The Book of Dave (21 page)

They didn't fight, though. They never raised their voices. They had a great deal of compatible secrecy – which would serve
as intimacy for a while. As they were working their way gingerly through this minefield of mutuality, the front door opened,
then explosively slammed, the fanlight rattled, the stairs reverberated, and Carl's bedroom door provided the final report
that an adolescent was in the house. Michelle became acutely aware of him …
my sweety, my honey
… sitting up there on the end of his bed, disdaining the pastel-painted work unit, complete with personal computer, ignoring
the framed posters of Tintin book covers on the candy-striped walls, instead pawing yet again through the box of kiddy stuff
that he'd brought with him from Gospel Oak. Shabby memorabilia of a time before he moved up in the world: an incredibly battered
Hulk; some broken Beyblades; a toy London cab driven by a faceless plastic cabbie. Stuck through the window of the cab was
a shard of plastic the size of Carl's middle finger. Why it should be talismanic he'd long since forgotten – he could not
recall his father demolishing the telephone with its own receiver, nor himself, dutifully collecting the bits and storing
them in his toy box – a small archaeologist of the immediate past.

At dinner – eaten en famille complete with candles, linen napkins and powered cruets – Carl sat sullenly. His downy top lip
caught the rays from the spotlights, his gelled hair glistened like seaweed, a pimple – hard and yellow as a nose stud – was
in the right position to be one. The odour of hormonal surge and pre-emptive aftershave hung about his sharp shoulders. Conversational
sallies from his mother were slapped down with single syllables, Cal's simply allowed to fall. Carl's moodiness might have
been within the acceptable range of adolescent disaffection – or way off the dial. It was impossible to judge without a control
experiment: another world with different rituals, taboos and family groupings, but the same blond boy.

When Cal, rising from tiramisu, clapped his sort of stepson on the shoulder, bent to kiss the top of Michelle's head and turned
to go, a shiver of relief shook the tall room. The Op-Art swirls on the walls dilated – and he was gone to his BMW convertible.
Michelle, abandoning her son to the television and the dishes to the morning Pole, trudged upstairs to dissolve her face in
bottled alcohol and brush her dry lips with Clarins Moisturizing Lip Balm.

At two that afternoon Dave had been grating the cab along Stamford Street towards Waterloo …
another bit of fucking metal
scraped till it wangs off.
In the steely jam, rain-washed manufacturers' logos shone: PLAXTON, JONCKHEERE, FORD. Windscreen wipers smeared, drivers sneered
at pedestrians, cyclists veered to avoid everything. The fare was
one of those cunts
who thought he knew the city, thought he knew the real stories behind the news, thought he knew
the mind of bloody God, 'cause 'e's the Flying-fucking-Eye . .
. and was eager to share it with his paid-for listener. He'd deliberated possible routes. 'I mean, Westminster Bridge is the obvious way' – mulling over traffic flows – 'but there might be an argument for cutting through Covent Garden and avoiding the traffic' – and roadworks – 'there's a lane out going through Admiralty Arch and that means the Mall'll be backed up.' Dave wanted to kill him:
What you don't understand is that I don't bloody care. I just follow the
route most likely to get us there with the minimum hassle. I don't make
any extra money for sitting in traffic, and besides, I want SHOT OF
YOU.
'It's entirely up to you, sir, if you know a quicker way, I'm only too happy to take it.'

'No, no, driver, you do your thing, you're the professional.' The fare sat back in his seat with a self-satisfied smile that filled the rearview mirror.
Happy now, aren't yer, because you're another fucking
control freak who finks 'e's swallered a Trafficmaster.

Dave dropped the fare off and drove on round the elevated roadway to the front of the station, where stone giantesses mourn
the death of its builders on Flanders Field. He ranked up and marched away past Delice de France, Upper Crust, Van Heusen,
M&S Simply Food, The Reef, Burger King and Tie Rack, then down into the temple of hiss and piss, where he could wring the
neck of his suicidal dick.
What was it Big End used to say? 'I love myself
so much when I hold my dick to piss I get a fucking hard-on.'

Back at the rank Dave's Fairway was holding things up. Two or three trains must have arrived simultaneously, because the fifty-odd
cabs were divided among the hundred-odd punters within five minutes. 'North!' the new fare barked without looking at Dave,
as if she were crying 'Mush!' to a husky. And when Dave ventured, 'Anywhere more specific, madam?' the fare barked: 'Belsize
Park!' Then sat there, her exploratory face pressed to the window as Dave dragged the metal sleigh back through the West End,
Euston and Camden Town.

Dried-up old stick, look at 'er … no one would want a crack at that
… Dave kept casting glances in the mirror at the hated fare, and, as if responding to this, the woman got out her compact
and began dabbing beige dust on a mole.
Got 'er own mirror, eh … what's she
got to look at innit, only the same fucking face day in, day out. Mindjoo,
these old boilers – they've got their own Knowledge, that's true enough.

The fare wanted Heath Hospital, but was either too grand or too embarrassed to say so until they were roaring down Pond Street,
then she ordered him: 'Here!' Dave pulled over outside the Roebuck. The fare tipped generously, then unfolded a gossamer umbrella
and flew, like a
fairy-fucking-grandmother,
into the lobby. Dave found himself alone, at four thirty in the afternoon, on the shores of Hampstead. The other points at
the end of this run came unbidden:
Anthony Nolan Trust, Armoury Sports Hall, Hampstead Hill
Gardens, Hampstead Magistrates Court, Holiday Inn, Keats Museum …

A nervous Japanese woman got into the cab at the Southend Green rank.
No questions asked as to why the detour if we're going to
Hendon Central
…
she might as well be in fucking Osaka
…
Osaka
.
. .
tourists .
. .
flyers
… A memory rose up and bumped against the underside of his consciousness …
Just before Christmas
…
the
nervous City getter on his way out to 'eathrow. 'You can't tell me, Beaky,
that it's all off the back of
Bluey –
or whatever that stupid kids' show is
called
…' His card was still tucked under the clip on the dashboard – so was Sid Gold's. The fare gave a little yelp as Dave
arm-wrestled the steering wheel while reading the business card CB & EFN INVESTMENT STRATEGIES, STEPHEN BRICE, CEO EUROPE.
That's it
…
there's
stuff there on Devenish
…
If they're going to do it to me – I'll do it to
them first
…
Gold'll know someone . .
.
An investigator
…
a private
dick …

Dave dropped
the Jap
at a hotel he'd never noticed before, four semis knocked into one dull frontage. Palms in half-barrels sat on a tarmac apron.
A sign flashed RALEIGH COURT in the gathering dusk. She picked up her carrier bags, shouldered her Hello Kitty rucksack and
paid what was on the meter. Dave drove on up to Mill Hill, the National Institute for Medical Research calling to him, its
copper roof shining over the tiled valley.

Once there Dave took up his position on top of Drivers Hill, and, finding card and mobile phone mysteriously in his hand,
he made the call, not expecting anyone to be there at this late hour …
least of all a bent fucker like Gold who's gotta be propping up the bar
in China White, one hand on a Bellini, the other up a tart's skirt
… The wind whooshed in Dave's ear but Gold's 100%-sure-of-itself voice was closer still. He remembered Dave, saying in
response to his muttered request, 'No trouble, Dave, I know a geezer, you gotta pen and paper?'

'She's done a runner again, Cal,' Saskia had cried that afternoon, a cry Cal heard via the phone as he drove home to Hampstead.
He'd frozen for a moment – caught between crushing bergs of work and family – before answering, 'I thought she was on a locked
ward?'

'You thought! You … thought!' Saskia snorted. 'That's novel!' She was standing, he supposed, in her kitchen. Toast crusts,
apple cores, damp clouts, canisters of decadent marjoram and a greasy oven glove lay on the worktop. On the windowsill a miniature
mesa of cacti supported a greenfly colony. 'They didn't have her on a section – she's gone!'

'I'll … I'll go and find her … later …' He'd manoeuvred the Beamer on to Hampstead Road. Laurence Corner, the
army-surplus shop, was still open.
I ought to pick up a mattock and a water bottle,
I'll be needing them … later.

'You do that,' Saskia snapped.

To be fair, Cal thought now, as he turned down York Road, whatever Saskia's lunacies – the shopworn socialism, the maintenance-funded
'creativity', the double-barrels (bi-polar, obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, personality disorder) through which she
shot at their daughter's pathology – the facts were simple: she'd been a single mother for thirteen years, and now she was
a single grandmother.
Some fucker rubbed his legs on Daisy's petals, then buzzed
off again.
And she, either hammered by Largactil or ranting on garage forecourts, was in no fit state to care for a baby.
Shit… they
had to tie her down and knock her out for the delivery.
Even if she'd been sane,
she was only sixteen
…

He talked to the duty psychiatrist at St Thomas's, a distant, pharaonic figure. 'Yes, Mr Devenish … your daughter, Daisy.
I understand your concern.'
But don't share it, obviously.
'Her GP hadn't been in touch, and the consultant here hadn't made any provision. We had no grounds for holding her against
her will.'
Except that she's a fucking loony.
'She was quite lucid when she left … said she was going back' – he consulted a tan transcript – 'to Driscoll House?'

Unwilling to abandon sickroom security, Cal stood for a while by the double doors, looking towards Westminster Bridge. On
the lobby floor, in front of the shuttered coffee shop, a ham and tomato sandwich was reduced by scurrying feet to a smear
of red, brown and pink.

Heading south down the old Kent Road, Cal felt mangling hands of anxiety on his neck. He remembered the girl found dead in
the fountains at Marlborough Gate. Three days fouling up a tourist attraction – when they dragged her out in her sodden stonewashed
jeans she was unidentifiable.