Hard Light (5 page)

“I don't know. Yeah, I guess.” I looked around. “Is there even a bedroom in this place?”

He gestured toward a cheap Chinese screen draped with scarves. “The seraglio lies yon. Coffin nail?”

He held out an alligator-leather cigarette case. I shook my head. He withdrew an e-cigarette, sucked at it, then exhaled an amethyst cloud of vapor. I grabbed my bag. “Bathroom?”

Adrian pointed at a door. “There's no hot water.”

There was no tub, either, only a flimsy plastic shower stall veined with mildew. Also no medicine cabinet, though one wasn't necessary. I'd seen pill bottles everywhere in the flat—Fentanyl, mostly. On the floor, on windowsills, lined up on shelves beside empty vodka bottles. Here in the bathroom they jostled for space in the shower stall, alongside enough hair products to furnish a salon. Some of the pill bottles had Krishna's name on the label. Most did not.

And most of the bottles were empty, though I did find one half filled with something called Solpadol. I pocketed it, undressed, and took a flash shower. Afterward I dried myself on a cheap polyester kimono emblazoned with a red dragon—there were no towels, natch. I dressed quickly, pulling on a striped shirt and worn black sweater. When I returned to the living room, Adrian Carlisle was on the loveseat, his long legs stretched atop a pile of clothing.

“So which little friend are you?” He nudged a red lace bra with one winklepicker, flicking his foot so the bra sailed across the room.

“Cassandra. We just met last night at the Banshee.”

“And such close friends already.” Adrian removed his stovepipe hat, revealing thin, shoulder-length dark hair streaked with gray. “I try to check in on Krish every day. Make sure she has a pulse.”

I perched on the opposite end of the loveseat, reaching to pick up an empty pill bottle. Haldol, 5 mg. “She has quite a habit.”

Adrian raised a white hand that trembled slightly. “Let he who is without stain throw the first stone. May I see that?”

He took the pill bottle and inspected the label, sighing when he saw it was empty. “Years ago I spent an entire day going through this flat with a fine-toothed comb. I found exactly one Mandrax. Where do you think she hides them? I pulled up the floorboards, there's nothing there.”

“What's Solpadol?” I asked.

“Codeine and paracetamol.”

“What's paracetamol?”

“Acetaminophen. Did you find some Solpadol?”

“No. Just curious.”

“You're lying.” Adrian smiled. “I like that in a girl.”

“You wouldn't have anything that might help me wake up?”

“Not today, darling.”

“What do they call Ritalin here? Focalin, stuff like that.”

“Ritalin. Methylphenidate hydrochloride, if you're a pharmacist. Which I somehow suspect you are not.” Adrian peered at me. “You looking to sign on with the NHS?”

“No. Just tired.”

“We'll all sleep when we're dead, won't we? Here.” He withdrew a card case, scrawled something on a card, and handed it to me; collected his top hat and stood. “I came to remind Krish that there's a birthday party tonight for Morven Dunfries. I tried to ring but of course her mobile's dead. You're welcome to come along—you look like you could use a hot dinner.”

“I'd rather find a drink.”

“I'm sure Krish has something, somewhere. Or you could just squeeze her like a sponge.” He tipped his hat. “Maybe I'll see you later.”

“What time is it?”

He pulled out a mobile. “Half four.”

“Jesus.” I raked the damp hair from my forehead. “I was supposed to meet someone, only now I'm not sure where to find him.”

Adrian nodded sympathetically. “I know just how you feel. Here in Camden?”

“Brixton. But I got the place wrong, or he did. Do you know Derek Haverty?”

“Derek? The barman at the Banshee? He's easy to find.”

“Not Derek. Someone he knows.” I hesitated, wondering if I could trust Adrian. Almost certainly not. “Is he an okay guy, Derek?”

“An okay guy? He did a bid in prison, if that's what you're after. I wouldn't sit on his Jimmy Shands.”

He made his way through the midden of clothing to the door, waved without looking back, and left. I stared at the card he'd given me.

ADRIAN CARLISLE, ESQUIRE

On the back he'd written an address. It was meaningless to me, so I stuck the card in my pocket and went through the contents of my bag. I counted out some bills from a wad of twenty-pound notes and left them in my wallet with the stolen passport. Then I put my U.S. passport into a Ziplock bag, retrieved my Tony Lamas from under the loveseat, and stuck the Ziplock bag in the bottom of one cowboy boot, along with the remainder of my cash.

“Morning.” I turned to see Krishna emerge from behind the Chinese screen. An oversized soccer jersey hung from her matchstick frame, falling well below her knees. Staring at her made me queasy: She looked about twelve. “Who was that?”

I held up Adrian's card. “This guy.”

She walked over and took the card, yawning. “He's up early.”

“He was here when I woke.”

“Yah, Ado gets where he wants to be.” She pronounced the nickname so it rhymed with Play-Doh. “He's like my fucking shadow, he is.” She read what was written on the back of the card, scowled, and tossed it onto the floor.

“He said it was a birthday party.”

“I know what it is.”

She wandered to a corner that served as kitchenette, searched the fridge for a liter bottle of water. She drank a hefty amount, returned to the living room, and handed the bottle to me. I took a sip: vodka cut with what smelled like nail polish remover.

“It's got B vitamins in it.” She flopped onto the couch and lit a cigarette. “What's your name again?”

“Cass. How old are you?”

“Age of consent's sixteen here. But I'm twenty-three.”

“What's the deal with this party?”

Krishna yawned again, showing gappy teeth. “Ado knows all kinds of squiffy old people. No offense,” she added. “Birthday Girl's on me like a cat every time I see her.” She stood, stretching so that the jersey ran up along her skinny thighs. “Feel like treating me to breakfast?”

“Yeah, okay.”

She padded off into the shower. I was relieved there'd been no discussion of last night. Daylight and what passed for sobriety on my part had burned off any residual desire. She wasn't my type—way too young, way too skinny, and the pharaonic eye makeup made me think of tombs. Still, that voice was one in a million.

And she knew her way around London. I hadn't had a proper meal in thirty-six hours. I still had no clue how I'd find Quinn, but I didn't want to do it on an empty stomach. I picked up Adrian Carlisle's card and stuck it in my pocket, waited impatiently until Krishna emerged from the bathroom, dripping like a wet ferret. Another half hour and she reemerged from behind the screen, dressed in black leggings and ankle boots, a knee-length orange sweater and freshly applied Cleopatra eye makeup, her cinnamon curls gelled into a pompadour.

“Ready?” she asked, pulling on her buffalo plaid coat.

Outside the light was already failing. Rain slashed down from a tarnished nickel sky. People hurried along the canal path, collars turned up against a wind acrid with the odors of diesel and dead fish. Krishna texted nonstop, mouthing the words to whatever she heard through her earbuds. Bicyclists rang their bells to warn us of their approach, shouting at me when they passed—I couldn't remember which side I should walk on. Krishna navigated like a bird in flight, never looking up from her mobile.

We ate at a sleek little bistro, not the kind of place I'd have pegged as Krishna's local. But then I was paying. Steak frites, a bottle of cheap Rhone. Every ten minutes Krishna would dash outside to have a cigarette, or turn sideways in her chair, whispering agitatedly into her phone.

“Lance?” I asked after about the seventeenth call.

Krishna nodded. “Yah. You know how it is.”

I thought of the bruises I'd seen on her arm. “Not really. I thought you said he wasn't your boyfriend.”

“Not your fucking business, is it?”

“Nope.”

I ordered some coffee and popped a couple of Focalin. Krishna raised an eyebrow. “It's polite to share.”

“Medicine for squiffy old people. You wouldn't like it.” I paid the bill and we walked back into the street.

“You got a game plan for the night?” I asked, as Krishna scanned the rainswept sidewalk, stopped to swipe intently at her mobile. “What, is it that asshole Lance again?”

She shook her head without looking up. “Nightmapper. It's a free app that tells you what's on at all the clubs. Also which boozers have cheap drinks.” She glanced at me and grinned. “You'd find that useful. Says there's half-price drinks at the Queen and Artichoke; I'm going to meet Lance in a bit.”

I flashed Adrian's card. “Feel like going with me to this place first?”

“Not really.”

“I don't know how to get there.”

“134 bus, or you can take the tube to Finsbury Park then catch the W3.”

“Yeah, but I don't know your friends.”

“I told you, not my fucking friends.”

“How about I pay you?” I pulled out two twenty-pound notes.

Krishna snorted. “I come cheap.” She fixed me with those sarcophagus eyes and held out her hand. “Throw in some of those pills and I'll take you.”

I gave her a Focalin. She swallowed it, then asked, “That it?”

“You're half my size. Come on, I'm freezing my ass off.”

It was a long bus ride. I stared out the window while Krishna fidgeted and texted. After a while, I dug in my bag and pulled out my Konica. My father gave it to me on my seventeenth birthday; never a top-of-the-line rig but I'd done good work with it, back when I could no more think of going a day without shooting than without a drink.

Like Uncle Lou said, those were different times. Until a few months ago, I'd barely picked up my camera in twenty years. Now there was no film in it—I'd been relieved of the last two rolls I'd shot. Not necessarily a bad thing, considering the pictures I'd taken could have incriminated me in several countries. But I still had a few rolls of Tri-X.

I tapped Krishna's shoulder. “Give me your coat.”

She shrugged it off, and I folded it into a makeshift dark tent in my lap. I didn't need to see the camera to load it: I could feel the sprocket's tiny teeth beneath my fingertips, smell the lactose odor of the raw emulsion as I wound it. When I was done, I closed the back of the camera, dropped the empty film canister into my satchel, and returned the coat to Krishna. She stuck her mobile in a pocket and flashed me a grin.

“Gonna take my picture?”

“Maybe.”

The light was bad, but I was used to that. I'd made my name in underexposed black and white, shooting grainy photos of the downtown punk scene in its infancy. I loved that monochrome world, the way my viewfinder captured everything and held it in suspended animation until later, when I summoned lovers and musicians and corpses in the darkroom: gaunt faces under fluorescent bulbs; arms flailing at cheap guitars on a makeshift stage; a severed hand with strands of hair caught beneath a blackened fingernail. I'd published one book, an iconoclastic volume called
Dead Girls
that would have made my career, if I hadn't been dead-set on losing my reputation before I'd gained it.

But my eye hadn't changed. That and my sense of damage kept me alive, even if I spent more time staring into a shotglass than a lens.

I picked up the Konica and gazed through the viewfinder, playing with the focus while I waited for Krishna's grin to dissolve. One Cleopatra eye twitched: self-doubt or boredom or maybe just exhaustion. I pressed the shutter release, clicked to the next frame, and set the camera on my knee. I knew I'd gotten what I wanted.

“Can I see?” Krishna snatched the camera from me and turned it in her hands, frowning. “How do you turn it on?”

“You don't. Jesus, don't touch the lens!” I swore and grabbed it back. “That's a real camera. Not digital.”

“How's it work?”

“Magic.” I stuck the Konica into my bag. “We almost at this place?”

“Soon.” She stared past me into the rainy night, at signs advertising chicken tikka and ESL classes and bargain dentistry, a pile of children's shoes in the window of a charity shop.

“So who's Morven?”

“The wife.” Krishna pulled nervously at her oversized sweater. “Her husband, he's a gangster.”

“Musician-gangster or gangster-gangster?”

“I'm not having you on. Mallory Dunfries, he chopped off some poor arse's fingers who owed him money.”

“How do you know him?”

“I don't. Adrian does—he's a raver, puts on parties at empty houses round London. He and Mallo were partners—Mallo's blokes, they're the ones sold you anything you wanted. Acid, ketamine. Nothing serious, I dunno why they busted him.”

“But they did?”

Krishna nodded. “Just a few months. Knuckle rapping, that's all. Morven's the scary one. She told me once she used to be a witch. I believe her—I don't know how Mallo sleeps nights. I told Ado I wouldn't be alone with her again for anything.”

“Then how come you're going?”

“'Cause you paid me. And it's a birthday party. I like cake.” She licked her lips, but her expression suggested she was recalling something other than cake.

 

8

We finally got off at a busy intersection, hopping over ankle-deep water at the curb. Cars and double-decker buses whipped through a roundabout as we dashed across the street. I looked in the wrong direction for oncoming traffic and almost got creamed by a cab.

“Fucking hell!” Krishna yanked me to the sidewalk. “Watch it!”