Bloody London (33 page)

I flicked my lighter on, found the work table and a piece of a candle on it. I got the candle lit.

In the shadowy light, the half-made sculptures made eerie shapes, entwined arms reaching up, a torso draped in damp pale cloth, the heads smiling down at me from the high shelf.

“Warren?”

No one answered. I took out my gun. Somewhere in the building, very faint, like a signal from another planet, a talk radio station started up; in the silent studio I could hear it, indistinct, polite. No human sounds; only a radio. Thunder rumbled outside. Outside were miles of empty streets, waste ground, demolition crews, cranes, the swollen river and the rain.

I picked up the candle and worked my way around the place, my back to the wall; the candle gave me enough light so that before I stumbled on the body, I saw the blood.

Where the floor sloped down, water seeped in and formed a puddle that was black with dirt, red with blood. Warren Pascoe was lying in it, a crumpled figure, wrapped in a sheet of plastic. When I touched it, water poured off the slick surface.

Soaked, he was hard to move. When I got the plastic off his head, in the creepy half-light, Warren Pascoe's face turned into Thomas Pascoe's, the head bobbing in water, the swimming pool slick with blood in the basement of the Middlemarch.

Grand Guignol, Lily said I called Thomas Pascoe's murder. She was wrong. I never thought death was a joke. Not then, not here, three thousand miles from home in this stone-cold place. First Pru Vane, now Warren. There was nothing to make me laugh here.

I tried to untangle more of the plastic sheet, then the old tweed coat. Warren was dead. Small, bald, the skin waxy. I stared at the face some more. I saw the family resemblance even better now: the distinctive Pascoe
nose – Thomas had it, so did Phillip Frye – the long forehead. I replaced the plastic and backed off.

I wanted out. Gilchrist as good as sent me to Warren's and Warren was dead. I left him on the floor. The scene was intact. I headed for the door. Then I tripped. A plaster head crashed on to the floor. It split at the mouth so the sweet smile came apart. The plaster was damp, I could smell it.

Water came up over my ankles and seeped into my shoes. I tried to pick the head up, but it had cracked into two pieces, and I put them carefully on a work bench. I held the two halves together. I held the candle closer to the head.

It was a cast of the homeless man who had attacked Phillip Frye. The man with the cleft palate who fell in the mud. A dead man, Frye had said. Won't last the night. The man I'd seen in the shelter the day before had been Warren's last model. Or maybe I hallucinated.

Did Warren use him after he died? Did Warren Pascoe get bodies from Frye's shelters? Was that what Gilchrist meant when he tossed me the keyring with the begging hands? Why did he send me here? Get me out of the way? Who gave Geoffrey Gilchrist his orders?

Suddenly, a leak opened up in the ceiling. Rain poured in.

I was drowning. Somewhere, I lost my balance. Someone pushed me or I fell. I lost my footing and my head was on the floor. The floor. Sidewalk. Steps. Cold stone.

There was the taste of blood. Sewage. In my mouth and nose. I could smell the river, the fetid smell of oil and garbage, feel the wind, taste the menace. It was dark. Someone banged my head on the ground again, and now I was only half conscious.

My head was under water. I saw everything drift by and I was freezing cold. I thought: If I pass out, it's over. I thought how cold it was. Hypothermia, isn't that what they called it on TV when little kids fell through the ice somewhere? Minnesota. Canada. Somewhere. Where was I?

I was cold. My lungs ached. I thought about the swimming pool out back of Kievsky's house up on the hill. The river. A lake. I thought someone dragged me down some slimy steps to the river. I had seen steps when I was out walking, steps, metal moorings, floating pontoons, tugs, boats, a houseboat. The Beach Boys' “Little Surfer Girl” ran in my head.

Staten Island Ferry, fishing off Long Island, my sailboat in pieces on the roof of my building in New York, the pool at the Middlemarch where they got Tommy Pascoe. Frankie in the bathtub, full of gin, dying. Frankie naked in the swimming pool.

I heard the smack of water against a seawall, felt the stone surface under me; it was slick with shit and dead vegetables. I could feel metal. I couldn't move. My head was under water. Someone yanked it up by the hair, then shoved it back. Lungs hurt.

I couldn't move. I realized they'd dragged me out of Warren's studio, down to the river, banged me around good, then dumped me back in the studio. They wanted
someone to find me. Things went gray. My body relaxed and I tried to breathe in, except there was water inside me. I was drowning.

Water streamed out of me, mouth, nose. It choked me. Arms holding me let go. When I forced my eyes open, I saw a concrete ceiling. A skylight where rain drummed on the murky glass. Plaster casts of dead men, covered in cheesecloth. I was in Warren's studio. A bucket on the floor was half full of water. Blood in it. My blood. It floats, I thought, looking at it.

Somehow I crawled out, down the stairs, into the street and found the taxi still waiting. The driver was fast asleep, the Vegas brochure over his face. I tapped on the window.

He dragged me into the cab. Unloaded me at some hospital. There was some change in my pocket and I gave him everything I had. The creeps didn't take my money, but the gun was gone. My passport was gone.

The next time I looked around, I was in the corridor of an emergency ward that resembled something out of Dickens. The stink of the linoleum. Carbolic. I tried to crawl off the steel gurney, then half-fell, half-sprawled on a plastic chair. My legs shook.

Half-conscious, I stayed on the chair alongside the poor, drunk and hopeless; you could smell the misery. It smelled like Moscow.

Snatches of conversation drifted towards me, then away. People cracked their bones slipping, a doctor said. His lungs fucked, someone else muttered. Bad weather. Damp. TB on the rise again. People coughing. Carbon monoxide. Train stuck in a station. Station flooded. No air.

The gabble of anxious voices surrounded me, the quibbling, contentious sounds of a public hospital. I was too tired to care. Maybe I dozed. When I finally came to the surface, standing over me, in a Burberry raincoat the size of a tent, was Tolya Sverdloff.

“You set me up.”

Tolya looked at me. “Don't be an idiot.”

I grabbed his arm. “Swear on your kids.”

“Yes. On my kids.”

I believed him because I had to.

We were in a big car, a Rolls-Royce, me wrapped in a blanket, Tolya next to me. I was shaking. I could hear my own teeth. The soft leather in the back smelled nice. He said again, in Russian this time, “Bastards.”

I looked at him. He looked lousy, the skin gray, a gash over his one eye that someone stitched in a hurry, a purple bruise on the other; the bruised eye was half shut.

“You look like shit,” I said. “What happened?”

“Makes two of us. They banged you around some, put your head in a bucket. Not fun guys.”

“Who were they?”

“The usual creeps.”

“Russian? Ukrainian?”

“Maybe.”

“How do you know?”

“Someone at the hospital found a list of numbers on you. My cellphone was one of them. I got into London a few hours ago. They had the driver's name, and I got to him. We talked Las Vegas. He showed me where it happened. The style was familiar. They were stupid, these creeps; they went drinking in a bar near by to get out of the rain. I found them.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Jesus, Tol, what time is it? How long have I been like this?”

He looked at his Rolex. “One a.m. Five, six hours you're like this, I guess. Maybe more.”

“The same assholes that killed Warren Pascoe and Prudence Vane came for me?”

“Who is Prudence Vane?”

“Never mind. How come they didn't kill me?”

“Luck. You're an American. They don't want extra problems maybe.”

“They're alive?”

Tolya didn't answer.

“Answer me.”

“Don't ask me, OK? What's the difference? They were nobody. Small little people.”

“Where are we?”

“My car.”

“We're going someplace?”

“Hotel.”

“How come? You got apartments here, buildings, the one I'm using. We can go there.”

“No.”

I hurt worse now I was really conscious. I mumbled, “Tell me some jokes.”

He told me some very old jokes in Russian about sex and politicians and cheap sausages. The blinding rain made it impossible to see, and by the time he finished the jokes, we were in a hotel garage.

There was a glossy brochure on a table. River Palace, five stars. Canary Wharf. Tolya stood in the doorway to an adjoining room. “You want a doctor?”

“I had enough doctors.”

Tolya shoved me towards the bathroom. Out of the window I could see the river. It was high and bruised, the rain drove down on it and made it pitch right up against the embankment. Somewhere in the distance, I could hear the waa waa of the sirens.

In the bathroom that filled softly up with steam, I lay in the tub, hot water up to my neck. It took all my energy to soak a washcloth and spread it over my face. After a while, my frozen joints began to thaw. Tolya squatted on the toilet holding a bottle of brandy, pouring it into big glasses. He said, “Drink,” and I drank and said, “Gimme a smoke, OK?”

He went into the other room and came back with a carton, an ashtray, his gold lighter.

I looked at him. “You're in trouble, man. Aren't you?”

He said, “I'm in trouble? You should talk,” but he didn't laugh.

“You do business with Leo Mishkin and Leo is Eddie Kievsky's brother-in-law.”

He reached up to a radio on a shelf and turned it to a music station. “We will speak English now, but softly,” he said. “And I will order some food.”

There were no querulous medics, no stinking creeps, no radio voices. Just the lovely liquid piano, Oscar Peterson and his trio and Rogers and Hart. Oscar played “I'll Take Manhattan.”

The steam was thick on the mirrors and ceiling. My lungs were still sore.

After I got out of the bathtub, I found a thick terrycloth robe and put it on. I went into Tolya's room, which connected with mine. A waiter rolled a table in; it was loaded with food – soup, roast chicken, hot rolls, heavy Barolo. I couldn't lift the spoon. I stumbled back into my room and on to the bed, and switched on the TV.

On the tube, a guy with a big nose, curly hair and a pinky ring came on and began interrogating a couple of politicians. Was there flooding near the Dome? Had the excavation for the Dome damaged the old tidal walls? I never heard an interviewer so rough in my life. He commented on the guests' ages and ailments and frailties, and I thought, Jesus, you'd never get a New York cop to go one on one with him for a million bucks after taxes. But it made me laugh, and laughing hurt. I switched off the set and turned the radio back on. I fell asleep just before dawn with only Oscar playing faintly from the radio.

*

When I woke up, it was dark again. I reached for a light. The door opened.

“What time is it?”

“Six o'clock,” Tolya said. I had slept through the tag end of the night and most of the day after. He said, “You are feeling better?”

“I'm good.” I sat up. Reached for my jeans, felt in the pockets, then got out of bed in a panic. My passport was gone.

“I fix,” said Tolya. “Tomorrow.”

I looked at him. “Yeah, OK.”

“Now we party.”

“Party?”

“Eat. Party. Meet people. Makes us feel good, see what we hear, who we see, have fun. I'll call Lily.”

“No.”

“Don't be one giant asshole, Artyom. This girl loves you. You need her.”

“Mind your own fucking business. You have no idea what you're taking about.”

“We go out together then, you, me.”

“Why are we talking English?”

He shrugged. “Between possibility of Russian bastards listening in or British asshole, I pick British asshole.”

“I need some clothes.”

“Clothes are here. I sent driver already.” He pulled on his cashmere blazer. “Let's go to party.”

The windshield wipers beat the panes, Tolya's beefy driver drove carefully and the car rolled smooth as
cream down the road. My ribs were sore. Tolya handed me his phone and I tried Lily because I was scared for her. Missed her. There was no one home. I left a message with Isobel Cleary.

On the back seat was a pile of papers. All the papers carried Pru Vane's murder. I scanned them fast. No one mentioned me. I had disappeared.

We cruised London a while, stopping in a couple of fancy hotel bars. More than before I had the sense of a place that changed at night – you pulled up out of the dark, wet, vast city, and light spilled out of bars and pubs and restaurants, and everywhere, people knew Tolya. Hands reached out for him. Booze appeared. At a restaurant with stained-glass windows, we ate Chateaubriand so rare it was practically alive. At a fancy nightclub in a townhouse, we ran into Eddie Kievsky, who shook my hand and showed Sverdloff the Fabergé egg. He kept it in his pocket. Kievsky was smooth; Sverdloff looked uneasy, and we moved on.

The car pulled away and a few minutes later, I said to him, “You have any ready cash, Tolya?”

He laughed, but bitterly, and said in Russian, “Big picture is, I'm broke.”

Tolya Sverdloff liked the night. He liked to work it, and he was never so broke or so drunk he couldn't enjoy himself. He put his ear to the ground, he said; listening for news, gossip, information, entertainment. “At night, people looking for contacts,” he said. He switched constantly from Russian to English and back, and as he got drunker, his Russian got better and his English fell apart.