Take the A-Train (17 page)

Eventually I undressed and got into bed and took a pill and fell asleep listening to the radio. I hardly even noticed that the other half of my bed was empty.

I
 slept badly and dreamed that I was tangled up in a telephone line that went on forever. I could only get through to strangers who couldn’t understand me, and the only people I could understand whispered down the line about my death. I woke up with a start, all caught up in my own damp bedsheets. The first thing I saw, on the bedside table next to the lamp, was the piece of paper with the address in Kennington. I knew that I should have gone there when Lawrence Taylor had phoned the previous night.

I looked at the clock. Seven oh five it read, and something was out of kilter. Even with the curtains drawn the room seemed strangely light. I got up and drew them back. The weather man on the radio had been right. The snow was thick outside and the street was bright from the reflections of the street lamps even though the sky was still dark. My car was just a white hump on more white. The road and pavements were hardly touched by tracks that early on a Sunday morning and I knew I’d never make even the short run up to Kennington in the Jag.

I called Teddy. The telephone rang and rang and I was just about to give up when he answered.

‘What?’

‘And a very good morning to you too, Teddy.’

‘Who’s that?’

‘Nick.’

‘Christ, what time is it?’

‘Time you were up and out, my son.’

‘What? Where? Why?’ He seemed to cover most of the possibilities.

‘Have you seen the state of the weather?’

‘No, what’s the matter with it?’

‘Never mind. Is that vanilla slice of yours gassed up?’

He hesitated. ‘Yeah.’

‘Then get it over here, right away.’

‘Why?’

‘Take a look out of the window. They do have windows in Peckham, don’t they?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then look,’ I said patiently.

The phone went down with a bang. He was back in a minute, sounding a bit more alive. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said. ‘Where are we going?’

‘I’ll tell you when I see you. Now get her out and yourself too.’

‘Who? There’s no one here.’

‘A celibate Mister Super Bad. That’s a novelty.’

‘A fact though, if it’s any of your business. Who were you sleeping with last night that was so special?’ he asked nastily.

‘I give in,’ I said. ‘Just get here, it’s important.’ And I put down the telephone.

He arrived just before eight, just as it was getting fully light. I was watching the wind blow powdered snow to fill in the few footsteps and tyre tracks that marred the smooth surface of the street when the Suzuki pulled up. I went down to meet him. He was standing in the street with snow past his ankles when I got downstairs. He was wearing a jean jacket over a thick sweater and blue jeans tucked into black, calf-length, sheepskin-lined boots. I wore last night’s jeans and my Schott with a pair of hightop Doc Martens and black leather gloves. I had pulled a thick, black, woollen watch cap over my hair to keep in the heat. I carried a loaded gun in each jacket pocket.

It was bloody freezing in the street and I wished I had stayed in bed.

I trudged through the snow, carrying my stick. It was pretty well redundant if not downright dangerous in the weather conditions. Teddy stayed by the jeep and watched me coming. When I reached him, I said, ‘I don’t want to hang around. Let’s go.’ Gingerly I found the edge of the kerb, kicked through the snow in the gutter and went round to the passenger door of the car. It was warm inside but draughty from the gaps between the fastenings of the soft top. Teddy got in and switched on the engine and hot air blew through the vents under the dash.

‘What’s all this about? he asked.

I told him. About Jack Dark and the money and our aborted dinner date, and about the telephone call from Lawrence Taylor.

He looked at me oddly when I finished. ‘Who’s Lawrence Taylor?’

‘Who knows?’

‘How do you know it’s about all this?’

‘Because everything lately’s about all this,’ I replied. ‘But if it’s because I haven’t paid my milk bill and Lawrence Taylor is a special investigator for the United Dairies, I’ll apologise for dragging you out in the snow and buy you breakfast, if we can find a café that’s open.’ I lit a cigarette. ‘Are you going to take me?’

He didn’t look happy. ‘I’ll take you.’

‘Let’s go then. Time’s a wasting.’

He put the jeep into gear, pulled out into the middle of the street and pointed it north.

The roads were almost deserted as we went. One or two cars, a few newspaper delivery trucks and a couple of buses trying to maintain some sort of service, but the stops were deserted and pedestrians few and far between. The closer we got to the centre of town, the clearer the main streets got, but not much clearer.

I’d checked in the A-Z before I left the flat and directed Teddy down the Kennington Road, which wasn’t too bad for snow, and then right and sharp left into a narrow street of terraced houses where it lay thick and untouched. I squinted through the side window past Teddy’s head. ‘There,’ I said. ‘On the left, park down a bit.’ He did as I directed and switched off the engine. I could hear the wind whistling against the side of the vehicle. I pulled the two guns from my pockets and held them, one in each hand. Teddy’s eyes widened. ‘Can you use one of these?’ I asked.

He nodded.

‘Which one do you want?’

‘The revolver,’ he said.

I passed the S&W to him, cocked and locked the Beretta and put it back in my jacket. We left the jeep and stepped back into the bitter wind which pasted my jeans to my legs and made me want to piss. I didn’t take my stick. Teddy was still holding the magnum. ‘Get that out of sight,’ I hissed.

He pulled up his jacket and pushed the gun down the front of his jeans, pulling the jacket back over the butt of the pistol. I winced. ‘Don’t blow your balls off.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t. Which number do we want?’

‘Number 28, top flat,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’ We went up to the door of the house. The carpet of snow over the short path from the pavement was trampled flat. Two bells, both tagged. Top one in the name of Murray, bottom one Johnson. Neither name meant anything to me. I rang the top bell. No answer. I rang it again. Same. I rang the bottom bell. No answer. Again. Same.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Teddy. ‘Kick the door down?’

I ran my hand along the top of the door frame and came away with dirty finger tips to my gloves and a Yale key.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Let’s kick the door down. Let’s make a nice racket, this early on a Sunday morning. You’re good, you know that, Teddy? Someone’s been and gone here. I don’t like it.’

I put the key in the lock and opened the door. We were in a tiny hall hardly big enough to accommodate the pair of us, facing two half glass doors, one with a brass ‘A’ screwed to the woodwork, one with a brass ‘B’. ‘A’ was closed tight. ‘B’ was open six inches or so, just wide enough to see a slice of stairway leading upwards. My stomach did a back flip. I’ve learned to distrust doors that should be locked standing open and inviting. I took the Beretta out of my pocket, slipped off the safety and held the gun in my left hand. I saw my other arm stretch, almost of its own volition, and the gloved hand push the door wide.

I walked through and felt warm, fetid air. I turned to Teddy. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about all this,’ I said. My chest was pounding and I found it hard to breathe. I wanted to turn and run, just go anywhere that the air was fresh and fear didn’t wait behind every open door.

I started up the single flight that seemed to stretch for miles. I heard music softly playing above, and something else, like an electric alarm clock, going off further away.

The central heating had been turned up full. The radiator on the stairs was bubbling and nearly burnt me, even though I only touched it for a second and was wearing gloves.

The music stopped and so did we. I heard the click of an automatic turntable through the silence and the song started again.
Me And Mrs Jones
, it was, by Billy Paul. I can never listen to that song now.

I got to the top of the stairs and Teddy was right behind me. There was a passage leading away to the back of the house, decorated with flowered wallpaper in colours nature never intended. It contained four closed doors, all painted white and fitted with naff silver handles, like council issue. I opened the nearest. Toilet and bathroom combined, all clean and neat and feminine. Opposite was the living room, curtains drawn, one table lamp lit. A Scotch bottle and two dirty glasses on the coffee table. Billy Paul on a cheap stereo. It was so hot I was all wet under my clothes and wiped sweat from the stubble on my chin.

The third room was the bedroom.

I pushed the door open. The curtains were drawn and the central light was on.

Teddy was right behind me.

The room smelled like an open bowel. It was small and seemed crowded with too much furniture. A large wardrobe with sliding doors, a dressing table cluttered with bottles and tubes, a flounced stool, a chest of drawers and a large double bed that had been pulled away from the wall into the middle of the flashily patterned carpet. The bed linen and pillows had been pulled off and scattered across the room. There were clothes twisted and balled in the sheets and duvet. The mattress was covered with a mixture of blood, shit and piss that had set to the consistency of the filling of a lemon meringue pie. It was thick and brown with a black crust around the edges that looked like it would crack if you touched it.

A still figure lay face down, half on and half off the bed. It was a woman. She was naked except for a black bra. The handle of a chisel or a screwdriver protruded from between her legs, poking obscenely upwards. The wood was smeared with blood dried to a rust colour. Her hands and feet were tied with cords and the flesh was black and swollen around the bonds.

Squeamishly I gripped her shoulder and turned her over. She rolled out of the gunk with a sucking sound, expelling foul air from her mouth and sexual organs, and I looked at a face straight out of a nightmare.

Her features had set in a rictus of agony. Someone had cut her lips off and the ragged edges of her mouth were drawn over yellow gums. Her open mouth was full of clotted blood. Her throat had been cut into another mouth and someone had carved
WHORE
on the skin of her chest above the bra.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ I heaved and tasted a bile of curry in the back of my throat. My eyes blurred with tears and I put my hand on the wall and lowered my head as if to block out the images of inhumanity and death.

Teddy put his hand to his mouth. ‘Don’t be sick in here,’ I said. ‘Don’t you fucking dare! Go to the bathroom or get out, but don’t let anyone see you.’

He went to the bathroom. I left the bedroom after him and closed the door behind me. I stood in the hallway, back against the wall, head bowed, trying to find some fresh air to breathe. I heard Teddy force the bathroom window open and felt a small, cold breeze. I gulped at the cool freshness of it. He came out of the bathroom with a towel over the lower part of his face. Billy Paul was still singing about having it off with someone else’s wife. I was getting sick and tired of the tune.

‘Turn that fucking racket off, will you?’ I saw Teddy’s eyes above the white edge of the towel and there was something strange in his expression, but he went into the living room and the music stopped.

I made for the last door.

Big mistake.

The smell in the kitchen was even worse than in the bedroom, if that was possible. The air was thick and rancid and the smoke detector was bleeping. That was the noise I had heard before. Something,
someone
, was lying across the burners of the electric cooker. A white geezer I’d never seen before and didn’t want to see again in a hurry. He’d been left on a low heat, naked, simmering. His eyes bulged with milky secretion and his hair had been burnt, so that what remained was glazed on his blistered scalp like charcoal. The skin and flesh that touched the hobs was done to a crisp.

He was as dead as dead could be, and overcooked.

I heard Teddy come in behind me and turned. I wanted to warn him, but his arm was raised and came down and the pistol in his hand crashed against my head and the room tilted and splintered into a million gilded sparks of blood red and orange and I plunged into darkness like a diver making the longest dive of his life.

T
he sound of an emergency klaxon brought me round with a jump. For a few seconds I didn’t know where I was or what was going on. But when I tasted curry again and smelt cooking human flesh, I remembered, and knew it would be a week or two before pork featured in my diet. Then I thought of prison food and the thought brought me to my knees and up to my feet, nearly keeling over as the dizziness and pain hit me. I righted myself by holding on to the kitchen table. There was blood in my eyes, blood on my hands, blood in my mouth and bloody murder on my mind. Teddy and the two guns were gone. Luckily the woollen watch cap I was wearing had taken some of the power out of his blow.

I looked around in panic. I heard voices and footsteps below. There was a door in front of me, key in lock and double bolted. I cracked the bolts, turned the key, opened the door and looked down a steep metal fire escape. I slammed the door behind me, locked it from the outside and threw the key as far away as I could.

The steps of the escape were slick with ice and rust and I blessed old Doctor Marten for the grip his boots gave me. I half jumped, half slid down the steps, kicked aside a pile of black garbage sacks and beat a path to the back gate. It stuck and I felt fingernails break inside my glove as I dragged it open. Outside the gate was a narrow alley, running right to left, and facing me another back gate. I pulled it open and ran through the garden, up a passage at the side of the house and over a set of iron railings into the Kennington Road.

A bus was just pulling up at a stop and the doors opened with an hydraulic sigh. An old dear clambered on board and I clambered after her, exhibiting considerably less agility. I pulled out a tenner and asked for a sixty pence ticket. The driver gave me a dirty look. ‘I can’t change that,’ he said and clocked the state of my boat race. God alone knew what I looked like. I heard sirens in the distance. ‘Keep it,’ I said.