Sonata of the Dead (11 page)

I snatched a glance at Underdog.
Bollocks you don’t
, I thought.

‘I like that,’ I said; I had to throw a sop. ‘There’s an admirable purity to it.’

‘We don’t self-censor,’ she said. ‘Anything goes. There are no market forces. No editor to please. Peer appraisal only.’

It struck me that any writing, though pushed to the fore in this ‘public’ forum, seemed secondary. It was an excuse for criminal acts, it seemed. A way to make nihilistic behaviour appear justified.
Christ, Sarah
, I thought.
What are you into? Just you wait till I get you home, young lady.

‘What are you smirking at?’ asked Underdog, eyes fast on me.

‘As I said, I like it.’

‘Yeah, well. You might change your tune. What are your fears?’

‘I’m not good in lifts,’ I said. ‘Or with heights in general. I don’t like dogs. I’m not a big fan of aubergines. Pick something out of that lot. I’ll write you a sonnet.’

Odessa seemed decided. Her movements had a finality about them, or at least the drawing of a line. She drank wine, finishing off the bottle, and tossed the empty at a wastebasket. It dropped neatly in. I resisted the urge to tell her to write about that.

‘We meet twice a month,’ she said. ‘Nothing planned in advance. You come or you don’t. But three absences on the trot and you’re out.’

‘Is that what is going to happen to Solo?’ I asked, but I put too much sauce on it. Odessa didn’t seem to notice, but Underdog certainly did. He was observant too; I had to give him that. Treacle was bored. I noticed he seemed put out that Odessa had drained the bottle. Maybe he was a drinker; maybe I could use that to my advantage at a later date.

‘Solo’s missed one session. But she has special dispensation. An unfortunate anniversary, I’m led to believe.’

Another lurch in the chest. I felt that I’d become utterly transparent; that Odessa, Underdog and Treacle could see the bruises on my heart, the fissures of suspicion like black splits in my mind.
Surely not. Surely not.
My mind struggled with dates and places. How could I forget? But of course I couldn’t. I could block though. I could fight, subconsciously, to keep that terrible door shut.

‘Shall we get a wiggle on?’ asked Treacle. ‘I’ve had too much bed lately, and not enough sleep. I need an early night.’

The mood seemed to have lifted where Odessa and Treacle were concerned. I’d miscalculated; obviously they had been nervous about this meeting too.

‘So when will I know where and when the next meeting is?’ I asked.

‘We’ll leave you a message. Once you’ve passed the initiation.’

‘All needlessly Le Carré isn’t it? You could just text me.’

‘No phones,’ she said. ‘No emails. We go face-to-face or write letters. No printers. No computers. No word-processing packages. Typewriters, pens and pencils.’

The way she spoke made the words bounce around. It was like performance poetry. It was, I supposed; I was sure she had recited this litany before. For a nominally liberated group they seemed to be beset with a lot of rules and regulations and restrictions. I said as much as we began walking north-east, towards Marble Arch.

‘A friend of ours was killed, Corkscrew. We suspect it might have something to do with the group. Do you think it would be wise of us to let all of our defences down? We have no idea who you are. The only way we can hope for an inkling of trust is to take recommendations. President was well-loved, but he couldn’t stay.’

‘Why not? His leaving looks a bit suspicious, doesn’t it? If you were inclined to look at it dispassionately.’

‘If he’d killed Needles, the stupid thing to do would be to draw attention by leaving,’ said Underdog. His lip was so curled by disgust it was threatening to become a Möbius strip. ‘He was scared. He’s older than the rest of us. It was an experience he could do without.’

‘You don’t think you’re being targeted, do you?’ I asked.

‘Christ,’ Underdog said. ‘You sound so much like a copper it’s unreal.’

‘Not a copper,’ I said. ‘Just nosy. Like a writer, you know? Sniffing out an idea, a plot. Maybe there’s not so much difference between us and our boys in blue. Isn’t writing all about finding clues? Solving problems?’

‘If you say so,’ Underdog said. Again, I was dismissed. He seemed cheated of something; maybe my reaction. If he’d been trying to get a rise out of me he needed to try a different tack. I was used to being pissed about by noisy, toothless mutts; I almost didn’t hear them any more. Some of his earlier cockiness returned as we approached Cumberland Gate though. It was closing on three-thirty in the morning and it was quiet now, but for the odd taxi and a white van taking the corner into Park Lane more quickly than it needed to.

‘It’s interesting you should reference Le Carré,’ Odessa said. ‘You know, there’s a line in
Tinker Tailor
, when he talks about the way some people live… God, how does it go now… something about a dozen leisured lives when someone else just lives a hasty one.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what the relevance of that is, but really, it rocked my world. Where are we headed?’

‘You’ll see,’ said Underdog.

I noticed Treacle had switched off. Maybe he’d seen this a dozen times and was bored of Underdog’s postures. Maybe, as he’d intimated, he was just tired. I noticed too that his hand and Odessa’s were interlaced.

We exited the park by a shuttered ice cream stall and crossed to Edgware Road. Underdog took a torch from his pocket and gave two short flashes and one long one at the cinema entrance. Two long flashes were returned.

‘Quiller’s back from Berlin already?’ I asked. Odessa snorted at this but Underdog only scowled. We crossed the road and the cinema entrance was yawning open before we reached it. A security guard stood aside as we piled through.

‘You have until seven,’ he said. ‘First staff on site today at seven-fifteen.’

‘We’ll be gone in an hour,’ Underdog said, slipping him a note from his wallet.

‘We watching a short?’ I asked. I’d had a bellyful of Underdog’s cloak and dagger.

The guard pressed some buttons on a door panel and let us through to a corridor. We moved in the opposite direction to the cinema screens. We took a lift to the top floor, then a short concrete stairway to fire doors that fed us onto the roof, eighty metres above the West End.

‘One of the last times we’ll get to do this,’ Treacle said. ‘The owners are going to knock this fucker down and replace it with flats. So enjoy the view while you can.’

It was a fine view, but all I could see was Treacle positioning himself between me and the exit. Underdog eased a leather cosh from his jacket pocket. He shook it out, enjoying the theatre, the sound of ball bearings as they shivered against each other.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ I said. ‘What’s with the menace?’ My voice was all over the place but they didn’t pay it any notice and ignored the question. Odessa and Treacle sat down on the flashing, which gleamed dully in the flat dawn light, and proceeded to explore each other hungrily beneath their jackets. I was forgotten. But not by Underdog.

‘Initiation,’ he said.

‘But I wrote something. You can read it too, if you want.’

‘It’s not about the writing,’ he said, shaking out the cosh some more. The leather was like the skin of something alive.

I looked around for another way down but there wasn’t one, unless I chose to be my own express lift. But that was good only for a single ride.

‘You’ll walk the perimeter,’ Underdog said.

‘I’ll do no such fucking thing.’

‘You’ll get up over that rail and walk the perimeter or I’ll break both your legs with this cosh and there’ll be no tomorrow with us.’

I knew I could prevail in a one vs. one with Underdog, despite his cosh, but so much was at stake that I was prepared to let him have his violent way with me. But the little coda, about being out, was more difficult to stomach. If I took a beating and they legged it, I’d have no recourse other than to hang out like some weirdo spotter at places of literary interest in the distant hope I might find them again. I’d only have Taft to lean on, but he was none the wiser now; once you recommended a replacement, you were out of the loop for good.

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘What?’ The question appeared to jolt him from some kind of trance. He was gleaning a vicarious pleasure from this. He was welcome to it.

‘Your initiation. What did you do? Drink beer out of a sock?’ I swung a leg over the low railing. London swerved away from me far below. ‘Streak through Piccadilly Circus?’

‘I crossed both lanes of the M25,’ he said.

‘Piece of cake. Why can’t I do that?’

‘I was wearing a blindfold.’

‘Kudos,’ I said. And then there I was, twenty-one storeys above certain death, on a parapet that was only slightly wider than my size nines.

‘Chop-chop,’ he said.

A wind had crept up on us, unless it had always been there and only now was I noticing it because it was plucking at my clothes.

I stood utterly still, aware only of the path in front of me diminishing into darkness. Another ten minutes and the sun would break over the horizon, but they wanted me to do this in technical night. A bit of spice. An edge to the challenge.

I couldn’t look to my left: that was the side with the sheer drop. To my right was Underdog slapping the cosh into his hand. If I concentrated on my feet I’d be too aware of the abyss screaming away an inch or so from my little toe. Straight ahead was somehow easier, even though I’d have to trust myself to walk in an utterly straight line. In the distance, Peckham maybe, the cherry and ice-blue stutter of police lights. Burglary in progress. Man down. More likely it was a couple of night-shifters bossing traffic so they could pick up their coffee and pastries.
Use that
, I thought.
Focus on that
.

I started to walk.

I’d never had a problem with heights when I was a kid. I could climb trees and leap from branch to branch fifty feet above the ground, where squirrels fear to tread. And then something happened – I don’t know what – and I was afraid of heights, to the point where my mouth would turn tinder-dry and my knees would become crucibles of molten metal. Maybe it was as simple as becoming an adult; more likely it was because I became a father. It might have had something to do with the fight I had on top of the railway shed at St Pancras four months previously. That kind of behaviour does nothing for your sense of mortality, believe me.

But this was going well – as well as I could hope – to the extent that I was building up some speed. Get it over with. Get home. Get vodkaed. But of course it’s when you’re feeling at your most confident and comfortable that something comes along to welly you in the bollocks.

Part of the parapet shifted underfoot.

I felt myself sway sickeningly to the left and my hand instinctively reached out for a counterbalance that was not there. I heard, very clearly, Underdog say: ‘Shit.’

I knew I was dead if I didn’t move, and the only move I had was a jump, off my right foot. But because I was already tilting left, unbalanced, there was a strong chance I’d only propel myself into dead space. So I had to keep right, which meant launching from my left, which meant little purchase because there was hardly anything below my left foot any more but concrete dust. All of this went through my head in the time it took for that syllable to fly through Underdog’s teeth. I pistoned my foot down and the parapet collapsed completely, but there had been some purchase there, enough to lift me a foot in the air, so that I could get my fingers on the railing. My face connected with the abrasive edge of the brickwork and took off a layer of skin. I felt a fingernail fold back from the flesh of my finger; the dawn air was shockingly cold against the exposed meat. That, and the cold mask of lymph and tears, kept me aware, and I clung on, hearing the chunks of collapsed masonry smash into windscreens on the street below.

I felt hands on me, lifting me over the rail: Treacle and Odessa.

‘I’ve not finished,’ I was saying, over and over, babbling it like a mantra.

‘You don’t have to prove anything else,’ Odessa said.

‘Where’s Underdog?’

Treacle lifted me upright and gently drew me towards the exit. ‘He bailed. I think he’s expecting some sort of police presence off the back of that, um, structural failure.’

Shock was crowding into me. That and exhaustion. And pain. I winced as the flapping nail on my finger caught on Treacle’s jacket. I rammed my hand into my armpit, relishing bitterly the nausea apparent on Odessa’s face.

‘I’d have thought Underdog might have embraced some new experience like that,’ I said.

‘It isn’t new,’ Treacle said. ‘That’s the thing. He’s been involved with the police before. Suspended sentence. Another strike and he’s in clink. Again.’

‘Again? He’s done time?’ Talking helped keep my mind off what had just happened. Vodka would help even more. But I knew I wasn’t going straight home this night… this morning.

‘He did a stretch when he was in his teens. Fell in with the wrong crowd. Fencing stolen goods. He was in and out of institutions till he hit his twenties.’

‘Grist for the mill,’ I said. ‘What happened in his twenties?’

‘He met a woman. He started writing poetry. He went right.’

‘Or went wrong. Poetry?’

We were inside now, descending the fire escape stairs just in case the police had been summoned. We’d left no evidence of our occupancy of the roof. We could hide out in a dozen different places while they hitched their belts and pressed buttons on their walkie-talkies and thought about what frostings they were going to have on their breakfast doughnuts.

There was no sign of the security guard; we let ourselves out, pushing against fire doors that emptied us on to the side street. I stared at the tarmac, at the hard gleam of it. I wondered if you could hit something so hard there’d be some sort of molecular exchange; if it was possible to become the thing that slammed the life from you. And then the streetlights went off and the road lost its morbid glamour. No banter, no exhilarated recap – Odessa and Treacle were preparing to leave.