The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy (11 page)

‘She's practising really hard for the concert. I daresay she's wondering how you will be now you're back in the land of the drinkers. What with all the temptation.'

‘In case you were wondering, we've already spoken about it, when she came to see me, and I'm doing just fine.' I take a cigarette from my pack and offer one to Matilda.

‘I don't smoke.'

‘Since when?'

‘I don't smoke,' she repeats.

‘Well, I do,' I say, and light up.

‘Good time for me to go then. I'm done with passive smoking. Passive anything, for that matter. I must dash,' she says with a smile, heading for the door. ‘I'm meeting Christine. You were late, remember, not me. Don't forget about tomorrow night. Lottie's expecting you for dinner. Don't let her down – her grandparents meant a lot to her.'

Her soup is half eaten, the bill left unpaid, the letter like a summons looms in front of me.

The waitress is standing beside me, a bowl of steaming vegetable noodles in her hands by way of compensation.

When I leave the restaurant the rain is tumbling down. I run across the road and take shelter in the door of the Prince Charles Cinema. I look into the foyer. A young woman with dyed blonde hair sits beside the popcorn, flicking through a magazine. Above her is a poster of a man and woman in traditional Japanese costume. The couple are set in a snowy landscape, linked together by a thick rope. The man is walking a few yards ahead of the woman. They look tired and confused. The show times tell me it is five minutes to the next performance. Feeling like a guilty schoolboy playing truant, I push through the swing doors and offer my five pounds to the usherette behind the magazine.

Finding a seat inside the cinema, my eyes slowly become accustomed to the dark. There is a smattering of people, dotted here and there amongst the rich plush velvet seats. As the curtain opens and the lights dim I feel my concerns drift away. The magic of the cinema and the beauty of the cherry-blossomed Japanese countryside captivate me. Slowly, the story of the young couple unfolds. So in love are they that the young woman loses her mind when her paramour is forced to marry the daughter of the company boss. When he hears of her plight he flees the altar and takes her away from the mad house to which she has been consigned. From here, the love-struck couple commence their trek through life. Bound together by a thick red rope, crossing gorges and bridges, taking on the robes of the ancient puppets that appear in the opening scene. Few words are spoken and I wonder what drives them on, what chains them together as they walk to their inevitable destruction? Finally, like lemmings, they plunge into a void and are left dangling on the rope, each suspended either side of a tree that grows from the side of the ravine.

Walking out into the rain, crossing Shaftesbury Avenue and heading back towards Old Compton Street, I look out for the couple with their thick red rope. But, of course, they are nowhere to be seen.

I hurry past the pubs of Soho. Each is a magnet, their interiors beacons of light and fascination. ‘No problem can be made better by a drink or drug,' I remind myself. Keep busy. Polish the shoes. Go for a walk. So on I go. Walking my polished shoes the length and breadth of Soho. Tomorrow I'll get to a Meeting like they told me. I've got the list. But for today I'll keep to the ‘walking and doing' therapy.

Before I realize it, as if by habit, I am standing at a familiar doorway. Squeezed between strip-joints, the small unmarked door opens to an unlit stairwell leading to a large room on the first floor. Small groups of people chat together. Some sit alone on the hard benches skirting the room; others hug the coffee bar in the corner, sipping from plastic cups. Three full-sized pool tables dominate the floor space. The one by the wall, farthest from the window, is occupied by the Maltese, who gamble for a thousand pounds on a single frame. The other two are in constant use. Pool played on these less exclusive tables is perfunctory. The players are biding their time; their minds are on other matters. They look up now and again to see where the action is, who is coming and going, who is buying and who is selling. For pool is not the main activity of the room. At the top of the stairs, leaning against the balustrade, the dealers keep a keen eye on the flow of people coming up from Old Compton Street below. Even before their heads come into view between the struts of the banisters, the gauntlet of dealers make their offers.

‘You looking?' says one. ‘Want some smack?' asks another. ‘After gear?' whispers a third. Every heroin user in London's West End knows of the ‘pool hall'. It's the one place where it is guaranteed that Class A drugs will be on sale day and night.

Each morning, before the doors open, the dealers gather together with the Maltese gamblers who own the place. The Maltese divide up the drugs amongst the regular dealers, and that's the last they have to do with it. From then on they relax, drink wine and play pool on the alpha table and joke around with Little Ed, the bartender who can just about see over the counter. The system works well for everyone. The Maltese shift large quantities of drugs each day, the dealers have a reliable source, and the users don't have to linger for hours on a street corner waiting for ‘the man'. Some of the less chaotic users act as ‘runners'. These carefully selected foot soldiers work for payment in kind. The dealers supply them with £10 ‘bags' of heroin that they peddle around the streets of Soho and the West End. When they've sold their load they come back to the pool hall for more, inject some drugs in the toilet, collect some more bags and head out again. Everyone is happy.

The atmosphere in the pool hall is heavy, but rarely threatening and never violent. It's a club where no one stumbles in by mistake. Even the police and drug squads are content. It keeps the drug injectors off the streets and that keeps the residents and politicians happy. Every now and again there are busts and a few small-time user-dealers are hauled off to the courts. But this is an occupational hazard for the illicit drug user.

I first heard about the pool hall two years ago when I was having a drink with Jack, who used to sell me cocaine from time to time. I was telling him about my work on the one-use syringe and he said I must meet Warren, an old hippy on a methadone maintenance prescription. Warren, according to Jack, knew more about injecting illicit substances than Job knew about suffering. So we met up, and over the months Warren schooled me in the assembly and reassembly of the most buckled and overused injecting equipment. He took to pieces our lab's prototypes and handed them back to me as good as new, ready for the next fix. He would laugh. I would frown. And then it would be back to the laboratory. I became something of a fixture in the pool hall and everyone knew me as the ‘Kitman'. They were all aware of my job – better to be straight than be suspected – and I carried a letter from the university, just in case I was stopped by the police. Every six months or so I would turn up with the latest offering from the lab, assured that it was invincible. Everyone would gather around. I would hand it to Warren and the crowd would wait for him to wrestle it to submission.

‘Go on, Warren, you can do it,' someone would shout.

‘Kick its butt,' another would say.

It was like a street fight. I was the outsider, challenging their champion. I was the bare-knuckled traveller laying down the gauntlet to the King of the Gypsies. If they'd had a billboard it would read: ‘University Kitman versus Junkie Lord, fight to the death for the undisputed one-use syringe world title.'

Then one day, a couple of months ago, there was a silence amongst the crowd as Warren stepped forward. As always, he imitated a real injection, just to give the process some street cred and to play to the audience. He knew the ethics of my research prohibited any hint of my encouraging illicit drug use, so he mixed sterile water with some salt on a spoon and heated it from below with a lighter. Then he placed a small cotton bud for a filter into the mixture. In an injection of heroin this would trap impurities and adulterants. He pulled the plunger to draw the solution from the spoon up through the needle and into the barrel of the syringe. Being a seasoned injector, he flicked the side of the syringe to check for air bubbles. He then placed the needle on the skin of his arm at a forty-five-degree angle with the needle bevel facing out, just as he would for a real injection. Finally, with all eyes on him, he depressed the plunger, releasing the mixture as it squirted onto his arm and then dribbled to the floor. With the syringe emptied the plunger would not come away from the barrel. They were locked together like solid steel. He huffed and puffed, twisted and turned, but all to no avail. I raised my arm to the ceiling, alone amongst the home supporters. I had done it. The title was mine. Warren shook my hand, the crowd cheered, and I ordered drinks all around, though I think most were hoping for something a little more potent.

All in all, the pool hall had been a great place to do work and also a great place to pick up the occasional gram of cocaine from Jack. Not that I was ever foolish enough or desperate enough to pocket my drugs there. These would always be left for me behind the toilet in a nearby coffee shop. But not anymore, thank you very much. Not for me. Clean these last three weeks and counting.

This evening I appear at the top of the stairs and the dealers who know me give me a cursory nod. Those who don't look slightly alarmed, but receive a tacit reassuring glance from the others. I look around for familiar faces. One or two I recognize, but there are a lot of new people in tonight. They sit on the benches, looking anxious, fretting that they may have got here after last orders. All the pool tables are occupied, so I stroll over to the bar. Ed is cleaning glasses with his back to me, his small head and narrow shoulders are all I can see of his tiny frame. I think back to my last visit, my euphoria at finally cracking the code. Ed is still here, just as he was that night when he opened the bottle of whiskey and drank my good health, along with Warren.

‘Hi, Ed.'

‘Hello there, Professor,' he says, swivelling around, a real and welcoming smile on his face. ‘And how is Frankenstein, today?'

‘Oh, I'm just fine,' I say. ‘The monster's got the night off, roaming the streets of Knightsbridge, so I thought I'd stroll down here for some high-class company.'

‘Well,' says Ed, looking around the room with a snigger, ‘you're surely in the right place.'

There's a slap on my back. I get a sudden mental image of the swan on the Heath, the flap of a wing, but when I turn, it's Warren.

‘Great to see you, Prof. Have you heard the news?'

‘What news?'

‘The police. Things are hotting up here. They must be getting orders from above.'

‘What's happened?'

‘Look,' says Ed, pointing through the window to the minicab office across the road. He and Warren wave their hands and smile. ‘Wave and smile. You're on candid camera.'

‘Where?' I squint across the room and through the murky glass of the window.

And then I see a tripod and a camera in the window of the first floor of the building across the road.

‘Last week they came and told us they were under orders to monitor the place. You remember that sergeant with the wig? He gave me twenty pounds to clean the inside of the windows. Their photos were coming out blurred.'

‘You know what this'll mean?' says Warren.

I do. I look around at all the scared faces. Drug users in varying stages of withdrawal waiting for their dealer to turn up with the medicine: a fix of heroin to set them back on an even keel.

‘I'll give it two weeks before they close this place down for good,' says Warren.

‘Less,' adds Ed.

‘And then we'll all be back out on the streets. Nowhere to go. Dodgy dealers, crap drugs cut with all manner of junk. Chalk, brick dust, anything to bulk it up,' says Warren.

‘Even strychnine,' says Ed, raising his eyebrows, referring to the recent deaths of ten drug injectors in Kings Cross, caused by dealers who over-cut the heroin.

‘I know all the tricks,' says Warren, the one-time big dealer who now keeps his hand in for old time's sake. ‘It'll be terrible for everyone.'

Warren cares about his customers, even though he often jokes about being the altruistic type of guy who steals your drugs and then helps you look for them. But dead customers are bad business, whatever the merchandise.

‘And if this place gets closed down there'll be nowhere safe to inject,' I add.

Ed looks a bit sheepish. We all know that for a small fee he lets the injectors jack-up in the toilets.

‘Hey Prof,' says Warren. ‘I've been thinking. A couple of us got to talking after you were here last time. We're happy for you and your needle, we really are. We know it's all about vaccination programs and the poor. We really get that. But we were wondering if it'd work for us.'

‘For you?'

‘Yes, Prof. There was a young guy here the other day. A researcher from some college. He said the government was going to try out needle exchange programs here in England.'

He looks at me to see if I get his meaning. I must look a bit nonplussed, surprised. I've heard about needle exchange programs in Holland to protect against viral infections like hepatitis C. They're run by drug users and activists. All very radical. But I haven't really paid much attention to it all. Been too busy in the rarefied atmosphere of my lab, striving for a solution to a scientific problem. But maybe Warren has a point. Maybe my invention can help drug users as well.

‘But this Government? Warren, do you really think they'll go for it? All you ever hear from them is we all have to look out for ourselves, and there's no such thing as community.'

‘You don't think we deserve it?' says Warren.

‘No, no, not that,' I answer. ‘I'm just not too sure how it'd work.'