Sonata of the Dead (12 page)

‘You want to go for breakfast or something?’ I asked. My legs and arms were jangling, as if I’d just been electrocuted.

‘We don’t fraternise outside of meeting hours,’ said Treacle. His face was straight when he said it.

‘What about you two?’ I asked.

‘Same,’ Odessa said. ‘It’s too risky.’

‘So you don’t know each other’s real names and you don’t know where you live? But you play gusset puppeteers with each other?’

‘Chef’s perks,’ Odessa said. Treacle laughed.

I was shaking my head but I had to accept it. Maybe it was bullshit and they were just protecting each other from me, the unknown quantity. That I’d proved to them I was insane was certainly no reason to disburden themselves of personal information. I bit my tongue again when the instinct was to say that Solo and Needles knew each other, probably intimately, and had done for years. Had they hidden that from the other Accelerants?

‘Okay. Well, I’ve got to go and run this off. Or eat something. Preferably while also mainlining a bottle of Smirnoff.’

‘Okay,’ Treacle said. ‘Knock yourself out.’

Odessa put her hand in her jacket and pulled out some sheets of paper. She pushed them into my hand. ‘I read you,’ she said. ‘You read us. Maybe tell us what you think. Next time.’

I had a gander at the first page. Handwritten. Fountain pen. Green ink.
Twenty feet from sanctuary, a SulciCam swam up out of the soul mists and pricked the back of Nuland’s head. He knew it was a SulciCam because the anaesthetising balm that preceded its sting was anathema to lice, and here they came, pouring off his scalp like black sugar from a scoop. So forget sanctuary, for now.

‘Next time,’ I said. ‘How do I find you next time?’

‘There’s a tree on Birdcage Walk, near Cockpit Steps,’ said Odessa. ‘It’s got a blue cross painted on it. We’ll leave you a message, pinned to an exposed root. Tomorrow. After nine p.m.’

‘Okay,’ I said. I didn’t know how to close proceedings. Handshake? Group hug? A tribute to J.G. Ballard via the medium of Bharata Natyam?

Treacle solved that problem for me. ‘“Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others… Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”’

‘Beautiful,’ I said. ‘Who wrote that? You?’

‘I wish,’ he said.

‘Goodnight, Corkscrew,’ Odessa said.

I said: ‘Good morning.’

* * *

I followed them.

It seemed less important to find out where they lived than to quash this silly charade about anonymity. I was so sure I’d see Treacle and Odessa disappear through the same door that it was a genuine shock when they separated at a bus stop on Oxford Street. Treacle headed north along Berners Street and Odessa watched him go, so I had to stick with her. I hung back under an awning until I saw Odessa move towards the road as a bus approached. Just as the doors were about to close I hopped on, relieved that she’d headed to the top deck. I stayed downstairs. I’d had enough of heights for one night.

* * *

Odessa disembarked in Tufnell Park but she loitered at the stop, hunting in her bag for something. The bus moved away. I bolted to the door and begged the driver to let me out. When he started quoting company policy I triggered the emergency release and hopped off. He was swearing at me now, using words that were unlikely to be found in any company policy handbooks and would be considered extreme on the oil rigs off northern Scotland, or the terraces of underperforming football clubs.

Odessa caught wind of it too and looked up just as I ducked behind a Range Rover parked on the street. Some more hard-earned experience for her Moleskine. I heard her footsteps moving away – thank God; I didn’t fancy playing ‘edge around the 4x4’ – and gave cautious pursuit. She moved north, along Dartmouth Park Hill. Behind us, the Tube station was coming to life. I could smell bacon and coffee, and that reminded me what time it was. I felt my blood sugar levels slump. I needed food. I needed sleep. Probably both. At the same time if at all possible.

Odessa still seemed appallingly perky. She had the kind of gait that made you think there were springs in her shoes. Tokuzo called it ‘The March of the Tit-Jigglers’. That was what youth did for you, I reasoned. And as we turned off the main drag into a series of leafy streets, finally emerging on Laurier Road, I thought:
that’s what wealth does for you too
.

At the foot of the road she turned into a house with an aubergine-coloured front door. I gave it a glance as I flashed past; not sub-divided into flats like many other big houses around here. A three-floor semi, with a converted basement. Newly clipped privet guarded a small front garden of fuchsia and beardtongue. Some other climbers I couldn’t identify – honeysuckle maybe. Maybe deutzia too – all assiduously pruned. I tried to remember if I’d checked out Odessa’s hands, but it meant nothing. If she worked on gardens she would probably wear gloves. The house was worth three, three and a half million, easy.
What do you do, Odessa? Who do you know?

Eventually I turned left on Highgate Road and traipsed down to Kentish Town. Cold sweat clung to my temples like blisters of hardened wax. I stopped at a café opposite a shabby kebab shop and bought a couple of bananas, a croissant, a bottle of orange juice and a large coffee. I scarfed the lot on the pavement outside and felt myself spiking away. It wasn’t quite on a par with Popeye plus spinach but the fear and the nausea were pressed back into their cages for a while.

I sank into the London Underground and burned smells sank with me – old, overused cooking oil, tar and tobacco – until I was in the sweaty world of scorched diesel and black snot. A woman on a seat, head down, was three bites into a green apple and had been overcome by tears. A paper bag shook in her other hand. Monsters and victims everywhere. The night crawlers go back to their pits and the unabashed day shift takes over. I stared at the headline of the newspaper opposite me as we chuntered down to King’s Cross where I caught a Circle Line Tube to Edgware Road. Somebody missing. Somebody dead. Somebody heartbroken.

Mengele yelled at me when I got home. His litter tray was like a horror scene filled with severed gorilla thumbs. I cleaned it all up and saw a note from Tokuzo. Away for the rest of the week at some reclamation yard or other in Barcelona and I was welcome to use her place if I needed to as long as I took care of the plants, you bastard. She had left me some cold chicken and salad and half a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

I’d been on the go for a day and a half. I made myself a cup of green tea and drank it on the balcony. The girl in the back bedroom at the pub was playing guitar and I could just hear snatches of it when the wind drew the notes my way. Slow and sad. Pretty. Then I went to bed, willed sleep into me. And it came, but it was not pure. It was not undisturbed.

You write. You cut and shape. You rewrite. You wipe the blood and sweat and tears from the page. You rewrite. You get the rhythm correct. You find your voice. You know your characters. You believe in your story. You cut and shape. Edit. Revise. Ten per cent inspiration. Ninety per cent perspiration. The pages stack up. The characters develop. They change. They take over. They dictate. The story thickens and splits. You control the strands. You rewrite. In a windowless room you stand at the lectern sharpening pencile. The ream of paper. You will not finish until those twenty pointed leads are worn down to the wood. Four thousand words, give or take. And then to the typewriter. Hone. Polish. Commit. You stand there shirtless, covered in sweat. In perspiration. When you write you go to war. And you write every day. Its a story that needs to be told. Its a narrative that needs to be dug out of you, like a canker, something raw and bloody and painful. You pay back. You layer. You accrete. I beheaded him because he beheaded me. I will behead you because you beheaded me. The inspiration. I rewrite. You rewrite. You go on. I cannot go on. I go on. The pages stack up. Ten per cent. Ninety per cent. The characters come alive. Chapter and verse. Dedication. Acknowledgment. Beginnings. The end. I cut and shape. I redraft. The end. I polish. I rewrite. Perspiration. Inpsiration. Ninety-nine per cent. The end.

I didn’t want cold chicken and leaves. I didn’t want white wine. I wanted a greasy, hot burger with everything on it, and a frosty beer to help it down. I stretched and looked out upon Marylebone, wondering how long I’d been out. The day had a glow to it, suggesting dawn or dusk, and I guessed evening because I had a cocktail pang in me and, screwed though my body clock undoubtedly was, I never yearned for vodka first thing. Much. So that meant I’d been out for nine hours or thirty-three hours. And I guessed the long haul because of the rasp of my chin. And the fact that Mengele had been creating more satanic effigies in his litter tray.

I showered and dressed and went out into the balmy evening. My mind was full of blue crosses. Edgware Road was its usual polyglot scrum of charcoal and shisha and crawling, honking traffic. A little rain and neon and it would pass for
Blade Runner
country. I sated my meaty needs at a bar and grill where I was tempted to plant my flag and stay until closing: it was beer-drinking weather and there were pleasant-looking women walking by that I could watch while I drank, but Sarah. But Sarah. She kept me moving.

I studiously avoided looking up at Marble Arch Tower, but noticed that the roads around it had been closed off; the reason for the slow traffic. A sign warned against falling masonry. Another spoke of unstable structures. I could have worn that one.

By the time I got to Green Park it was dark and I’d bypassed any number of bars and pubs but I was a good man, a considerate dad, and I did not waver. Of course, I had chosen not to bring the Saab with me because once my mission was accomplished I intended to turn myself into a human cocktail shaker.

I reached Birdcage Walk around ten minutes later. I found the tree with the blue mark – I felt like a spy in a Cold War drama; I felt like Quiller, like fucking Smiley – and I leaned against it for a while, watching the traffic, looking out for Max von Sydow or Patrick Stewart. Then I pretended to tie my shoelace and had a grope around between the roots. A piece of paper was thumbtacked into the wood. Many holes told of many previous messages. I felt a strange resentment that this had been going on without me for so long. I imagined Sarah bending here to retrieve, or plant, some code of her own.

Quaint. It had been typed:

corkscrew. you’re in.

51°28’59.58”N 0°10’11.63”W

I pocketed the scrap, realising it should have gone in an evidence bag straight to Ian Mawker, realising too late I should have picked it up with tweezers, or worn latex gloves, and I nipped over to the Westminster Arms. A pint down and I was feeling twitchy. Usually I’d be settling in for a long session; there was often a couple of Met officers with their beers and whisky chasers whose backs I could scratch, but now I just felt kettled. I wanted to be out in the nighttime again, prowling.

Something else was bothering me too, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It was perhaps just the combined triple whammy of adrenaline, hope and frustration. The Accelerants had… well, they had accelerated me. I felt the need to run, to fly. And yet. And yet.

Another meeting? Tomorrow night? It didn’t sit well with their ethos. Yes, they forced experience but they wrote too; and they shared. There was a reason for a gap between meetings. A chance to let off steam. An opportunity to take stock, recover. And to read the submissions.

Which reminded me of the papers that were still in my jacket. I spread them out on the table. Three single sheets of different quality paper. No identifying marks. All pages handwritten.

Before I’d properly thought it through I was on the phone.

‘Romy? It’s Joel. Are you busy? I was just… would you like to be? Well, no. I meant busy in a fun way. Well, that’s great. I’m in town. Victoria way if that helps. Yes, yes I like beer. Yes, yes I like football. Okay. Okay. See you there.’

* * *

She was sitting in a corner booth of a sports bar in Haymarket and there was a fresh pitcher of lager in front of her. Two glasses. The place was crammed with men wearing pastel-coloured polo shirts and placing in-play bets on their smartphones.

‘I didn’t interrupt anything, did I?’ I asked, looking around.

‘I was about to leave,’ she said. ‘A friend stood me up at the last minute. And then your call came through so I bought this.’

She poured and I drank. She held her glass with both hands, like a child, and closed her eyes when she took her first mouthful.

‘Oof,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’

‘That was the drink of a person who has just walked out of the desert,’ I said.

‘Feels like it. Had a tough couple of days.’

‘I know how that feels.’

‘So I watch football to unwind.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘It doesn’t relax me. I end up swearing at the set.’

She took another drink, leaned back in her seat. On the screen, ex-players in panic-inducingly expensive suits and fuck-me haircuts bantered around a pitch-side table.