Ventriloquists (24 page)

The ramifications being what?

This was one that Branston had demanded of himself, time after time. In fact, it had grown into his favourite puzzle to solve while working out; the sort of conundrum that he had long since stopped regarding as an odd thing to work though while performing one’s physical jerks. (It was what got you through the sweaty session that counted. Some delved no more deeply than adding up repetitions; some grunted and thought of nothing at all; some claimed to visualise sexual encounters; and Branston even knew a guy who recited the value of pi under his breath while benching his one-twenties and holding for the strain and burn.) And it was during a workout, a few days after he’d viewed the sex tape the first time that Branston had experienced his epiphany.

By watching the film of Yasser with Maggie, he was part of the story himself. Up to that juncture, true, he had been no more than a bit-player, a victim; his ascension up the ladder of closing credits would depend on what he did next. Participation was the passport to a starring role: for this reason, he had vowed, he would strive to learn the backstory and to introduce a few twists of his own. Why, by the time he had completed his session, his shins aching, a dull throb shining in the small of his back, Branston was halfway convinced that he could smell the polishing lacquer on the statuette that he’d win for Best Short Picture at the next Cannes Festival.

Branston had begun two activities simultaneously. The first was a journal – a Word file that he simply called
Yasser and Maggie
– and the second was to follow Yasser wherever the young man went, within the obvious boundaries dictated by the laws of temporal, physical and ethical discretion.

At a stroke, it seemed, he had become Yasser’s shadow.

6.

The new working week began, and on Tuesday evening, when he arrived home in the middle of the afternoon, Yasser sensed change in the air: something hard to define; a tension. Trying to remain as optimistic as possible, Yasser held tight to the possibility that his parents’ bad mood was down to a rapid deterioration in Shyleen’s uterine health. Not that he wanted his cousin to suffer, of course; it was more that he disliked being the focus of their negative attention. Maybe she’d died in her sleep. Though it shamed him to consider this alternative, briefly he hoped it was so. It did not take long, however, for that fag end of possible good fortune to be pissed away along the long urinal trough of an already bad morning.

‘We’ve had a visitor,’ his father told him, shortly after he’d sloughed off his coat.

Yasser sighed. ‘I better sit down innit.’

‘Don’t you innit me, boy.’

Yasser sat down anyway: the settee cushion pumped out a farty acknowledgement of his tensed body mass. Then he saw his name in bold type: a headline in a Sunday tabloid, perhaps. Banged to rights. Guilty.
I feel so ashamed,
purrs Bury Park’s Paki D’Amour. The lounge’s dark and treacly shades had rarely felt so oppressive. It was the like the walls had inched in over decades, only now the film had been speeded up.

‘Did you play it?’ Yasser asked.

Although his father had remained standing, his eyeline was not much higher than his son’s. In the past he had used this resultant eyeball stare to his advantage; indeed, he did so now.

‘Play what?’ he demanded, goggled.

‘The film, man!’ Yasser shouted back.

‘And don’t you man me either! What the dickens are you discussing, boy?’

Yasser frowned; his belly gave a quick squeeze. ‘She didn’t give you a memory stick?’ Yasser knew that his father knew how to use one: the man had taken Barnfield College up on its offer of free computer training for the over-50s, a few years earlier.

‘Now what nincompoopery? What
she?
’

Yasser took a breath. With an effort he was able to keep his eyes open.

‘Who was the visitor?’ he asked softly.

‘A boy! He says his name’s Fonehacka. He even spelt it to me, like I don’t know my ruddy English!’

And who the dickens is Fonehacka when he’s at home? Yasser wondered.

‘He wants you to help him find his brother! You! Apparently you’ve got a reputation in High Town for finding people, Yasser. You found a stolen
baby
.’

‘I did,’ Yasser admitted.

‘So why didn’t I know nothing about this?’

‘About what? It was a college project I caught on film. It was a fluke, Dad. I’m not a
detective;
I got no
talent
.’

His father’s eyebrows writhed. At length.

‘Well
he
thinks you have, and it transpires half of bloody Luton thinks you have! So what you gonna do?’

Yasser repeated, ‘About what?’

‘About finding the bloody boy, boy! His name is Nero – or Neil in real money. He’s fifteen and he’s trotting out with a white girl, the child reckons. I want him found by the end of the week.’

Yasser waited for a different interpretation of the mini-speech to emerge, but no different interpretation was forthcoming.

‘You want me to
what?
’

‘Find the missing Nero! And don’t shilly-shally about it, fart-arseing on your bloody laptop!

Throughout this direction, Yasser had shaken his head. Now he tongued his lips damp, the better to produce his flat refusal.

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said.

‘Joking? You’ve got a new reputation for something useful, finally! And all the Fanny Adams with your college –‘

‘Dad. I’m not about to start a business locating missing people. Period.’

His father wiggled a finger. ‘Don’t you period me, boy. You’ll establish a profitable sideline by the time I say Jack Robinson or you’ll regret the day you were born! How else are you buying your expensive shoes?’

‘The stall.’

‘Billy Bollocks. You take me for just off the banana boat.’ His father stretched up to his full height, adding an inch or two to the total: he was preparing to leave the room, Yasser guessed, his words delivered as a
fait accompli –
and lo, it shall come to pass…

‘And one more thing,’ the man added. ‘You’ll marry Shyleen too if you’re so keen on plugging her weak spots with your little man’s didgeridoo! And if she’s pregnant… you’ll name your son after me.’

7.

Naturally, Shyleen was the only person with whom Yasser felt comfortable discussing the matter and these latest developments. As usual, she suggested a drive: she thought better when she drove, or so she claimed.

‘When you drive,’ Yasser answered, ‘you don’t think
at all.
’

‘Then
you
drive. I’ll pout and look pretty as your Asian babe. Maybe tickle your
didgeridoo
if you’re lucky. You can always go back to the Pikeys tomorrow.

Yasser smiled into the mouthpiece. ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

‘Impossible.’

‘We’re going to see those students – the ones Tommy played poker with,’ Yasser replied.

‘Why?’

‘Because he might’ve said something. People say all sorts of things to strangers.’

‘How do you know they’re strangers?’

‘Well I don’t. But I don’t have any better ideas.’

‘And what makes you think they’ll talk to you?’

‘I don’t. But I don’t have any better ideas. And I have to get out of my room.’

They met outside the Galaxy Centre, and had a coffee in the work-dodgers’ pub before heading up the High Street on foot, with the smell of that establishment – disinfectant, hops and curdled hope – scorching their nostrils.

Ten minutes, and they were standing outside the student Halls of Residence.

‘And now you’re King Kong,’ said Shyleen.

‘Do one,’ Yasser told her reflectively, staring up at the oxtail-coloured brick. Then he turned to her and added: ‘Do what?’

‘Climb the walls? Or do you surprise me with the announcement of a
plan?
’

‘No, no plan. Heaven forbid! I could pretend to be pizza – a pizza delivery.’

‘Like in a porn film!’ Shyleen was beaming. ‘Then I share you with all them eighteen year-old Nursing undergrads from
Hull
. Ooh, you know how to turn a girl on, Yass. I’m like the Grand Coulee Dam in me thong!’

‘Shut it, Shy, I’m thinking. Or dare I ask you what
you
suggest?’ said Yasser.

The beam on Shyleen’s face burned brighter.

‘You
suggest
, dear boy, what abuses of my position in car insurance I might’ve committed since our phone call, and what evidence of those abuses I might’ve printed out using work time and work ink.’

‘…The fuck?’

‘Well, students have cars too, you know.’

‘So?’

‘So. I can do address searches, and I did.’

‘
So?
’

‘So a student in this very Hall of Residence owns a Mini with oh-nine plates. Her name is Melissa Claybridge – and I’m just about to tell her I saw a black guy tying to steal it. And not
just
because she’s an overprivileged bag of foxshit either, driving a car her daddy paid for when I had to pay for my own. No. In order, my Yasser, to
get in your pants
.’

‘You’ve got her
number?
’

‘Well, I have. But how would a passing member of the public have her number? No. It’s the intercom blackjack for us, Sunny Jim. Then when I panic her into coming out… you go in.’

Yasser grinned. ‘Not bad. For that,’ he said, ‘my didgeridoo is yours for the blowing.’

‘Always was. Come on. I’m feeling like that bird off
The Killing.
Don’t want to lose my mojo.’

8.

Shyleen had seen Tommy pressing a button less than halfway up the panel, and this at least gave Yasser a clue where to start. The building was eight storeys high, after all.

Third floor. By the time he’d stepped out of the lift he’d rehearsed his door-knocking speech, truncated though it was.

The fifth door that he tried was already ajar, and heavy metal throbbed within. A tangy incense of hash smoke snaked out into the corridor. The gland problem who opened the door wider – twenty stone in his khaki beach shorts and faded Fields of the Nephilim t-shirt, his features foetal and his scribble of beard less philosopher than mouse turds on a Welcome mat – appeared to have partaken of more than his fair share of the latter. His eyes were like the Roadrunner’s.

‘
Buenos noches
,’ he piped, ‘
amigo
.’

It was three forty-five in the afternoon.

‘
Buenos noches
,’ Yasser answered, and then offered his real name. ‘I’m a friend of Tommy’s. Here for the cards the other night?’

‘Sure,
amigo
.’ The glandjob nodded his head.

‘Says he might’ve left his phone here.’

‘Yeah? Well, come in and look,
compadre.
My igloo is your igloo.’

‘Cheers.’ Yasser stepped over the threshold, yanked by the dizzying silver fog. ‘Jesus.’

‘Yeah, it’s pungent, I grant you.’

‘It certainly is.’

The apartment was filthy. Clothing and food competed for space on every surface. There was no sign of a carpet anymore: it was covered with newspapers.

Making a show of looking for a mobile, Yasser spied eggshells on a bookcase; and such was the volume pounding from the music centre that a pizza – an entire cooked
pizza
– bounced and wriggled with the bassline, upside-down on a sofa cushion.

Yasser expected to see a mouse. Or catch a throat infection.

‘Oh wait a minute, bro,’ said the glandjob. ‘It weren’t here – my mistake.’

‘What weren’t?’

‘The poker game? It was next door.’

‘Jesus.’

‘My memory, eh? Too much voodoo. It were next door: Paul Physics.’

‘That’s his name?’

‘No, man, that’s his subject he’s studying – I don’t know his surname. Or maybe I do. To tell you the truth – I hide it well, I know – but I been doing a lot of Class C. I mean, like
wheelbarrows
of the fucking shit. I tend to live a lot in the American Sixties and Seventies. A speedball was –‘

‘I know what a speedball is,’ Yasser interrupted. ‘Heroin and coke.’

‘…You wouldn’t have one on your person you’d be good enough to sell, would you? My folks are well rich and money’s no object,
compadre
.’

Yasser laughed: a bark. ‘I don’t tend to carry em around. The five-oh ain’t so copacetic round here, man. Street hassle, you dig?’ For the occasion of this satirical pisstake, Yasser had even adopted a chiffon-light American accent.

‘My
brother
. Ain’t
that
the truth.’

So Yasser stepped out into the corridor and knocked on what he reasonably hoped was the relevant door. At least the student who answered it appeared student-normal: long, rodent-colour hair, parted in the middle; a lively culture of spots on an angular chin; John Lennon spectacles, darkened glass. He spoke with a Gallic burr, and listened in a manner that suggested a slight deafness, as Yasser explained his predicament.

The man was hurting. On Cards Night he had lost heavily; he had taken, in fact, a thorough spanking, to the tune of three hundred quid. For this reason alone he was happy to talk – to analyse his play and his misfortune – in the loquacious manner of all breathing victims the world over.

Yasser could not believe his luck. (It was about time.) Midway through a recital that was italicised by emotion, the student started framing thoughts on how he would report his lack of funds back to his father. And Yasser said, ‘I have a few pounds I could help you with.’