Nobody Walks (6 page)

Bettany put the photo away, but stayed where he was.

“You’re blocking the pavement.”

“I was looking to score some dope.”

“You were
what
?”

“You heard.”

The bouncer said, “Funny man. We do open mic on Saturdays. You’d need to tidy up, though.”

Bettany moved on.

“And lose twenty years,” came floating in his wake.

Something wild was tugging at him, something reckless. Maybe a little of Liam’s connectivity, telling him
because of that, this.

One thing happens, so the next thing follows.

Someone sold Liam muskrat, so Liam smoked it.

In a pub off the main drag he showed the bartender Liam’s photo, and got another slow response. Asked whether there was a problem with drugs in the area, and got told nothing. Asked again, and got told to leave.

He left a full pint on the counter, unpaid for.

Bettany looped
a circuit, looking for he didn’t know what. He cut through a playground near an estate comprising a pair of ’60s blocks. Dark oblongs limned in light were drawn curtains, and discs fixed at tangents to balcony railings were TV dishes. The playground was swings and a seesaw and plastic animals swaying tipsily on big springs. A five-a-side pitch carved out by ten feet of wire mesh occupied a corner. A red pinprick winked in the darkness at its far side. He didn’t slow down but watched it glow and fade, and be passed along, and felt the air grow thick again.

On his second go-round, they emerged from the shadows. Three of them, kids, two boys and one he wasn’t sure, but
probably a boy. All mixed race. The tallest called from behind the mesh.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Nothing you’d be interested in.”

“How you know what I’m interested in? You know something about me?”

Bettany said, “You guys smoke weed at all?”

“That what’s in the bag?”

“No. I’m looking to buy.”

“You got money in the bag?”

“Ever heard of muskrat?”

The tall one laughed.

“We hear of muskrat? That’s sick.”

The one who might have been a girl made a gun out of finger and thumb, aimed it at Bettany’s head.
Pkoo.

“You a paedo, man? That why you hangin’ round?”

Pkoo.

Bettany walked on, tote bag in hand.

Invisible, painless bullets struck him dead every step of the way.

He visited
more pubs, asked more questions. Nobody was glad to see him. Even those who might have cared, who didn’t take him for a cop but a parent tracking a runaway, wanted him gone.

“He looks old enough,” said one woman, still in her teens. “He probably just wants his own life, you know?”

Some places he asked about drugs, whether they were a big problem round here. This wasn’t popular either.

His first serious run-in came on neutral ground. He’d stopped to collect his bearings and decide which street to try next, knowing that whichever he took there’d be somewhere, a pub, a bar, a café, he could imagine Liam entering. A barber’s window threw
his reflection back as he stood there, and in this same window he saw them approaching, a matching pair. Tweedledum was barrel-chested, wore sleeveless leather, and the tattoos gracing his arms formed an intricate narrative that might repay study. Tweedledumber had opted for facial piercings. Both were stubble-haired and lightly goateed.

“You’re bothering people.”

It came scraping out of Tweedledumber’s mouth as if some of those piercings had rusted on the inside.

Bettany didn’t pretend innocence.

“Just asking a few questions.”

“There’s a Citizens Advice up the road,” Tweedledum said. “You want answers, there you go. Anywhere else, mind your own business.”

“Message received.”

“I hope that’s not a piss-take.”

Bettany raised his free hand, palm open. “I’m not looking for trouble.”

“Keep being a bother, it’ll find you anyway.”

For a moment longer they remained in formation, making it impossible for him to get by without squeezing between them. Then, as if operating on a frequency only they could hear, they moved aside, like an electric gate.

Bettany passed through.

Raging Angels.
Neon Twist. Nightclubs had once striven for sophistication—Downtown Manhattan, The Mayfair, Tuxedo Junction. These days, implied threat seemed the norm.

Just short of eleven, he walked into a club while its guardians were occupied. Big front doors gave onto a red staircase with a wide mirror at the bottom, and another door guarded by a youth
wearing a
MADE IN BRIXTON
tee. He did a double-take on seeing Bettany.

“Friend of Tommy’s,” Bettany said, dropping one of Liam’s twenties on the table and sliding by.

It wasn’t heaving, but there was a respectable crowd for a Tuesday in a recession. The bar was on a mezzanine with the dance floor below, visible through railings, and looking to Bettany like a wine cellar, stone walls and shallow alcoves. The music was mostly bass, and coloured spotlights looped and spun, overpowered every few beats by klieg lights drowning everything in thick white glare. He turned his back. What did he know? He must look like a bible illustration come to life. A girl shrank as he passed, making a
bleuch
face for her friends.

The floor round the bar was carpeted. Fibres clung to his boots.

Finding a gap he leaned on the metallic counter, earning another double-take, this from a barman with punched ears, polo mint-sized plastic disks allowing a clear view through his lobes. Instead of serving Bettany he turned and called a name.
Rowf? Roof? Ralph?
No way of telling.

Rowf or Roof or Ralph was more substantial in terms of years as much as girth. He and Bettany between them had more miles under their belt than the rest of the crowd combined.

What Ralph or Roof also had was a weary expression on a craggy face and a stubby index finger the size of a sardine tin. He crooked it to make Bettany lean forward, then said low and close, “On your bloody bike. Now.”

Bettany showed him not Liam’s photo, but another of Liam’s twenties. “Quiet word?”

Ralph—probably—pursed his lips.

“Just some information.”

A hand dropped onto his shoulder, and Bettany knew the door staff had caught up with themselves.

Ralph plucked the note from his hands.

“Time to go, Methuselah.”

He hadn’t been wrong about the bible illustration.

“I’ll be outside,” Bettany said, but Ralph was gone.

The door staff weren’t rough with him, which he suspected was because they didn’t want to get too close. It had been a while since he’d stood under a shower.

On the street they led him to a corner, one on each side.

“You’re making a nuisance of yourself.”

“Keep it up, and you’ll attract the wrong attention.”

“So do yourself a favour and go home.”

It was like being the straight man in a musical. Maybe they’d break into a tap routine. When they didn’t Bettany shrugged, and made as if taking their advice.

But he didn’t. Instead
he waited over the road in the doorway of a vintage clothing company, which had probably once been a secondhand shop. He gave it five minutes, then another five. At length Ralph emerged, lit a cigarette, and shared a laugh with the bouncers before setting off medium pace, a man on a break, no particular place to go.

On his side of the road Bettany held stride. Between them a hiccuping flow of traffic, mostly black cabs.

He let Ralph pick his own spot, which turned out to be a widening expanse where the road bled into a roundabout, from the centre of which an office block sprouted. On its side a huge advert, a Premier League name modelling a pair of briefs. Ralph leaned on a railing and lit another cigarette.

When Bettany reached him, he said, “You’ve got till I finish this.”

Bettany showed him Liam’s photo.

“Cop?”

“No.”

“Private?”

“Do I look like a private detective?”

“Don’t know,” Ralph said. “Never met one.”

He took the picture. Unlike most others, he studied rather than glanced at it.

“Maybe,” he said. “I think so. Maybe.”

He handed it back.

“Not a regular,” he said. “But now and again.”

“In a crowd?”

“That’s how most people come. Unless they’re just out to score.”

“Score what?”

This earned him a slow look.

“What do you think? No one goes clubbing hoping to go home alone.”

“What about drugs?”

“You are a cop.”

Bettany said, “The boy. He’s my son.”

“Yeah, I figured. No offence, but if he was a pick-up, you’d have made more effort.”

“He’s dead.”

Saying the words aloud was like hearing them the first time. Standing there, his boy’s ashes in his hand, it felt as if he were just now getting the news.

“Sorry, man. Tough break.”

Quickly said, but it sounded sincere.

Bettany said, “He was high. When he died.”

“Damn.”

“I’m looking for whoever sold him the drugs.”

Again, saying it made it true.

A clique of women sallied past, perfume trailing in their wake.

Ralph ground his cigarette under a boot.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Bettany waited.

“You’re planning on going Bronson on the streets of N1? Two things wrong with this picture, man. You are nobody’s idea of a vigilante. And you’ve pissed a lot of people off already, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

Bettany said, “You think that might have been in your club?”

Exasperation now. “What might?”

“Where he bought what he was on.”

“Christ. Look, you’ve had your twenty quid’s worth, okay? I’m sorry about your son, but seriously. Go home and mourn. You have got a home?”

“You want to meet him?”

“What now?”

Bettany held up the bag.

“My son.”

Ralph stared. Then said, “You really are a whackjob, aren’t you?”

“I hadn’t seen him in a few years. But I figured we’d have time. I thought I’d run out of that before he did.”

A sixteen-wheeler trundled by, navigating the roundabout the way dinosaurs must have waddled round waterholes.

Ralph said, “Look, I’m not saying nobody ever snorted a line in the toilets, but we’re talking recreational. People get high to keep dancing. There’s nobody sticking needles in themselves, nobody selling it to them. Not where I work. Wrong demographic.”

“What about dope?”

“You’ll need to be more specific.”

“Cannabis. Weed. Marijuana. Whatever it’s called now.”

“He was smoking
weed
? For real?”

Bettany said nothing.

“Look, man, no offence. I mean, sorry for your loss, but he was smoking
weed
?”

“Muskrat, it’s called.”

“Yeah, that’s seriously … That’s mellow shit. You know? Look, sorry, but what happened, he fall under a bus or something?”

Bettany didn’t answer.

“He did, didn’t he?”

“He fell.”

“Yeah. Look, I’m sorry. Really. But if he’d been drunk, would you be picking a fight with Smirnoff? It doesn’t make sense, that’s all I’m saying.”

He turned to go, then turned back.

“Here. I don’t need this.”

This was the twenty-pound note Bettany had given him. He pressed it into Bettany’s hand.

“Go home, yeah?”

He headed back to his job.

Bettany stood while traffic blasted round the junction, filing off in separate directions, the city, westward, further east. Way overhead an aeroplane silently circled. Eventually he stuffed the money into his pocket.

He left
the main drag. He was not far from the playground where he’d encountered the kids smoking dope, which was not far from the pub where this odyssey had begun. A wave of exhaustion almost flattened him. He’d been awake a long time.

Carrying Liam’s ashes had become central to his being. As if the bag’s handles had fused with his fingers, the pair of them holding hands again across an unbridgeable gap.

Passing another bar he hesitated, unsure whether he’d tried
this one. Through its fuzzy-glassed window elongated shapes shimmered, and even on the pavement Bettany could feel music’s dull thump, like a blunt-skulled creature repeatedly butting its head against a door. Not unlike his own evening’s activity. This was enough of an insight to persuade him to walk on by.

A dog trotted past and disappeared up a lane. He followed it, thinking to cut off a corner, but the lane right-angled then deadended in a blank expanse of wall. Three wheelie bins stood sentry, each lid tilted by a bulging load of refuse. He turned. He wasn’t alone. Blocking the way were a pair of large shapes, the streetlight behind them rendering their outlines harsh.

It wasn’t a big surprise. The bouncers, Tweedledum and his shadow. He’d been warned off and it hadn’t taken. They’d told him to go away, but here he was.

He said, “I was just going.”

Neither replied.

“So no harm done.”

Tweedledumber shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“Okay then.”

A car passed by out of sight, its throaty progress a reminder that he could have kept walking. Should have kept walking.

Tweedledum said, “Thought he’d been told.”

“Definitely. He was told.”

“We told him, didn’t we?”

“We did.”

“I distinctly remember that.”

Bettany understood they were a comedy act, if only in their own minds. That this was the part they really enjoyed, or enjoyed nearly as much.

“But he’s back.”

“So he is.”

“Bothering everybody.”

“I get it,” Bettany said. “I really do. I’ll go now.”

“Oh, now he’s talking.”

“Telling us he’s off.”

“Which is what he already told us.”

“Except here he is.”

A tapping noise had been going on for some moments. It came from the baseball bat in Tweedledum’s right hand. He was gently bouncing it off the ground, testing its springiness.

Bettany said, “You’re not seriously planning on using that.”