Balzac of the Badlands Read online

  ***

  There’s that rustling sound again. Last night. She’s as nervous as a kitten on its first date. Or scraping sound. At university, Sarah went skyjumping with James, her now ex-boyfriend. She also tried mountaineering, but that was more for the physical thrill of it. She hasn’t done anything for a cause before. It veers between the two. Well, she has, but presenting fundraising meetings… Paper. Then sandpaper… and taking potential donors for lunch to discuss the UK’s position on refugees… Something in the leaves… although exciting isn’t exactly heart-in-mouth stuff. The undergrowth. But when Ozan tells her of his plan to hijack two lorry-loads of illegal Kurdish immigrants, she thinks, ‘I can help here,’ she can do something more than earn £30,000 a year in order to raise £30,000. But she can’t quite work out from where it’s coming. She may be able to make a difference. How long has it been? As soon as she mentions to Ozan that her father owns a haulage yard in which Ozan can park the lorries… Certainly hours. Feels like days… she knows where her father keeps the spare set of keys – it is like standing at the top of that mountain in Scotland. It could be minutes, seconds. Or at the threshold of that airplane door somewhere over Hampshire. She cannot move. She moves. Fear. Through fear. It is like that, only better, she thinks. She breathes heavily. Too many people. Not enough. A rush. She can think of nothing else. The streets full one minute and then decanted. Strange. Her body feels so alive. But that’s not a good thing. She doesn’t. Want. To feel. Her own stupid fault. Too many movies. Too many books. Her body carries on without her. Something moves under her skin. She should have stayed out of it. Handed over the keys to Ozan, let him deal with it. It crawls, then walks, then runs, then races over her, mechanical, organic, veers around arterial corners. Why insist on being involved? Crossing veins, zooming towards the chequered flag, the finishing line, the champagne. The ashes. She can’t stop it. She can’t control it. She should have waited at the yard. Multiplying. And now? Now she’s cold, wet, and shivering somewhere in North London. Feeding. No money. Excreting. Again, that sound. Rustling. Scraping. She’s tired, and she’s hungry, and she can’t stop crying. She daren’t phone her parents. No phone. Paper. Not until all this dies down. She can’t phone Ozan. No phone. Scraping. Leaves like sandpaper. Did he double-cross her. Her? Double-crossed her? Double-cross? Rustling. He promised to fix up the Kurds with jobs, to start asylum procedures. Scraping. Now what? Scraping. But she trusts Ozan. Nothing can go wrong. Her legs are heavy, her chest tight. There’s a thorn bush, scrapes her arm, tears her sweater, a thin line of blood soaks through. Her tongue fat and dry. If only. She smells mint, stale water, a yeasty odour cut with lime. Her hair hangs in her eyes and… She smells a musty sweetness and she hears the pleading.

  ***

  I am five years old, my mother leaves me and my sister at her parents’ farm in darkest Suffolk while she goes off with some hippy to a music festival – she returns a few weeks later smelling of damp clothes, patchouli oil, and something salty. Coming from Finsbury Park, I’ve encountered dogs on our trips to the playground, in the street, and on television, but I’ve never been up close to one, felt its greasy fur, smelled its evil coppery breath. My grandparents own two Border collies. For the first few days, concerned about our fragile city ways and the two dogs’ excitability, my grandfather locks the collies in the barn while Clea and I play, supervised by our grandmother, by the pond. Toward the end of the week, Grandma thinks it’s safe – we’ve been strengthened by the sun and her hearty soups – to let out the dogs to investigate the two small humans playing in their garden. The dogs bound up to Clea and leap about her like anxious suitors. She giggles and leaps with them. I stand, hands in pockets, and watch the dogs and my sister dance. Tiring of this, the male looks around at me and yelps and I realize that what I think is its excited high-pitched barks are in fact clues to where it has been and what it has done that day. I can read its memory as if I am guiltily perusing a doggy diary and the dog knows I am able to understand it, and it stops and stares and shits itself. Its partner, too, stops and looks from Clea’s smiling face to my frowning one, and it urinates down Clea’s leg. Clea runs off shouting for Grandma, the two dogs howl at the small boy not five feet from their slathering muzzles.

  ‘What did you do to those dogs?’ My grandma asks me that night. ‘They are cowering in the barn, off their food, just staring at the barn door. What did you do?’ My protests of innocence ignored, my soup left cold on the kitchen table, my grandpa trying to side with me, shushed into the yard where he spends the evening cleaning his guns. The next morning, after a number of telephone calls, an aunt agrees to take us in for the remainder of the holiday. I never again see my grandparents. My grandmother dies of a brain tumour and my grandfather shoots himself a week later after killing the two shell-shocked collies and a goose that must have wandered by. My mother never mentions the subject and I spend years attempting to ignore dogs. Occasionally, as a party trick, if I am in a bad mood, or it’s a particularly ugly-looking hound, I’ll catch its eye and watch it scream and purge. The Mermaid has an airhead of an Airedale – Agamemnon is its name – a broody, depressed specimen. Oh, the temptation – I must remember my sunglasses next time I stay over.

  Now, I’m not saying I can understand what dogs are thinking. I mean, it’s not exactly going to be a stimulating form of communication, and even if Border collies are the geniuses of the bow-wow world – making beagles the meatballs, the numbnutses – their topics of conversation do not stretch beyond sniffing, eating, barking, and poochy porn – but I get an idea of what they’ve heard, what noises, usually unknown to us, they’ve stored away, what smells impossible for humans to detect they’ve discovered. It creates a sort of map of their associative memory and it becomes mine for a while, not that I want it – I don’t particularly want to know where they’ve buried juicy bones or which Alsatian’s arse smells sweetest. But sometimes it comes in handy. It just scares the bechewtoys out of them.

  Soon after the episode with my grandparents’ collies, I realized – with some trepidation but also excitement – that, as a naughty and meddling schoolboy, I had powers beyond those of regular spotty oiks. I practised – a lot – like other kids practise ping-pong or masturbation. My ‘powers’ got me in trouble. They got me my job. They got me where I am today: in Finsbury Park, slightly hungover, heading towards the badlands in search of my comrade, confrère, crony – the mighty Mr. Homo Sapiens Sapiens Jones. And H has his own thing going. I have an inkling even Spaghetti Monster and The Bush has something going on they’re not telling me, keeping to themself. But we all do, don’t we? I don’t mean like The Mermaid and her ability to talk to the Laughing Cavalier or Botticelli’s Venus, I mean we all have what I like to think of as mini super powers. One person can attract cats. Another cook perfect rice. Yet another run the 100 metres in 9.55 seconds, or whatever the record is nowadays. I have my thing with dogs. H has that whole time-space trick he uses on occasion and that I still haven’t figured out. We all have super powers – however small. I use mine to solve things. Sometimes. What’s your specialty? Cracking walnuts behind your knees? Speaking twelve languages? Autofellatio? If only. That reminds me. Maybe.

  ***

  A crack running the length of the structure’s roof has his full attention. He has all about him the trappings of success. But they are not enough. Not now. Not then. Jonathan Eaves can see it shine. He lives in a six-bedroom Georgian mansion in Harrow on the Hill. There’s a spider. He owns a stable of luxury cars. His daughter, away at school in Switzerland, has a pony brushed and gleaming. The spider is an angry blackened fist. His wife, who left him five years ago, maintains credit lines in casinos and hotels he co-owns on the French Riviera and the Costa del Sol. Curled up. He could retire if he so wished. But then, what would he do? From where would the fun come? Legs tucked under its body. He no longer enjoys the tear ‘em up and torture of youth. Its head paler than its body. No longer gets his kicks from torn off fingernails lying around like so
many discarded crab shells. Occasionally, its web shrugs in the draught coming from somewhere. No longer seeks solace in the rum-and-black bruise surrounding a rival’s plucked eye socket. But it is dark so how can he see these things? No, for Jonathan Eaves, strategy equals foreplay, the deal penetration, and the close orgasm. If he could remember those things. The former. Are they memories? Last night: watching a DVD, he feels a shiver along his spine, like somebody trailing an icy finger counting out his vertebrae, one, two, three, until it reaches the small of his back and a cold pulse signals to him that something is amiss. Dreams? Can he really see? Are his eyes closed or open? Does light penetrate this place? He stands in the unlit room, the glow of the plasma-screen, blue as newly-milled steel, casts his shadow on the undecorated walls, thin, angular, the slope of his nose like a seagull’s beak, his lips a pale protuberance, his chin bifurcated like the tip of a fresh strawberry. The crack is no longer there. The TV’s angry blue-grey annoys him and he switches it off and waits for his double to be extinguished. The spider has also disappeared. He picks up his mobile knowing that they would not dare call him. But not so its web, strumming. The night lights of Harrow twinkling like phosphorescent sea creatures. Down there are the living, the breathing, the unsullied. Thrumming. He walks to his desk, opens the drawer and pulls out a folder. Played by the breeze, by the minute. Flipping it open on a reproduction of Magritte’s L’Empire des lumières, he traces the trees and the house with his finger. This web is not symmetrical like most webs. Three versions of this painting exist. It’s elongated on one side. His world. The shortened side is all hexagons, triangles, squares. Yesterday, he held the keys to the door, contemplating the daytime sky from the lighted porch of his night-time house. The other side has broken sections, torn rectangles, demented pentagons, squashed circles. Is he now just a visitor? The shortened side is bejewelled with petrol-coloured dew, the other side dry, discoloured. This feeling strikes Jonathan Eaves as strange. One is a phantom of the other. It is as if he is drunk. But he hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol since the night his brother killed Scouse Ronny at the Finsbury Park fairgrounds. The other is a phantom of the one. Not from any moral revulsion, you understand, it’s just that Jonathan Eaves has always rued missing the sight of his brother Martin slicing off Ronny’s ears, pruning his fingers, and feeding him a peckerburger; Jonathan being drunk and throwing up an ill-advised pre-night-out bowl of strawberry Angel Delight behind the Waltzer. Did a spider build this web? Maybe it was something else. He’d wanted to see Martin in action but instead had spent the time listening to Scouse Ronny’s screams, hands on his knees, knees in the mud, his face inches from a puddle of foaming dessert shot with Cinzano and flecks of lemon. Something other. In the far reaches, in the darkest corner, he sees it; silk issues from spinnerets in its abdomen. Since then, he has sworn off the Captain Morgans, the Bacardi Spices, and drinks instead wheatgrass smoothies, pomegranate juice, and mineral water. He hears a buzzing. His skin itches. The spider smiles and the buzzing increases. The web disappears. He again sees the crack in the roof. Very slowly, it widens. Doubt. When the day is not over. His body protects him from the pain. He is reminded of the spider. Couldn’t. Should have. He dials.

  ***

  On my way, I’ll tell you a bit more about myself, my manor, my manner, and my job. But not in that order. I’ve been a private investigator/detective/dick/eye for ten years. Started off small potatoes – literally. An arson job on a chip shop next to the Manor House pub on the Seven Sisters. A decade or so ago: I am temporarily down on my luck having just returned from Morocco – forcibly returned, I might add. I spend my nights breathing in the fumes of so many cans of spilled Merrydown, kipping on an old mate’s living-room floor. The Mermaid is in India on a pilgrimage. I spend my days not looking for work, playing pool, and walking around the park. One night, I’m sitting on the sofa, cold can of beer in my paw, slopping down a carton of chicken chow mein, when the door opens and my mate walks in with a gorilla dressed in a bear costume. Or that’s what I thought. The bear growls, the gorilla interprets. I nod and gesture and go back to my Chinese. Oh, I forgot. Spatchcocked face up on the packing case used as a coffee table is a copy of Great Expectations, which I’d put down in favour of a can of Stella Artois.

  The bear collapses on to a brown bean bag and says, ‘Dickens fan, are you?’ I look up from my hunched position, noodles and bamboo shoots fibrillating from my greasy lips, and realise what I thought was a bear in a gorilla suit – or was it the other way around…? Anyway, Bearilla turns out to be a six-foot eight-inch man, wearing a fur coat, leather trousers, ski-boots – all black – he’s bearded and on his head is perched a black Russian hat with earflaps. His lips look like slugs pumped full of Botox, lipstick by way of Siouxsie Sioux, the squirrel-tail awnings on his forehead are eyebrows, and he’s looking at me out of what look like eight-balls. It’s mid-August.

  ‘What?’ I slurp.

  ‘Dickens,’ he says, ‘fan, are you?’

  I open with, ‘Pip, Estella, Joe Gargery.’

  He counters with ‘Abel Magwitch, Jaggers, and Miss Havisham.’

  I raise him, ‘Mrs Joe, Wemmick, and Herbert Pocket.’

  He sees me, ‘Dolge Orlick, Bentley Drummle, and Mr Wopsle.’

  And I close with, ‘Uncle Pumblechook, Startop, and Miss Skiffle.’

  He winks. My mate – Ken – comes out of the kitchen and hands Bearilla a dusty glass of cider.

  ‘I hear you’re not looking for work,’ he says.

  ‘Might not be,’ I say.

  ‘Need help on a case.’

  ‘Case?’ I say, looking down at the table.

  ‘Name’s Joseph Welch, but everyone calls me The Bison. I’m a private investigator.’

  I look at the guy and can’t imagine him hiding inside wardrobes but I can imagine wardrobes hiding inside him.

  ‘I’m working on an arson case. Simple job. Insurance. Need someone to do a bit of running for me. No questions. Thirty sobs a day. Usual bloke I use is in hospital. Wardrobe fell on him.’

  ‘£30 a day,’ I say.

  ‘Plus expenses,’ he says. ‘You know the chippy that burned down by the Manor?’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘Near where I grew up.’

  He says, ‘Meet me there tomorrow morning 8 a.m.’

  I say, ‘Done. Cheers.’

  And we spend the rest of the evening drinking, listening to my mate’s goddamn reggae music, and reciting lists of characters from Dickens’ novels. The Bison turns out to be an ex-copper, ex-wrestler, and ex-husband. I work with him on the arson case – I like to give jobs names, so I call it The Case of the Poison Fish. This is how it went down.

  The owner of the chip shop meets some guy in a bookies on Green Lanes. The guy tells him he’s got a mate who works at Billingsgate who can supply a lorry-load of fish every Saturday, the cost would be a quarter of what he pays for his usual stock. He assures the chip-shop owner that although grey in colour, bony, and sandpapery to the touch, fish lovers everywhere prize the Kurdistan cod. And a tip – best served battered, covered in salt and vinegar, smothered in tartar sauce, and a few drops of Tabasco don’t go amiss – traditional recipe, innit? The chip-shop owner buys the fish. Sells it. No one complains. Not until one night when, just as the pub is closing, in walks Mikey (Crikey) O’Reilly, two of his O’Goons, and some tart dressed in green. They all order the special fish supper and a couple of pickled eggs. No problem. Job done. Mikey is on the bog – oh, the mirth – for three days, the O’Goons each lose two stone, and the Green Girl, already doing a ton in the fast lane of the Bulimia highway, ends up in the Whittington – hospital not pub. Suffice to say, Mikey is none too chuffed. So, after the kaolin and morphine (special supply) has done its job, Mikey, accompanied by a different set of O’Goons – no neck, no brains, no kidding – pays the chip-shop owner a visit and gives him three options. One: baptism in hot oil. Mikey’s joke that he will ‘batter’ him met with silence by the O’Goons. Two: Mikey will
cut off the owner’s fingers and toes, deep fry them and serve them back to him garnished with dill pickles. Three: the owner can torch the place, collect on the insurance, pay it to Mikey so Mikey can ‘fritter’ it away on the Green Girl. The O’Goons remain stony, the owner agrees to the third option, and the shop goes up in fishy flames two weeks later. The restaurant, gutted and water damaged, reeks of char-grilled fish, blackened potatoes, and exploding jars of pickled eggs. The fire brigade and the police report an accidental fire. The owner pleased, the insurance company not so. They ask The Bison to look into it further. He does. I help.

  I know the area. I was born here. I’ve lived here most of my life. Except for spells in New York, Tokyo, Tangier, and Rome… Let’s just say I’ve lived here most of my life. And I always end up back here. So, while The Bison looks into the owner’s bank balance, staff discontent, and the deep-fat fryer – or is that deep fat-fryer? – I photocopy things, pick up lunch, make calls, and run errands. The Bison finds some dodgy evidence, shakes down the owner by standing very close to him and frowning, then we both pay a visit to Mikey and the gang.

  We find them in an O’Neill’s in Muswell Hill. Mikey beckons us over. I was at school with him; that is to say, I was at the same school from which Mikey played truant. He seems to know The Bison. He would. Sitting with Mikey are two O’Goons and a young woman I take to be the Green Girl – celery-thin and, every ten minutes or so, toilet-bound. The Bison comes straight out and tells Mikey he knows he’s had a hand in the torching. Mikey says it wasn’t him, but he knows who did it – ‘an old flame.’ No one laughs. Mikey goes on to say he is, ‘Innocent, he’ll swear on his mother’s sole,’ that, ‘Cod only knows who could have done such an awful thing,’ that he’s ‘haddock up to here with the hooligans in the area,’ and he is ‘going to put them in their plaice.’ Mikey’s puns are met with silence from all present until The Bison tells him that he ‘would hake Mikey to have to do time over a little thing like this.’ Both men stare at each other and a deal is done. They split the insurance money 50/50 and I get ten per cent of The Bison’s share.