The Quorum (30 page)

As long as there were witnesses about, he should be safe. The glazier was fingering putty around the last pane of glass. Zafir Azmi had turned up with an envelope of notes to pay the workman. Even Pel was in the street, nagging Zafir to come in on some scam with discontinued washing machines.

‘I’ve got the last Betamax video in the country thanks to you,’ Zafir told Pel.

‘It was a better system,’ Pel insisted. Zafir, elegantly disgusted, rattled gold bracelets.

‘Chance of another cuppa, mate?’ the glazier asked.

Neil went back inside. Through his window, he saw the three sets of legs. A long black car cruised past and Zafir whistled. As he filled the kettle, he wondered: could any of the three be secret Norwegian Neil Cullers? He often suspected the enemy had people close to him. Turning off the tap, he wrenched his mental flow to a halt. That way lies paranoia. His only enemy was himself.

* * *

A distant church bell sounded one o’clock as he reached the Cranley Gardens turn-off. A sleek machine emerged from the road, crawling towards Muswell Hill. It was Sally’s Rolls-Royce. SHADE 001: a dinosaur of the road, deep space black with silver trimmings. The Shadowshark rolled away, its engine was almost silent.

In his pockets, Mark’s hands shook. He stopped walking for a moment and drew a deep, lung-chilling breath. Could this be some surprise move of Mickey’s? The car was gone but shadow stayed in his eyes: the dancing squiggles of dark negatives of the bright caterpillars you got from looking straight at the sun. He tried to blink them away.

As he set foot into Cranley Gardens, a filthy hand fixed to his elbow.

‘I’ll no shit ye,’ a voice croaked, ‘I’m after brass te get pissed out o’ me head.’

He shook off the wino.

‘Ah sorr,’ he said, brogue thicker, ‘just ten mingy pence fer a snort o’ mother’s ruin.’

The vagrant had a child’s duffel coat stretched around his big body, hood as tight about his head as Batman’s cowl. His thick glasses were fixed at the bridge with a wodge of Sellotape. To get rid of the pest, Mark fished out coins.

‘Zhou’ll never regret it, sorr,’ the wino burped.

‘Michael,’ he said, wearily. ‘Is the accent supposed to be Scots or Irish?’

The wino straightened, assuming exaggerated dignity, and spat out the joke teeth. ‘My boy, I am an ack-tor!’

Mark began to put his money back.

‘I earned that,’ Michael said, snatching the coins. Mark let them go and looked his friend up and down. The disguise was complete visually and odorifically.

‘And what have you got against Basildon?’ Mark asked.

* * *

The police would be there inside five minutes, which didn’t give her long with Salt and Pepper. Katie let her use a stockroom and even agreed to watch over the Invader. The Shoplift Twins sat on cardboard boxes of canned spinach.

‘New Year’s Eve,’ she reminded, ‘after midnight but before one. Muswell Hill Road.’

‘The nutter,’ Pepper said, remembering. ‘You were his girl.’

‘Not quite,’ she snapped.

‘Fucking weird, sister,’ Pepper shook his head, dazed and embarrassed. He would like to be a professional. Salt was just a stack of humiliated resentment. Katie had stripped off his shell-suit in public and hauled a frozen steak out of his shorts.

‘What kind of neon slime has nothing better to do on New Year’s Eve than beat up strangers?’

‘Weren’t no stranger,’ Pepper said.

‘Shut up,’ Salt put in. ‘Just shut up.’

‘Neil wasn’t a stranger?’

‘Neil?’

‘The nutter you call him. The man you thumped.’

‘His name was Neil?’ Pepper asked.

‘Fucking nutter,’ Salt said.

‘Where do you know him from?’

‘Tin Woodsman.’

‘The pub?’

‘Yeah. Met him in there pissing it up on New Year’s Eve. Bought us drinks, gave us money, bought us off.’

‘And you beat him up? You guys are liquid filth.’

‘He paid us,’ Pepper insisted.

A dizzying chasm yawned. Her mind stood on the edge, looking over. Miles below, jagged rocks waited, washed by foamy tide.

‘He paid you to beat him up?’

‘Shut the fuck up, Bendy,’ Salt said. ‘She’s Old Bill.’

‘Your name is Bendy?’ she asked Pepper. ‘I’m a private detective. I don’t give Shit One about Sainsbury’s. The prices are extortion, anyway. I’m interested in New Year’s Eve.’

Pepper tried to explain. ‘This bloke you call Neil. The nutter. He paid us to put a bloke in hospital. Told us where, told us when, told us what the target would be wearing...’

‘He had on the same kit in the Woodsman,’ Salt said, joining in. ‘Only we never noticed. Fucking nutter, John.’

‘We took his drinks and his dosh and did the job. When we twigged, we scarpered. He paid us for more than a couple of bops and a lick, but we didn’t want no more of it. In the Woodsman, he said the blowlamp he wanted done over was picking on him, screwing him over all the time. He told jinx stories, about losing gaffs, having his melts nicked. Broke your heart.’

‘You’re sentimental, Bendy.’

‘Fuck you, sister.’

‘You wish,’ she said, pouting a kiss-mouth. Katie let two policemen in to make the formal arrest.

Sally watched Pepper and Salt get read their rights. She had plea-bargained with Katie, getting out of making a statement. The supermarket had enough evidence to make a case without her. One of the policemen already knew both parties and greeted them like old friends.

He paid you to beat him up.
She felt shed been sent back to Go and robbed of her £200.

* * *

Michael had been in his vile tramp suit for hours. He’d made £1.87 from hassling passersby. Whenever a police car zoomed down Muswell Hill Road, he did his best to chameleon with the grimy park railings.

Mark, annoyed to be fooled, buttoned up completely. From their corner, they could see the house where Neil dwelled. A glazier was at work. Michael said he deserved a commission for drumming up business. Mark gave a little sneery snort that was worse than not laughing.

‘Know who lives there?’ Michael said, pointing to a biggish semi-detached. ‘The Gregorys. A fine family. Typical and average.’

A boy he took to be Jonathan Gregory had come out of the house earlier and pedalled past on a BMX, spotty face into the wind over the handlebars, pert bottom bobbing up and down as he pumped his legs.

‘Your move with the windows,’ Mark said. ‘You did it again, didn’t you? At the science fiction shop?’

Michael had a fart of warm pride. ‘The Good Soldier Strikes. Things are really working out this year, don’t zhou think?’

‘What about Sally’s Dr Shade?’

‘It’s
Sally
now, is it?’

‘The black Rolls-Royce. Did you see it?’

Michael remembered the car. It took longer to pass than the QE II. A wonderful beast.

‘I want one, I’ve decided. I’ll nag Zhin to get me a pressie with her Zhackie Collins loot.’

Mark’s brow cracked in a frown. He was worrying himself to premature senescence.

‘It’s zhust some local loon,
mon brave.
We’re not the only crazies in North London.’

A sturdy little cyclist popped out of a side road and zigzagged past. Michael gave Jonathan an unseen salute. The kid was puffing. He must have taken a roundabout getaway route.

‘Home is the Window Breaker, Home from the Vandalism,’ he said. Jonathan let his bike collapse on the thin carpet of lawn outside the house and ran round the back. ‘It’s so peaceful and sit-com Saturday, isn’t it? Tykes on bikes, window-workmen whistling, dinner in the oven, sport on telly.’

Mark mentioned that this was where Britain’s most notorious postwar serial killer had lived.

* * *

Neil had a tray of teas together. He took them into the street. It was cold for standing about.

‘It’s only teabag tea,’ he apologised.

‘Warm and wet is what counts,’ the glazier said.

They all drank.

‘Any idea who broke the windows?’ Pel asked.

Neil shrugged. Zafir looked furtive.

‘Your Old Man hasn’t been messing about with the Pakki mafia? I hear ragheads chop off your fingers.’

‘That’s the Japs,’ Zafir said. ‘If Dadiji’s ticked off anyone, it’ll be the uncles. ’kin mental, the uncles. They’re planning to assassinate Salman Rushdie.’

‘I didn’t know your family was into Islamic Death Jihad Jazz,’ Pel said.

‘They’re just after the reward,’ Zafir said, shaking his head. ‘They spend more time working out how to get Rushdie’s head from High Barnet to Tehran than they do thinking about where the government has him stashed.’

A burst of barely-competent death-metal exploded from two doors down. Neil and Pel, familiar with Hendrix’s frenzied and endless solo abortions, exchanged a look of resigned disgust.

‘Who is that?’ Zafir asked. ‘Sounds worse than fucking
bhangra’.

* * *

After seconds of guitar holocaust, Mark jammed fingers in his ears. Even Mickey had never made a noise that horrible.

‘That’s Mr Karl Garr,’ Michael said, proudly. ‘Those speakers are my contribution to endowment of the arts. Loud, aren’t they?’

There was no denying how imaginative Michael’s moves were. He still had a kid’s enthusiasm for pouring vinegar into wounds.

‘I wonder if Mr Garr has a comrade who needs a drum kit?’ Michael thought out loud.

‘Sometimes I think we go too far,’ said Mark.

* * *

At two, Sonja came back from the hairdresser’s and was able to take the Invader off her hands.

‘It’s an emergency,’ Sally swore. ‘Code red.’

Sonja didn’t ask questions.

The Invader had been hyper ever since the trip through space and the crashlanding on Bendy’s stomach. She could tell the baby enjoyed the flight. Her child would grow up to be the first Briton on Mars.

Her maternal responsibility discharged, she was free to wander the Broadway in horrorstruck panic.

Neil had arranged his own mugging.
He must have had to save up for months. She hadn’t found out how much he’d paid Salt and Pepper.

From a call box, she phoned Mark and got the machine. She wanted to talk over this development. Something truly sick was happening and she was part of it. She hadn’t been told enough to understand. It was time Neil’s friends stepped down from their lofty observation platforms and
did
something.

She said some of the words she’d been trying only to think in front of the Invader. Shoppers gave her a wide berth, politely not staring at the insane person.

* * *

The clock woke him at seven. Light scratches stung on his back. It felt as if the edges had curled. The sheets were a tangle around his ankles and he lay naked on the waterbed, looking at his reflection hanging in the glass roof. He was still wearing the last of the night’s condoms. A jet passed, sliding through his body like a winged knife.

‘You have a nine o’clock with
Newsweek
,’ Heather told him. She sat, nude but for power spectacles, on the rim of the bed, reading from a clipboard. ‘The journalist’s name is Leonard Scheuer. He’s a friendly, but objected to the “mythologising of serial murder” in
Choke Hold.
It’d be best to slant his profile to your work-in-progress, since Scheuer likes to feel he’s cutting-edge. He needs to know everything first. Then, at eleven, you’re signing in the Marching Morons Bookstore in TriBeCa...’

‘The Marching Morons?’

‘It’s named from a short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth.’

‘How could I forget?’

She continued, ‘The manager’s name is Buddy and his girlfriend is a big fan of yours, Cherill.’

‘Cheryl?’

‘Cherill.’

‘I bet they weigh a half-ton each and wear bib-overalls.’

‘It doesn’t say. In her fanzine, Cherill writes that you’re “greater than Neil Gaiman”.’

He tried to sit up but his back wouldn’t work. ‘Score one for Choosy Cherill, then.’

‘You’ll lunch in the limo, then at three Dick and Eivol will meet you for drinks at High Rollers with Irwin.’

‘The District Attorney from
Hill Street Blues?’

‘Irwin Jenevein. He’s interested in producing
Choke Hold.
His
Ballet Dancers With AIDS
mini-series took three Emmies and he needs a prestige first-feature project. Major enough to meet but no A-list player. Dick thinks he has a line with Bruckheimer-Simpson, so hang fire. At five, you’re debating the Death of Amazon Queen with Nancy Lucey Kunst of WoFBReIGN on Cloud 9’s
Big Apple.
Kunst has an unattractive vocal mannerism which will leave you sounding reasonable. When she gets annoyed, she stutters; best to irritate her before you get on air.’

Mickey managed to get fingertips to Heather’s thigh. Velvety skin dimpled.

‘At 6.30, Timmy Chin has a buffet at the Plaza. All the creators, happy flacks, sundry cheerleaders. You press flesh and make small talk. Try not to cripple a waiter. At 9.15, I’ve reserved a room in the Pyramid and we’ll have forty-five minutes for sex. At ten, the limo will pick you up for the Mayor’s reception...’

* * *

After half an hour of loitering, Mark was cold and bored. Nothing seemed about to happen. He wanted to get on and find Sally. Michael, insulated in his tramp costume, was obviously enjoying himself. He even derived some pleasure from Garr’s tortured axe solos.

‘Hello,’ Michael said, ‘visitors.’

A 2CV parked behind the glazier’s van and leaked exhaust into the gutter.

‘Enter Dolar,’ Mark said. ‘Neil’s boss.’

‘He of the smashed shopfront?’

‘The very same.’

‘This should be of considerable interest, coz. I’m going to lurch along the road a ways and hie myself within earshot.’

‘Neil will recognise you instantly.’

‘Zhou didn’t.’

‘I’m not paranoid.’

‘That’s not what Pippa says.’

‘When did you talk to her?’

Grinning, Michael said, ‘See, zhou are paranoid too.’

Michael was in one of his under-your-skin-and-itching moods. Usually, they meant he was having a bad time at home. Mark was pleased to let him go off on his own. He’d found a niche in some park railings, a semicircular dent which once harboured a wastebin, and was using it for concealment and protection from the elements. He wished he’d thought to bring a Thermos. Michael hammed it up again for Mark’s benefit, shambling drunkenly between precise footsteps. Charlie Chaplin in Hell.