The Mark and the Void (13 page)

‘We’ve ’eard all the ’ard-luck stories. Every sodding bank in Europe’s been over looking for a few quid from the Gaffer. Most of the Yanks as well.’

‘But he could do very well out of it. Real estate, too.’ Howie gestures out the window at the pristine rows of empty buildings. ‘What is it they say? When there’s blood on the streets, buy property?’

‘Don’ tell me about blood on the streets, mate,’ James Harper says. ‘Oran, you put on a bulletproof vest before you get off the plane.’

I turn again. ‘I thought the unrest hadn’t reached Oran.’

‘They keep it ou’ of the papers, don’ they. But the las’ time I was over there, they’d ’anged a load of revolutionaries across the road from my ’otel. Eleven geezers lined up along the street like We Are Fackin’ Dead FC. Fackin’ dogs barkin’ all night, tryin’ to chew their shoes off.’

‘Terrorists?’

‘Some bunch of ragheads comin’ ou’ of the deser’. You know the type, Koran in one ’and, AK in the uvver. Makin’ a big bleedin’ hullaballoo that the Caliph’s a blasphemer and not a proper caliph and all tha’.’

‘But he’s got things under control?’

‘’
E’s
got nuffink to worry about. Seen ’is bleedin’ Imperial Guard? Fifty fackin’ sand niggers seven foot tall that can kill a man wiv one blow. ’
E’s
all right. It’s every uvver cunt who’s shittin’ it.’ He shifts his weight, making his buttocks squeak against the vinyl. ‘Once Wawter’s got this wall finished, it’ll be easier. ’Opefully the Gaffer can keep a lid on fings till then.’

As he speaks, we pull up at our destination; the suddenly sombre mood is lifted by the other Tordale delegates, who haul their leader from the cab with the happy news that they mooned a policeman en route. James Harper brightens immediately.

Two bald, Puffa-jacketed sentinels are guarding a stairwell. Over their heads, a neon sign spells out
VELVET DREAM’S
. A deep, pulmonary thrum issues from the subterranean entrance; the four brilliantined visitors hasten boisterously down the steps towards it. Following after them, Ish momentarily catches my eye; I give her a sympathetic pat on the elbow.

At the door we are met by a svelte girl wearing a kind of heart-shaped velvet bustier that covers half of her breasts and some legal minimum of her genitals. She leads us to a table; Chris Kane conspicuously passes her a credit card, and our guests, as if at a signal, start shouting drinks orders. Around us, girls glide constantly through the red-tinged murk. Some carry trays of
drinks, others plastic gourds, which they shake like tambourines, soliciting ‘tips for the dancers’; others carry nothing at all, but bend in close to the men on the banquettes and whisper in their ears. Now and then one will get to his feet, as if he’s been fingered by the thought police, and be led away into the darkness. At the top of the room is a stage, where a girl with long blonde hair and enormous, unreal breasts is spinning around a pole in metallic hot pants; as she pivots, faster and faster, hair and pants become interweaving rings of light, like some electrical phenomenon.

‘Busy,’ Chris Kane observes.

‘Recession-proof, innit?’ one of the hobbits says. ‘People’ll always want to watch a fit bird get her ganny out, good times and bad.’

‘Structurally, sex industry’s very robust,’ another hobbit agrees.

‘Look at the flamin’ structure on that,’ the third hobbit says, nodding at a statuesque girl in a thong who has arrived at our table. Her vampish maquillage and stupendous bosom cannot quite counteract a callow, bumpkin quality – perhaps it is in the way she stands, her shoulders squared as if ready to carry a hay bale.

‘Myou vont privet dents?’ she inquires.

The Tordale delegation crack up. ‘You wot, darlin’?’

‘Privet dents?’ the girl repeats, shifting uncertainly. Ersatz gemstones glitter blankly from her thong.

‘A
privet
dance?’

‘You got a musical bush, love?’

She is blushing now, the colour visible even in the degraded light.

‘Only teasin’ yer, sweetheart.’ The youngest hobbit pats her hand. ‘I’d love a dents.’

The girl smiles uncertainly and performs a clumsy back step as the hobbit gets to his feet. Chris Kane hurriedly passes him the credit card; the hobbit takes it without even looking at him. As
she leads him away, he gives his comrades a rascally grin. ‘I’m goin’ to put a great big dent in ’er privates!’

‘No touchin’, mate,’ his colleague reminds him. ‘Remember Birmingham.’

Howie and James Harper are at one end of the banquette, deep in talk. Jurgen begins telling us how many
Weissbiers
on the market are strictly speaking not
Weissbiers.
One of the hobbits slides over to Ish. ‘Ow’igh’?’ he says.

A famous banker once said that the key to gaining a client is to become his friend. People give their business to people they like; in banking, where what we actually do with the money becomes ever harder to explain – indeed, where a client half-expects his own bank to rip him off – a strong bond between you and your account is paramount. Hence the fortunes spent on ‘entertaining’: the rugby matches and Grand Prix and golf tournaments, the lavish dinners and
premiers crus
and trips to Venice, the girls who appear at the door of your client’s hotel bedroom at 2 a.m. just in case he needs anything. Obviously, the system turned into a racket long ago; nowadays the best salesman is the one who can make his client believe that he is his friend
in spite of
the ostentatious gifts and luxuries he bears.

For me this has always been a lie too far: at these events I usually limit myself to making sure the glasses stay full. Looking for a waitress, I see that a fresh dancer has come onstage. She has long dark hair and a tawny complexion and looks enough like Ariadne that I experience a pang; as she cavorts naked around the pole, I clothe her in a black Airtex T-shirt and jeans, give her a tray, and a smile, and a smudge of cinnamon on her apron …

Then something else catches my eye: a silhouette at one of the tables girdling the stage. I stare at it without knowing why; then I realize who it belongs to. ‘Excuse me one moment,’ I say to our guests.

He is alone, gazing up at the stage, so fixed on the dancer’s performance he doesn’t notice me until I tap his shoulder. He turns;
I see the drowsy swim and swoon of his pupils as his eyes attempt to focus, then recognition dawns at last and an expression of horror crosses his face. He springs or rather staggers to his feet, staying upright for only a moment before falling backwards over his stool, from which position he warns me not to try anything.

‘I’m not going to try anything,’ I say.

‘That’s good,’ Paul says, pulling himself back on to his stool. ‘For you.’ He lifts a shot glass from the table and brings it to his lips, not seeming to notice that it is empty. The dancer smacks her buttock, leaving a bright pink handprint glowing on her skin.

‘What are you doing here?’ I ask him.

‘What are you doing here?’ he retorts, eyes trained on the dancer, who has stalked over to the end of the stage so that another solitary spectator can tuck a note into her G-string, which has evidently remained on for that purpose. ‘If you’re looking for an apology, you’re wasting your time.’

‘I’m not looking for an apology.’

‘Oh, you want to have me arrested, is that it? Well, go right ahead. There’s not a judge in the land who’d convict me. They’d probably give me a medal.’

‘I don’t want to have you arrested.’

‘Well, what do you want, so?’

I am at a loss. I came over on impulse, without thinking why; only now does it occur to me that we have nothing to say to one another. Onstage, the dancer shucks down her knickers to reveal a finger of carefully trimmed pubic hair, then reaches between her legs to spread her labia. To a rising chorus of hoots, wolf whistles, catcalls, she slowly begins to arch her torso backwards.

Was it always a scam?’ I hear myself say.

‘What?’ he says irritably.

‘The book. Your book. Did you ever intend to write it?’ Even as I speak the words I know the question is futile, irrelevant, like asking the person breaking up with you whether they ever really loved you.

Paul looks up at me, suitably disgusted. ‘Seriously?’

‘I thought maybe in the beginning …’

He waves a hand, cutting me off. ‘I don’t do that shit any more,’ he says.

‘What shit?’ I say. ‘You mean writing?’

Paul shrugs, returns his attention to the floor show. Inch by inch, thighs quivering, the dancer has bent back so that her dark hair sweeps the floor and the spotlight shines directly athwart the sad little heart she holds between her fingers; from behind, the noise of the unseen crowd breaks over us, cheers and applause as if the vagina were a famous diva hitting a high C.

‘You don’t write at all?’

Paul casts about him and signals to a passing girl, pale with a mane of chestnut hair.

‘Private dance?’ she says, coming over.

‘I have to go,’ he says to me.

‘Wait.’ I reach out, grab his arm. ‘Why me?’ I say.

Paul looks back at me with a mixture of pity and guilt and exhaustion. ‘I have to go,’ he says again.

I release him; the chestnut-haired girl takes his hand; I watch him follow her away towards the honeycomb of rooms at the back. Onstage, the dancer takes a bow; a moment later, a dolorous attendant trudges out with a spray and a flannel, with which he wipes down the pole and the dance floor.

‘There ’e is!’ One of the hobbits grabs me in a loose headlock as I slide back into our table. ‘You ’orny little fucker, I fough’ you was goin’ to crawl righ’ up that bird’s minge!’

I smile, take a sip from my repulsive fluorescent drink and put the encounter out of my mind. Glancing around the table, I gauge our progress. The smallest and most earnest hobbit is speaking animatedly to Chris Kane, whose face exhibits the mixture of fascination and panic characteristic of one whose efforts to feign interest are undermined by his inability to hear what’s being said. The burly boy who put me in a headlock rambles to
Jurgen and Kevin about football; his curly-haired colleague, now wearing his tie wrapped around his head Rambo-style, is talking to Ish in a low intense voice that requires her to lean ever closer. Of Howie and James Harper there is no sign, but I spot Howie’s Bulgarian friend from earlier moving through the crowd in the direction of the toilets. That is where the deal will happen, if there is one; our job now is to run interference, keep the others happy so Howie can work uninterrupted.

I order a fresh round of drinks, take a surreptitious look at my watch. The next dancer has come on, a synthetic blonde with breasts like warheads who humps the pole slowly and then, as if at the flick of a switch, at double speed. Her siliconized body and its clumsy imitations of love put me in mind of an early iteration of a new technology, those first, oxymoronic mobile phones the size and weight of breeze blocks.

‘So’ – with a suddenly businesslike air, the burly boy now places his elbows on the table and leans in – ‘BOT’s based in Dublin a good while now?’

‘Almost ten years,’ Jurgen says. ‘The regulatory climate here gives our clients many options not available to London banks.’

‘Ten years,’ the burly boy considers. ‘And in that time’ – he looks around at each of us in turn – ‘’ave you ever seen … a leprechaun?’

Hilarity engulfs the visiting party. Their faces are rubicund and sloppy with drink, and looking at them I have the incontrovertible certainty – as if it were inscribed over the scene, like the motto of a Hogarth print – that we are being taken for a ride …

And then a shadow falls across the table.

A girl is standing there: a black girl, easily six foot tall, lithe and muscular and making no pretence at affability. ‘Private dance,’ she says. She pronounces it like a death sentence. The visitors look at each other; we look at them looking at each other. Chris Kane readies the credit card.

‘You ge’ off wiv ’er,’ the curly-haired boy says.

It takes a moment for Ish to realize he is talking to her. ‘Excuse me?’

He nods up at the lap dancer. ‘Go on, give her a snog,’ he says.

Ish, for once, is speechless; she stares back at him agape.

‘Why not, she’s gorgeous,’ he persists. ‘You been givin’ me the brush-off all night, maybe this bird’s more your flavour. Come on, I’ll pay.’ He reaches into his jacket pocket and takes out his wallet. From the fold he removes a wad of bills and counts them out on to the table. Ish turns to Jurgen, but he sits there as if frozen, grinning glassily at thin air.

‘Go on! Go on!’ the boy’s comrades urge Ish, laughing. The lap dancer waits motionlessly at the tableside, her face utterly blank.

‘Fuck off,’ Ish says. The other two make mock-appalled
Oo!
sounds, but the curly-haired boy is undaunted. ‘I’m not saying you have to lick her out, just give her a kiss. ‘’Ow much to kiss ’er, wiv tongues?’ This latter is directed at the lap dancer.

‘Come on, don’t be an old biddy,’ the burly boy joshes Ish. ‘Walter told us you lads knew how to have a laugh!’

I get to my feet. ‘I am afraid we have another appointment.’

Jurgen’s eyes flash at me from the banquette; I ignore them, reach for Ish’s hand, which she gives me dazedly, though she remains in her seat.

‘Wait,’ the curly-haired boy says. He has stopped laughing. The others stop too and look at him. He licks his lips and says slowly to Ish, ‘If you get off wiv her, we’ll sign wiv BOT.’

Over our table, in the midst of the thudding music and the barracking laughter, a dome of silence falls. Ish hunches miserably in her chair; Jurgen carefully examines his cufflinks; Kevin gawps as if he’s watching the Wimbledon final; and the lap dancer continues to look on, impassive as a Japanese mask. Then some kind of fracas starts up at the top of the room, a man and a woman shouting. Everyone turns to look; I take advantage of the
distraction to tug Ish to her feet and drag her away. She appears conflicted: at the door, she turns to me. ‘Maybe –’

‘Go,’ I say, hustling her up the stairs.

The shouting voices get louder. Craning my neck as I make my way through the crowd, I can see the chestnut-haired girl from earlier berating a punter. His back is turned, but there is no doubt who it is. A bouncer storms past me to intervene; I find myself hurrying after him.