The Damnation Game (49 page)

The priority now was to find Papa and warn him of what Mamoulian intended, then plan as best they could against the European’s offensive. If Whitehead wouldn’t help, that was his prerogative. At least Marty would have tried, for old times’ sake. And in the light of the murder of Charmaine and Flynn, Whitehead’s crimes against Marty diminished to sins of discourtesy. He was easily the lesser of two evils.

As to the
how
of finding Whitehead, the only lead Marty had was the strawberries. It had been Pearl who’d told him that Old Man Whitehead had never let a day go by without strawberries. Not in twenty years, she’d claimed. Wasn’t it possible, then, that he’d continued to indulge himself, even in hiding? It was a slender line of inquiry. But appetite, as Marty had so recently learned, was at the crux of this conundrum.

He tried to persuade Carys to come with him, but she was wrung out to the point of collapse. Her journeys, she said, were over; she’d seen too much for one day. All she wanted now was the sunshine island, and on that point she would not be moved. Reluctantly, Marty left her to her fix, and went off to discuss strawberries with Mr. Halifax of Holborn.

L
eft alone, Carys found forgetfulness very quickly. The sights she had witnessed in Mamoulian’s head were dismissed to the dim past from which they’d come. The future, if there was to be one, was ignored here, where there was only tranquility. She bathed under a sun of nonsenses, while outside a soft rain began.

XII

The Fat Man Dances

Chapter 64

B
reer didn’t mind the change in the weather. It was altogether too sultry on the street, and the rain, with its symbolic cleansing, made him feel more comfortable. Though it was many weeks since he’d felt the least spasm of pain, he did itch in the heat. Not even an itch really. It was a more fundamental irritation: a crawling sensation on or beneath his skin that no ointment allayed. The drizzle seemed to subdue it a measure, however, for which he was grateful. Either the rain, or the fact that he was going to see the woman he loved. Though Carys had attacked him several times (he wore the wounds like trophies) he forgave her her trespasses. She understood him better than anyone else. She was unique—a goddess, despite her body hair—and he knew that if he could only see her again, display himself for her, touch her, all would be well.

But first he had to get to the house. It had taken him a while to find a taxi that would stop for him, and when one obliged the driver only took him part of the way before telling him to get out because, he claimed, the smell was so repulsive he wouldn’t be able to get another fare all day. Shamed by this all-too-public rejection—the taxi driver harangued him from his cab as he drove away—Breer took to the back streets, where he hoped he wouldn’t be sneered and sniggered at.

It was in one such backwater, just a few minutes’ walk from where Carys was waiting for him, that a young man with blue swallows tattooed on his neck stepped out of a doorway to offer the Razor-Eater some assistance.

“Hey, man. You look sick, you know that? Let me lend you a hand.”

“No, no,” Breer grunted, hoping the Good Samaritan would leave him alone. “I’m fine, really.”

“But I insist,” Swallows said, picking up his pace to overtake Breer, then standing in the Razor-Eater’s way. He glanced up and down the road to check for witnesses before pushing Breer into the doorway of a bricked-up house.

“You keep your mouth shut, man,” he said, whipping out a knife and pressing it to Breer’s bandaged throat, “and you’ll be OK. Just empty your pockets. Quick! Quick!”

Breer made no move to comply. The suddenness of the attack had disoriented him; and the way the youth had seized his splinted neck had made him giddy. Swallows pushed the knife a little way into the bandaging to make his point clear. The victim smelled bad, and the thief wanted the job over and done with as soon as possible.

“Pockets, man! You deaf?” He pushed the knife deeper. The man didn’t flinch. “I’ll do it, man,” the thief warned, “I’ll slit your fucking throat.”

“Oh,” said Breer, unimpressed. More to quiet the tick than out of fear, he rummaged in the pocket of his coat and found a handful of possessions. Some coins, a few peppermints that he’d continued to suck until his saliva supply dried up, and a bottle of aftershave. He proffered them with faint apology on his rouged face.

“That all you’ve got?” Swallows was outraged. He tore open Breer’s coat.

“Don’t,” the Razor-Eater suggested.

“Bit hot to be wearing a coat, isn’t it?” said the thief. “What are you hiding?”

The buttons gave as he tore at the jacket Breer was wearing beneath his coat, and now the thief was staring, open-mouthed, at the handles of the knife and fork that were still buried in the Razor-Eater’s abdomen. The stains of dried fluids that ran from the wounds were only marginally less disgusting than the brown rot that was spreading down from his armpits and up from his groin. In his panic, the thief pressed the knife more deeply into Breer’s throat.

“Christ, man—”

Anthony, having lost his dignity, his self-esteem, and, did he but know it, his life—had only his temper left to lose. He reached up and took hold of the inquiring knife in a greasy palm. The thief relinquished it a moment too late. Breer, swifter than his bulk suggested, twisted blade and hand back, and broke his assailant’s wrist.

Swallows was seventeen. He had lived, he thought, a full life for a seventeen-year-old. He’d seen two violent deaths, he’d lost his virginity to his half-sister—at fourteen, he’d raised whippets, he’d watched snuff movies, he’d taken every kind of pill he could get his trembling hands on: it had been, he thought, a busy existence, full of acquired wisdom. But this was new. Nothing like this, ever. It made his bladder ache.

Breer still had hold of the thief’s useless arm.

“Let me go … please.”

Breer just looked at him, his jacket still swinging open, those bizarre wounds displayed.

“What do you want, man? You’re hurting me.”

Swallows’ jacket was also open. Inside was another weapon, thrust into a deep pocket.

“Knife?” Breer said, looking at the handle.

“No, man.” Breer reached for it. The youth, eager to oblige, pulled the weapon out and dropped it at Breer’s feet. It was a machete. Its blade was stained, but its edge keen.

“It’s yours, man. Go on, take it. Only let go of my arm, man.”

“Pick it up. Get down and pick it up,” Breer said, releasing the injured wrist. The youth went down onto his haunches and picked the machete up, then handed it to Breer. The Razor-Eater took it. The tableau, with him standing over his kneeling victim, blade in hand, meant something to Breer, but he couldn’t fix exactly what. A picture from his book of atrocities, perhaps.

“I could kill you,” he observed with some detachment.

The thought had not escaped Swallows. He closed his eyes, and waited. But no blow came. The man simply said, “Thank you,” and walked away.

Kneeling in the doorway, Swallows began to pray. He quite surprised himself with this show of godliness, reciting by rote the prayers he and Hosanna, his half-sister, had said together before and after they’d sinned.

He was still praying ten minutes later, when the rain started to come on in earnest.

Chapter 65

I
t took Breer several minutes of searching along Bright Street before he found the yellow house. Once he’d located it, he stood outside for several minutes, preparing himself. She was here: his salvation. He wanted their reunion to be as perfect as he could make it.

The front door was open. Children were playing on the threshold, having been driven from their hopscotch and skipping games by the onset of the rain. He edged past them with caution, anxious that his lumpen feet shouldn’t crush a tiny hand. One particularly fetching child earned a smile from him: she did not return it, however. He stood in the hallway, trying to remember where the European had told him Carys was hiding. Second floor, wasn’t it?

C
arys heard somebody moving about on the landing outside the room, but that passage of shabby wood and peeling wallpaper lay across unbridgeable straits, far from her Island. She was quite safe where she was.

Then somebody outside knocked on the door: a tentative, gentlemanly knock. She didn’t answer at first, but when the knocking came again she said, “Go away.”

After several seconds’ hesitation, the handle of the door was lightly jiggled.

“Please …” she said, as politely as possible, “go away. Marty isn’t here.”

The handle was rattled again, this time more strongly. She heard soft fingers working at the wood; or was that the slosh of waves on the shore of the Island? She couldn’t find it in her to be frightened or even concerned. It was good H Marty had brought. Not the best—she’d only had that from Papa—but it took away every fiber of fear.

“You can’t come in,” she told the would-be intruder. “You’ll have to go away and come back later.”

“It’s me,” the Razor-Eater tried to say. Even through the haze of sunshine she knew the voice. How could Breer be whispering at the door like this? Her mind was playing unwelcome tricks.

She sat up on the bed, while the noise of his pressure on the door increased. Suddenly, tiring of subtlety, he pushed. Once, twice. The lock succumbed too easily, and he stumbled into the room. It wasn’t mind-play after all, he was here in all his glory.

“Found you,” he said, the perfect prince.

He carefully closed the door behind him and presented himself to her. She looked disbelievingly at him: his broken neck supported by some homemade contraption of wood and bandages, his shabby clothes. He worked at one of his leather gloves to take it off, but it wouldn’t come.

“I came to see you,” he said, the words fractured.

“Yes.”

He pulled at the glove. There was a soft, sickly noise. She looked at his hand. Much of the skin had come off with the glove. He extended this seeping patchwork to her.

“You have to help me,” he told her.

“Are you alone?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

That was something at least. Perhaps the European didn’t even know he was here. He’d come courting, to judge by this pathetic attempt at civility. His dalliance went back to that first encounter in the steam room. She hadn’t screamed or puked, and that had won his undying loyalty.

“Help me,” he moaned.

“I can’t help you. I don’t know how to.”

“Let me touch you.”

“You’re ill.”

The hand was still extended. He took a step forward. Did he think she was an icon of some kind, a talisman that—once touched—cured all sickness?

“Pretty,” he said.

The smell of him was overpowering, but her drugged mind idled. She knew it was important to escape, but how? The door perhaps; the window? Or just ask him to leave: come again tomorrow?

“Will you go, please?”

“Just touch.”

The hand was within inches of her face. Revulsion overcame her, bypassing the lethargy the Island had induced. She swatted the arm away, appalled by even the briefest contact with his flesh. He looked offended.

“You tried to harm me,” he reminded her. “So many times. I never harmed you once.”

“You wanted to.”

“
Him
; never me. I want you to be with all my other friends; where nothing can hurt you.”

The hand, which had returned to his side, suddenly darted up and took her by the neck.

“You’ll never leave me,” he said.

“You’re hurting me, Anthony.”

He drew her closer, and bent his head toward her as best he could, given the condition of his neck. In a patch of skin beneath his right eye she could see movement. The closer he came the more she saw the fat, white grubs that had been laid as eggs in his face, and were maturing there, awaiting wings. Did he know he was a home for maggots? Was it, perhaps, a point of pride to be flyblown? He was going to kiss her: she had no doubt of that. If he puts his tongue in my mouth, she half-thought, I’ll bite it off. I won’t let him do this. Gentle God, I’d rather die.

He put his lips on hers.

“You are unforgivable,” said a thin voice.

The door was open.

“Let her go.”

The Razor-Eater unhanded Carys, and drew away from her face. She spat to rinse the kiss off and looked up.

Mamoulian was in the doorway. Behind him stood two well-dressed young men, one with golden hair, both with winning smiles.

“Unforgivable,” the European said again, and turned his vacant gaze to Carys. “You see what happens if you desert my custody?” he said. “What horrors come?”

She didn’t respond.

“You’re alone, Carys. Your erstwhile protector is dead.”

“Marty? Dead?”

“At his house: going out for your heroin.”

She was seconds ahead of him, realizing his error. Maybe it gave Marty an edge on them, if they thought him dead. But it wouldn’t be wise to fake tears. She was no tragic actress. Best to feign disbelief; doubt, at least.

“No,” she said. “I don’t believe you.”

“My own fair hands,” said the blond Adonis at the European’s back.

“No,” she insisted.

“Take it from me,” the European said, “he won’t be coming back. Trust me in this at least.”

“Trust you?” she murmured. It was almost funny.

“Haven’t I just prevented your rape?”

“He’s your creature.”

“Yes; and he will be punished, depend upon it. Now I trust you will return my kindness in coming here, by finding your father for me. I will not brook delay of any kind, Carys. We will go back to Caliban Street and you will find him, or by God, I will turn you inside out. That is a promise. Saint Thomas will escort you down to the car.”

The brown-haired smile stepped past his blond companion and offered a hand to Carys.

“I have very little time to waste, girl,” Mamoulian said, and the changed tone of his voice confirmed that claim. “So please: let’s be done with this wretched business.”