She wanted to go in there early evening to see if he was still asleep, what was going on, and as she got to the stop of the stairs, hand reaching for the door handle, suddenly that song came on again with a thump, made her jump, her hand snapping back as though the door was booby-trapped and she slowly, half anxious, half resigned went backwards down the top three steps then turned and descended to the living room, and decided, well it was Saturday night and she wasn’t staying in on her own.
A friend’s birthday, the great salvation, always a friend’s birthday somewhere in London popping up on your timeline, friend of a friend and everyone’s invited. Jacintha, met her a few times out with the gang, another possible ex-lover of Dominic’s, father was the guitarist for The Statics back in the early Nineties, mum a chick-lit novelist and now a columnist, people who had made money back when being a guitarist or writing a book could still make you rich.
This one was just round the corner and she was determined to flirt and have a good time, drink too much, be disgraceful and free and independent, but after the usual disappointments of the make up and the mirror and choosing clothes she came back down to fortify herself with a glass of wine and found he was there in the living room, looking at the TV, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, his head to one side.
He is having a breakdown, that much is evident.
Alex? She says quietly, questioningly, from the doorway.
He remembers where he heard the name Vernon Crane,
not in the club,
but once he returned home,
here in this very house,
yes
half awake, drunk still, stumbling groggily to the bathroom in
the dark and there,
waiting just behind the door,
pale, damp with death, emaciated
was Crane himself waiting to lean forward
as he stumbled back to bed
to whisper his own name in his ear.
Johannes has two choices.
If he tackles the Gopher, is covered with petrol, petrol on his clothes, hair, skin, and the boy does manage to ignite this he will be burned. If he steps back, steps away, then a certain amount of heavily insured property will be damaged.
Actually, a third option, he could try to leave. The Gopher is between Johannes and the door and he has a screwdriver. No doubt if he is happy to see them both burned to death he will certainly be prepared to attack Johannes with it.
Did Connaught send you? He asks. Is this Connaught’s doing? Glaucos, he says, the word that activates the security alarm.
The Gopher has produced two more canisters of lighter fluid from the pockets of his army coat and is throwing it around everywhere. A substantial quantity hits the original Schmee Jacobin piece on the left wall. They paid something like fifty dollars for that when they were busy tracking down his work three or four years ago. Now it must be worth what, eight, ten million.
The gopher has entered some kind of trance state, eyes shining, wide open, muttering to himself. A Connaughtian. Where else would he have got this distinctive rhetoric from, this fervour, such good information networks to tap.
Johannes steps back to avoid a few drops of lighter fluid as they soar through the air toward him.
Would it be foolish of me to ask you to stop that? He says.
Is the Gopher amenable to financial incentives? Or is he an Other-directed type? And if so what form of compensation can Johannes offer? When will security arrive? Imperfect information.
Let me say that whatever your price is to stop I am happy to hear that.
Vernon’s friend has been in and said the video is all set up and now Jack’s up and trying the stairs, each step a cliff face. He used to bound up and down them, even a few months ago. He was more than good for his age.
When Vernon disappeared all he could say for months was, the daft bugger, the daft bugger. He was a good Dad, played with him, took an interest in his schooling, not like some men, in the pub every night and a job in the shipyard for their sons, if it’s good enough for me it’s good enough for our lad. No, he never had that attitude. Perhaps they spoiled him, him being the only one.
The tea is ready; she can’t stall anymore though she has got a bit sniffly. Made worse hearing him struggle down the stairs to watch the video, she can hear him standing panting outside the front room, trying to get his breath back before he goes in, embarrassed to seem so frail. May as well see him again now, before he dies. No point being truculent about that. No point shying away from that loss, when the greatest of losses is upon him.
Come down to have a last look at his lad, the daft bugger.
Graeme wonders who he’s involved with now, this gang, this crew don’t seem that welcome here, not unwelcome exactly but people are wary of them, they have formed a knot of their own where others circulate and mingle. He is going over his mission as a Gopher yet again to someone new now, explaining who he works for, who he is supposed to be meeting. Initially they wanted to take his bag and the contents until he protested that this was all he had left in the world of any value, without which he would be left with nothing but his body, its minimal strength, its poor capacity to endure.
He sits at the back of the room as some guys at the front talk about housing. People he knows, half recognises, his crowd, South London, feels like home, but isn’t anymore, maybe hasn’t been for a long time but just it’s hard to let go, to stop clinging on to an idea about the future, a set of presuppositions about who you would be and where you’d live, the people you’d know, which just dissolves, melts into air. 12 o’clock they’ve told him they’ll be running him up to meet a goods lorry coming in from the coast, smuggling him up North; he’ll be getting dropped off, picked up, crouched in wet laybys waiting for his off-grid mobile to ring.
Yes it is like the country’s being partitioned, before perhaps people used to swirl around each other, intermingle at certain points in certain places, but gradually some force began to pull them apart, separate them out again, lock them away. Perhaps they never did, perhaps it was all an illusion anyway to imagine that the whole world would end up like, well, this room. Someone puts a tune on he likes, from back in the day, Rat Pack’s
Bomb Scare
. That was the moment to be alive, that was when it was all alright, back when he was just a kid and listening to his brothers mixtapes and Jamm FM on a Sunday afternoon.
Shouldn’t have run, he shouldn’t have run. His eyes are cast down at his feet, hood up, chewing his lower lip. He should have stuck with that nursing course, he should have worked harder at school, he should have got a job, bought a house, even if the mortgage would have crippled him, need to have a stake in the place, own land, if not you’ll be at someone’s mercy, the landlord, the cops, the Government, these guys even. He doesn’t want to owe people favours, doesn’t want to be in anyone’s debt, but how can he not be when he is so fucked? He shouldn’t have run; but he has now. He glances up as remorse flows over him and sees Joolzy, standing over by the door and chatting to the pretty black girl who used to come in Record and Video Exchange with her Mum.
Joolzy, like a bad dream everywhere he goes. He lowers his head again eyes darting around over his feet. Doesn’t want to get spotted. How many other cops are in here?
Tobi’s hand comes down lightly on his shoulder, signalling that it’s time for him to go, head down and hood up, slipping out the back way to a destination unknown.
Head down and hood up, that’s the way. Head down, hood up is how we live these days.
He turns to look at her, pausing the video.
Karen? Don’t worry, don’t worry OK? I am close to the end. I am almost there, funnelling all his words out of the left side of his mouth.
Almost where, Alex?
At the solution.
Take off the sunglasses Alex.
I can’t. My eyes are bad. I have some kind of infection. Some kind of growth.
A growth. Her blood stops. A tumour. He’s got a brain tumour. She wants to sit down but can’t move.
Let me see.
I’ll get it looked at, he assures her. The left side of his face hardly moves as he speaks, in the light from the TV it looks like a wax mask.
Perhaps a stroke. At his age. Maybe an embolism, thrombosis. A friend of a friend got something like that after a flight to New Zealand. Almost died. Maybe that.
I think you need help now, she says softly.
I have realised that this is where they lived for a while. Here, in this house. What a coincidence. If it is a coincidence.
Our house?
Vernon Crane came here. Paula lived here. Suddenly he straightens and what’s left of his face begin to tremor.
No Alex, no, I don’t think they did.
Maybe it’s here. Maybe he left it here somewhere. What did your parents do when they bought this place?
Alex I don’t know.
I have to go back to Castleford.
No, she says, exasperated. Alex no. You need to stay here and rest.
I have to be quick, he says. You don’t get it do you? People are trying to beat me to it, to get hold of the book, all of it. I need to be first.
Who is trying to get what, Alex? Alex, I don’t understand this. This obsession you’ve developed.
Alex, can’t you tell me what is going on? Is it that hard to do?
It’s raining heavily now, the sky grey with thick flocks of dark bellied cloud. They settle into place, in the armchair, the settee they have had for twenty years in the house they have lived in for forty.
Silently.
I will be back one day. In a matter of seconds. In the blink of an eye. All that time will have passed.
It’s dusk outside when the tape stops.
Rob smiles, begins to rewind it, that lost day reversing. Presses play, brings up an image of Vernon’s face.
Christine clears her throat to say something when,
suddenly
there’s a knock at the door.
Nick sits in the car and watches Paula Adonor disappear into the flats, then returns his attention to his phone.
It took him a little while to persuade her to let him drive her back. Hard to say if she’s just being polite, doesn’t want to get involved too fast or have Nick assume anything too much about where last night might be leading. In the end Nick spun it as a sensible, practical decision, he could take back some of the things she has already boxed up and store them at his place, assuming that they will be sent off down to the south coast soon enough anyway. Perhaps he said, he could use what he is pretty sure come Monday he will be told is his last month in work to sort out some reasonable accommodation for them, and Paula, strict as ever, said no, really I don’t want any special treatment just because we know each other. Fair enough, he respects that, but given the fact that Paula is likely to be treated less fairly, punished and penalised, he has decided that it’s only fair she gets the little bit of advantage she can, level the playing field a little.
Let me drive you, I haven’t been up to London for a while anyway, or been out of Thanet except for work-related things. I don’t have the kids today, I am free.
Free, a little window of freedom, he feels an immense sense of release wash over him, summer is on its way.
Paula wants to make sure Lee is clean and presentable, that the place isn’t too much of a mess. South London looks different, lots of cranes everywhere, lots of building work. Is all this sustainable? Someone who understands all this more than he does must think so. Is it politically sustainable? Looking at his news feed just before they set off he saw that there had been trouble outside The Shard, looks serious. Billionaire Entrepreneur in Coma, he scanned it quickly. Having survived an arson attack on his flat Johannes Altborg then walked outside to confront the crowd of demonstrators and was struck with a concrete base that had been ripped off a rubbish bin.
The press are baying for more crackdowns, one step away from demanding mass incarcerations of anyone involved even peripherally in protest, tweeting anything untoward.
He drifts into a momentary fantasy of escape with Paula to some remote hillside and a tumbledown old farm, the kids somehow released into his care.
She’s taking a long time. Well, he checks his emails again and finds his heart surging up against his ribs suddenly. An email from Robert Gillespie, the title:
Definitive news on Vernon Crane
.
Well. Life never gives you a moment’s respite, does it? He puts the phone face down in his lap and glances around, picks it up again. His finger hovers over the screen. He imagines what might happen if Crane is alive, what impact that might have now on Paula, where things might go, or if he’s dead, finally confirmed.
Does Nick hope he’s dead? Is there a sudden return of anxiety that Vernon Crane will come and take her away from him? That she will fall back toward him?
Old fear, old frustration, old doubt, old resignation return to him, these ghosts he thought he had banished
He closes his eyes, taps the screen, keeps them closed, heart galloping, sounds of cars going past, sun warm on his face through the windshield. Eyes closed, all possibilities rioting around him, that life, this future, the longed for still open before him.
Security boast a ninety second response time. He has already unlocked the door to the apartment using the key fob.
The Gopher has brought a lighter and a bunch of rags out of yet another pocket.
The key fob vibrates. Someone has just come through the door, he checks his phone. One minute forty-five seconds. He will have to speak to someone about this. Ninety seconds is after all the allowable maximum. Within ninety seconds, ideally fewer of course. The one time so far he has needed to use them and they are, to his way of thinking, substantially over the guaranteed maximum.
The Gopher is covered in petrol. He begins flicking the lighter. Sparks, sparks, any, any moment now a flame.
Into the living room, two security guards, one immediately back pedalling as he smells the petrol, sees the Gopher, his colleague colliding with him, the two of them sprawling into the room and sliding forward along the petrol sodden floor.
The scream and the movement through the landscape and the shape that is now branching in his head; he sees a quarry, a lake in the middle, a copse and trees and soil, loose dirt, yes, where he drove the car in a trance that day, he can see Crane standing there on the water, mouth wide open and eyes rolled back, beckoning to him.