Something to Tell You (36 page)

Even as I put the phone down, he was cackling.

I had been intending to ring Henry to say I’d got the Hand for him. He would be relieved, and we would continue with our friendship as normal. Now it was my duty to explain that I had indeed retrieved the picture—and had spent some time helping his daughter, at Valerie’s request. Except that there had been a glitch.

I explained, “The Hand has been taken from my flat by a psychotic patient.”

“Taken? You say taken?”

“Yes, taken. Sorry about that, pal.”

“Taken for good?”

“Maybe. How would I know? Do the mad explain their long-term intentions?”

“Taken by which madman, for God’s sake?” He began to yell. “Who was it?”

“That’s confidential.”

“Are you serious? You are telling me there is a lunatic running about London with my wife’s best Ingres stuffed in his backpack?”

“Exactly.”

“And you let them? Is this your rebellion—your hatred—of me? You’ve finally turned, have you?”

“Certainly the Hand has been severed.”

“Is it coming back?”

“Who knows? As Lenin might have said,” I added, “one step forward, two steps back.”

The noises on the other end of the line were extraordinary. I turned off the phone.

After I’d finished for the day, Henry came by. We had argued often, and sulked and disputed vigorously, enjoying much of it, but not all. Both of us relished a good rumble, though we had never fallen out. Now I didn’t want to hear another word about the Hand.

I must have come to the door with some leery belligerence, because he laid his hand on my shoulder and said quickly, “Don’t worry, cool it, I’m not going to bring it up. There are more important things than pencil marks on a piece of paper.”

We strolled past the line of busy pubs, with drinkers sitting outside in the sun, towards the bridge at Barnes and then back along the towpath towards Hammersmith Bridge. On the opposite side of the river path was a deserted bird sanctuary with a bench on a bank high above it. We sat there for a while.

“I wanted to see you. I’d have joined you last night,” I said, “if I hadn’t been dealing with your family.”

“I’m grateful for that,” he said. “It was fun. There was a panic early on because the man holding the party phoned to call it off. As always in life, there weren’t enough girls. But being in the agent business, I could be of assistance.”

“You?”

“Bushy called in at the Cross Keys, and he came along to the party with three Eastern European grinders who were more than willing to have money put their way. But what do you know, they were accompanied by their manager—a Mr. Wolf.”

“Big Bad?”

“You know him. Mr. Wolf stayed for the evening, feeling his charges needed security. He was extremely pleased by the way it went.”

“In what way?”

“He had a briefcase full of charlie, and there were plenty of takers. Soon the girls and the guys were lost in a blizzard of it. If I hadn’t called a halt to the whole thing around three, I think we’d still be there.”

“How was Bushy?”

“He wasn’t convinced he could play without you on hand. I had to tell him he was helping me out, that he was a staff member rather than a star. That seemed to do it.

“But he was—for reasons he wouldn’t elaborate—wearing a white plaster on his nose, which made him resemble Jack Nicholson in
Chinatown
. At one point, his face turned red and his eyes started to pulsate. I don’t think anyone noticed until he started shutting one eye and letting the other pop and bulge. One of the girls went into a hyperventilation and had to be taken out and slapped, but she was a write-off for the rest of the night.” Henry went on, “Wolf’s one of your oldest friends, if not the oldest, and I’d never met him before.”

“What did he say?”

“As the evening went on, he told me about Valentin and Ajita and her father’s factory. I’d forgotten that you’d been involved in that. I remember reading about it at the time. I’d say that Wolf’s rather obsessed with you, isn’t he? He wants to meet up with me to talk more. Would that be okay?”

“No.”

“I did hear about the unsolved murder and the whole three-years-in-a-Syrian-jail thing. Don’t look so worried, none of us is clean.”

Henry finished his drink. He was going to Miriam’s. One of the dogs was sick; she needed him there. Miriam was on her own more than she liked to admit. The children, teenagers now, stayed where they could, often with friends. One of the sweeter boys, needing to escape, had even gone to stay with Mum and Billie in the suburbs.

I saw a lot of Miriam, particularly as she had the Sky football package I hadn’t got round to renting, but I would never sleep under her roof. She was still more than capable of “insane” behaviour: screaming, rolling around on the floor, punching the wall. At times, in her house, I could feel as though I’d been lobbed through the looking-glass and whirled back into my childhood.

I did think of accompanying Henry, but Bushy had called me earlier. “I got the information,” he repeated. “I’m waiting for you.”

I wondered whether it was a good idea for us to discuss this in Wolf’s workplace. But Bushy wasn’t concerned. He had other business on at the same time.

Henry and I parted, and I walked along to Hammersmith bus station and caught a bus inside the shopping centre. It was slow progress, particularly along the Uxbridge Road. The bus, low and long, was noisy with kids playing music on their phones. It stank, with every nation seemingly represented, and I wondered if anyone would have been able to identify the city just from the inhabitants of the bus.

Bushy, without a wrap on his nose, was at a table in the corner. Wolf, working tonight, was at the other end of the bar. The Harridan brought me over a vodka. She wanted to sit down, but I told her Bushy and I were in a meeting.

I said, “You and Wolf had a good night, I hear.”

“Shrinky, you’re right,” Bushy said. “That man jus’ don’t keep still.”

Bushy moved his chair closer to me, whispering; two old men in a pub, talking.

I asked, “What information are you referring to?”

He glanced around and then at me. “Don’t yer know? I bin researching around for you. Listen.”

Bushy told me chucking-out time at the Cross Keys was still 10:30. It opened at midday and was always busy, particularly in the early evening, but it closed before most of the other local pubs. Like other dubious local businesses—minicab offices, porno shops, lap-dancing clubs and corner shops which sold alcohol out of hours—the Harridan paid off the local police but didn’t want unruly behaviour to draw unnecessary attention. At closing time, one of the Africans would drive Wolf up West.

I learned from Bushy that, in Soho, Wolf had been working as a doorman at a fashionable club, Satori. As a natural hustler, in ten days he’d soon discovered that such work was lucrative, mainly because of the tips the door staff earned from the clamorous photographers who moved from club to club around the West End all night, earning top sums for the right picture. The photographers needed to know who was in the club—which footballer, soap star, pop singer or movie actor, the price of whose fame was a transparent life—and whether they were coked-up, drunk, copulating or all three.

This information was passed rapidly through the club’s ecosystem, beginning with the bathroom attendants—the Africans whose night’s work it was to clean the toilets, offer towels to the celebs, clean up their shit and pick up meagre tips. They appeared to be almost invisible but were quite aware of who was smoking or snorting what. Aboveground, the bar staff, security and managers were part of this chain of associates: every drink, pass or glance was intensively monitored by numerous unnoticed eyes. Wolf and his pals also had access to the club’s CCTV system, selling the right piece of tape to the right Net dealer.

I said, “What I’ve heard doesn’t surprise me, Bushy. I think it’s good for our friend over there to keep busy and make a living.”

“But do you know this? He pimping after something bigger. He cunnin’ to the core. There’s some rich Indian bird up West. After work he goes into her. She got a fine house in a quiet Soho street. You personally acquainted with the girl, Jamal?” He was prodding me on the arm. “Are yer?”

“Yes, yes. Ajita.”

“That’s the name, I think. You said it.”

“You know this for sure?”

Bushy tapped his nose. “Everything go round the Cross Keys line. The drivers outside talk, all the girls natter. But it was me who put all them pieces together, like you do with a dream.”

“But, Bushy, I’m getting confused as well as annoyed. You told me Wolf had started on something hot with the Harridan.”

“Look at her! It didn’t last. You can see why. The Harridan guess Wolf goes to someone else. She don’t like it, but she don’t want to lose him. He do the electrics, the plumbing, he can paint and all that. You know, I work for Miriam, not her. We’re family. Harridan weren’t ever my employer. I only did favours for her.”

“What are the rumours about Wolf and this girl?”

“He’s risking it.”

“In what way?”

“If he want to get his name on the contract to the pub and all that, and be on the same level with Jenny Harridan, he shouldn’t annoy her by going with other women.”

So Wolf had wanted to take over the Cross Keys; indeed, he had started work on the upstairs rooms, which the Harridan was keen to rent out for private functions. But the rumour was, and it seemed inevitable, that the Cross Keys would be sold and converted into a pub selling basil risotto and Spanish bottled beers with diced limes jammed in the top. It was the end for ordinary street-corner pubs, and certainly for rough and cheap places. The Cross Keys didn’t seem the kind of hostelry that could survive. London was being decorated; perhaps the city would be rebranded “Tesco’s.”

I said, “Wolf’s more than a little crazy. If the Harridan refuses to let him run the place with her, or if she chucks him out altogether, he might go nuts. He’s on the edge as it is.”

Bushy said, “Doctor, don’t get me wrong, but have you thought you might be the crazy one? Paranoias an’ all that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Wolf’s getting laid at least. Sorry to tell you, but they’re at it a lot, he’s told the girls. He’s going to be chilled.”

“Is he? Nothing helpful follows from that. It might be even worse. Crazies are always being let out of institutions because they’re chilled. A week later they’re sitting down to a plate of toasted balls.”

“You’re the doc,” he said casually, making me wonder whether I was.

“About Ajita, I should have guessed,” I said. “Perhaps I did, unconsciously. Now I can only worry about what he will tell her.”

“About yer dirty crime?”

“My dirty crime, yes.”

“Is it going round and round yer head?”

“At times.”

“I hate that,” he said.

I noticed Bushy was looking in a mirror at his nose and stroking it. I thanked him for the information and went round to the side of the bar where the girls worked.

I ordered a drink from Wolf and said, “Wolf, please. I need that picture back. You stole it from me, an old friend. How could you do that to me? What sort of man are you?”

“Don’t raise your voice. I’m not a thief,” he said. He leaned across the bar. “It was borrowed in lieu of other payments.”

“You’re doing well,” I said. “I set all this up for you. Isn’t that recompense enough?”

“A job in a bar?” He looked as though he wanted to spit at me. “You smoked my whole life like a cigarette, until it was ash.”

I was almost out the door of the pub when I turned, nipped through a door marked “Private” and ran upstairs to Wolf’s room. His corner was characteristically neat: his jackets and trousers were on hangers, his shirts organised by colour, his shaving gear on a shelf above the sink. The rest of the room was such a mess of broken furniture, ripped curtains and cardboard boxes I wouldn’t have known where to start searching for the Hand.

“Can you help me?”

One of the girls was behind me, half-dressed in pink high heels with a flimsy dressing gown over her shoulders, backlit and looking like a woman in a movie by Fassbinder, one of my favourite directors.

She said, “You the psychiatrist and me you don’t recognise.”

“Hello, Miss Lucy, how you doing?” She shrugged. I asked, “Any chance of a quickie?”

“Quick? You think I that sort?” she said, approaching me. At least she grinned before she pretended to slap me. “What you wanting up here?”

I said, “I think Wolf might have something of mine.”

As she appeared not to grasp a word I said, I kissed her and held her hand. We were looking at one another curiously.

Wolf came in suddenly, looking annoyed and agitated, as though convinced he’d caught me at last, as he knew he would, and now would have to deal with me.

I said, “Just looking for a G-string to floss with.”

“Hi, Lucy.” He winked at me and said, “Up to your old tricks?” and went out.

“He was bad temper today,” she said.

I was laughing when I gave her my mobile number. I thought of Valentin and his charm and facility with women he didn’t know: it was a rare man who wasn’t afraid of women. How odd it was that I still identified with that part of him, after so many years.

I followed her downstairs and watched her for one dance. At the end, I went over, kissed her and said, “I can’t wait to see you with your clothes on.”

I rang Ajita that night, but there was no reply. I decided to leave it a few days to see whether she called me. She didn’t. The following week I rang and again asked if she had time to meet. She sounded sleepy but at least said she’d been thinking about me “a lot.” We arranged lunch twice, but she cancelled each time, saying she had a cold.

Finally I left a message with her saying I would be in the neighbourhood at the end of the week. I’d call by and see her, making sure it was early evening, when I knew Wolf would be working at the Cross Keys, a few hours before his evening excursions.

I wanted to see her, I was ready for it, and she, apparently, for me—at last. She had sent me a text saying there was “something” she wanted me to look at as soon as possible. It was “urgent.”

Before I could begin to think about what she might mean—whether she was going to tell me about Wolf, or about something he had told her—I received a frantic call from Miriam saying that Henry had disappeared.

“Where’s he gone? What are you talking about?”

I managed to grasp that she had had one of the dogs put down, at home. During what she called “the ceremony,” Henry had walked out of the house. He had gone to his flat—or wherever—and stayed away for three days, not ringing once.

“Have you called him?” I said.

“I’m afraid to. Well, I did a few times, but I turned the phone off when I heard his voice on the answering machine. I know he hates to talk on the phone. But what is he hiding—is it bad news, do you think? What if he’s been blown up?”

“What? Why should he be?”

“If he goes on a train, like in the Madrid bombings! Two hundred people killed! It could happen here, couldn’t it?”

“He probably has more chance of winning an Oscar.”

“What if he’s left me? It would finish me off.”

“Has he said he’s left you?”

“He only muttered something about not wanting to think about the Dalmatian.” I sighed. She began to cry. “It was bad enough having to have it put down. But it’s that daughter who has put him against me. You know where she lives? I’ll get her address and I’ll have her again—this time for good!”

On my way to visit Ajita later, I called around at Henry’s, not really expecting him to be there. He might have taken off, as he did sometimes, to stroll around some foreign city, like Budapest or Helsinki, for a couple of days, sketching, reading and visiting museums.

But the window opened and his head popped out. He came down straightaway, in his slippers, and was agreeable, indeed excited, not appearing to be in crisis.

“Was it the dog that did it?” I asked as we walked under Hammersmith Bridge, towards the station.

“It was a damn good dog. I walked it often. The ‘ceremony’ was unusual.”

“It was?”

Miriam had invited some of the neighbours, the children, other friends, and of course Henry to be there when the vet injected the stricken dog with the fatal fluid.

Henry said, “As I got down on my knees and took my place on the floor, lying there with my ear at the dying dog’s heart—the dog that didn’t know it was going to die—I enacted the goodbye with love, rolling about with all the shamelessness I could muster, even making appropriately agonising noises. No way can I be accused of shirking on my dog duties.”

“I can’t wait to see the video.”

“But when the others took their turn, it occurred to me that I couldn’t spend any more time with people who want to hug expiring mutts. The abyss of boredom is my phobia. I’m terrified of being enveloped and destroyed by it. I’ve never stopped running from it.”

“Or towards it.”

He was quiet, then said, “Miriam and I had decided to go clubbing later to a new place, the Midnight Velvet.” I must have made a face; he said, “You didn’t like the Sootie?”

“Not at all, no. It made me feel wretchedly depressed, particularly seeing Josephine. I was annoyed that I allowed myself to be talked into going.”

“You blame me?”

“Partly, but mostly myself.”

“I’m really sorry, Jamal. I tend to agree with you now.” He said, “For months I’d wanted to follow my desire to the limit, all along the razor’s edge. But those places no longer haunt or attract me either. Didn’t my own daughter call me a stupid, stoned fool? I hadn’t faced up to its exhausted decadence. I felt unclean, repelled by myself. I had become that dying dog. And there was something in my old life I missed.

“I left Miriam without disturbing her—she was with her loved ones—and went home. The world of bloodied, shredded bodies under Bush-Blair had been making me angry and sick. I’ve been feeling more and more hopeless.

“But on the night of the dying dog, I was up until dawn, reading poetry, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, running from book to book while listening to Mahler, Bach. Isn’t art the still point—a spot of sense—in a thrashing world? I wrote ideas down and emailed actors I wanted to use in the documentary. I outlined my ideas for
Don Giovanni
.”

I said, “I’d been wondering recently whether you really are beyond one of the more useful male vanities—that of reputation,” I said.

“I do think about it. I want to have been of little harm,” he said. “And of some use. I wouldn’t want to have betrayed my intelligence or my talent, such as it is. Talent exists, you know, and is inexplicable. I used to write, in my end-of-year diary roundup, ‘Thank God, nothing to be ashamed of.’ But this year I’ve done no work at all.”

I said, “Why would it not be good for you to vegetate, to lie fallow for a while?”

“Like some Chekhov character who wants to work but doesn’t know where to start, I believed my artistic ambition had run down. Now some sort of energy has come back.”

“Lucky you, with a surge of new life. Miriam will be pleased.”

“I’ll see her, and try to find some clarity. Will you come by later?”

“I’m going to see Ajita.”

He said quietly, “Is there any hope there?”

“My guess is we’ll meet up for a bit tonight and then she’ll go out.”

“Jesus, Jamal, how terrible. I know now you waited and waited for that woman and then—what? It just didn’t work out?”

“Who said it won’t, in time?”

“But there’s something sad there, aren’t I right?”

“Something impossible.”

We embraced; he went back to his flat. I got on the train, where at least I had the chance to read. Like Henry, I still had some impulse to learn, to understand.

At Ajita’s, the housekeeper wore a crisp white uniform like a servant in the Edwardian children’s novels I used to read to Rafi. She led me to Ajita’s bedroom, right at the top of the house, knocked and said, “Miss—your visitor.”

“Thank you,” said Ajita, coming out and kissing me. She almost knocked my ear off with a thin unmarked box. “It’s only a DVD. But it’ll interest you, I think. I know how much you like to be interested in things.”

“Do I? But I thought you had something to tell me.”

“To show you,” she said. “It’ll certainly surprise you, I know that for sure.”