Clapham Lights (13 page)

Mark gasps for breath. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Go? No. We’ve only just started. You’ve not even touched the right one, he’s lonely.’ Harry pinches his other nipple between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Now earn your money. And put some heart into it.’

Mark spits on the ground, licks his lips and attacks it with his tongue.

‘You dirty boy,’ Harry says as he gazes up at the stars.

‘Do you want a cigarette?’ Harry asks.

Mark ignores him and sits at the foot of a tree, staring at his feet.

‘How are you getting home?’

‘Tube.’

‘Which station are you going to?’

‘High Street Ken. Can we stop this chatting? I want to go home. I feel sick.’

‘That’ll be all the wine you had.’

‘It was that to start with.’

‘Don’t be like that, Mark. I hope we can still be friends,’ Harry says, doing up his tie.

‘No.’

‘Just think of the money.’

‘I don’t care about the money. Send that email in the morning and blind copy me in. I feel violated.’

A teenager in a Chelsea shirt is arguing that he has been short-changed so the girl behind the counter of McDonald’s is told to give him 20p by her manager. At the next till, Mark orders two hamburgers and a large milkshake and pays on card.

He sits on his own at a table by the window and watches as a black cab motors up Kensington High Street and drops three underdressed teenage girls outside a nightclub.

Mark finishes his drink and keeps licking his teeth. He spits into his cup and leaves it there.

A miserable-eyed homeless man with a matted beard is sat outside High Street Kensington station with a sleeping bag over his knees. Mark empties a pocketful of change into his lap and walks down to the tube.

C
raig sits on his bed in the dark with Mark’s MacBook open on the duvet next to him. It’s 1.56 a.m. and he’s on his account summary page on the HSBC website. His current account balance is -£3979.44. Available funds are £20.56. His HSBC credit card balance is -£1998.60. His limit is £2000. There are eleven days until the end of the month.

Craig logs out and minimises the web page. The screen wallpaper is a shot of Daniel Craig as James Bond walking out of the sea in
Casino
Royale
with Mark’s head photoshopped on. He flicks on his bedside lamp and gets a pen and paper from his desk.

On gumtree.co.uk, Craig clicks on the London jobs section. There are 9,509 permanent jobs and 2,012 temporary positions. He selects temporary and slowly runs the cursor down the list of categories until he reaches
Part-time
,
Casual and Weekend
and scours the first few adverts:

Party Promoters required for top West End Nightclubs – central London

Life have no meaning? Join Al-Qaeda – Worldwide

Become a model and get unbelievably rich - Clapham

Senior executive positions, Lloyds TSB (20 hrs p/w + bonus) – City of London

Craig clicks on the ad wanting models, which has been viewed 7,460 times, and skim reads the blurb:

Top London model agency is looking for new models (age 16-35) for fashion shoots, music videos and TV commercials. No experience necessary, you just have to be hot.

Pay ranges from £500 - £4000 a day for modelling, £800 - £3000 a day for music videos and £450 - £950 a day for film extra work.

Please email three pictures of yourself (they don’t have to be professional but we require one face shot, one topless and one full frontal naked.)

We will get back to you within 48 hours if you are successful. STRICTLY NO MEN.

Email [email protected]

He doesn’t seem to notice the email address and goes back to the jobs list. There are vacancies for part-time telesales executives, beauty therapists, charity fundraisers, German-speaking bicycle tour guides, sous chefs and walkers for dangerous dogs but he doesn’t look at anything until he gets to:

Earn £150 this Sunday – Wandsworth

Someone reliable required to clear a garage. Call Chris on 02099833212.

He makes a note of the number on his phone, turns off the laptop and gets ready for bed.

Pleasant Street is terraced with smart two-up, two-down houses and lined with cars. It is only a short walk from Wandsworth Town station and the railway line runs across the top of the street. Craig checks a text which tells him to wait outside the double garage beside number 58 - the final house on the left. The house looks freshly painted in a pale pink but there are no curtains up and the rooms are empty. The garage doors have been boarded up and tagged with spray paint and an empty skip sits outside in the road.

It’s a warm day and Craig’s wearing cargo shorts and an old grey t-shirt that has a small tear around the neck. He notices an elderly lady watching him from an upstairs window opposite. The stillness of the street is interrupted every couple of minutes by passing trains.

A short, round man in his thirties walks purposefully towards Craig. He has a shaved head and is wearing a green polo shirt which is too big for him. As he gets closer he wipes his forehead with the palm of his hand.

‘You must be Craig,’ he says. He sounds local. ‘I’m Chris, good to meet you.’

‘Hi.’

‘Got your overalls?’

‘Overalls? I’ve got a jumper in my bag.’

‘It’s pretty messy in there,’ he says pointing at the garages. ‘You might want to get yourself something to cover your clothes with and a face mask. Get one from the hardware place at the bottom of the road – you’ll need to go down there anyway to pick up the stuff you’ll need. I’ll give you some cash.’

‘OK, sure.’

‘What I need you to do is dead simple; just open the garages up and chuck all of the shit into the skip and then wash the whole place
down - thoroughly
. It might take you a few hours, but just make sure you do a proper job. This place goes on the market next week and it’s got to look top drawer.’

‘No problem. I will.’

‘Good. Here’s a list of the stuff that’ll be waiting for you at the shop, and here’s a tenner to get a protective suit and a face mask, I’m not
having
your clothes getting ruined. You might need to get some thicker gloves as well.’

‘OK, cheers.’

‘You’re going to need a claw hammer to get the boards off the doors, so I’ll get one from inside the house and I’ll leave it behind the front wall. I’ll probably be gone by the time you get back from the shop but I’ll be back at four to inspect and give you your money. That all right with you?’

‘That’s fine.’

‘If you finish any earlier then give me a bell. The shop’s bottom of the road and right. It’s called Darren’s Hardware, you can’t miss it. I’ve told them you’re coming. If you get hungry there’s a Sainsbury’s just along from that. Any questions?’

‘Um, no I don’t think so.’

‘Good. I’ll attach the hose in the back garden and leave it behind the gate for you. I’ll leave the gate unlocked. All right?’

‘Yep, that sounds fine.’

‘Good stuff. I’ll see you later then,’ he says, moving towards the house. ‘Good luck.’

It takes Craig - now dressed in a white hooded coversuit - almost an hour to yank the boards off the garage doors. He chucks them in the skip and has a rest against the front wall. He has twelve litres of white spirit, a pair of sponges, industrial gloves, plastic goggles and a dust mask in a bag by his feet. He catches the woman over the road watching him again and stands up, applies the gloves and hangs the mask and goggles around his neck. He picks at the paint peeling off the left-hand door and tugs at the handle. The door opens with a high-pitched metallic squeal.

Craig jumps back, splutters and says, ‘Oh my fucking god.’ He slips
the mask over his nose and mouth, swats away flies from his face and rushes to get the goggles on. Once he’s done this, he steps forward and flicks the light switch.

Despite having two doors, the interior is a single space with a light bulb hanging from a central beam. The sun is coming from behind the house so it’s gloomy inside. There are six filthy mattresses spread across the floor amongst rotting newspapers, crushed cider cans and cigarette butts. In one corner is a gas stove surrounded by shards of glass from a smashed mirror. It reeks of urine.

Craig steps tentatively inside and something cracks underneath his feet. It’s a syringe. He kicks it away and bolts out into the street to check it hasn’t pierced the sole of his trainers.

He delves inside his suit for his mobile phone and starts to write a message to Chris telling him that he’s not going back in there because it’s dangerous, but then, after some consideration, deletes it and opens the gate into the back garden.

The shed is unlocked so Craig takes a shovel and a broom and then unfurls the hose. He sprays the soles of his trainers and covers them with the empty bags from Sainsbury’s and the hardware store, tying them in triple knots at the ankle.

The other garage door opens smoothly, letting in more light and exposing the full horrific state of the inside. The mattresses are covered in brown stains and mildew, and there are piles of what looks like
hardened
vomit as well as shredded, blood-splattered toilet paper. There are a number of burnt spoons by the stove, empty cigarette packets, and a couple of buckets full of some form of liquid waste which have fat flies circling above them. Craig doesn’t even look at what’s in the buckets; he picks them both up, struggles outside and launches them into the skip.

He takes a minute to compose himself and heads back inside.
Something
is stuck under the mattress closest to the doors, making it harder for Craig to pull out. He yanks it to one side and out roll two
decomposing
rats, writhing with maggots. He scoops them up with the shovel, keeping as far away from them as possible, and adds them to the skip.

Disposing of the mattresses takes almost two hours and leaves Craig covered in indistinguishable smears. Each one he shifts exposes more piles of filth: mushy mould-ridden bread, used razor blades, a grimy leather belt, a broken mug full of mouse droppings.

There are trails of liquid running from the garage to the skip and once Craig has dragged the last mattress out, he has a fifteen-minute break but doesn’t go near the sandwiches or crisps he bought for lunch. After finishing a bottle of Tango he begins shovelling away the debris
littering
the floor. Amongst the scraps of paper and glass are a tiny stained blanket and a baby’s dummy which Craig picks out with his gloves for closer inspection.

It takes him another hour to clear the floor. The last thing he gets rid of is an old radio-cassette player with a snapped aerial, which was plugged into the wall. Craig heads back outside, looks at the
disgusting
pile of waste in the skip and then sits on the front wall. He removes his goggles and mask, which leave red rings around his eyes, nose and mouth, and checks the time. Chris is due back in two hours.

The power hose has a long reel, allowing Craig to get into the
furthest
corners of the garage and to spray away the old spiders’ webs that hang from the beams. He works in a slow, methodical manner, giving each area of the breeze-blocked wall and concrete floor a high-pressure soaking. The dirt slowly ebbs away and although a few puddles form, most of the dirty water flows down into the drain outside. On the back wall someone has scratched the word ‘death’.

After the initial blast, he takes the bottles of white spirit and splashes them over the dark patches on the walls which helps neutralise the smell. Craig then gives the whole place another thorough hose down,
including
the fronts and backs of the doors, empties the last two-litre bottle of white spirit into the skip and covers it with a blue tarpaulin as the
dreadful
stench is being intensified by the heat of the sun. The only things he hasn’t touched are the sponges so he rubs them roughly against the walls until they look well used and slips them into the skip.

Craig turns off the light as the sun is now shining directly inside and stands back to admire his work. The transformation is remarkable. He hoses his hands and feet down, throws away his coversuit and the bags protecting his trainers and hangs the goggles and mask on the gate. After rolling up the hose and replacing the shovel, he eats his sandwich and drinks his bottle of water.

The elderly lady who was watching him earlier crosses the road with a cup of tea and a custard tart.

‘I thought you might like this,’ she says. ‘That must have been hard
work.’ She has a grey perm and is wearing a cardigan despite the temperature.

‘Thank you, that’s very kind.’ Craig eats the tart in three bites. ‘It’s really nice. Thanks.’

‘It’s about time someone cleaned that out. They’ve done a nice job with the house, but after what happened I’m not surprised nobody wanted to go in there.’

‘After
what
happened?’

‘Drugs,’ she says in a hushed voice.

‘I thought so.’

‘There was a group of them squatting in the house, but when they were evicted they moved into the garage. We’d hear the doors go and we thought something was up but it wasn’t until the police turned up one morning that we found out something was wrong.’

‘What was wrong?’

‘One of the neighbours had complained about the whiff coming from inside there and nobody could trace the owner so the police opened the place up and there were six of them in there. All dead from drugs,’ she says, wide-eyed.

‘What? Six dead bodies?’ Craig looks horrified. ‘I’ve just cleaned a place where six people died?’

‘I assumed you knew that part, I thought you wanted to know why.’

Craig shudders. ‘That’s disgusting. It’s making me feel sick.’

‘I thought you might have read about it in the newspaper. They’d been dead weeks before they were found. One of the girls in there even had a baby, but it was taken away by the social services when she went to hospital.’

‘No, I had no idea. There’s no way I’d have gone in there if I’d known that.’

‘You’ve done a splendid job though. It’s good to see a young man not afraid of some hard work. Are you finished with the mug?’

Craig thanks her for the tea, and after looking at it long and hard, gives the garage a final sweep. The sun has dried most of the floor.

When Chris turns up at exactly four o’clock, Craig is killing time by sweeping the area outside the front of the house. He’s impressed with Craig’s efforts and pays him £150 in cash:

‘Hats off to you mate. Cracking job. We had a bit of a problem with
a couple of junkies using it you see,’ he explains, ‘that’s why it was boarded up.’

‘I heard it was a bit more than a problem.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘That there were six dead bodies found in there.’

Chris half-turns away from Craig and looks at the spotless interior. ‘Look, I won’t lie to you,’ he says in a more serious tone, ‘I’ve had a few blokes down here before who’ve walked off after two minutes and professional cleaning companies wouldn’t touch it because of what they read about the place, so I’m very grateful. I know it wasn’t a pretty job, I didn’t want to go near the place personally, so look, how about I give you this.’ He takes another £50 note from his wallet. ‘I don’t think I can say fairer than that.’

Craig takes the money. ‘You do know there were syringes on the floor and stuff covered in blood. If I’d have cut myself on anything I could have-’

‘All right, all right, I get you.’ Chris takes three £20 notes from his wallet and hands them over. ‘How’s that.’

Craig nods in appreciation. ‘Thanks.’

‘Good. Thank you, even if you have cost me a bloody fortune.’