London Noir (5 page)
Lever had the evidence, both real and fabricated, to get O’Sullivan banged up for a very long time. To avoid jail, Jilly had made a deal with him. O’Sullivan had to sell drugs on Paul’s behalf and provide him with information about anyone who set themselves up as a dealer without his approval. She also agreed to see us once a week at the police station where we had a regular line-up with her. Jilly wasn’t the only junkie Paul had providing us with sexual favors, all of which might give the impression he’s a hard man. Certainly this is the appearance he cultivates, but actually he’s somewhat sensitive about his macho self-image. Back in 1972, Jilly had the singular misfortune to be around just after a colleague made a crack about Lever always taking last place in our gang-bangs.
Paul, like any virile male, enjoys slapping whores around while he’s screwing them, and on this particular occasion he was determined to prove through sheer ultra-violence that he didn’t harbor any unnatural sexual desires. As I gave Jilly a poke, Lever grabbed her right arm and broke it over his knee. O’Sullivan was in agony, but Paul took great pleasure in amusing himself by making the bitch indulge him with an extended sex session before allowing her to go to the hospital. On the surface this might sound somewhat sick, but Paul is basically a good bloke, and he genuinely believes that being a bit psycho is the most rational way to deal with whores and crims. After all, the only thing these reprobates respect and understand is brute force. Indeed, what other way is there to deal with someone like O’Sullivan? In the early ’60s she had offers of marriage from more than one of her upper-class johns, but she turned them down and became a junkie instead.
It was Jilly’s decision to live the low-life and what she got from us was no more than she had coming for choosing to subsist, as her extended Irish family have done since before the days of Cromwell, beyond the pale. Jilly wasn’t just a junkie and a prostitute, she was also a pickpocket, a thief, and she engaged in checkbook and other frauds. Any reasonable person will agree that without laws and police officers prepared to carry out a dirty job vigilantly, society would collapse into pure jungle savagery. That said, there are still too many do-gooders who love besmirching the name of the Metropolitan Police, and an inquest into Jilly’s life and death would in all likelihood bring to light the type of facts that fuel the enmity these bleeding hearts feel toward us.
Police officers like me deserve whatever perks we can pick up, providing this doesn’t impinge upon the rights of law-abiding citizens. Bending the rules goes with the territory of upholding the law; if I stuck to official procedures my hands would be tied with red tape. Punks and whores really don’t count as far as I’m concerned, nor do the pinkos who bleat on about police oppression. In a sane society criminals wouldn’t have rights, and the police wouldn’t have to break the law to protect decent folk.
A
bove the sound of sirens, my view is as always: stark, sullen, and eldritch. I’m prone to believe that it’s a vile and disgusting world below.
Where
I stand, the Harrow Road Police Station is to my right, and Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church is to my left.
Crime and redemption carved into each set of knuckles.
I catch myself on the turnaround—reflected in stained glass. I am at once as black as night and yet somehow as white as a sheet.
Moiety me!
I hang my head and lean on a knee that sways gently. The smell of tumble dryers and fried food pique my hunger for something more than the reminders of a not so comfortable existence.
Beneath me: the Harrow Road. This is the main artery that divides (at this juncture) Notting Hill and Maida Vale into an area uncommonly known as Maida Hill.
More commonly known as Maida Hell.
If it were a pen it would be broken. The scribe’s grasp sullied by an unthinkable, irremovable liquid; marking him forever as the guilty one.
If it were a book it would be stolen. Pushed into a dark alley; fingers around its throat; gasping and bleating for its very existence to be ratified before being hauled over the coals and the very life beaten out of it.
Sucked in.
Chewed up.
Spat out.
Stepped on.
MAIDA HELL.
I spy with my little eye; the red, white, and blue blood vessels that jam their way through this darkened gray conduit we’ll refer to as the “Harrowing Road.” The number 18 bus domineeringly crawls the entire length of it like a fat, hideous tapeworm; its red and shining sixty-foot body bulging with sweating parasites. This
Dipylidium caninum
heads as far west as one can imagine, taking in “Murder Mile” Harlesden, where you could very well be “starin’ down de barrel of a ’matic,” as though you were merely being greeted by an old friend. Then forever you’ll sit on your backside next to some undesirable with few manners, as the nauseating carrier snakes its way through Wem-ber-ley and finally sets in Sudbury. Which is as far west as one can imagine.
Or: it heads northeast, over Ballard’s Concrete Island; ceremoniously known as the Paddington Basin (which, in my opinion, is as good a place as any to let go of the contents of a now infested stomach!). Scolex features, then slithers up the Marylebone Road, and finally breaks itself down by Euston Railway Station to complete its lifecycle and let everybody get the hell out to the rest of the country. Which is precisely what I intend to do when all this is over.
Not a hundred yards from where I stoop, the Great Western Road jumps over the lazy Harrow Road and becomes Elgin Avenue. This is also the sector where Fernhead Road comes to an end, along with Walterton Road, creating a psychic wasteland of sorts. This circumambience consists to my mind of five corners. (Traditionally four. Nineteenth-century ordinance survey maps will forever testify that Walterton and Fernhead came much later. However, bananas to all that.) These
five
corners shall become evinced and bring into our very consciousness the indurate domain of:
THE SPACE BETWEEN.
I’ll take you there.
On one corner: the bank.
Always full and with few tellers, most of who are off shopping in Somerfield and grabbing all the reduced-priced stock before it goes out of date later that day. Outside of the bank, they’ll flirt with the locals they looked down upon not a moment earlier. (Don’t kiss her, she’s a teller!) Then stroll lazily back to the jam-packed treasury, where one guy is now screaming the place down.
“YOU KNOW ME!
NIG NOG.
WHERE DID HE GO?”
The toothless, yellow-eyed man with the pee stains on his coat then begins to cry, and shamefully leaves.
“Tosser. Jennifer, will you buzz me in?”
The teller then shirks in to stuff her face with tuck and gossip, before slipping into a dream of tonight’s date with the new business manager, Clive. Twenty-two. Looks a bit like Ronaldo without the skills.
He’ll part my lips with first and third and slip in the second. He’ll stare into me. Through me …
Cream oozes from the doughnut she scoffs and lands on her skirt, which she wipes off with her hand. The rest of us? Well, we just lose another day silently practicing the art of queuing; bemoaning a self-confidence we just don’t seem to have been born with.
On the other corner: the mobile phone shop.
“Mobile phone, please?”
A skinny girl in a tight sweater hands out flyers, which nobody takes, except this one bizarre-looking guy who lurks ominously, scratches his crotch, and then approaches her with a greasy smile.
“Oh, this is the new Ericsson, right?”
“Yes. Please. To take. My boss …”
“It’s the flattop, isn’t it?”
“Please, just take.”
“Yeah. It’s got those buttons that really stick out. You could play with them all night. What are you, love? Polish? Latvian?”
“Please, I don’t …”
He gives her the killer’s stare.
“Mark my words, love. You fucking do. And you fucking will. All right?”
He holds her gaze before leaning away and into the distance. Feeling exposed by the coruscating sunlight, she pulls her coat together, mumbles an idea of faith while thinking about her mother and the friends she left behind, and moves onto the next.
“Mobile phone, please?”
On the other corner: the public toilets.
Usual setup. Standard, heading underground. Disabled, at floor level. Toilet of choice for drug addicts.
“The animals went in two by two, hurrah, hurrah.”
“Fuck off. Give me the gear.”
“You make me feel like dancin’, gonna dance the night away.”
Lucy takes the first boot. The back of her knees fold and immediately she’s scratching like a monkey.
“Gimme that.”
Sandra, not singing for the first time since these two scored, squirts Lucy’s blood into the sink and then rinses the syringe in the toilet bowl before drawing up the heroin, tying up, shooting up, tying off, and time ending and trouble saying goodbye. She looks to Lucy who now slides down the wall like a lifeless doll, smashing her head on the toilet bowl in the process.
“Get up, you stupid bitch.”
Nothing.
Sandra gets the hell out of there. She makes a fuss to an oncoming guy who’s wheelchair bound.
“They’re broke, love. You should try downstairs.”
The guy looks at her. “Un-fucking-believable.” Finally she notices the wheelchair; scratches her face in slow … motion.
“Sorry, love. You must have done all right though, eh? Couldn’t lend me a fiver, could you?”
On the other corner: Costcutter.
The
most expensive twenty-four-hour supermarket in the world.
What the fuck are they on about? Nine pounds sixty for a couple of newspapers, some fags, and a drink?
“Nine pounds sixty.”
Someone bursts through the door.
“Give me a single, you get me?”
The shopkeeper
(There’re six of them. Remember the time
some posh kid walked in followed by fucking Crackula himself, wielding a crook-lock and swinging at the poor cunt, whose only
crime was to point out that the Count could take a piss in the bogs
instead of in the road?)
responds with, “No more singles. Out. Get out.”
A couple of stray Australians, believing themselves to be in the warmer reaches of Notting Hill, wander in. Seeing a chance to exercise an act of old-country benevolence, the Aussie guy pulls out a smoke and gives it to this arsehole. Now this idiot’s all over him.
“Nice one, bruv. SEEEN. Let me carry you shit for you.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“I WASN’T TALKING TO YOU. I WAS TALKING TO THE LADY.”
“It’s cool, buddy, just er …”
“Just what?”
He stares hard into the Aussie guy’s eyes and presses his head against him, the poor sod now reeling; purblind; red in the face and his girlfriend is starting to really get the shits.
“Tell him to go fuck himself, Dobbo.”
Dobbo decides to wade in, kakking himself.
The shopkeepers surround the scene and the guy walks, lighting the smoke; grinning and staring between the Aussie girl’s legs as she puts some breakfast stuff, eggs and the like, on the counter.
“Nice nice nice nice nice.”
“Rack off, numb-nuts.”
“Lay down, gal, let me push it up, push it up.”
“Look, mate, just fuckin’ …”
“Leave it.”
“Twenty-four pounds thirty-eight.”
“What?”
On the final corner: the pub.
Well. I wouldn’t know about that anymore, would I? Be the last place I could afford to be seen in. I mean, what if they decide to reopen the case? Then what?
When Mary tells me that it’s “the best craic in town,” I undoubtedly always agree with her that it just might be, and change the topic as fast as I can, save that she might see me faltering.
The ways of W9 lives are reflected in the otherwise preposterous comparisons with the South Bronx.
The five corners.
The five boroughs?
Preposterous.
Henceforth, the tradition of tolerance for the rights of ordinary fucked-up people, a communal tradition that was fought for in the ’70s right on this spot by the one and only Joe Strummer and company, intertwines and combines to make up the disfigured landscape.
Truth is, there’s no shrugging off the fact that these folk are forever condemned to scrape around like lunatics, sucking for dear life on yesterday’s rotten air, cast over hill and vale.
Hanging over W9, Mr. Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower watches as the nuclear sun sets down. This architectural abomination stands creaking, turning a blind eye to Japanese photographers, while at its roots, skulls are caved in and crack rocks are sold to whoever the hell wants, by dealers who freewheel the nearby Grand Union Canal on stolen bicycles.
Meanwhile Gardens is also apparent as it skirts both canal and tower and is the divider and last breathing space before visitors to this hellhole say goodbye to common logic. Forever.
On the canal itself, most are as oblivious to the Canada goose; Gray heron; Mallard; Kestrel; Coot; Moorhen; Black-headed gull; Wren; Robin; Song thrush; White throat; Chiffchaff; Willow warbler; Starling; Greenfinch; Goldfinch; Woodpigeon; Gray wagtail; Dunnock; and Blackbird, as the birds are to them.
Best keep it that way.
Meanwhile.
Gardens.
The underdeveloped.
The youth.
The hood rats and the squeaks.
Hood rats (mainly black), who like any young voluble yet asinine revolutionary, guise themselves and any sign of vulnerability in a uniform of oversize sports clothes; hoods pulled down low over cap even lower, with one hand always down the trouser front.
Listen listen listen listen. I do what the
fuck I want. Don’t arsk. A gun is a gun and I DO have one. Next
to my blade. Live at my mum’s, innit. My sister’s got three kids
and she’s younger than me, innit. My dad? Don’t know, mate.
Don’t fuckin’ know. Three guys, right. Chase me in my car and I
get mashed, innit. Don’t want no fuckin’ hospital though, innit.
Squeaks (mainly white), who like any terrified young revolutionary, guise any sign of vulnerability by wearing a uniform of tight-fitting sportswear which also doubles as a mask for the lack of a soul. Obsessive about their appearance to the point of perfection, their goal is to have you believe that the projection of superiority is indeed true.
Nice trainers.
Gleaming. I do the right thing by me mum. If you (dirty filthy
fucking animal) do anything to hurt any one of my family or their kids, I’ll fuckin’ kill you. I’ll clump you with a fuckin’ hammer. I’ll cut your fuckin’ heart out (after I’ve cleaned the house for me
mum and taken me gran up to the hospital). All right? Have you
been fuckin’ smokin’?
A community of chagrins and fighters set against a world of cheap booze and even cheaper promises.
Fighters against a war they started.
Fighters for peace.
Secondhand peace.
A community of losers and bruisers.
A community nonetheless.
Life made difficult is practical by default, with little room for the spiritual.
Even less room for the likes of me.
My mobile rings.
“Hello?”
“Johnny.”
“Yes. This is …”
“I fuckin’ know all about you, you cunt. You won’t get away with it this time.”
Then the line goes dead.
I look at the last caller to find the number withheld and flick a somewhat tentative snarl into the eye of my fear.
Loud pangs begin in my temples. My throat tightens, and remembering to breathe, I look around to see where I might fall if I were to pass out. The world begins to swim around me and the deafening sound of an ambulance threatens to pop my right ear. As though a six-foot tuning fork has been struck at the core of my very being, I vibrate from the inside out. Then I stumble to a chair and clench my eyes as a million pinpricks pepper my forehead, squeezing out tiny beads of alternating hot and cold sweat. I don’t know if I will ever see again as I open my eyes and hear a high-pitched wail that accompanies the darkness. A backward scream travels into my chest, and as though a light has just exploded, I begin to make out solarized shapes in front of me. I can also hear my heartbeat and I know I’m back. After a few deep breaths, I manage to look out of the window from behind drawn curtains. Fade up to a rat and a squeak and a Mazda. Music so, so loud.