. Forget his employer, the fine lines in the corners of those big, slightly almond-shaped eyes, forget the way she put her hand on his and it was too familiar… Let it go. Let go of Osama Bin Laden, let go of books where bombs go off and people die, let go of this war you have no scale for, that you don’t understand. Let go of the crumb trail, the talk of refugees, the sideshow freaks in the old black and white movie he’d watched in Paris, chanting One of us, one of us.

It was getting late. The three-piece band had wound down, softer music came on, some sort of jazz, no, he knew that song; he touched his eyes and they were wet, and when he blinked he saw the world through a film of moisture, like rain, and she said, ‘We have all the time in the world.’

Then she was there, sitting opposite him, blurry, he could only see her blurred through the film over his eyes, an intersection of light and water: he thought she smiled.

He said, ‘I saw a man die today.’

She said, ‘Maybe he was already dead.’

The silence lingered between them. Joe shook his head, said, ‘No.’ The girl reached across the table, touched his hand. Her hand was warm. ‘No,’ she said, agreeing. He blinked, the tears still there. The pub quiet now, the voices hushed. She said, ‘Do you remember –?’ and Joe said, ‘No,’ – his vocabulary shrinking to that one word, one single perception.

‘Find him, Joe,’ the girl said, and he noticed her ears again, a little pointy, and lovely for that. ‘Find Mike Longshott. Find Osama Bin Laden.’

He wanted to say, No one ever catches him in the books. Now you see him now you don’t. And then he thought how the writer resembled his hero, a jack in the box, a disappearing act. He said, ‘Why?’ Her hand on top of his trembled. He had the urge to take her hand in his, lace his fingers with hers and not let go.

She shook her head. ‘For…’ she was fading, he couldn’t see her clearly any more. He rubbed his eyes and they were dry. When he looked up she was gone. Left on the table was a calling card. He picked it up. It said The Blue Note. Nothing else. He finished the dregs of his beer and stood up, and walked out, through the wide corridor of the reception area, up a wide and empty elevator, down an empty echoing corridor, and to his room. Later he had a shower and shaved and watched the dried blood from the back of his head swirl down through the plug-hole, turning and turning in a diminishing spire of loss.

bruisers and cruisers

——

The next day he decided to watch the Castle. He walked through Soho, passing signs for Adult Bookshops, Adult Cinemas, Adult Shows – an entire wonderland of adulthood, sculpted into the red-grey bricks of the narrow streets. Italian restaurants; Chinese restaurants; Indian restaurants. Newsagents selling cigarettes and soft drinks and newspapers. Pubs. Bars. Clothes shops. Ticket agents selling tickets to shows on Shaftesbury Avenue at half-price. Mini-cab stands. A man sidled up to him as he walked, said, ‘Hashish? Marijuana?’ He pronounced it like a name, Mari-Joanna. ‘You want girls? Boys? Opium?’

Joe shook his head, no, no, no again; the man sidled away, shaking his head. Joe walked along Old Compton Street and wondered who Old Compton was, and smiled.

Frith Street: old stone houses spilling down to the pavement. Outside number twenty-two, a coffee-bar, tables outside, on the left: a small, unmarked door. He went up the stone steps, pressed a buzzer.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m here to meet a member.’ Said as a question.

‘Who are you looking for, sir?’

‘Mike Longshott? I believe he’s expecting me.’

Silence the other end. The sound of papers being moved. ‘We have no member by that name.’

‘My apologies,’ Joe said. ‘Is this not the Century Club?’