Dead Enders

  


     The bombardment had been going on for so long no one could remember when it started. Not that it mattered here in Hell where everything was welded together in one yellow-brown mass of men, machines, mud and stagnant water. There was no sky - just a sickly, thick, green-black pungent cloud of choking smoke that stank of sulphur, cordite and burned flesh. Spent shrapnel fell with the rain sometimes turned red with the blood of insignificant wretches blown to shreds, their screams blanked out by the deafening roar of overhead explosions and the perpetual, monotonous blanket thunder of artillery fire.

     The line of soldiers, elbow to elbow, entirely consumed by a terror they could not have imagined possible, pressed themselves as hard as they could into the slime of the trench wall, their hands flattened against their ears in futile attempts to lessen the pounding of their eardrums, their rifles trapped between their bodies and the mud, redundant, pointless pieces of excess baggage.

     A solitary figure in full British Infantry battle dress and gas mask appeared through the smoke mist and torrential rain walking ankle deep in slime in the narrow corridor between the line of soldiers and the rear wall of the trench. The figure held a rifle, bayonet fixed, draped with a rain cape, cascading waterfalls into the bog of the trench floor.

     One soldier let his rifle slip from its resting place, instinctively reaching down to grab the gun before it fell into the mud. In doing so, he glanced at the passing figure, which stopped, lifted it’s own rifle to face height and plunged the bayonet through the left glass eyepiece of the soldier’s gasmask and into his brain. The soldier’s hands automatically grabbed at the blade protruding from the fleshy mess that had been his face a split second before his arms fell limp. The figure placed a foot against the man’s body shaking the bayonet free and ramming it into his stomach, pinning the torso against the mud bank. It twisted the bayonet violently and withdrew it dragging out the man’s intestines and dropping them into the mud. The body fell like a bloody bag of rags and the figure walked on, seemingly oblivious to the mayhem going on all around.


     * * * * * * * * *

     I remember the 1980’s as a kind of intoxicated blur. The media remembers ‘a time of excess’, an understatement the size of Mount Everest. Everyone I knew drank too much, ate too much, smoked too much, spent too much, sniffed too much up their nostrils, shagged themselves stupid and generally over indulged in everything until their systems just couldn’t take any more and they fell over. Then they picked themselves up, dusted off the funny white powder they’d spilled over their Giorgio Armani, and started all over again.

     Everyone was loaded – with cash, booze and whatever else they all seemed to need to keep up with the maniacall speed of the lives they led. If they didn’t have the necessary where-with-all it didn’t matter – the concertina of credit cards in their handsome, handmade, Mulberry wallet allowed them the illusion that they were minted to the eyeballs. Everyone was on a huge roll – well, not everyone, just those who made up Margaret Thatcher’s new wealthy middle class who sneered down their noses at less privileged morons who had to work their arses off to scrape a living in her brave new world of ‘grab it while you can and screw everyone else.’

     I didn’t have a problem with any of that having been brought up on a post war council estate where no one had much of anything but were happy with their lot having fought off Hitler and his hoard of Nazi nutcases and kept good old England alive and kicking. But I wasn’t happy with my lot. Hitler was before my time and meant bugger all to me and I vowed one day I’d get myself into a position where I had loads of everything no matter what it took and the 1980s gave me the opportunity to do just that. Maggie Thatcher’s Task Force had blown away the Argentineans in the Falklands War and it suddenly felt great to be British again. Not that most of us remembered or cared what it felt like to be British before. What was important was that we felt invincible now – untouchable, supreme, and if that was being British then great. And if it wasn’t that was great too.

     “SPEND, SPEND, SPEND,” were the orders of the day.

     ‘If you want it, buy it,’ was the mantra, ‘And if you haven’t got the necessary wedge, borrow it; there are plenty of folk out there willing to lend it to you, at a fairly hefty interest rate maybe, but with the way things are shaping up, we’re all going to get fabulously wealthy anyway, darling, so who gives a monkey’s?’

     People gave you credit - as much as you wanted, more than you needed, enough to bankrupt you twice over the second the dream came to an end, if it ever did, not that it ever would’ve.

     Then it was: ‘invest - in bricks and mortar especially. Buy a flat. Then buy another one. Wait a few weeks and sell one of them for twice what you paid for it. Capital-Gains Tax? Forget it. You’ll have so much cash you won’t need to worry about such trifles. Buy the council flat you live in (or the council house if you’re a bit posh) at a snip then sell it to some mug for three times what you paid for it. If you don’t live in a council flat, buy someone else’s and get the tenants to pay you the rent they’d be paying to some faceless council anyway, not forgetting to charge them a hefty premium for saving them from local government bureaucracy.’

     Smokers seared the walls of their lungs with the boiling fumes of pungent, full-blown Marlborough or waxy foreign fags - none of that ineffective, namby-pamby, low tar British rubbish. Those who could afford it drank gallons of champagne. Those who couldn’t afford it got some other bugger to pay for it. Those at the top of the financial pile, who had real money sniffed it up their nostrils in the shape of what looked like thin rows of talcum powder and then behaved like packs of unhinged hyenas on a beano – solid proof that whatever the white powder was, it didn’t come out of tins with holes in the lid in someone’s bathroom.

     I worked in advertising and ridiculously fast cars were an essential part of every day kit for the trendy, successful executive or creative person. The cars were symbols that you’d made it and it was absolutely imperative that you looked like you’d made it even if you hadn’t. Having made it meant you had power, probably in the shape of a cast iron contract and anyone who wanted to fire you would have to pay through the nose for the privilege. And that sort of power allowed you to piss on anyone whenever you felt like because you were untouchable. My made it symbol was a red Maserati Merak, which moved with about the same velocity as an Exocet missile producing the same amount of noise. My friend, Terry Grey, nick-name it the 'Rocket'Tomato'.

     The main criteria of the ‘80s seemed to be: ‘Have a good time’.
     Those who could afford it tried their damndest to do just that.
     Those who couldn’t afford it tried just as hard.
     In the end we all paid for it one way or another.
     Some of us paid more than others.
     Some of us paid more than we deserved to.

     ‘The Eurhythmics’ was the band that represented the sound of the 80s for me.
     Their sound was weird, slightly off balance – with a sense of almost tipping you over the edge.
     The lyrics of their biggest hit said it all.

     Sweet dreams are made of this
     Who am I to disagree?
     I travel the world
     And the seven seas
     Everybody's looking for something.

     Some of them want to use you
     Some of them want to get used by you
     Some of them want to abuse you
     Some of them want to be abused.

     Sweet dreams are made of this
     Who am I to disagree?
     I travel the world
     And the seven seas
     Everybody's looking for something.

     Hold your head up - Keep your head up - Movin' on
     Hold your head up - Movin' on - Keep your head up - Movin' on
     Hold your head up - Movin' on - Keep your head up - Movin' on
     Hold your head up - Movin' on - Keep your head up.

     Some of them want to use you
     Some of them want to get used by you
     Some of them want to abuse you
     Some of them want to be abused.

     Hold your head up - Keep your head up - Movin' on
     Hold your head up - Movin' on - Keep your head up - Movin' on
     Hold your head up - Movin' on - Keep your head up - Movin' on
     Hold your head up - Movin' on - Keep your head up.



Chapter 1: NEW COMPANY

     Tony Wall was a psycho. His constant companion, Keith Cheese, though scary to look at, was just thick - physically and mentally. I first met them both about a week after the first body was found. It was sliced into pieces and strewn around Hackney’s Victoria Park. A tattooed no-brain walking his two Staffordshire Bull Terriers heavily disguised as Pitbulls early one morning, found them fighting over what turned out to be a hand with only a thumb left. Everybody thought Jack The Ripper had risen from the dead to carry on his grisly hobby when a second limbless torso was found in a Whitechapel backstreet. The arms and legs turned up a couple of days later on the Regent’s Canal tow- path. As with the first body it was headless.

     There were more people than usual at the Sunday gathering in the Rose and Crown. The tradition was a few pints and appetisers before piling into cars and nipping over to Shoreditch for lunch. My friend, Terry Grey, writer, artist and film director, told me this was a special occasion – a going away party for Keith. I asked Terry where Keith was going away to and he reckoned Pentonville was on the cards.

     “Or Brixton. He’s a minder by trade but when there’s no minding about he burgles. Trouble is, he’s no good at burglary and always gets caught. He’s up before a crown court judge tomorrow for sentencing. He’s a fairly alarming looking geezer, I’ll admit, but he’s got a heart of gold,”

     Most of the crowd was made up of what would have passed for the cast of villains for one of the TV crime dramas Terry directed. Except these weren’t actors but the real thing. Terry assured me that behind the Ray Bans, sun-tanned chests, solid gold choke chains and house brick sized signet rings lived the odd ‘diamond geezer’ and introduced me to several of them as ‘new company’, a temporary term of acceptability, which did little to make me feel at ease.

     Keith towered above everyone like a giant lump of Monument Valley rock, his face oddly smooth for a man in his late forties, the features blended together in a sort of shapeless pudding – expressionless and dead-eyed like a shark rolling over to tear off a chunk of flesh or a leg.

     “I once wrote and directed a documentary for a production company that went bust just after we’d done the final cut,” Terry said, “The only tape of the film was held by the geezer who owned the company. As I hadn't been paid I went round there to get it but he wouldn’t give it to me - said everything was in the hands of the receivers. I pointed out that I didn’t give a fuck about them and just wanted to receive what was my legal copyright. He said how sorry he was that he couldn’t help me with this sanctimonious fucking grin on his chops. I went back the next day with Keith. He just sat in a chair next to the bloke’s desk with a face like a tombstone. He never said a word but the geezer just handed the tape over."

     The Ringside in Shoreditch was an American style steak bar with a gym, a full sized boxing ring, workout parlour and solarium upstairs. It was owned and run by boxing promoter, Vic Andre, and his wife, Brenda, a proudly wealthy couple in their late forties failing miserably to hide their true ages with a camouflage of fashion belonging to a generation 25 years younger than either of them. In the gym Vic put prospective new talent through its paces, the standing joke being that the steaks in the cafe were really for the black eyes.

     Vic, half Italian, stocky and square had a head belonging to 1957, the thick black hair swept back at the sides, a flat facial profile where the elevation of a nose had once been, the eyes, puffy slits. He'd had been a fairly successful middleweight fighter in the mid to late 1960s but suffered from the boxers’ curse of the glass chin being knocked down and out so quickly and so often he was probably saved from really serious injury.

     Born and brought up in Bethnal Green, Vic often sparred with another couple of local lads and would-be pro fighters, Ronald and Reginald, a pair of twins who lived in Valance Road. Vic was a much better boxer than either of them but he always seemed to come off worse whenever he had a bit of a knockabout with one or the other and never really understood why.

     As we all piled into the restaurant, Vic and Brenda rushed forward to greet us in their usual gushing manner of knuckle crunching handshakes, and the kissing of cheeks strictly between men and women. This wasn’t Palermo and this wasn’t the Mafia. This was East London in 1983 and in these circles homosexuality and anything remotely linked to it was frowned on – at least, publicly. The fact that Ronnie Cray had had probable though unconfirmed leanings away from what was considered to be the norm was never spoken about in company and when George Cornell decided in a moment of drunken bravado to announce to the world that Ronnie Cray was a fat poof, it cost him his life and Ronnie his freedom for the rest of his.

     We were ushered into the centre of the restaurant and some punters who’d been waiting patiently by the door for a table were pushed past, tables were pulled together, one or two customers encouraged to move, their tables commandeered. Nobody seemed to mind – at least, they didn’t complain.

     The women in the group were loud and garish like their make-up and dress sense, lip- gloss and shoulder pads in abundance and thick, frothy manes of blonde hair cascading over skin too exposed to ultra violet light, premature wrinkles standing out like ski tracks across the over suntanned slopes. The male tribal walk was penguin like - feet pointed outwards, shoulders back, head thrust forward, the demeanour anything but penguin - more: “I’m an all right geezer really but fuck with me and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

     Keith wasn’t concerned about image, his massive frame squeezed into a cheap, grey suit with all the jacket buttons fastened, the fabric straining against huge force giving him the appearance of an overloaded sack of turnips. Judging by the size of the spliff he was dragging on and the soppy grin on his mush he was enjoying all the attention.

     Somehow villains and dope didn’t seem to go together. It was OK for some hairy tosser, with beads round his neck and a headband to be in some kind of alternative orbit but the puffers in this crowd didn’t look so much far out as left out. It was a bit like a vicar struggling to do the twist at the local church youth club hop back in the Sixties, failing miserably and hanging onto the vain hope that the younger generation would find him more acceptable for his efforts.

     The chatter at the long table was a loud, coarse jangle, uninhibited by any nonsey etiquette with everyone talking over the top of everyone else. I sat next to Terry with Keith a couple of places along. I felt like the proverbial fish out of water amongst this gathering of faces from the so-called criminal underworld. But they hadn’t all suddenly materialised from somewhere deep in a tube tunnel or a bunker under the city. Everyone knew who these people were and what they did for a living. Some of them knew what some of them had done, to whom they’d done it, and to whom they might do it if they didn’t keep their traps shut. It was all quite straightforward.

     A late arriving bullet-headed man sat down opposite me, his shirt opened almost to his navel revealing a fine fur of grey hair across a tightly muscled torso, his eyes hidden behind mirror-lens sunglasses. I smiled nervously, but he didn’t respond, remaining motionless like a vulture waiting for the collapse of a dying victim.

     “Tone, this is Alan Taylor, a mate of mine.” Terry said before the beads of sweat could fully form on my forehead. “Al’s an art director - works in the advertising business. Al, this is Tony Wall, the writer. Writes a lot of the stuff I direct.”

     The man with no eyes slowly allowed his lips to peel back, revealing a set of perfect Hollywood teeth. A lean, sinewy forearm tattooed with a crude flowery tribute to someone called June, slowly proffered the hand attached to its end across the table

     “Pleased to meet you, Al,” said Wall, “These directors are all the same. You spend months writing stuff and they take 2 days to fuck it up. Isn’t that right, Tel?” The voice was rough and deep and gravely and seemed to come from somewhere deep inside the down covered chest.
     “If you say so, Tone.” Terry spluttered through the smoke of a freshly lit Gauloise.

     So the man with no eyes was a writer. He didn’t look like a writer – whatever writers are supposed to look like. He did look like a villain and Terry told me he’d been a getaway driver when the others at the table had finished eating and shuffled around so that the women could get within gossiping distance of each other and Wall was out of earshot. “He was doing a stretch in Brixton when the writer who invented ‘The Sweeny’ and ‘Minder’ paid him a visit. At the time, the geezer was the only writer for both series and he’d got permission to tour several prisons for research. He asked Tony what he thought of ‘The Sweeney’ and Tony said he thought it was a load of old bollocks and that he could write better stuff standing on his head. The bloke left Tony with some script paper and said he’d call back in a week to see what he had.
     “What Tony gave him was so good that it ran in the next Sweeney series virtually unchanged. When he got out, Tony was hired as a freelance writer and he’s just gone from strength to strength. But does he let all that newfound fame and fortune get to him? You bet he does. He’s as happy as a pig in shit.” Terry looked reflectively at Tony Wall who was holding court at the end of the table. “Mind you, he can be a right awkward bastard to work with.”

     “This was the last time Tony was ‘inside’. He’d actually been going straight for a couple of years and one Saturday night was at a party over in Rotherhythe. It got to about 2 in the morning and he decided to go home. He’d had a few but when he got outside it was pissin’ down and he had to get back to Dalston which is a fair old trot from where he was. He could’ve walked to bus stop and waited for the night bus but old Tone couldn’t be bothered and he went back inside and borrowed some car keys off some bloke who was so pissed he couldn’t stand up, let alone drive.
     “Fair enough I ‘spose, but at the time, Tony was banned from driving. He still is, and always will be because of his career behind the wheels of mostly stolen cars and breaking just about every fucking traffic regulation you can think of including speeding of course, which was a bit of an essential requirement of his chosen trade, not to mention bein’chased all over the place by The Old Bill. He can’t even drive a fork lift fucking truck.” Terry’s face creased up as he relished the thought of Tony Wall’s situation.
     “So there he was tooling along in this bright canary yellow Ford Cortina at half past two in the morning, radio going full blast and the window wound down when he smells fish and chips. Of course, he’s bloody starving. All he's had in the last 3 or 4 hours is about 8 pints of beer. So he slams on the anchors and the car skids to a stop in the middle of this high street.
     “He sees an all night chippy on a parade of shops and, figuring he’d better not leave the jam jar in the middle of the road, he whacks it into reverse, and backs across the road into a side street straight into a parked Panda car. Laugh! These two Old Bill are sittin’ in it minding their own business noshin’ their fish and chips when this bright yellow Cortina steams backwards round the corner like a fucking great banana and smashes into ‘em. The chips must’ve gone everywhere. You know, all that Vinegar and salt down the front of those lovely blue uniforms. Fair makes you wanna cry.” Terry doubled up again. He took a second to compose himself then, after a long suck on his fag and a swig from his large Canadian Club and American Dry with ice, eagerly continued the story.
     “Now if that’d been you or me, it would have been a case of ‘it’s a fair cop,’ right? You know, hands out ready for the cuffs. Not old Tony. His instincts automatically kick in. He slams the Cortina into first gear and he’s off like a scalded cat. It gets better. It really does.” Terry was finding it almost impossible to continue, his eyes now streaming. “The two coppers in the pander go after him. They chase him backwards and forwards across London for about an hour, but, an’ this is really amazing, it ends up like a scene from one of those old British Black and White B feature movies from the 1950s.
     “Eventually, old Tone rolls the Cortina onto its roof by a railway embankment. But still he doesn’t give in, does he? Nah. He clambers out of the wreck and legs it up the embankment with the 2 Panda guys in hot pursuit. He slips, they grab him, there’s a bit of a scuffle and all 3 of ‘em roll down the bank together. I mean you couldn’t choreograph a scene like that and you wouldn’t want to. It’s just too bloody corny to be true. It was real ‘Carry On Copper’ sort of stuff. “I don’t think the judge could believe it either. Tone said half the court were bustin’ themselves laughin’ when one of the Panda blokes read out his statement."


     Enter one Rolls Royce stage right through the Ringside front window. Tony Wall saw it first. He shot up like a Saturn 5 Rocket along with his plate and glass of Valpolicella screaming like he was in the throws of childbirth.

     “JEEESUS FUCKIN’ CHRI…”

     The car hit the building at an angle, its left front corner coming through the window frame and bringing half the surrounding brickwork with it, jamming a triangular 5ft wedge of automobile and nearside front wheel into the restaurant. Luckily, the table that usually occupied the space against the window had been moved to help make up our banqueting formation saving whoever might’ve been sitting there from becoming instant Shepherd’s pie. As it was, there was a lot of gravy about, the stuff not mixing particularly well with hair spray or peroxide rinse. The banqueting tables had tipped over and a few of the party were on their bums amongst the discarded beef and veg’, the rest slip sliding against each other like a load of first time ice skaters.

     Vic Andre pushed his way through the crowd. “Look what it’s done to my fuckin’ winder!”
     “Bleedin’ well-made motors, these Rollers, Tel?” Tony Wall observed as he brushed gravy and peas from the front of his shirt and chest hairs, “A BM wouldn’t have stood up to that. Look at the radiator. It’s not even scratched.”

     He wasn’t entirely right, the Rolls Royce radiator, in this case a gold plated version, was a bit a gouged and scratched but pretty much intact complete with figurine standing proud amongst the rubble, a monument to the ultimate in engineering perfection, ostentation and bad taste.

     “Everyone out the back. Someone call the Old Bill. Come on. Fuckin’ move. The bastard could go up any minute.” In an attempt to take control of the situation, Vic managed to cause panic and the crowd began pushing and shoving towards the back of the restaurant.
     “Calm down for fuck’s sake. It’s not gonna blow up. It’s a Roller not a petrol tanker. You’ve been watching too much telly, Vic.” Tony Wall’s sudden exertion of authority over the proceedings took immediate effect and the crowd stopped shoving. “Just take it easy – nice and slow and go out through the kitchen, all right?”
     “Look at my fuckin’ frock,” said a tall, 40ish blonde in a bright yellow dress with designer holes all over it. Now there was gravy all over it as well. “I only bought it yesterday. Cost me two ‘undred and forty bleedin’ quid.” She grabbed the hem and began frantically scrubbing the material between her knuckles at the same time exposing her extremely small, pink briefs to all and sundry. Tony Wall gave a low whistle.
     “Fuck my….” he said under his breath. But he wasn’t referring to the woman’s knickers. He nudged Terry and nodded in the direction of the car. “D’you see what I see? FAR69T.” Wall said quietly, folding his arms and looking deliberately away from the car… “I thought I recognised the motor…”
     “Yeah?” Terry said not understanding the significance of this apparently startling revelation one jot.
     “It’s Tommy Farr’s.”
     “Who’s Tommy..?” Terry started to ask until Wall elbowed him gently in the ribs.
     “Never mind.” Tony Wall turned to me. I felt the glare of the hidden eyes, and the set of the jaw and tightness of the lips told me either I hadn’t heard a single word of what had just been said or I’d suddenly been struck with a bout of acute amnesia.


Chapter 2. RACHEL

     The pandemonium moved from inside the Ringside, now filled with a fog of grey dust, to the pavement outside. Vic Andre appeared covered in white chalky powder looking like a ghost ship off the Dogger Bank.
     
     “Where’s the driver? I’m gunnooavim. Look at the mess e’s made of my fuckin’ café.”

     A crowd was gathering round the car. Terry’s wife, Bernie, had got the driver’s door open and was leaning inside.

     “Bern. Get away from there, you silly cow! It might go up. Has anybody called the Old Bill?” Terry yelled.
     “Never there when you need the fuckers,” Wall said, “Guaranteed to turn up when you don’t.”
     Terry shoved people out of the way and tried to grab hold of his wife. She half turned, “Fuck off, Tel. She’s hurt. Leave me alone.”
     Terry tried to peer over Bernie’s shoulder and Tony Wall did the same. Wall pulled Terry to one side.

     “It’s Rachel.” Wall said trying not to move his lips as if some MI5 spy half a mile away with a telescope might lip-read.
     “Rachel?” said Terry looking confused, but catching fire with the excitement of a real drama rather than the fictitious stuff earned his living creating.
     “Rachel Farr - Tommy’s daughter. I thought she was away at university. What the fuck’s she doing in her old man’s motor?”

     By standing on tiptoe, I could just make out the figure of a girl slumped in the driver’s seat. There was a small amount of blood on her face and Bernie was dabbing at it with a tissue. Then the earth moved. A huge force lifted me off my feet, and placed me firmly back on the pavement a few feet from where I’d been standing. It was Keith. He’d pushed past Terry and Tony Wall as if they were made of cardboard and pulled Bernie away from the car. He leaned inside and began gathering the girl in his arms.

     “Leave her, for the medics, Keithy. She might be badly hurt.” Keith ignored Wall, lifted the unconscious girl, carried her away from the car and laid her on his jacket spread out on the pavement. He lowered her as if she was made of glass cradling her head in his lap and smoothing her hair away from her face, oblivious to anything else around him.

     “He’s minded her since she was 2 years old when her Mum, Avril, died of cancer. He’s devoted to her. Worships the ground she floats above,” said Tony Wall, wistfully.

     Suddenly, the scene was full of white Rovers, blue flashing lights and the piercing sounds of agitated sirens. Uniformed ‘bodies’ were everywhere and some of the company from the Ringside evaporated into the crowd. A youngish copper rushed around asking if anyone had seen what had happened and shouting into the walkie-talkie attached to his shoulder.
     
     “Did you see what happened?” he said to Tony who didn’t respond. “You?” he said to Terry, “You?” to me.

     An older man in a suit whispered something in the young copper’s ear and pointed at the Rolls Royce and then at the girl lying on Keith’s jacket. The younger man started his questioning again. “Anyone know who this girl is? Was she the driver? Or was she a pedestrian? Anyone know her name?” The young cop would’ve got more cooperation from the occupants of a morgue. An ambulance arrived and two paramedics managed to persuade Keith to let them get a look at the young girl though he refused to move out of the way. After about 5 minutes and a routine examination, they attached a neck brace and put her on a stretcher. They tried to stop Keith climbing into the ambulance with her but he just ignored them and sat down in the back.

     As the ambulance drove away, the guy in the suit shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled casually over to where the three of us were standing. “Hello, Tony. So you don’t know who the girl is?” Tony Wall shook his head. “And you didn’t see anything of course,” Wall shook his head again. “But you do know this car belongs to Tommy Farr, don’t you?”
     Wall shrugged his shoulders and farted long and loud. “Sorry, officer. Must be the sprouts.”

     The copper gave Wall a withering look and turned back to the accident.
     
     “D’you know him?” Terry said, a little anxiously.
     “Only by his smell. Well, that just about concludes lunch for the day. I reckon it’s back to your place, Tel. Tel?”

     Terry was staring at the crashed car. “What? Yeah. Sure. Let’s go back to No 18. I was just thinking, Tone. This could be the opening for a new ‘Chinese Detective’ episode. Roller crashes through café window – kills a couple of people – driver injured…”
     Wall flashed his shark flavoured smile, “I really worry about you sometimes, Tel.”

     The crowd drifted away leaving Vic talking agitatedly to the police and waving his arms about like a demented helicopter. Bernie Grey crammed as many of her teenaged entourage as she could into her left hand drive black Dodge Mirada and swept off into the traffic. Tony Wall, Terry and I walked towards the railway bridge where we’d parked our cars. When we were out of earshot of anybody that mattered, Terry started asking questions, his excitement still obvious.

     “So who’s Tommy Farr?”
     “I thought everyone knew that,” Wall said, patronisingly placing a hand on Terry’s shoulder, “Tommy used to work for the Crays back in the Sixties when they were at war with the Richardsons mob from Lewisham,” said Wall, “Then he worked for the Richardsons as a spy for the Crays and then he worked for the Crays again. The Crays always had the upper hand after that. The Richardsons said they’d do Tommy after they sussed what had been going on. Four of ‘em tried it. They pulled up beside him on the Ballspond Road one night.” We stopped by Terry’s Porsche and Wall leaned his elbow on the roof. “The first one out of the car got it in the eye a screwdriver. He was the lucky one. Tommy left him alone after that probably because his eyeball was swingin’ on his cheek by its entrails. The next two to make the mistake of getting out of the motor wished they hadn’t. Well, they weren’t to know Tommy had a Samurai sword in a scabbard stitched to the lining of his overcoat, were they? Tommy stuck one in the bollocks and sliced the other one’s arm off at the shoulder. The driver stalled the engine in panic and Tommy got in beside him. He made the geezer drive through the Pipe (Blackwall Tunnel) all the way out to place called Gnats Valley near Wrotham. It’s a pretty lonely spot surrounded by hills. It’s also right next to the A20, which is a very busy, very noisy road. The perfect spot if you want to torture someone.
     “It was 2 days before some bloke driving a tractor driver found the poor bastard. He thought he was just having a kip at first till he saw all the blood – most of it dried by then. Tommy had chopped off both the bloke’s thumbs and stabbed him in both thighs to stop him leaving the scene.” Wall smiled all the way through his account.
     “What’d ‘e get for all that?” asked Terry.
     “A great big hard on, I should think. Come on, Tel. They all survived. They were all breathing. D’you really think anyone was gonna come forward as a witness? They all knew how deep they were in. It was their choice. No one forced them into that kind of life. But it’s got fuck all to with any code of silence. Its just not fancyin’ a night time visit from someone even half as loony as Tommy Farr that keeps a geezer’s trap well and truly shut. Mad Frankie Frazer? Tony Lambrianou? Charlie Richardson? Bunny rabbits by comparison. Tommy Farr made Reggie Cray look like Florence Nightingale.” Wall widened his grin and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial level. “It was while Tommy was pretending to work for the Richardson’s that he invented what became their favourite form of torture, the ‘Generator’.
     “What the fuck was that?” Terry was really hooked.
     “Like I said, it was a generator - the kind that they used to power field telephones in the trenches in the First World War, you know, the ones with the handle that you turn to crank up the dynamo. It was crude, but very effective.”
     “What did they do with it?” said Terry almost salivating.
     “They’d strip some poor bugger naked,” Wall went on, “Then they’d shove him in a bath of cold water and connect wires from the generator to his naughty bits with those little crocodile clips, you know? Then they’d start turning the handle. Old Freddy Groombridge, you know that punchy geezer I introduced you to at Wally’s that time, once saw the ‘Generator’ in action. Freddy said he had to go outside and chuck his guts up. First of all they’d give it a quick, short turn, just to make sure it was working. The poor fucker in the bath screamed like a stuck pig, apparently. His whole body came right out of the water. They turned it slowly to get the victim sizzling a bit. Usually he’d talk if that’s what they wanted him to do, but sometimes it was done as a punishment for something or other and they’d just give it max. That was probably the best way to get it because the poor sod would just pass out.” Wall folded his arms and crossed one grey loafer over the other, leaning his back against the Porche. “Of, course, I’m sure you can guess who insisted on doing the cranking, can’t you?”
     “This Tommy Farr geezer.” Terry said.
     “The very same. A couple of times he tortured his own mates – blokes from The Firm, the Cray’s mob who’d strayed onto the wrong turf. The victims couldn’t say a thing. They couldn’t admit they knew Tommy. Not if they wanted to keep their bollocks in tact. If you ask me, old Tommy just enjoyed torturing.” Wall let out a resigned sigh. “Yeah, he’s definitely got one or two screws loose, has our Tommy. I sure as hell wouldn’t like to have taken a shirt from Charlie under any circumstances but with old Tommy at the helm, well… ”
     “Do what?” said Terry, “What d’you mean, ‘taken a shirt’?”
     “It’s what everybody called it. Taking a shirt from Charlie. Being one of the most un-hinged geezers you could ever have the misfortune to run into, old Charlie Richardson had some pretty strange behaviour patterns, one of which was that after a geezer’s torture session was over – if he survived, that is – he’d always give the bloke a clean, white shirt to go home in. Even if he’d had one or two of the geezer’s toes cut off with a bolt cutter, the kind of surgery he was very partial to, he’d still toss him a brand new Rael Brook box. Whether it was to try and disguise the bloke’s condition was doubtful. Maybe he thought it made the bloke feel better, though why he should want to do that isn’t all that clear having probably nailed his feet to the floor or taken out a few of the geezer’s teeth with a pair of pliers.
     "People close to Charlie said the shirt thing was his way of demonstrating that was nothing personal in whatever had taken place. I dunno about you, but I can’t think of anything more personal than having your knackers excited by a few volts of electricity.” By now I was feeling really pre-vomit and wanted to be on my own and far away from Wall but he hadn’t finished.
     “After all the wars were over the Twins were banged up for good and Charlie and his bother, Ed, went down for a long stretch Tommy disappeared for a few years. Then he turned up again as a legitimate builder – if you can call knocking up ex-pat mansions in old Espanola legitimate. He’s still as crazy as ever by all accounts. He caught some spic bloke tryin’ to snog his Rachel in Alacante once when the bloke’s advances weren’t wanted – well, Tommy assumed they weren’t. You don’t want to know what he did to the geezer, believe me.”
     “How old is she?” Terry asked. “I mean, my daughters all have boyfriends and they’re only just old enough, if you know what I mean.”
     “Rachel? 22, but old Tommy’s very protective, especially since her Mum died.”
     “Yeah, but even so…”
     “Oh, she’s had boyfriends but they’ve all had to be vetted. Most of ‘em have been a bit upper crust and Tommy doesn’t mind that. It’s people from his own background he doesn’t want anywhere near his precious Rachel. Rumour has it that there’s some knob sniffing around her at the moment. She’s been seen with him up West a couple of times. All I can say is the silly fucker had better watch out.
     “Word also has it that Our Rachel’s still intact, if you get my meaning. And that’s the way her old man wants it till she’s marched up the aisle. I mean he must know the chances of her bein’ untarnished are about six million to one against, but whoever she ends up with, has got to be the right bloke according to our Tommy. He wants to give her away all proper like. So woe betides anyone that ruins his plans is all I can say.”
     “A virgin at 22?”
     “Yeah, daft I know. It’s just a fantasy Tommy has. He knows it is really. He was young himself once. I wouldn’t mind a bit of young Rachel myself but I value my plumbs too much.”
     “So what was she doing with his motor?”
     “Search me. Tommy must still be out on the old Costa Packe. He’ll go fucking mad when he hears about all this, not that he isn’t halfway to the loony bin already. Lovely to meet you, Al – it’s been a real pleasure.” Wall’s sentiment contained about as much warmth as a snowball down the neck as he limply shook my hand.
     “You not coming back, Al?” said Terry. “You all right, mate? You look a bit green around the gills. I didn’t think the sprouts were that bad.”

     Wall had either assumed I wasn’t going back to Chez Grey or was telling me I wasn’t in an indirect way.

     I was feeling more than just a bit sick. And it wasn’t the Sprouts or anything else The Ringside had dished up. It wasn’t even Tony Wall - he just made me feel sick in the brain. I didn’t want go back to No 18 with Terry and the rest. It wasn’t until I got to the flat that I broke out in a cold sweat. I didn’t know Rachel’s old man was a maniac. She’d told me he was a builder and that he was out of the country on business. She said her name was Rachel Turner not Farr and even if she had said it was Farr, I wouldn’t have known her father from Santa Claus. My hand shook as I lit a cigarette and tried not to panic.


Chapter 3: MELISSA

     “I see there’s been another gruesome murder in your neck of the woods,” Melissa said, emphasising the words gruesome and murder with relish. She was sitting at her desk with her Daily Telegraph spread out when I walked into our office on the Monday morning. The room was filled with the usual foggy haze of smoke as Melissa, the copywriting half of our creative team, refused to open any windows despite chain-smoking all day.
     “Close the door, Al. It’s fucking freezing in here.” She was wearing sunglasses - a sure sign she’d hit the booze the night before or had had a row with a boyfriend. Most of the bits and pieces in the room were hers. She’d bought in a couple of stuffed birds inside glass domes from her turret flat in Battersea Park Road and stuck them on a shelf. There were a couple of antique feather boas draped over the notice board and a picture of her cat, El Puzzo, on the desk next to her typewriter.

     Melissa wasn’t beautiful in the classic sense. She was 5ft-2, with straight red hair, cut short level with her ears in a kind of Richard III style. She had a long, sharp nose down which she’d look at anyone she didn’t care for. She had a good body - quiet prominent beasts and fair legs though her bum was a bit on the wide side. She was stylish and obviously spent a lot on clothes. Sometimes, when I was pissed, I fantasised what she looked like unwrapped - but only when I was pissed.

     “It says here the body was horrifically mutilated. I wonder what they mean by that?” Melissa stubbed out 2 thirds of her fag in the grey mountain in her ashtray and lit another. We worked in a side-by-side formation with our two long tables taking up the whole length of the room. Most creative teams usually faced each other but Melissa and I decided by mutual consent that that if one or the other of us came in to work in a bad mood or feeling the worse for wear it would be better if he or she wasn’t obliged to engage in small talk and could direct their misery at the wall which wouldn’t be offended by a rebuttal. She turned to me with her eyes wide with excitement. “Do you think they cut the bollocks off?”
     “How the hell do I know? I don’t really want to think about it, to be honest.”
     “Oh you’re so stuffy, sometimes. You’re a local, surely there’s some kind of word on the street, isn’t there?”
     “I don’t talk much with the locals.” I wasn’t lying. In the Rose and Crown, I only spoke when spoken to apart from chatting to Terry and Bern.
     “Not only are you stuffy, you’re a stuffy snob.” Melissa grinned impishly.
     “Hadn’t we better get on with the milk scripts?” I shuffled a few papers on my desk not really wanting to get involved in one of Melissa’s mischievous conversations.
     “You’re also extremely boring. Perhaps they stuck them in his gob,” she said with an excited gleam in her eyes.
     “What?”
     “His balls, his scrotum, for heaven’ sake, along with his Willie. Oh, dooo show some enthusiasm.”
     “I doubt they stuck his bits in his mouth. This isn’t Sicily. And, anyway the head was missing.”
     “Oh my, the man’s educated. He knows all about the Cosa Nostra. It doesn’t say anything about a missing head in my paper.”
     “Maybe you read the wrong paper.” I said with a sneaking feeling this wasn’t going to be a day when I’d get anything sensible out of her and in the mood she was in, we’d probably end up getting rat-assed together at the end of it.
     “I doubt that very much. If anyone is reading the wrong newspapers it is guaranteed to be one’s art director, a breed not noted for its appreciation of the finer points of true journalism or indeed literacy in general.”

     I’d never heard anyone with Melissa’s type of voice swear until I met her and I never got used to the idea. She said ‘cunt’ quite often which still sounded weird even after 2 years of us working together. I’d never heard anyone with a voice quite like Melissa’s. Posh wasn’t a big enough word to describe it. She used to say she could shatter a wine glass at 20 paces and I believed her. Imagine Her Majesty, the Queen, screeching at the top of her voice – sprinkle with a few granules of Joyce Grenfell, chuck in a pinch of Margaret Thatcher and some essence of Maria Callas and you’d get pretty close to what Ms Tarry actually sounded like. Most people hated the sound of her voice, but at least it was an early warning of her approach, giving them time to run for cover on the premise that it’s better to be a scared rabbit than a dead one.
     
     Melissa and I were once thrown out of the Ritz because of her behaviour. I don’t mean any old Ritz, I mean THE Ritz in London’s Piccadilly. She decided one evening after work that we’d go there for cocktails and we’d been in the bar for about an hour with Melissa having consumed God knew how many of the establishment’s very expensive cocktails including a couple of mine. Her voice got embarrassingly loud and several people complained to the waiter who came over and quietly asked if Madam would kindly keep her voice at an acceptable decibel level so that other patrons could enjoy some peace and keep their eardrums in tact. Her response was clear and concise.

     “Why don’t you tell them to fuck off and take their miserable, insignificant lives elsewhere?” she said without looking round and swallowing another cocktail in one. The waiter discreetly vanished as only waiters know how reappearing a minute later with our bill on a silver salver and his own message which he delivered discretely leaning close to Melissa’s left ear.
     
     “The rest of our clientele are not going to ‘fuck off’ as madam requested, but madam very definitely is as soon as she’s paid her bill.”

     Melissa didn’t say a word. She drained another glass, stood up, threw her blue fox fur round her shoulders, and with the maximum of panache despite being pissed enough for any mere mortal to have fallen flat on their face, stormed out into Piccadilly and into a cab someone had ordered leaving me with a bill I’d need a mortgage to pay.

     Things reached a critical point one night after Melissa and I had both been drinking in the agency bar. We we’re arguing about typefaces, of all things, and things got very personal by the time she got to her 7th Vodka and orange. “The body copy looks like a spider’s dipped its legs in ink and wandered across the page.” She was in the process of dismantling an ad I’d spent the last 2 days lovingly crafting. “Only a prick would use Pernod. It’s just such a crappy typeface. Actually it’s not a typeface at all. You can only get in a John Bull Printing outfit, but then you’d know all about that being a blind fucking art director with not an ounce of taste in his body, if you can call it a body, which I wouldn’t. I bet you haven’t even got a Willie, have you. Tell you what, let’s take a look see shall we?”

     We were both sitting on bar stools and, as she made a grab for my flies, she lost her balance and her stool tipped over. She grabbed my shirt and pulled me over with her and we both fell on the floor. There was no one else in the bar except the barman as most people had got fed up with the sound of her voice and left. As I tried to help her up, she took a swing at my face with her fist but she was a lot drunker that I was and I managed to catch it in mid flight.

     "You cunt!” she almost spat the 2 word in my face.

     The next thing I knew, I had her by the throat and was squeezing as hard as I could, “If you ever call me that again, I’ll fucking kill you.”

     The voice didn’t sound like mine - it was quite scary and I felt I was standing back just observing. What was really disturbing was that I felt perfectly calm - like nothing in the world mattered. I knew I could kill her easily without a thought. I think she sensed I could too. I let go and she grabbed her bag and tried unsuccessfully to throw her feather boa around her neck. Her face had turned red and she was choking and gasping for air.
     “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” I started to say. This time the voice was definitely mine and it sounded pathetic.
     “Fuck off. Just leave me alone.” She was crying as she staggered out of the room.

     I sat there for a minute, and then followed her. She left the building the back way, down the stairs and through the basement car park where I caught up with her. I grabbed her shoulder and pulled her round.

     “You’re a bastard.” She was still crying and, stupidly, I pulled her close and she buried her head against my chest. I pulled her head up and kissed her gently on the lips. “You are a bastard.” she repeated. Next thing I knew, it was all tongues down throats and I was frantically kneading her left breast like it was a lump of pastry and she was clutching at my bits, only this time she wasn’t joking. “Take me home,” she said.

     I didn’t. I just poured her into a cab, feeling distinctly sorry for the driver.

     “It says here that bits of the body were removed from the scene. I wonder which bits?” Melissa was still on about the murder, which by all accounts, was extremely bloody.
     “Apart from the head, probably the bollocks.” I said sarcastically. Melissa stuck out her tongue.
     She looked back at her paper. “So who was the girl Laura saw you with on Friday?”
     “What?” I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention.
     “Laura, you know, our producer whom you see every day with Rusty, the sweet little Shitzu. She said she saw you with a girl coming out of a pub in Old Compton Street on Friday evening.” She still didn’t look up.
     “I don’t know what she’s on about. Anyway, does she get some kind of turn on from gossip? Even if I was with some tart in a pub or coming out of one, which I wasn’t, what’s it got to do with her?”
     “Methinks, the lad doth protest too much,” she said, her hand cupped under her chin, “All members of the fairer sex get turned on by gossip. You should have figured that out by now – a man of your maturity and experience. Well, experience certainly.”
     “But Laura’s supposed to be a mate.”
     “Gossip about mates is the best kind. Anyway, dear boy, how many times do I have to tell you before it penetrates that thick cranium of yours; you don’t have any friends in this business? You just think you do. So who was she?”
     “No one you’d know.”
     “AHA!” Melissa yelled triumphantly, screwing up the paper and stuffing it into her wastepaper bin. “He confesseth at last.” She sat bolt upright, her eyes blazing through the blue smoke haze like the beams of twin lighthouses. “No one I’d know’ - that’s conclusive proof that it’s someone I do know!” her voice reached shrieking mode, “Come on. Spill. Who is the wench? It’s not that stupid little tart, Trish, in TV is it? She’s very pretty, I grant you, but there’s not much between her ears. Still, you’d be more interested in what’s between her legs.”
     “No chance.” I said swinging my chair round to the desk and playing with the loose papers again. “Forget it. I wouldn’t tell a you a fucking thing IF there was anything to tell, which there isn’t, because you’d broadcast it to the Nation.”
     “You’re blushing, “ she giggled, “Like a traffic light. So, it’s not Trish. Now who else is there?”
     
     Melissa was right. My whole head seemed to be on fire. I was blushing - like ten traffic lights.

     It must have been The Compton, in old Compton Street, that Laura saw Rachel and I leaving that Friday evening. We hadn’t been in there long having staggered into the place to get out of the rain to find it so crowded that we’d been shoved together until our noses were almost touching. Rachel thought it funny and started to giggle. She kissed me lightly on the lips and smiled up at me. I wanted to touch her hair but I couldn’t free my hand so I leaned forward so I could at least smell it. It felt damp from the rain against my cheek. Someone touched my leg and I knew it wasn’t Rachel.

     “I think we’d better leave,” she said, still smiling.
     “Don’t you want a drink?”
     “I don’t think they’ll serve me. But they’ll definitely serve you.”

     I noticed a huge, tattooed bicep next to Rachel’s left ear. It belonged to an arm the size of a leg, which in turn was attached to an oak tree sized trunk in a white T-shirt. A tanned face was perched on top of the trunk with a droopy moustache fixed to the upper lip but the head the lips lived in was completely bald. A heavy silver ring hung from each ear and the clear blue eyes stared into me like lasers. An anchor shaped silver stud was threaded through the left eyebrow.

     An even bigger tree man had its arm draped round the shoulders of the one with the anchor stud. The second tree guy wore a white, sleeveless vest, which seemed a bit lost on a Giant Redwood. We seemed to be surrounded by a forest of tree men and they were crushing us. I’d been so lost in Rachel, I hadn’t realised that we’d staggered into Soho’s flagship gay pub.

     Outside again, the rain had eased off and we pushed off arm in arm towards Wardour Street then North towards Oxford Street. I put my arm round her shoulder and pressed her close. We walked in step, with Rachel laughing like a child and me laughing with her.
     
     An hour before, we’d been in the club, Lime, in Shaftsbury Avenue, rotating slowly in one direction on the dance floor with the rest of the heaving throng, too tightly packed for anyone to actually dance. The music was monotonous and electronic; the heavy bass line powerful enough to create a pins and needles sensation in everyone’s calf muscles. Rachel clutched a small bottle of ice-cold beer. She took a swig and kissed me, pushing the cold liquid from her mouth into mine. I swallowed, took the bottle and reciprocated. This was a new one on me. I’d never done that before - never even heard of it. I’d obviously led a very sheltered life as a youth. Rachel, young as she was, and despite what Tony Wall had said, obviously hadn’t.

     I ran my fingers through her small thatch of naturally blonde hair and she squeezed closer, pressing her face against my chest. We’d just spent an hour in the tiny lounge of my mate’s cutting room over the café in Berwick Street. He’d asked us to lock up and set the burglar alarm when we left. We’d sat on the sofa together in the semi dark, the only light intermittently flashing through the window from a tall lamppost with its fluorescent tube on the blink. She was staring into her empty glass. The wine had relaxed me enough for my arm to move around her easily and pull her gently towards me. There was no resistance.

     “I bet I know who it is!” Melissa squealed. “It’s that new little blonde thing in the secretary’s bay, the pretty one with the freckles. It is, isn’t it? What’s her name? April? No, Rachel. Yes, it’s Rachel. Cradle snatcher! You ought to be ashamed of yourself - an old rake like you, polluting the mind, not to mention the body, of such a sweet young thing. Laura said the girl in your very dubious clutches was blonde but she couldn’t see her face on account of it being stowed under your armpit, Heaven perish the thought. I must tell Laura the news.”

     Melissa got up and made for the door but I grabbed her arm. “For Christ’s sake, can’t you just leave things alone? It’s none of your bloody business, and certainly none of anybody else’s. Anyway, you don’t know anything.” Melissa pulled free and went back to her chair.

     “Ooh, we have got it bad, haven’t we?” she said lighting another Silk Cut, forgetting in her obvious excitement she already had one half consumed in the ash tray, “What’s she like in the sack?”
     “JEEESUS!”
     “It’s all right. I’m only winding you up. You’re so sensitive. I’ll shut up now, all right?
     “Yeah.” I said grumpily.
     “But only if you tell me what she’s like in the a sack.”

* * * * * * * *


Chapter 4: THE MILKY WAY

     When the phone rang I was dreaming about Rachel. At least, I think it was Rachel. Whoever she was, she was blonde, wearing nothing but red underwear and sitting on a bar stool in a large, empty white room with a drink in her hand. It was one of those purple jobs with fruit and a stupid little paper umbrellas draped over the side of the glass.

     A fat woman with red hair and a cigarette holder walked through the wall and into the room in a shower of brick dust. “Where’s my drink, you bastard?” The fat woman sounded like Melissa but looked like a hippo in drag.

     “I thought you were at your Mother’s.” said my voice though I didn’t seem to have a body.
     “I am my mother,” said the fat monster metamorphosing into Tony Wall who grinned, showing a big bloody gap where his front teeth should have been. He started laughing and then bits of him disappeared like the Cheshire Cat in ‘Alice In Wonderland’. He reappeared as the fat woman again but with Terry’s head, “Let me introduce you to someone, Al. This is my mate, Tommy Farr.” said Terry’s head.

     Keith came through the hole in the wall with a telephone on a silver tray. It was ringing and he offered it to me. I couldn’t take it because I didn’t seem to have any arms.

     “Take it, you clown. He only wants to eat you.” Melissa’s voice screeched from somewhere. The ringing of the phone got louder and I tried to yell but no sound came. I couldn’t breathe. I was choking. There was a long, bloodcurdling scream and I was falling. I landed with a thump and woke up on the floor of bedroom shaking like a jellied eel with Parkinson’s disease, dripping with sweat and realising the scream had been mine.

     I rolled over onto my hands and knees and crawled towards the phone on the floor by the door. “Ah, there you are, Alan. I thought you must be out.” I recognized the unmistakably oily voice of Miles, who was more like a disease I couldn’t get rid of than a friend.

     “Miles. What do you want? What’s the time?”
     “Time is of no concern. What is time after all? Time is merely an illusion, a reflection of…”
     “Shut the fuck up, Miles. What the hell do you want?”
     “That’s charming, that is. That’s no way to treat an old friend, is it? After all I’ve done for you in the past.” I couldn’t deny that. Miles had been there when I needed him – several times. I’d met him in a bar somewhere when I’d found myself in a bit of a state. “I just thought you ought to know something.”
     “Like, what?”
     “Well, if you’re going to use that tone of voice, I might not tell you.”
     “Look, I’m shattered and you woke me up. What do you want?”
     “I just thought you ought to know that there are people out there looking for you.”
     “What people?”
     “Not nice people. Actually, quite nasty.”
     My stomach did a quick back flip and the saliva drained from my mouth. My hand shook as I groped around on the floor for my cigarettes. “What the hell are you on about, Miles? Are you trying to scare me or what, because if you are, you doing one hell of a great job.”
     “Have you heard of a Mr Thomas Farr?”
     “No.”
     “Liar!”
     “I’m not. I’ve never heard of anyone by that name.”
     “Now, why don’t I believe you? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you know his daughter rather well – a sweet young virgin by the name of Rachel except that now she’s not – thanks to you.”
     “I don’t what you’re talking about.”
“That’s a really corny line. I’m surprised at you. I thought you were supposed to be creative. Just watch your back, OK? They’re on to you.”
     “Who is?”
     “Let’s just say you wouldn’t come across them at a Buck House garden party.”

     Miles generally seemed to have his ear close enough to the ground to hear worms breathing, so I knew he wasn’t kidding. Someone else must have seen us apart from Laura and checked up on me, found out my name and most likely where I lived. But Rachel and I had been so discreet and it we hadn’t been seeing each other that long.

     “Alan? Are you still there? You haven’t gone back to sleep on me, have you?”
     “Yes, I’m still here? What do I do now?”
     “You could emigrate.”
     “I’m being serious.”
     “So am I.”
     “What If I stop seeing her?”
     “Ah, so you admit you’ve been a naughty boy, then?”
     “Let’s cut the crap. What if I tell her it’s over?”
     “Yet another corny old line – two, actually. I can see her leaning out of the train window now – and you standing pathetically on the platform in your London Fog Mac and trilby and her in her silly, felt hat. ‘We’ve been so very, very foolish…can this really be goodbye?’ I love it.”
     “You seem to be enjoying this.”
     “Oh, I am, I am.”
     “What sort of a friend are you?”
     “Right now, probably the best you’ve ever had.”
     “You could’ve fooled me.”
     “Bit of a dilemma we have here though. If you give her the elbow, you’ll upset her, and if you upset her, you’ll get your legs broken. If you carry on seeing her, you’ll get your legs broken. You could offer to make an honest girl of her.”
     “What, you mean marry her?”
     “I said ‘offer’. Daddy might not think you’re suitable – and then you’ll get your legs broken. Tricky.”
     “What the fuck do I do?”
     “I’ll have to give it bit of thought. I’ll get back to you.”
     “I need to know now, for Christ’s sake…Miles? MILES!”

     The phone was dead. I was thinking I would be soon.


* * * * * * * * * * * *



     “They’ve found another one.” Terry pointed to to the main story on the front page of the ‘Sun’. He and I were leaning against a wire fence outside ‘A’ Stage, Bray Studios, near Hampton Court while we waited for the camera crew to get their act together for the first take of the day.

     ‘3RD BODY FOUND IN 2 SUITCASES’ the headline read.

     He folded the paper and stuffed it into the pocket of his ski jacket. “Bit of a rum do on Sunday? I thought we’d all ‘ad or chips when that bloody Roller came through the window.”

     I just nodded and grunted. It was too much to expect Terry not to want to talk about the Ringside incident - and he did want to talk about it.

     “I spoke to Tony Wall late last night. He said the girl, Rachel, got let off with a caution and a bit of concussion. They breathalysed her but she was clear and her driving licence was clean as a whistle. They’re keeping her in hospital for a couple of days just to make sure she’s OK. I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t want to be in this boyfriend’s shoes, whoever he is when her old man hears what’s been going on. If I were him, I’d fuck off to Argentina or change sex or both.” Terry creased up, “Old Vic Andre is still hopping mad – at least he was till Tony Wall told him who this girl, Rachel, is and, more to the point, who her old man is. Tone said Vic suddenly shut up like a clam. I’ve never heard of this Tommy Farr geezer and the more I do the more pleased I am I never came across him.” Thankfully Terry changed the subject. “D’you know that’s the biggest lighting rig in there any of us have ever seen? Dusty Waller over there worked with David Lean on Oliver Twist and Zivago, but he says this one takes the biscuit. It’s like the Tropics in there.”

     I had a nasty thought. Melissa was late, but when she turned up, I didn’t want to get onto the subject of cars, restaurant windows or girls called Rachel. She’d milk it - appropriately enough when you think what we were all doing at Bray, and Terry would find out I’d been seeing a girl called Rachel and if Melissa described her…it didn’t bear thinking about.

     “Tel, can you do me a favour?”
     “Yeah, sure.”
     “When Madam Lafarge shows herself, don’t tell her about the weekend.”
     “No? OK mate. I’ll keep shtum. Mum’s the word.”
     “It’s just she’s got this morbid curiosity about ‘deeds most foul’ at the moment and she keeps going on about these bloody murders. Mention Rollers crashing through café windows and we’ll never get a minute’s peace.”
     “Gotcha. Nuff said.”

     I just had to hope Melissa didn’t start on about me being seen coming out of a pub with some tart called Rachel. This unpalatable thought was skidding through my mind at the ungodly hour of 7am on a freezing Wednesday morning when we were about to start shooting a commercial for The Milk Marketing Board. It was a promotional ad and the prize was a Vauxhall Chevette. Our idea was to have the car performing slaloms around a line of 12 ft milk bottles against a pure white backdrop hence the ernormous lighting rig.

     A white Peugeot 404 drew up a few yards away in a cloud of dust and screech of tyres and Terry and I could clearly detect the sound of a familiar voice over the commotion. The voice suddenly amplified when Melissa threw open the rear passenger door and got out.

     “You shouldn’t be in the country if you can’t understand the road signs. I can recommend a thoroughly reputable primary school that’ll teach you to understand English in no time unless, of course, you’re dyslexic as well as sub-normal.”

     She slammed the door hard enough to rock the car on its suspension and marched towards us. As the car pulled away the driver yelled some kind of obscenity in a mixture of Cockney and Hindi.

     “Here’s Lady muck, late as usual,” Terry said with a sigh. Then, he smiled and called out: “Watcher, sexy. The natives playing up again?”

     Terry couldn’t stand Melissa, more because of her accent and what it represented than anything else, but he played his part well and she’d often declared that she really liked his ‘honest down to earthiness’, as she put it, and the fact that he liked a drink. The way they hugged each other, you’d have thought they were long lost buddies.

     “Hello, Terry. Hi, Al. How’s it going? Fucking foreigners! They shouldn’t be allowed to drive if they’ve got no sense of direction. I haven’t missed the bacon rolls, have I? That’d really put me in a bad mood.” She tried in vain to light a Silk Cut with her cheap stick lighter and Terry obliged with the flame-thrower that lived inside his Zippo almost removing her eyebrows and fringe. Melissa ignored the near miss, producing a copy of the Daily Mail from her shoulder bag. “Have you seen the papers?” she said enthusiastically, “They’ve found another body and this one doesn’t have a head.”
     “Neither did the last one. You haven’t changed your newspaper have you?”
     “What?” Terry said.
     “Ignore my apology for an art director, Terry. He clearly imagines he’s acquired a sense of humour overnight along with a totally misguided inclination to practice it. It’s pitiful really, don’t you think? Now where’s the darned catering truck? If I don’t get a bacon roll pretty soon, I’ll expire.” She moved off in search of her breakfast.
     “Chance would be a fine thing.” Terry said when she was out of earshot.
     “What d’you mean?”
     “That she’d just drop dead,”

     With the lights at full blast, it was 110 degrees inside the aircraft hanger. It was some 4 and a-half hours later before we were ready to actually shoot something. The 12ft white Milk bottles on the whiteout set looked great, the camera moves had been planned, and the little railway line along which the camera was going to be pushed on its tiny truck by four huge lighting guys so that we could get a long smooth panning shot, had been constructed. Then the stunt driver drove the Chevette backwards straight through one of the cove walls. There was a massive crack like a clap of thunder, and what looked like a flash of lightning arced across the ceiling between several of the lights. All the lights went out, flickered intermittently, and then came back on again. Showers of sparks like a Roman candle fell onto the studio floor. Someone started a slow handclap and everyone, with the exception of Melissa and me, joined in.

     “FUCKIN’ WANKER!” cried our intrepid director in the general direction of the half visible Chevette, “I’ve spent all the morning telling that dickhead to be careful. He goes on and on about all the stunt driving he’s done at Brands Hatch and how he knows Nikki Lauda and Graham Hill and that he’d have been Formula 1 World Champion if it wasn’t for his piles, then he goes and drives the car backwards through the wall. Noddy would have been a safer bet - jingly fucking bell and all.” Terry marched back towards Melissa and I standing at the side of the cove. “LUNCH!” he yelled to anyone who was interested.
     “Lunch, everybody,” echoed Rod, Terry’s producer, “Back at 2.30, there’s good children.”

     Melissa had insisted the car should appear not to have a driver. She made a point of this at one of the pre-production meetings we’d had at the agency. She’d more than just mentioned in passing that she wanted the car to appear driverless but there were several other issues being debated at the same time and the driverless car scenario had been conveniently sidestepped. Now she was demanding a driverless vehicle and turned to Laura, our agency producer who’d minuted the meeting to show documentary evidence to back her claim. Laura showed Terry and the crew that Melissa’s idea had indeed been recorded and approved by the client. Laura eagerly flipped over several pages on her clip board and read aloud:

     ‘CAR TO APPEAR DRIVERLESS - PRODUCTION COMPANY TO ADVISE ON HOW THIS WILL BE ACHIEVED…’

     “I did speak to Rod at 10.50 Friday morning and he told me not worry about it…DARLIN’, and that everything would be alright on the night.”

     Laura, a tall, dark very pretty, and very together, Jewish lady did an exact imitation of Rod’s patronising manner when it came to dealing with female agency producers and I suspected she knew that driverless cars would be stuffed at the bottom of the ‘not really necessary because only some silly little bint from the agency has asked for it’ pile and was relishing this particular moment.

     The props man suggested spraying the windows so you couldn’t see the driver but Melissa wasn’t to be put off.

     “We don’t want to hide the driver, we don’t want there to be a driver.” Melissa was firm but not, as yet, rude.
     “ROD.” Terry yelled.
     Rod appeared at Terry’s shoulder as if shot from a cannon. “Tel?”
     “Lose the driver. I mean visually, not actually.”
     “Running all the way, boss.” Rod feigned a salute and scampered away.




Chapter 5. BLOOD AND GUMS

     Next door to Bray Studios is the Waterside Inn Restaurant. It’s a quiet, civilised, white linen tablecloth and napkin job that entirely belongs in its location on the bank of a particularly tranquil stretch of the Thames, surrounded by Weeping Willows, and with swans and the occasional rowing eight gently scudding by. The menu is a mixture of English and French with a bit of Italian thrown in and a wine list any buff would die for. If that all sounds a bit pretentious, then good. I wouldn’t have wanted to see your average Tom, Dick, Harry or Brenda eating in a place like that. I wanted to be left in peace to enjoy my couple of hours of unadulterated luxury that some loaded client was paying for.

     At lunchtime on a film shoot, the creative team usually eats with the director unless the director can’t stand them or they hate him, which, though possible, is pretty rare. This time it was just Terry, Melissa and me and the claret was flowing. Terry started out with his favourite large Canadian Club and American Dry and I had a Scotch on the rocks but Melissa went straight for the red stuff like a vampire goes for blood.

     “Listen, my dear Terry,” Melissa exhaled a cloud of blue Silk Cut smoke into Terry’s face. I could tell she was up to no good by the distinctly mischievous tone of her voice, “What about all these murders in your manor? Al pretends he doesn’t know anything and if he does, he isn’t telling. Is there a code of silence in the East End as there is in Sicily? I mean are you all scared you’ll end up with your cocks and testicles in your mouths or with concrete boots or something? I mean someone must know something, surely.”
     “I haven’t got a clue, and I’ve got better things to think about. So a few blokes get carved up for some reason. So what?” Terry showed no enthusiasm whatever for the subject.
     “But they didn’t just get carved up, did they? They got dissected - methodically opened up and various bits of them were removed from the scene – in some cases, the heads.”
     Melissa wasn’t about to be put off. “You know villains in the East End don’t you? Surely some of them must have some idea what’s going on. Maybe it’s a vendetta or something.” Melissa had the gleeful look of a fox that’s burrowed its way into a chicken coup and come up surrounded by overweight hens too fat to run.
     “I don’t know any villains, as you put it,” Terry said tersely, “I do know one or two faces who might have been villains at one time or another. These murders are a bit spooky, I’ll grant you, but they aren’t something those sort of geezers like talking about.”
     “So there is a code of silence.” Melissa’s enthusiasm for blood and gore was taking hold.
     “What there is, is a code of being sensible. Like leaving certain subjects alone, keeping your nose out of where it doesn’t belong, and generally minding your own business.” Terry was showing signs of getting a touch turgid round the edges but Melissa had only just started and I knew she wouldn’t let go until she got some kind of information.
     “By the way, Al, Keith got a year’s sentence, suspended.” Terry realised the mistake almost as the words slipped over his lips and Melissa, who’d spread her Daily Mail, which she only bought if she couldn’t get the Telegraph, out on the table, was at him like a shark on water skis.
     “Who’s Keith and what did he get a year’s suspended sentence for?” she demanded.
     “Just somebody Al and I know. “He was a bit naughty and got done.”
     “Obviously,” Melissa sneered, “What did they do him for, pray?”
     Terry drew a deep breath then chanced his arm with the truth, “Breaking and entering.”
     “How boring,” She turned back to her paper and Terry and I threw a couple of relieved glances at one another, and Terry mouthed a quick ‘sorry’ realizing he’d almost let the forbidden cat out of the bag, “Bit of a prick getting caught, wasn’t he?” Mellisa said into the agony column.
     “Yeah. He’s not exactly the brightest bulb in the box, our Keith.”
     “It says here that the police are considering the possibility that the 3 murders are connected. I wouldn’t have thought they’d need Sherlock Holmes to work that out. It hardly seems likely that there is more than one crazy lunatic out there filleting people’s bits and pieces, wouldn’t you say?”
     “Search me,” said Terry not trying very hard to hide his complete lack of interest.

     Terry topped up Melissa’s wine glass as she lit another cigarette, carelessly puffing a cloud of smoke over her shoulder and into the faces of the 4 people at the next table. Terry winced suddenly and put the heel of his hand against his jaw. “Fuck!”
     “What’s the matter?” Melissa blew the next lot of smoke straight in his face again.
     “Toothache.”
     “I have a very good dentist in Brook Street. He operates on snakes and tigers but don’t let that put you off. I’ll give you his number if you like.”
     “Terrific!” Terry was unimpressed.
     “I’m absolutely serious. His name’s Simon Kadiz. He’s often on TV.”
     “I hate dentists.” Terry poured himself a glass of claret.
     “Perhaps that’s why you’re in so much pain.” Melissa sometimes had an unfortunate way of sounding like a sarcastic headmistress. “Anyway, what I can’t understand is, why chop someone in half, put the two bits in separate suitcases and then leave them in the same place – by a bus stop in London Fields. That’s just up the road from you isn’t it, Al?”
     I nodded. A bloke from the next table tapped Mellissa on the shoulder. “Excuse me, but would you mind if we eat while you smoke?”
      “I’d rather you didn’t.” Melissa’s reply snapped back like the bloke’s red braces and Terry almost choked on his mouthful of wine. He may have hated Melissa but he also thought she was hilarious.
     “Bitch.” was all the bloke could muster by way of a reply and Melissa continued with the conversation as if he didn’t exist.
     “There seems to be no motive for the murders.” She scanned her newspaper as if she’d missed a vital clue somewhere, “Apparently, the victims weren’t robbed – just sliced up. The only thing the cops seem clear about is that the killings took place late at night or even the early hours of the morning.”
     “How’s Abbi getting on with her new boyfriend?” I asked Terry in a fairly calculated way of changing the subject.
     “Who’s Abbi?” Melissa looked up from her paper, the distinct whiff of gossip drifting past her nostrils.
     “She’s my stepdaughter,” Terry said with a look that suggested he wasn’t over the moon about it, “She’s 17 going on 35.”
     “Seventeen, uh? I bet Al’s been sniffing around.” Melissa didn’t look at me but she knew I’d be blushing.
     “Well, she likes him,” Terry shot me a sideways grin, “but then she likes most anything in trousers. I mean she’s not a slapper or anything like that, but she knows how stunning she is and gets a kick out of the effect she has on blokes. Some geezer called Gus is ‘er newest squeeze, poor bastard. He seems all right.”

     I’d met Abbi for the first time at Mr Lighting’s* Christmas party in their warehouse studio in Camden Lock. She was petite and dark skinned with long, dark, carefully waved hair, almond shaped eyes and slightly flared nostrils like her Mother’s. We danced together several times during the evening. She wasn’t a great mover but knew how to show off her body. It was at the party that Abbi introduced me to her friend, Rachel. She called me a couple of days later and said Rachel needed a job quite urgently and would I see if there were any vacancies for secretaries or PAs. Still imagining I might one day stand a chance of slipping between the sheets with the lovely Ms Grey, I said I’d see what I could do. There was a vacancy in the creative secretaries’ bay and Rachel came in for an interview and got the job.

     I hadn’t taken much notice of her at the Mr Lighting do because I’d only had eyes for Abbi. Rachel, like Abbi, was petite and pretty but blonde. She seemed quiet and shy and as she sat in front of the typewriter. She looked as if it was the first one she’d seen. She sat with 2 other girls behind a barricade of desks in a square formation in the centre of the main creative floor, around which were the creative teams’ offices. Ours was at one end of the long room and when I looked up I had a good view of her profile and could watch her without fear of her suddenly looking up seeing me.

     Rachel immediately caused a stir amongst the agency’s male predators, magically propelled to the bay by the scent of nouveau female as it wafted along the corridors. Even the usually lackadaisical mailroom boy made several unnecessary trips to the creative department on her first morning.

     Terry had been intermittently nursing his face with his cupped hand since we sat down and now he excused himself and made for the gents. Melissa was sounding progressively blurred speech-wise, which was always a sign that Count Dracula was about to leave his coffin, inhabit Melissa’s body, and pay everyone in the restaurant a visit. The bloke at the next table who’d complained about her smoking leaned close to her as he left. “Have another 50 fags, why don’t you. With any luck you’ll suffer a lingering death.” She didn’t bother with a retort and I prayed to whatever God might have been in the immediate vicinity and thanked him for that one small mercy.

     Terry had been gone a long time and so I went to the gents to find him. He was leaning against the row of sinks and peering into the mirror at the reflection of his contorted mouth, his cheek pulled to the side with a finger. He stood up and grinned. His eyes were streaming and he looked pale. He held a teaspoon in his hand.

     “Won’t have any more trouble from that little fucker. It was driving me up the wall. The bloody thing was loose anyway.” Terry sounded triumphant even if he did look like he’d just died. He opened the palm of his other hand and displayed a very nasty looking, bloody molar, root and all. I felt my stomach convulse as I realised he’d gone onto a cubicle and extracted the aching tooth himself. Terry tossed the tooth across the washroom into the open cubicle and into the toilet. It hit the inside of the bowl with a ping and slid into the water.

     “Slam dunk!” he yelled triumphantly, then in a more conspiratorial tone, “Al, did you notice anything odd just after James bloody Hunt backed the jam jar through the wall?”
     “Like what?”
     “I don’t know. I haven’t mentioned it to anyone else, but you know how hot it was in there?”
     “Yeah?”
     “Well, when the sparks started to fly and the lights flickered, didn’t you notice how cold it got? I mean, just for a second or two, it felt like we could’ve been in the Arctic. The temperature went through the floor.”
     “ No, can’t say I noticed anything like that.”
     Terry grinned, rubbing his jaw, “ I must be losing it then. I’m glad we’ve cleared that little mystery up.”

     We made our way back to the table with me feeling like he must have looked.

     “And just what have you two been doing to each other in there?” Melissa said so that whole restaurant could hear, “On second thoughts, I’d rather not know.”
(*Mr Lighting was a company that hired out lighting rigs for film shoots.)




Chapter 6: THE HEEBY-GEEBIES

     The John Michael Print Associates Christmas party was where I’d first got it together with Rachel. JMPA, as they were known, were one of the agency’s suppliers and threw the party for the for the Creative Department and one or two other people they didn’t want to upset by leaving out. It was held in the back of Du Rollo’s Restaurant in Greek Street, Soho. The mob was curtained off from the main restaurant but I doubt the heavy drapes shielded the average punter from the bedlam. Why people want to throw food is beyond me. Perhaps it’s some kind of innate animal tendency we all have deep down that comes to the surface on festive occasions and causes us to be neighbourly by tossing each other a few tit-bits.

     Peter Du Rollo, who flitted from table to table in his usual fawning manner, rubbing his hands together, bowing and scraping like an undertaker’s clerk and grinning through his magnificent Zapata moustache, got hit a couple of times but carried on regardless no doubt mentally adding on a sizable chunk of gratuity for every missile that found its target to the fortune he was already guaranteed to make out of the evening.

     “How is you, Al? Nice see you, he said shaking my arm half out if its socket and crushing my bicep with his other hand. “Lot crumpet wiv you lot tonight, eh? You aver yourself a fuckin’ good time, wha’?”

     Thankfully he quickly moved on to ingratiate someone else.

     There had been the usual buzz of excitement in the office on the day of the party. Several teams took a long lunch hour to get tanked up for the big event. Melissa was screaming down the phone at some unfortunate wretch so I went across the bay to the coffee machine. I pressed the button and the plastic cup dropped down.

     “Hi.” said a small voice behind me. I turned and looked over my shoulder, the next sequence of events being inevitable. My fingertips were already touching the plastic beaker in readiness for when it was full and I could take it from the machine. The dispenser was maladjusted and the pourer always kept pouring after a receptacle was full. Timing was of the essence to avoid either burned fingers or wet feet.

     The sudden sight of Rachel standing close caused me to lose my balance and tighten my grip on the cup. A searing pain shot through my fingertips and I dropped the cup of fierce liquid with a howl. Thankfully, I missed Rachel and emptied most of the molten gunk over my feet

     “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
     “That’s OK.” I lied, “I’m a real clumsy bastard sometimes.”
     “Excuse me,” Melissa cut in, pushed her way past and pushed a button on the machine, “When you’ve finished your circus act, some of us have work to do.”

     We both watched Melissa in silence, as the machine gurgled and burped its way through its coffee mixing process. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, she stuck her nose in the air and headed back to the office calling over her shoulder, “By the way, Al, did your doctor confirm Ghonerea or was it just a local infection?”

     “Don’t take any notice of her.” I said, “She’s just got the hump because someone turned down one of her headlines.”
     “She’s very frightening,” said Rachel timidly.
     “Oh, she’s not so bad. Her bite’s far worse than her bark - only joking.”
     And there was the melting smile that reached the parts of me previous smiles never had. She pushed her hand backwards through her hair and blushed slightly. “Are you going to the party tonight?”
     “Er…I don’t know if I fancy it really.” I lied again. It had never occurred to me that Rachel was going – actually, that’s not true either, it had crossed my mind that she might be there in which case a team of Whitbread Dray carthorses on coke wouldn’t have kept me away.
     “Oh, you must come. Apparently it was a real laugh last year.”
     “I wasn’t with the agency then so I wouldn’t know. Are you going?”
     “Yes, though I didn’t expect to be invited. I won’t know anyone.”
     “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure no harms come to you. I’m quite good as a bodyguard.”
     “So you will come then?”
     “Might as well. Nothing much else to do.”
     “Great. I’ll see you later then?”
     “Sure. See you later.”

     As she walked away, a squadron of butterflies looped the loop in my stomach at the anticipation of what might be to come. Earlier in the day I’d got the shock of my life. I was in a bit of a rush and went to the secretaries’ bay to pick up a re-typed script. Rachel looked up as I shuffled through the in tray above her desk.

     “Hello, sexy.” she said with a sudden rush of cheek that seemed to surprise her as much as it did me. I felt myself burning red and turned quickly and went back into the office.

     In the third trap of the fourth floor Gents toilet, half an hour before we due to leave for Du Rollo’s, I changed into the DJ I just happened to have had cleaned and stashed behind the office door for emergencies. With a last minute preen in the mirror, and a quick and totally pointless tug at the edges of the fake bow tie, I determined that Melissa, for this one evening at least, could go and boil her head.

     Then everything turned purple, then green, then orange. I seemed to be flying – upside down – then everything turned black.


* * * * * * * *

SPASM


     When the psychedelic fog in my brain started to clear, I found myself sitting on the lavatory seat and hanging onto the toilet roll holder with one hand with the other flat against the cubicle wall. Thankfully, the door was closed. The last thing I needed was for anyone to see me in this state. It hadn’t been a particularly bad attack, but for a witness it would’ve been pretty alarming. Sweat was pouring down my face but my breathing was getting more regular and I reached into my inside pocket for the little plastic bottle. I took two of the black and green jobs and one big red bastard, and, feeling slightly comforted, I started to stand up. I froze as the outer door opened someone entered the bog.

     I recognised the voices as belonging to Pip and Don, two creatives in their early twenties. I didn’t like either of them and thought them arrogant, talentless aresholes. They were both from Yorkshire and I resented the way they bullied young account people as if they had a God given right to stomp all over anyone they saw as privileged and middle class, and whom their feeble minds automatically qualified for a good kicking. It’s all right for a seasoned campaigner with a few years and battle scars under their belt to occasionally vent their spleen on account management, after all, that’s what ‘suits’ and ‘frock’s are there for, and persecution comes with the territory. But these bastards thought they were in Hollywood and were playing the superstar bit as hard as they could. They had no respect for anyone. They were already pretty pissed and their conversation as they stood at the urinals filled me with a desire to leap screeching out of the cubicle like a giant bat and rip their hearts out through their backs. One of them farted loudly.

     “Ee, thut’s fookin’ berrer.”
     “I’ll only feel berrer when I get ma tongue down that Rachel’s sweet yoong thrort toneet.”
     “Arm not goin’ ta stop at ‘er throat. I’ll reelly be lappin’ ‘er up, I can tell ye.”
     “Ye dirty bleeder.”
     “Your just jealous ‘cos it’s me she can’t wait to ger ‘er unds on.”
     “Don’t mak me fookin’ larf. You should’ve seen the way she was lookin’ at ma crootch this after.”
     “You fookin’ wish.”
     “You’ll see. You’ll fookin’ see.”
     “You stand nor chunce woonce she sees the size ‘o my fookin’ dick.”
     “I joost did. She’ll fookin’ die laffin’.”
     “Ye fookin’ pervy coont.”
     “Gerrof! You’re fookin’ oop me dickie bore.”
     “You oughter tie a bore on your orn dick. It might improve your fookin’ chunces.”

     The two crashed out of the toilet and I heard them shuffle down the corridor guffawing. Another second, and they’d have been vulture food.

     By the time I got to Du Rollo’s, the food fight was in full swing. Melissa had already left, haughtily proclaiming that she had no intention of spending the evening with a bunch of mentally retarded children. I couldn’t say I blamed her and would probably have done the same had I not caught sight of Rachel in a her little black dress sitting half way along the first table inside the drapes and that prick, Pip, the Luddite half-wit, with his great smelly arm round her shoulder and his pudgy fingers fiddling with her hair.

     She saw me, and seemed relieved. There was no room at her table and I made for the only one that had spare seats. It was little wonder. The table contained Gordon Skeens, JMPA’s finance director, an overweight heart attack looking for a place to demonstrate its mortal power. The heat rays from his beady little eyes had already steamed up his rimless Nazi specs as they darted here and there no doubt trying to take in the abundance of sleek, brown young skin poking out from all the skimpy little black numbers liberally sprinkled about.

     Rachel noticed where I was heading and made to stand up but the Luddite held her firmly in her place and I decided he should die slowly before the night was over. Also on the table with Skeens was Penny Foster, an accounts clerk from the agency. Unnaturally blonde and too big for the size 12 frock she’d obviously had to shoehorn her size 16 mass into, the over-made-up 45-year-old was already leeringly drunk, her elbows propped on the table, her lipstick - smeared gob alternating between sucking down white wine from the glass in her left hand and great lungs full of smoke from the Marlboro in her right.

     Then, next to Penny, there was Pat, our ex-Desert Rat night watchman and agency gossip. His yellow dentures proclaimed an empty, moronic grin. His jacket and dickie bow were already removed and the sleeves of his translucent nylon shirt, through which his Marks and Sparks vest was clearly visible, were rolled up to reveal blue anchor tattoos on both forearms. Why anchors? He’d been in the fucking army and wasn’t he fond of telling everybody that really interesting fact? Feeling depressed, I pulled out a chair and sat down as a sharp piece of bread roll hit me behind the left ear.

Peter Du Rollo, who flitted from table to table in his usual fawning manner, rubbing his hands together, bowing and scraping like an undertaker’s clerk and grinning through his magnificent Zapata moustache, got hit a couple of times by bits of bread but carried on regardless. He was no doubt mentally adding on a sizable chunk of a gratuity for every missile that found its target to the fortune he was already guaranteed to make out of the evening. Every now and then, Du Rollo would bark an order at this headwaiter, Aldo, who was busily skidding about with trays of this and that and marshalling the other two younger waiters who looked pretty terrified.
“Wha’ you doin’, for Chrisakkes, eh? I mean fuckin’ wha’is this? I tol’ you no one want the fuckin’ soup. Just dish out the main course, innit? You jes cannot get the staff, you know wha’ I mean? How is you, Al? Nice see you. (Shaking my arm half out if its socket and crushing my bicep with his other hand.) Lot crumpet wiv you lot tonight, eh? (Sharp, painful nudge to my rib cage) You aver yourself a fuckin’ good time, wha’?”
Thankfully he quickly moved on to ingratiate someone else.


     The next 3 hours promised to be only slightly more fun if I’d spent them in Alcatraz. I tried to keep my eye on Rachel without appearing obvious. A couple of times I wanted to rush across the room and wrench Pip's head from his shoulders as Rachel was having difficulty keeping his paws from going on a feeling tour of her body. She kept shoving him away but each time his tentacles slapped straight back around her again.

     Towards the end of the meal, when all pretence of formality had gone out of the window, and people were pissed enough to move tables and try to pair off with someone, Rachel got up and made for the cloakrooms. Pip tried to follow her but was too drunk to make it to his feet quickly enough. A few minutes later, fed up with Penny’s leering advances, “My hushband’s gone away on a fishing trip, to Devon, so if you need somewhere to shtay tonight, Al, you’ll be mosht welcome, Al, MOSHT welcome,” I headed for the cloakroom too.

     In the dark, discreet corridor at the back of Du Rollo’s where the toilets were located, I bumped into Rachel. She’d just come out of the ladies. There wasn’t room for us to pass so I flattened myself against the wall to accommodate her tiny body.

     “Hi,” she said in what was no more than a whisper and touched the tips of her fingers against the front of my shirt as she squeezed past. A faint, subtle waft of expensive perfume tantalised my nostrils mixing beautifully with the clean scent of her hair. “Fancy meeting you here.” She stopped trying to pass and leaned her body against mine in the half dark and smiled up at me. “I’m so pleased you came, Al.” Then she reached up and kissed me on the cheek.”

     I heard the horrible whirring sound in the distance again – somewhere far away a dark, un-chartered corner of my mind. I held my breath, praying for it not to start again. Not now. Oh, please God, not now.

     “There y’are, kitten. I thought you’d fooked off an’ left me.” It was Pip. He was leaning against the wall and trying not to fall over. “Oo the fook’s thut? Oh, it’s you Al, ye coont. Canoodling wi’ ma bird, ye cheeky fooker. Tell ye wha’, ye can uv err when ar’ve finished. Can’t say fairer that tha’ can ah?”

     He staggered forward, his fat face grinning out of the darkness like a Halloween Pumpkin. I shoved Rachel behind me and lunged at his crotch. I met my target, squeezed and twisted, slapping my other hand across his ugly gob to stifle his protestation at the same time. Still holding onto my prize, I shoved him against the wall and pressed my mouth close to his ear.

     “I’m only going to say this once, Pip, you fucking Northern maggot. Stay away from her. If you don’t listen to me, I’ll come after you and rip these off and stuff them up your arse. Do you understand?”
     “You coont!” he managed to say from behind my hand.
     “I said do you understand?” With a feeling somewhere between revulsion and joy, I tightened my grip, “Yeeeeah. Leggo, ya bustard.”

     I threw him away from me and he went down on one knee, groaning. I grabbed Rachel’s hand and pulled her round him. I waited for a second while she walked back into the restaurant, then, straightening my dickie bow, I followed. I sat down at the table and realised the spasm threat had passed. Thankfully, Penny Foster had moved tables and was plying her dodgy trade elsewhere. She was sitting on Don’s lap and looked pretty un-stable. They were both as drunk as each other and swaying as one congealed mass. I lit a cigarette and Pat, who hadn’t bothered to go on a table-hopping expedition turned towards me, the same grin still fixed in place.
     
     “Alright, Al? Good do, innit?”
     “Yeah, triffic.” I don’t think he noticed I didn’t share his enthusiasm. He wasn’t noted for his comprehension of cynicism or understanding of subtlety or irony.
     “ Good grub, eh?”
     “Yeah, great.” I couldn’t remember having eaten anything.
     “You ‘avin’ a good time?”
     “Yeah, great.”
     “Penny’s off ‘er tits as usual. She tried it on with old Skeens, didn’t she?
     “Yeah?” I couldn’t have been less interested if I’d found myself in bed with Margaret Thatcher.
     “Yeah. Got the right ‘ump, e’ did.”
     “Really? I can’t imagine why.”
     “Yeah, well, ‘es on the other fuckin’ bus, in ‘e?”
     “What?” I had a brief vision of Skeens dressed as conductor waving to us from the platform of a number 8 Routemaster as it careered along Oxford Street.
     “You know, the other way.” Pat twisted his hand outwards.
     “Oh, you mean…”
     “Yeah. Very nifty under the old shirttails, I imagine. Hangs about in Old Compton Street. I’ve seen him there of a Saturdee in one ‘o them poof bars.”
      “Right.”
     “Saw ‘im frew one of the winders, “ he added quickly, anxious that I didn’t think he was a batting for the other side for an instant, “She sucked his earhole.”
     “What? Who did?”
     “Penny. Pulled it right into her gob, all of it, she did. Thought she’d swallered the fuckin’ fing.”
     “What?”
     “Skeen’s ear ‘ole. You should’ve seen it. He went potty. Stormed out. Went home. Or down to Old Compton street, more like.”

     I looked across at Rachel. Pip was back in his seat but was being a good boy and leaving her alone. He was looking a tad grumpy. Rachel suddenly turned, caught my eye and smiled. She turned back before I could return the gesture.

     “They’re all going to Stringfella’s after.”
     “Who?”
     “This lot. Yeah. It’s all arranged. All paid for. I bet that’ll cost a fuckin’ fortune. I’m not goin’. I’m off home.”
     “That’s a shame.” I lied, the thought of gyrating to some bloodcurdling beat with Rachel on a dance floor presenting my imagination with a slightly more attractive scenario than Pat’s journey home on the tube to Rickmansworth.



Chapter 7: STRINGING IT OUT


     Don and Pip had been lucky. Some creative director, anxious to be trendy, had been impressed by their Northern patter and liked some outrageous piece of work in their portfolio that had a couple of risqué swear words and no doubt a pile of dog shit as a visual in it and given the fuckers a job on the strength of it. As far as I was concerned, they hadn’t paid their dues. They hadn’t burned the Midnight oil or sweated for days on end just to try and do something different. They thought they’d made it and were really worth the ridiculous amount of money they were being paid for doing fuck all as far as I could see, except behaving like animals and trying to grapple with innocent young girls. I resolved very soon after I first met them that I’d find a way to make them pay for the privileges that had so easily fallen at their feet. But really make them pay.

     I was taken to Stringfellows the first time by a friend for a night out to cheer me up just after I’d left Kent and moved to the Smoke. Suzie was a bubbly, fun loving, stunning, young art director who knew how to give a bloke a good time without giving him good time. She’d flirt but that was as far as it went. She was profoundly loyal to Nick, her boyfriend, but was not into staying at home and warming his slippers by the fire, as he would have liked. She was far too full of life for that.

     She was extremely fit, with the kind of neat, trim body most women would have killed for. She kept it that way playing tennis and squash and working out regularly in a couple of trendy West End gymnasiums. She had a face that mesmerised and beguiled every male who happened to be lucky or unlucky enough to glance her way depending on which way you looked at it. Lucky, because her features, framed by a spectacularly thick mop of brown hair styled by Nicky Clarke, in a ‘just-tumbled-out-of-the-hay-loft’ look. Her teeth were immaculate, always displayed through a wide, friendly smile, her hazel eyes alive with the boundless energy that ran through the whole of her magnificent body. Unlucky, because it was impossible for any bloke not to fall desperately in love with her at first sight and there wasn’t enough of her to go around.

     It was 3.30 in the morning by the time Suzie and I had done enough boogying and run out of cocktail money. I’d done my adequate impression of John Travolter and Suzie, hers of a very giggly, high-class hooker on a bar stool. The cocktails came in a variety of exotic names and colours and they’d certainly got us in the mood to take on the chrome dance floor decked out with all the flashing lights from ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.’

     We sat on the bottom steps of the chrome central staircase that divides the open plan upper floor from the lower, watching the last remnants of the previous evening’s revellers trying to decide whether they’d had a good time or not and whether the indulgences of the previous evening had been worth the sneers of their company accountants or their wives’ scorn when they opened the next bank statement.

     An overweight man in his late forties wearing a dinner jacket and puffy, red face complete with stupidly vacant expression leaned his hand and full weight on Suzie’s shoulder as he stepped uncertainly past us. His bow tie hung untied from his bulging neck and his jacket was covered with a rich mixture of cigarette ash and dandruff.

     “Hey, take it easy,” she protested. He just grinned inanely and tried to look down the front of her frock.
     “Don’t worry,” I said, “His heart attack’s gonna take him out any second now,” and we both laughed out loud.

* * * * * * * * *

     The opening chords of Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted To Love’ galvanised Rachel into action. She grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the bar onto the Stringfellows dance floor. The floor was flooded with gyrating bodies, most of which were guided by the consumption of alcohol, the amount consumed dictating the fluidity of movement or lack of it.

     Rachel moved like a diva, her arms raised above her head like jungle vines, her body gyrating in an abandoned, uninhibited snakelike motion - overtly sexual and totally at one with the driving pulse of the music. She was dancing for me - at me. Every movement was rude, dirty, and promiscuous as she thrust her hips in a deliberate sexual motion. She was totally hypnotic - a complete and utter turn on. She had me. I was caught like a rabbit in the headlights and she knew it. She took things to a level way above. She accentuated every part of her body in turn with her movements. After a couple more earth moving tracks, the DJ, in his wisdom, put on Dire Straits’ ‘Love Over Gold’. Rachel fell into my arms automatically as the lights went down and, clasping her hands at the back of my head, hung herself round my neck as we shuffled in a tiny circle.

     This had never happened to me before – a member of the female species throwing herself at me so spontaneously. I had always been a bit shy and had missed a number of opportunities with women over the years due to that fact. She glued her face to the front of my shirt and allowed my hands to gently explore her back and sides. It’s always difficult to know how far to go in a situation like that. Prats like Pip and Don, had no such inhibitions, and greedily grabbed at what they could get away with plus anything else in the vicinity. But I didn’t want to be categorised as belonging in the same pigpen. When a certain part of my anatomy made its presence felt, she raised her face to mine, still with her eyes closed. I kissed her lightly on the mouth. It was just a peck but enough to get a response. When our mouths eventually parted she said quietly, “You are a sod,” which I thought a bit rich as she’d done most of the running.


* * * * * * * *


     “I said, do you think the 10 second cut works?" The jagged edge of Melissa’s voice sliced me out of my daydream and back to reality.
     “Yeah, I think so.”
     “I don’t think your mind’s on the job – on second thoughts, that’s probably exactly where it is. I did point out about a minute a go that I didn’t think the middle cut of the car in close up works but you couldn’t have heard me. Perhaps you should get your ears syringed.”

     Melissa rudely barked an order in the direction of the circle of blue light at the back of the viewing theatre to re-run the rough cuts of the Milk commercial. Terry, Rod, Melissa, John, the editor, and I were in ‘Rushes’ the editing company the morning after the shoot had finished. A shorter cut close up shot of the car was substituted though Melissa and Terry argued for a good half an hour about the merits of the exercise. Need-less-to-say, Melissa won, the two of them having tried to out-smoke each other, during their fervent discussion.

     Outside in Dean Street rain was falling steadily and Melissa decided she had an overwhelming urge for ‘shoe buying therapy’ and went west towards Bond Street. I continued north up Dean Street, stopping at a tobacconists’ on the way. That was when I saw Keith. He was standing outside the shop looking in the window. As I left the shop I spoke to him.

     “Hi, Keith. How’re you doing?” He looked through me with no hint of recognition. The hand I’d offered him hung limply in space and his face remained like stone, “Well, I can’t stand here chatting all day…” The sarcasm just slipped out and luckily flew straight over Keith’s head, “See you around.” I patted him on the arm, glad to move on.

     It wasn’t till I reached Oxford Circus, stopped at the kerb and turned to look into the oncoming traffic that I saw Keith about a dozen people to my left. Then I saw him again about 20 yards behind me when I reached Charlotte Street. It was obvious to a blind man he was following me.

MINE

     It must have been 3.30 when Rachel and I got to the flat. Neither of us was drunk unlike most if those we’d managed to shake off when we left Stringfellows, but we’d had enough to dissolve a few inhibitions. In the cab she’d squeezed really close. I wanted to kiss her but she was jammed tight and didn’t seem to want to move. I was hardly complaining. The smell of her clean hair filled my nostrils again and I closed my eyes as if that would help me capture the fragrance and keep it.

     Not wishing to be a subject of post agency binge gossip, we’d agreed to go off in different directions when we stepped onto the street from Stringfellows. Rachel went down St Martin’s Lane towards Trafalgar Square and turned left into Longacre. I headed north and took the first right towards Neil Street. We met up outside Pineapple Dance Studios and were lucky enough to grab a cab that was in the process of dropping someone off. That dick-head, Pip, tried to follow Rachel when she left the club but was so dazed and confused by the river of alcohol coursing through his veins, he fell backwards against a bouncer who looked like Mr T from the A-Team who elbowed him sharply in the ribs, sending him sprawling. I didn’t see what happened next, having already left the scene.

     Less than an hour later Rachel and I lay flat on our backs in the half dark of my dingy room in Pennethorne Close. We held hands her breathing regular and relaxed. The urgency of a few minutes before was gone - dissipated into a blurred, surreal memory – a mixture of searing, hungry energy and, oddly, of deep unfathomable pain.

     She sighed and broke the silence. “You know, I never thought I’d fall…” she began and trailed off.
     “What?”
     “Well, for someone…”
     “Old?”
     “No. Well, I mean…Older.”
     “How old are you?” I said, dreading her answer.
     “22.”
     “Right.” I said trying to sound unconcerned. (‘Jesus.’) I thought, desperately trying to work out if I was old enough to be her father, realising I was, and then not being sure if I felt like a nonce and the idea being one big turn on, or whether I was just plain scared shitless.


Chapter 7: WHEREFORE ART THOU?


     The phone rang at the other end for ages before someone picked it up. “Hi, Abbi? It’s Al. I was just wondering if you’ve seen Rachel since the accident.” My contempt for Rachel over her sudden departure was short lived. In fact, I’d have to admit, I didn’t remember missing anyone quite so badly in all my life, pathetic as that may sound.

     “No. I haven’t. How are you, Al?” Abbi didn’t show much concern for Rachel’s absence.
     “I’m fine.” I was far from fine.
     “Good. Are you coming to my 18th birthday party next week? It’s in the Rose and Crown upstairs. It’s fancy dress.” She sounded excited but I was mentally comparing her to Rachel. She did better than most but still didn’t quite measure up.
     “I don’t know. Depends how busy I am at work.”
     “It’s on a Saturday.”
     “Yeah, but you know what it’s like.” I didn’t give a shit about her bloody party. “So when was the last time you saw her, Rachel, I mean, before the accident?”
     “A couple of weeks ago, just after she started at your place. How’s she getting on?”
     “Fine. But she hasn’t been in for a few days and no one seems to know where she was.” I tried not to sound concerned.
     “She was probably at her Dad’s place in Essex or maybe she’d gone back to university, though I can’t see her doing that.”
     “No?”
     “No. She only went there because it was what her Dad wanted but she wanted to leave and earn some money.”
     “I wouldn’t have thought she needed to.”
     “She doesn’t, but she wants her independence…like we all do in the end.”
     “Right. Do you have her Dad’s number?”
     “No. There no point in having it – it keeps changing.”
     “Right. OK. If you do see her, ask her to call me, will you?”
     “OK. What are you going to come as?”
     “What?”
     “My party. What are you going to come as? Christian says he’s coming as a bogey.”
     “That sounds like Chris. See you, Abbi.” I hoped it hadn’t shown in my voice that I wanted to get off the phone but the last thing I needed to talk about right then was Abbi’s impending bloody 18th.
     “Bye, Al. See you next Saturday.”
     “Sure. Bye.”

     As I placed the receiver back in the cradle the phone rang. It made me jump and I actually cried out. I picked up the receiver again and Terry Spoke.

     “Al? Tel. You got a second?”
     “Sure.”
     “Fuckin’ weird, this! Don’t make any sense.”
     “What doesn’t?”
     “Something peculiar’s turned up. What’re you doin’ now?”
     “Not a lot, but I’ve just got home from work. I’m creamed.”
     “Look, I could try and tell you about it over the phone but it’s best that you see it for yourself. Can you get in a cab and come over to rushes?”
     “Now?”
     “Yeah.”
     “What, have you re-cut the film? Look, I don’t want to start pissing about behind Melissa’s back. Life’s far too short for all that.”
     “No, it’s nuffin’ like that. It is to do with the film, though. I’m here with Ronnie, one of the editors and we’ve come across something that really don’t make an awful lot of sense. I really want you to have a gander.”
     “Oh…what’s the time? 8.30. OK. Give me half an hour.

     45 minutes later, the taxi splashed to a stop outside Rushes in Old Compton Street. The rain was hosing down, which didn’t help my mood. Upstairs in one of the editing suites, I found Terry leaning over the Moviola beneath a thick cloud of French cigarette smoke while a guy about Crispin’s age toyed with the controls and the machine’s rickety machine gun sound echoed round the big, open-plan room. Terry couldn’t have been more pleased to see me if I’d been Father Christmas.

     “Al. Glad you made it. Come and look at this.” I stood behind him and looked down at the tiny viewing screen. “Al, this is Ronnie. Ronnie, Al.” Ronnie and I said ‘Hi’ in unison. “Run the whole section, Ronnie. Now, watch closely, Al. Tell me what you see.”

     The machine gun started up and the flickering picture showed the Chevette parked in the middle of the whiteout cove. It was a wide shot, and the car looked like a Dinky Toy. Suddenly, it shot backwards across the set and crashed through the wall. The whole firework display that we’d seen on the shoot was replayed, then, the screen went black.

     “How come you’ve got that on film? That was a rehearsal, wasn’t it?”
     “Yeah, but Dusty, the operator, ran film because he said he knew that wanker was going to do something fuckin’ stupid and he wanted to make sure he got it for posterity. What did you see?” Terry was quite agitated.
     “I saw the car going backwards through the wall followed by November the fifth.”
     “What else?”
     “Nothing. Was I supposed to?”
     “Run it again in slo-mo, Ronnie.” Ronnie pressed a button and the film clattered through the gate (the bit where the film was displayed on a tiny screen) at about half speed. The car appeared as a flickering image in the centre of the screen like before and then ran backwards until it went through the wall. The lights flickered and the screen went momentarily black.
     “There. Look. Did you see it?” Terry almost burst my eardrum being so close.
     “What? You mean when the screen went black?”
     “Yeah!”
     “So the screen went black, and next come more fireworks. So?”
     “Run it again, Ronnie.” The film was already clattering through the gate. “Now, watch. Look, right there.”
     “So there’s a scratch across a couple of frames. I’ve seen it a thousand times.” There did seem to be a white mark, which appeared for a split second as the screen went black.
     “It’s on about 8 frames and it ‘ain’t a scratch.”
     “Well, a chemical mark, a bleach mark, or something.”
     “No. It ain’t any of that. Freeze on it, Ronnie.”

     The film stopped rattling, Ronnie pressed another button, which slammed the machine into reverse and the rattling continued. The picture in the gate turned black except for what looked like a tiny ragged white blob near the bottom of the frame and Ronnie hit the brakes.

     “Take a butcher’s though this, Sherlock.” Terry handed me a brass-edged, antique looking magnifying glass. I placed the magnifier over the little screen, bent my head so that my face was almost touching the glass and focused on the white blob. It was a figure, or what looked like a figure. It was standing to the left of where the car was parked, and towards the centre of the frame.
     “That’s one hell of an illusion.” I offered.
     “It’s no illusion.” Said Terry, a bit disgruntled.
     “Well, it must be - unless someone in the lab’s taking the piss. It still could be a scratch or mark that just happens to look like a figure. It’s not so unusual. I mean what about all those faces of Christ people keep finding in stones or slices of bread and stuff?”
     “We’ve checked with the lab. It’s definitely not an optical effect or a bit of clever fuckin’ retouchin’. It’d show up on the emulsion and they’ve checked that. There’s nothing there.”
     “What, and you’ve taken their word for it?”
     “I spoke to Frank Manor. I’ve known him for fuckin’ years and he don’t bullshit. The other thing about him is he ain’t got a sense of humour and certainly ain’t into practical fuckin’ jokes.”
     “Well, it’s all very interesting, Tel, but I hope there’s a point to bringing me all the way over here on such a shit night.”
     “Fuck, Al. There wasn’t no–one standin’ next to the car when the film was runnin’ through the fuckin’ camera. Now there is.”
     “Teriffic! What do you want me to do about it?”     
      “Oh, well, I’m sorry to spoil your fuckin’ evenin’. I thought you’d be interested.” Terry was angrier than I’d seen him since a wayward account director talked a client into changing his mind about a shot he’d had taken two days to set up and light on an RAF film we’d made together.
     “All right, mate. Take it easy. I just don’t see what you want me to say. I mean, OK I can’t explain it either, but stranger things have happened at sea or whatever. Can we project it, Ronnie?” I found myself trying to be more enthusiastic than I actually was.
     “No. We’d have to freeze-frame and the film would melt. The best I can do is have a still print done, a bromide or something. I could get that by tomorrow.”
     “OK. Let’s do that. Tel?”
     “Yeah, OK. That makes sense.”
     “C’mon. Let me buy you two a drink.”
     “Sound like a fuckin’ good idea.” At least the grin had returned to Terry’s ugly mug.

     As we made our way in the pouring rain to the Blue Posts in Berwick Street the figure on the film was still on Terry’s mind. “Did you see what it was wearing? The figure, I mean.”

     “Not really. It was a bit bleached out.”
     “It was a British First World War infantry uniform complete with rain cape, tin hat and gas mask.”
     “Yeah?”
     “Yeah. And the fucker ‘ad a bleedin’ rifle, an’ all.”
     “Yeah? Was it loaded?”
     “Areshole!” said Terry, following up with one of his characteristic wheezy cackles. At least he’d managed to recover his sense of humour.

* * * * * * *


     Big multinational advertising agencies have offices in most major cities in the democratic world where one would expect advertising to be considered an important economic concern. They also stretch their tentacles into perceived up-and-coming markets in less democratic counties with a scattering of smaller satellite offices to keep things ticking over in case of a major political change which might allow business to flourish more freely.

     McKenzie, the agency where Melissa and I worked, was no exception and had an office in Istanbul where not much happened, Istanbul being the capital city of a fairly extreme Muslim country where advertising was tolerated but not actively encouraged. The office was manned by a skeleton staff of an account director, a couple of secretaries, a local writer, essential for communicating in Turkish, and a temporary art director supplied from the UK office.

     Being seconded to a place like Istanbul was considered professional suicide in the advertising business, as was a spell in many of the other foreign offices with the exception of the major ones like San Francisco, New York and Sydney who’s sophisticated approach to advertising matched that of the UK. Different world markets had different needs and the advertising industry in those markets had to cater for those needs.
After the number of crisis’s I’d been through in the last couple of years and now finding myself embroiled in an affair which could cost me my legs or my knee-caps at the very least, it did cross my mind that the risk of becoming out of touch might not only be worthwhile but desirable and Istanbul started to become quite an attractive proposition.

     McKenzie Inc was different from most other multi–nationals in the respect that most of them allowed each of their national offices to do its own thing and cater to its own markets - Continental, British, Australian and American consumers having different cultural attitudes and expectations from each other as well as markets further affield. McKenzie’s own network had a less sophisticated view and believed there was a middle-ground compromise of what they termed ‘International Advertising’, a sort of all things to all men approach, which meant ideas had to be watered down and simplified to make sure they spread across every international market.

     It was a philosophy that led to mediocre, dull work and was the kind of stuff both Melissa and both despised and hated. It also meant that McKenzie had acquired the reputation for being a dull and boring place that some of the larger, more high profile domestic brands steered clear of.

     Melissa and I had been employed by McKenzie to produce the kind of high profile creative work that the agency, wrapped up in its international ethos, no longer had the ability to produce if it ever had had the knack or know-how to do so in the first place. This cost them a lot of money in terms of our salaries and inducement packages and they also had to sign an agreement that we would be allowed to operate outside the agency mainstream philosophy. In other words, the agency management would leave us the fuck alone and let us get on with the job without interference. We still had to answer to Steve Reynolds up to a point, but as I said earlier, Melissa had her own way of dealing with creative directors who crossed her.

     Also, we didn’t have to deal with executives from McKenzie’s American holding company, Interstella. These were extremely unpleasant people who effused a creepy, patronising manner, and seemed to live in a world that wasn’t part of or even related to ordinary, every day life, but rather connected to some powerful, sinister, unseen regime that rumour said had strong links to the Mafia. Indeed, there was one particular high-ranking executive who looked like he was straight out of the Godfather.

     Phil Dior was one of the highest of the high, and had quite a formidable presence to all but Melissa who feared and revered no one on the planet and me, who’d was gradually turning into a cold fish of almost pre-human abnormality. Dressed usually in lightweight cream coloured suits stretched across the magnificent expanse of his 260lb frame, Dior would sit like a Buda occupying the whole of a sofa, his wide, luridly patterned tie lying like a landed mackerel across his distinctly over-lunched gut as he continuously displayed the perfect, flashing plastic smile that only perfect Hollywood dentistry like his could muster and transmitting all the charm of a jolly but ravenous barracuda

     Slightly further down the scale in McKenzie’s great scheme of things was our own Chairman and Vice President, Brian Night. A 5ft 3 bald-on-top man with a long, sharp beak-like nose and the kind of bushy sideburns and hair flowing over his collar Mr Pickwick would have been proud of, Night obviously suffered from small man syndrome, and was consequently a rude, bumptious bully. But being English with a deep, cultured voice that was sometimes difficult to hear, (which was just as well, because, to me, he talked absolute crap), and foppish in his 1940’s double-breasted mode of dress, the Americans adored and almost revered him like he was some kind of guru.

     Night spent most of his time jet-setting around the globe lecturing to various agency offices and clients and talking the kind of over-intellectual bollocks about advertising and brands and consumers that would confuse most sensible people and make those of us who understood their art and practised it with passion want to throw up. You read what Brian Night says and you think, ‘yeah, right…’ and then you think, WHAT?

     The agency sycophants shuddered in their collective boots whenever Brian Night was in town as if it was a visit from Jesus Himself. I thought Brian Night was a complete wanker with not one creative cell in his rotund little body, and the fact that he professed to once having been a copywriter meant 0.0% of fuck all to me.

     He never made eye contact, which I took as a sure sign of paranoia. I once borrowed a large framed picture of Humphrey Bogard to use in the background of a photographic shoot from his office wall (he considered himself to be a great aficionado) and as I was taking it down, without looking up from the coffee table where he was stooped with his arse on the huge leather sofa no doubt writing another of his obscure speeches he said, “Don’t fuck it up, there’s good chap.”

     The picture was on the wall behind him and it was all I could do to stop myself from bringing it down on the quite welcoming dome of his shiny pate and framing him with it. Night was also an incredible letch. I suppose most men are if they’re honest. It’s just some are more subtle and less obvious than others. Night thought he could buy whichever woman he wanted and I suppose, to some degree, he could with his income, connections, facilities and power. My crazy, beautiful pal, Suzie, once almost fell into his clutches by allowing herself to get conned into visiting him in his hotel room at Inn On The Park by Hyde Park Corner, to discuss an agency mailer she was involved in designing. Suzie could be infuriatingly naive sometimes and frequently displayed all the intelligence of a delightfully half-witted butterfly.

     She and Night had dinner in his suite with copious amounts of Dom Perignon on offer. But Suzie, being so overwhelmingly attractive, was pretty used to getting herself out of sticky situations and when Night suggested she stayed the night, despite the fact that she was pretty pissed, and having already noticed the matching set of posh towelling dressing gowns laid across the bed, she grabbed up her bag, blew Night a kiss goodnight and made for the door which she found locked. She then told Night quietly but succinctly that if he didn’t let her out that she would scream the place down and that her boyfriend, Nick, would make hamburger out of his face. It worked. He unlocked the door without a murmur and she left the hotel. A short time after, she also left the agency discovering to her surprise one Friday afternoon that she no longer had a job.

     About a week before she disappeared, I was pretty pissed off to find Rachel chatting with Night one day in a corridor. He was smiling in a discernibly salivating manner and she looked nervous. I walked past and heard a bit of what he was saying.

     “Give it some thought over the weekend. We can chat again on Monday. I’ll be in New York but you can get Val to connect us.”

     Later Rachel told me that he’d stopped her and asked if she wanted to become one of his PAs. He told her she’d get free foreign travel and have use of an apartment in Rome, plus a fairly hefty expense account to buy clothes. She said Night really gave her the creeps and she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to lose her job but said she would leave rather than face up to the leering bastard. That’s how I put it – Rachel wasn’t capable of saying a bad word about anyone.

     I told Rachel not to worry and that I’d take care of it. She begged me not to do anything that would lose me my job but I told her I had a contract with Interstella who’d by-passed Night to hire Melissa and I and that I wasn’t answerable to him for anything. This was only true in part and Night was present at our final interview at which he spent most of his time trying to intellectually chat up Melissa and failing abysmally. She might as well have been sculptured in ice iceberg for all the good his efforts did him.

     It did cross my mind to go straight to Night’s office and beat the shit out of the little weasel but I had a better idea. I’d tell his girlfriend instead.

     His girlfriend was Nicky, a copywriter at the agency and a very tough, ambitious individual at that. Maybe not quite in Melissa’s class creatively, she was still very professional and nobody’s fool. She was tall and striking, with long blonde hair and was quite beautiful in a hard-lined sort of way. She had very large but well-proportioned breasts and long legs and she never wore trousers – always skirts and high heels. She was married to another writer who was quite famous in the business when she became a member of Nights concubine. Unfortunately for Night, he didn’t know what he was taking on and only became aware of her power when she announced one day that she’d sent his other women packing and that she’d tolerate no such shenanigans in the future.

     She’d paid a visit to each of the other four women Night had in tow at the time and told them to pack their bags and get out of town if they knew what was good for them, but in terms probably a bit stronger that I could imagine based on a contretemps I once saw her have with one of the creative secretaries.

     Nicky’s attack methodology was pretty ferocious and physical without actually throwing a punch. Apparently, Paula, a rather pleasing, plump, Jewish girl had retyped one of Nicky’s scripts but made the same mistakes she’d made when she typed it the first time. I was near the bay when Nicky came striding across from her office with the script in her hand and launched in on the unsuspecting secretary.

     “Listen, you stupid fat cow, when I ask you to correct a script that you were lazy enough to fuck up in the first place because you spend all your time on the phone to your stupid fucking fiancé instead of doing what you’re paid for, I don’t expect it to be wrong again.” She tore the 2 sheets of paper into pieces and threw them into Paula’s face like confetti before grabbing the typist’s desk and turning it over jetting all the contents including a cup of coffee across the floor. Then she screamed at Paula, their noses almost touching, “NOW GET UP OFF YOUR LAZY, FAT, JEWISH FUCKING ARSE AND GET IT RIGHT OR I’LL MAKE YOU WISH YOU’D NEVER BEEN BORN.” Then she turned on her heel and walked calmly back to her office as if nothing had happened.

     Nicky and Melissa got on well and it wasn’t till I was having lunch with the two of them one day and slagging off Brian Night that it became apparent that he and Nicky were, in fact, an item.

     “Oh, he’s not really so bad once you get to know him.” That was all she had to say for the penny to drop like Quasimodo’s bell falling from the tower of Notre Dame and onto my head. What I did, then, was corny, girly-like but very effective. I sent Nicky an anonymous memo in a sealed envelope.

     I am sorry to bring this to your attention but I thought you ought to know for everybody’s sakes that Brian Night is up to his old tricks again and offering to facilitate the career of a young female member of staff. She’s is a perfectly innocent party in this and is not complicit in any way. She has turned down the ‘offers’ Mr Night has made I would therefore be extremely disappointed if her job or place in the company were in any way to suffer as a result and I would be obliged to take the matter further officially were this to be the case. The lady’s name will not be disclosed and she herself will not mention the harassment she has suffered to anyone else if it ceases forthwith. I trust you will take the appropriate action.

     Thank you.


     I had absolutely no doubt whatever that this would do the trick. A few days later I saw Rachel pass Brian Night in the corridor he walked straight by as if she wasn’t there. I would love to have been a fly on the wall when Nicky confronted the little turd over his intended discretion.


     Rachel had been missing for a whole week before the Roller episode and that had been bad enough, but having seen her unconscious and hurt on top of that and not being able to do anything about it was agonising. Melissa was less than sympathetic. I hadn’t said anything but she knew Rachel wasn’t around and it didn’t take an Einstein to figure out why I was behaving like a Grizzly Bear who needed urgent root canal treatment.

     “There are plenty more Tiddlers in the sea, dear boy. You need to get drunk and forget all about the sweet young thing and I’ll be only too happy to help you achieve a sufficiently numbing state of inebriation as soon as you’ve done the Fray Bentos Corned Beef storyboard we promised two days ago, the task of which, for so multitalented an art director as you, if you can concentrate for more than thirty seconds at a time, will take us up to lunchtime.”

     Grumpily, I picked up a thick Pentel Pen N60, half intending to stab her in the eye with it, and started to draw. I didn’t need to use the thick N60 type pen but, being spirit based, they have a really pungent smell which I knew Melissa couldn’t stand so just taking the cap off had nearly as satisfying an effect as ramming the thing into her eye socket.

     “You absolute bastard. You don’t have to use the thick one. You’re just doing it to annoy me. How can you be so childish and petty?”
     “I thought you said you liked them thick.” I said without looking up.

     I didn’t know if she caught the significance of my comment, but I did achieve the desired effect and she performed her usual dramatic exit ritual punctuated with her own brand of vitriol.

     “Do let me know when you’ve stopped wearing nappies. The smell’s unbearable.”

     Melissa went across the bay and into Laura’s office, closing the door behind her. She liked Laura and she didn’t like many women. I think it was more Rusty, Laura’s Shitzu, that Melissa had fallen for which made life for Laura a little easier when she had to deal with the mad cow.

     After about half an hour of forcing myself to draw tins of corned beef for the very boring commercial we had to make for a very boring client whom the agency was making pay through the nose for it and then some, my phone rang. It was Rachel.

     “Alan?” she sounded tired and a long way off, “It’s me, Rachel.”
     “Where are you? I was concerned.” I didn’t want to say worried. Worried seemed to presume too much. We’d only made love…OK, shagged, on two occasions after all and I didn’t want her to think…well, I’m not sure what I didn’t want her to think.
     “I can’t say. Not on the phone. I’m going to send you a note. It’ll be in a little yellow envelope. Look out for it. You should get it tomorrow.”
     “Are you OK?”
     “Yes. I’m fine.”
     “What about the bump on your head?”
     “What?” she sounded more than a little surprised.
     “I was there. In the restaurant, I saw the whole thing. The bloody Roller only just missed us when it came through the window. What the hell’s going on?”
     “Oh, God no.” she started to cry.
     “Look, when can I see you?”
     “Not now. Not yet. I don’t know. Listen, I have to go…” The line went dead.
     “Rachel…?”
     “Rachel, Rachel. Wherefore art thou, Rachel?” Melissa swept back into the room right on cue carrying plastic beakers. “She’s turned up, then? Where has she been hiding? Some abortion clinic, I’ll be bound.” She sat down, crossed one leg over the other with the squeak of fine expensive net against fine expensive net and grinned. Taking a tentative sip from the steaming liquid posing for coffee in the plastic beaker followed by a heavy drag from a fresh Silk Cut, she cocked her head at my layout pad. “LOVE the storyboard, Ducky. You’re SO talented. Now, where are we going for lunch? That’s the most pressing item on the agenda.”
     “No. I don’t fancy it. I’m going to stay in and finish the storyboard.”
     “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve almost finished it anyway. You can knock in the last couple of frames later. We’ve shown willing, that’s the main thing. You’ve done enough to keep the account group off our backs. I’ll call Vicky and tell her she can have it tomorrow morning. (Vicky Cooke was the account manager. Account managers do all the work while the account directors have lunch.) You, dear boy, are coming out to lunch whether you like it or not. I’m going to take you in hand. Well, actually, that’s the last thing I’m going to do. You should be so lucky.” She picked up the phone and hit the push buttons with one of her index finger talons.
     “You’ve just got to pull yourself together…oh, Christ, the dénouements are coming thick and fast today. You see, there I go again…Vicky! How are you? Yes it’s a beautiful day. Listen, you can have your wretched storyboard tomorrow morning. It’s nearly done but we have to go over to Soho… Ugh… Agh… Ya…” She puffed away furiously at her Silk Cut showing it no mercy whatsoever. “Well, that’s unfortunate, Vicky, you’ll just have to un-book the client for 4 ‘o-clock this afternoon. How many times must I tell you not to book the client for meetings before consulting your creative team first? Ugha…that’s as maybe but we ran into some technical problems, which have put us back half a day. Well, I’m sorry, you’ll just have to tell him he can’t have it, won’t you? No. That’s just not possible. Tell Brian Night by all means. Tell the Queen, if you think it’ll make you feel any better. Maybe she can get Prince Philip to get his crayons out and finish your storyboard for 4 o’-clock. But you’d better get your skates on, the Palace closes for lunch.” She dropped the receiver back onto the cradle instantly severing any further protestations from the account group and strode across to the coat-stand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before they descend on us mob handed. I’m just not in the mood for an argument.”

     She could’ve fooled me.



Chapter 8: CONFESSING

     We went to the Natraj, a small, cheapish Indian restaurant in Charlotte Street. I’d never been a fan of Indian food but Melissa was quite a connoisseur and a regular consumer. It was the only place she and I ever ate together on our own. And we only ever ate together on our own when she was feeling friendly or wanted to gossip and as she was only friendly when she wanted something, I guessed I was in for an ear bashing as well as the mild lamb Korma I always ordered.

     “I’m worried about you,” she suddenly said over the top of her glass of claret.
     “Yeah?” I didn’t take her comment seriously, believing it an overture to a session of piss taking.
     “You seem preoccupied about something and I don’t think its fanny.”
     “Who?”
     “You know perfectly well what I mean.”
     “You mean ‘pussy’, don’t you?”
     “I hate that expression,” she almost spat, “Pussy means cat. Fanny means cunt.”

     Quite why she objected to the term ‘pussy’ but didn’t flinch at the use of the C word eluded me totally. I swallowed the scotch and ice the waiter had just put down and broke off a piece of pop Odom.

     “Come on, now. Tell Aunty Melissa all about it.” she said smiling.
     “About what?”
     She put her glass down and watched her finger as she ran it round the rim. “Look, it’s none of my business, but we have a mutual acquaintance, Sandy, and he was telling me the other evening that you’d had a bit of trouble a while back.” She gave me a kind of doleful look. “Tell me to fuck off if you like and we’ll talk about something else.”
     “Sandy’s got a big fucking mouth. I didn’t know you knew him.”
     “I used to work with his wife, Joanna. I had dinner with them on Saturday.”

     She was probing. I had no idea what Sandy had told her or how much but I wasn’t about to volunteer anything. She lit a Silk Cut and drew on it heavily, blowing the smoke down her nostrils. Realizing I wasn’t going to give out she knew she’d have to stick a couple more of her exquisitely manicured toes into the water.

     “Sandy said you’d had a sort of breakdown.”
     “Did he? I wonder why he said that.”
     “He said someone put something in your drink.”
     “Did he?”
     “You’re not making this easy for me.”
     “Should I be?”
     The waiter arrived with a first lot of hauderves. “Look, as I said, it’s none of my business…”
     “You’re right about that.”
     “Bollocks. I’m making a real lash up of this. And now I’m embarrassed.”
     “You’re blushing.” I said through a totally manufactured laugh.
     “Fuck off!”

     I re-filled her glass. She was embarrassed and I didn’t really care. I wondered just how tough she was underneath that precise makeup and Footlights exterior. She was a bloody nosy cow but at least she had a brain. I quite admired her in some ways. I wished I’d had her ability to see so many moves ahead when it came to dealing with the political part of the job. She was like a Russian chess player but nowhere near as inscrutably boring. In fact, the one thing I could never accuse Melissa of being was boring. She was a severe pain in the balls most of the time but very entertaining in a cringe-making sort of way. I decided it might be fun to see just how tough she really was.

     “Look, there’s not much to tell. Some bastard did put something in my drink and I wound up in the nut house. It’s as simple as that, really.” I thought I could at least enjoy dangling a couple of morsels in front of her and watch her squirm when I refused her the big mouthful.
     Melissa leaned forward, encouraged by the apparent chink in my armour. “Jeesus. What was it? That they put in your drink, I mean.” She took a hungry gulp of wine forgetting that she was supposed to be hiding her enthusiasm.
     “LSD.”
     “Really? Christ!”
     “Yeah, really. LS fucking D.”
     “What happened?”
     “I told you, I ended up in the loony bin.”
     “You mean a psychiatric ward.”
     “No, I mean the loony bin. There was a psychiatric ward attached to it but it was definitely a loony bin on account of there were a lot of loonies in there. And I don’t mean just people who’d had breakdowns and stuff, but real, bona fide, one hundred percent, crazy to the core fucking loonies.”
     “You’re kidding.”
     “Nope - as potty as they come, most of them. Completely bonkers and completely harmless, but held under the Mental Health Act, none-the-less.”
     “But what happened when you drank the stuff?”
     “No idea. I don’t know when I drank it. It was sometime during the evening.” A puff of Silk Cut smoke hit me right in the eyes and I winced. Melissa made no attempt to apologise. I really had her attention.
     “But what happened when…you know, when you started tripping?” I had her on the line and was starting to reel her in.
     “You probably already know. You must have done loads of stuff at Cambridge.”
     “Yah, I did. I fucked the Dean of my college one Sunday afternoon. But I never did LSD. Too damned scary for me - all that chemical stuff doing Christ knows what to one’s faculties. There’s enough brain damage from everyday life as it is. Who needs to accelerate the onset of dementia? It’ll probably get most of us in the end anyway. It’s already got half our account teams and our illustrious creative director as far as I can see.”
     “You screwed the Dean?”
     “Yah.”
     “Was he any good?”
     “About as much good as a knife in a gunfight. I only did it for a bet. He was crap, but I think he enjoyed himself judging by all the moaning and grunting he did.”
     “Did you?”
     “What?”
     “Enjoy it.”
     “He thought I did. I screamed the place down. We were in his study sitting room. He’d locked the door and someone tried to get in. Must have thought I was being murdered. You should have seen his face. Talk about panic. He suddenly went all soft on me.”
     “You mean you faked it?”
     “Of course. It takes a real man to make me come.” She shot me a glance that was supposed to melt my brain but it didn’t even melt the butter in the dish on the table.
     “Do you often fake it?”
     “Only when I’m bored and I want someone to stop. Works every time.”
     “Are you actually a screamer?”
     “That’s something you’ll never have the pleasure of knowing. Now, aren’t we getting a little off the subject?”
     “Yes. You were telling me you were worried about me.”
     “I just said that to get you talking.”
     “You cow.”
     “I’ve been called worse. So what did it do to you?”
     “What, sex? I don’t know yet. I haven’t had enough to say whether there are any lasting effects except that it’s a bit like Chinese food…”
     “Don’t bother to finish the joke. Just tell me what the fucking LSD did to your brain, though I think I’m getting a pretty good idea.”
     “You haven’t any idea. None whatsoever.” The words came out like white-hot coals fresh from a furnace.
     “Go on,” she said quietly and with just a hint of caution.

     Some creative teams are really close, best friends, often with interlocking families and wives and kids spending time together. Most aren’t, their relationship being based on a purely professional basis. There has to be mutual respect for each other’s craft and the same ambition to produce the best possible work. There also has to be a certain amount of trust for a team to be productive. Some people describe the creative team bond as being like a marriage and I suppose that’s true to some degree, with pairs spending a third of their lives in the other’s company, inevitably, a closeness between partners forms. You get to know how the other thinks and vice versa. As in any marriage, you can sometimes hate the sight of the other person but over time, the relationship can become quite deep in an unspoken kind of way. But our relationship was nothing like a marriage unless all marriages were nightmares, which at that time I thought was pretty near the truth. Whatever, without much hesitation, I told her what she wanted to know – up to a point.

     “It’s weird,” I said, “There are no blank bits. No unconsciousness. Like when I had an accident once. I fell on my head from about 5ft onto a wooden floor. I was mucking about making a human pyramid with some mates after an indoor five a side football match. Being the smallest and lightest, I was last one on. I remember taking a running jump and getting my feet on someone’s shoulders, losing my balance and reaching down to try and steady myself and then…nothing. The next thing I remember was being in a wheel chair and yelling then in an ambulance – then again on a trolley in a hospital corridor.
     “When I tried to speak it came out backwards. One of the nurses said it was called brain shake. It’s when your brain gets bashed against the side of your skull. When you come round – if you come round, you speak gobbledegook. Apparently, I went straight down like an arrow, headfirst onto the floor. By rights I should have broken my neck.
     “Also, you know when you have an operation and they count you down into oblivion?”       Melissa shook her head. “Never been in hospital. Never had an operation, but go on.”
     “There’s a moment when you can feel yourself going, then…you’re coming round. There’s no memory of what was in between. Nothing. It’s why I’m not afraid of dying. Because there’s nothing - no memory, no pain, no experience of any kind - one minute you’re breathing, the next you’re not. There’s only conscious and unconscious - life and death. Nothing either side.” Melissa didn’t comment. “Anyway,” I went on, “one minute I was enjoying a pint in the King and Queen and the next I was flying over Hampstead Heath.”
     “You mean like in a dream? The hallucination, I mean.”
     “It wasn’t a dream. I was flying. I was really there.”
     “The mind can do some amazing things.”
     “No, you don’t understand. I wasn’t hallucinating. I WAS flying.”
     Melissa squinted slightly as if confused. Maybe she was trying to make up her mind how mad I really was. “Are you all right?” she said. “Your face looks kind of pinched.” The waiter put down a plate of houderves and some white stuff in a dish that looked like thick milk. Noticing my nose turning up, Melissa just said “Yogurt.” by way of explanation, obviously intent on not interrupting the flow. “OK, so you were flying over Hampstead Heath. How did you know it was Hampstead Heath?”
     “It was Parliament Hill Fields. I know it like the back of my hand. I’ve been up there loads of times with my nephew, flying kites. There were people below. Children. They seemed to be scampering about in all directions. I was moving very fast and the ground was rushing past at an incredible rate, like it does when you come in to land on a plane, you know, just before you touch down. Only it wasn’t time to touch down. It wasn’t time to land. I was moving so fast that pretty soon Parliament Hill was miles behind me somewhere. Gone. Just zapped by in a blink.”
     “Where did you go next? Not Crouch End. Tell me it wasn’t Crouch End. I hate Crouch End.” She poured some more wine onto both our glasses, watching carefully to be sure that the measures were equal.
     “You think this is a big joke, don’t you?” I said childishly.
     “Am I laughing?” She wasn’t. She was particularly po-faced. “Actually, I think it’s all a bit scary – what you’re saying. And there is a reason I don’t care for Crouch End but it is of no significance right at this moment.”
     “I haven’t got to the scary bit yet.”
     “Really? I can’t wait,” she said totally deadpan.
     “You think I’m mad, don’t you?”
     “Not at all. All I know is what Sandy told me, and what you confirmed – that you’d had a breakdown.”
     “That’s what I mean. People equate one with the other. Breakdown equals mad, am I right?”
     She didn’t agree or disagree. She just lit another fag. “Please go on. If you want to, that is.” The waiter brought our main courses even though we hadn’t touched the hauderves. Melissa pointed at the tablecloth and he peered over the two plates he was carrying and stared to where was she was pointing as if looking for a mark or stain, he didn’t know what. “No, no. Just put it down. Leave it. It is fine,” she said a trifle impatiently. The waiter placed the two plates on the table and gratefully retreated. “Anyway, you were saying…”
     “You tell me.”
     “You’d gone past Hampstead Heath.” She wasn’t letting go. There’s was no chance I was going to change the subject. I didn’t seem to be scaring her, which was a bit disappointing.
     “I was still flying. I went through a kind of storm of green clouds. Then there was smoke everywhere. It was choking me. Like I said, it wasn’t a hallucination or a dream. It was really happening.”
     “Of course.” she said in the kind of patronising tone that would normally be reserved for a child upset by a bad dream.
     “There were occasional breaks in the smoke and I could see some kind of mêlée going on below - like a battle or something. There were explosions everywhere and I could see a line of figures advancing across what looked like a battlefield. It was absolute mayhem. There were screams and a whole barrage of booms and bangs, like gunfire but far louder than you could imagine gunfire could be. It was deafening. It hurt my ears. It was incessant. It just kept going on and on. It was like layers and layers of explosions piled one on top of another - a massive blanket of noise that I never thought was possible. I knew I was screaming, too, but the noise of the gunfire drowned it out. I remember trying to lift my hands to cover my ears except that I didn’t have arms. I didn’t have any extremities at all. There was no body - nothing – but I was there inside myself just the same.
     “Then there was this huge, blinding flash and I felt myself falling, spinning round and round. I wanted to vomit but couldn’t. I found myself in a trench. I had a body and arms and legs. But I was constricted in some way. My breathing was laboured and my throat burned like hell. I couldn’t see properly because something was in front of my eyes and my head felt heavy.
     “There was a whole line of figures to my left, against the trench wall. They’d pressed themselves into the mud and were covering their heads with their arms. They were all dressed in First World War uniforms. One or two had rifles tucked under their arms. Others had let their guns fall into the mud. They all had tin hats, gasmasks and all. They looked like British Tommys, from what I could remember from old photos. Though, if it hadn’t been for that daft tin hat they had to wear, I’d never have recognised them. They’d have been indistinguishable from any other bloody soldier what with all the mud and the rain pissing down.
     “I could see my legs but didn’t seem to have any feet. I had those puttee things wound round my legs and when I tried to move, I couldn’t. I was stuck fast in the mud – almost up to my knees in thick slime. I was one of them - one of the soldiers. The weight on my head was a steel helmet and I was wearing a gas mask. I was right in the middle of some fucking First World War battle with the rest of these poor bastards. The thought crossed my mind that at least I was with the British Army and not the fucking Germans. I can’t stand fucking Germans.”

     I seemed to have lost sight of Melissa, and was for a moment back on the battlefield, desperate to escape from the horrors of it and my little joke allowed me to focus on her again. “Go on,” she urged in a voice that was quiet for her. I felt a choking sensation in my throat as I spoke and gulped more wine.

     “I was terrified - more scared than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I ended up in the same posture as the other poor sods, pressed into the mud of the trench wall shaking from head to foot and crying like a baby. All the things written about the horrors of war are crap. We all know how many million people died in that stupid fucking war. But we only have the statistics. We have no idea what it was really like for the poor fuckers who had to suffer it first hand.
     “This was the first mechanised war with weapons that had unprecedented power. Things like that had never been seen before - never imagined, except in early science fiction. H. G. Wells probably came close with his Martian heat ray in ‘War Of The Worlds’, but the true destructive capability of weapons like these were a completely new experience and had never been measured. Only a few years before, the same soldiers that crouched in that trench would’ve been riding horses into battle and waving bloody swords about. In this situation, they really were like lambs to the bloody slaughter.”
     “Are you sure you’re all right? You’ve gone white. You look like a ghost. You’d better put the glass down.” Melissa was right. My knuckles were white round the glass. I put it down slowly on the table. “Let’s eat. We can talk later.” She picked up her fork and prodded at her Chicken Biriani.
     “I’ve read all that stuff like anybody else – I even studied modern history for O level. So I knew all the statistics – how many died in the four years – five million Russians alone! Can you imagine that? But you just swallow facts like those as if it’s so much mashed potato. You’ve no real idea what it was all like. It’s just impossible to imagine. You just go ‘yeah, tough’ or whatever, and move on.”
     “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so passionate about anything. Even Pernod.”
     “What?”
     “Pernod. The typeface,” I managed to quell the anger that wanted to burst through my chest, “You ought to eat something,” she said like a mother to her child.
     I stared down at the dark yellowish substance on my plate. I couldn’t have eaten it if it was the last morsel of food left on earth. “That’s the colour it was.”
     “The colour what was?” she said through a mouthful of Biriani and pirata.
     “The mud, the slime in the trench. And the stink, it was unbelievable - like the smell of shit, but far worse - much stronger. It could well have been a mixture of both. Shit and mud slime. I don’t suppose many of them could’ve had a lot of control over their arses.”
     Melissa placed her fork on the side of her plate and sat back. “ I don’t think I’m very hungry either.”

     There was a long silence while she probably pondered the wisdom of pushing me to talk about my experience with LSD. She ordered another bottle of wine and lit her 4th cigarette of the meal. Without looking up from the table she changed the subject drastically and said,

     “I had dinner with John Crankmire the other evening. You know, the writer over from the Brazil office. He’s moving back to London with his wife and 4 brats. Our illustrious Executive Creative Director, Greg Bradley, suggested I help get him re-acclimatised by having dinner with him. We came here, actually.”

     Greg Bradley, an American ex-hippy, and once bead-encrusted, pony tailed wild New York art director of part Italian, part Greek descent had been smartened up, given a wardrobe of Italian suits, and a haircut and sent over from The Big Apple to make sure the two new joint Creative Directors behaved themselves and didn’t spend too much of the creative department budget on lunches for the boys or secretaries who’s knickers they had a mind to invade.

     Crankmire was an old mucker of Bradley’s from a previous spell at the London office. A skinny, dandruff ridden, chain smoking, bag of puss and bones and pseudo intellectual wanker of the first order, whom I despised and hated on first sight, he was often to be found in a crouching frog position on someone’s desk, and I mean ON the desk, with his bony arms stretched over his knees, pontificating about this or that and talking absolute crap at some poor unsuspecting and totally confused young creative.

     Crankmire always wore a thin roll-neck sweater under a grimy-collared shirt and then another sweater over the top, even in hot weather. The sweaty ensemble further highlighted by his perpetual yellow-toothed, sticky lipped smile, the weedy apology for a moustache glistening on his upper lip. I thought it would be best for all concerned were he to be skewered on a spike, bagged up and buried in lime on some remote island previously used for nuclear experimentation, an act which the advertising industry would benefit from enormously, not to mention Humanity in general.

     “He offered me money for a fuck.”
     “You’re kidding!” Melissa’s sudden revelation brought me back to earth with a bump. I suspect the timing of her delivery was intended to do just that.
     “Not in so many words, but he did get his cheque book out at one point and place it on the table between us. He wasn’t offering to pay the bill because he knew I’d already been given the cash. Having described in some detail his wife’s lack of enthusiasm for oral sex and said he could see I would’ve made the sort of liberated soul mate he’d always craved for and that, had he not been married, would’ve pursued me vigorously as a possible sex partner. The thought of him doing anything vigorously makes me retch, frankly. God, what an horrendous thought.” she said, twisting her nose in disgust and sounding the ‘an’ before horrendous as only she could. She slugged back some more wine anxious to drown any thoughts of Crankmire on the job.

     Melissa looked across the table at me and the pair of us burst out laughing.


* * * * * * * *

     A continual stream of laughter over nothing in particular egged on by a fresh bottle of claret helped us both relax. In a funny way, this was the closest Melissa and I had ever got. We spent the next hour exchanging advertising anecdotes some of which were hilarious. We even found time to eat some of the food.

     “There was this bloke at JWT when I was there, “ I told her, “Mel Rackmill, his name was. He was a creative group head from New York and straight out of central casting - small and skinny with glasses – very reminiscent of Woody Allen when he was doing his stand up stuff in the early Sixties. His shoulders sloped at 45 degrees form left to right like a ski run, which gave him a naturally comic posture. He was a loud fucker, full of his own importance, always yelling at his secretary in the bay outside his office so that everyone could hear.
     ‘Has that call come in from News York yet, Susan? Let me know as soon as that call comes in from New York, will you, Susan,’ he’d go. Then he’d come out of the office and lean over her, trying to see down her front. ‘It’s very important that you let me know as soon as the call comes through, Susan. Very important.’ I worked down the corridor from him in another group but even with the door to my office closed, you could still hear him yelling. Everyone thought he was a complete prick.
     “One of the agency’s major accounts at the time was Gillette - not the most creative of clients as I’m sure you know. They have their own way of doing things and see the world very much as revolving around them and their fucking razor blades. We didn’t have the whole account – nobody ever does. It’s spread around a number of top name agencies, and when a new project comes up, they all get a chance to pitch for it.”
     “Yah, I’m familiar with that kind of operation. It can be a real pain in the arse having to pitch to a client you already have but it keeps the roster agencies on their toes, I suppose. Sorry, carry on.”
     “Well, they’d just developed the Gillette G2, the first twin blade razor. It was a real breakthrough in shaving technology.”
     “You sound like an account man.”
     “Fuck off! It really was a breakthrough. It bloody well worked. It really did give you a closer shave. Something you wouldn’t appreciate unless you were in very close proximity to some bloke who’d just used one.”
     “I do shave some parts of me. We girls do grow unwanted hair as well.”
     “Which parts of you are we talking?”
     “You’ll never have the pleasure of finding out so get on with the fucking story.”
     “I’d be happy to if you’d stop interrupting.” Melissa stuck out her tongue and grabbed another slug of Claret. “Obviously this launch was a very big deal, not just for the revenue but for the prestige and a chance to stick it to the other roster agencies. The whole agency got involved initially. You know what it’s like. They think that they stand more chance of getting the big idea if they use the scattergun technique - spread your shot wide enough, and you’re bound to hit something and they don’t give a shit how demoralising and demotivating that is for all the creative teams.
     “So we all had to troupe up the board room a team and a time and present our ideas to a committee of agency big wigs while they sat in judgment like a load a magistrates. I wonder what the collective noun for a group of magistrates is…”
     “A CAUTION, probably. GET ON WITH IT!”
     “I was working with an Australian writer at the time. He was good and a real tough cookie. Anyway, our campaign line was ‘G2 – shaves you twice as close’. Pretty obvious, we thought, but true of the product. The ads were all about really close shaves – nothing to with shaving but every day scenarios like a bloke who runs off from his bride when he’s at the alter, that kind of stuff.”
     “Sounds like a load of irrelevant hyperbole to me.”
     “Shut up! But, yes, you’re right, of course. It was a load of rubbish and they rightly turned it down. They did buy the line though and asked us to go away and rethink the advertising. To cut a long story short, a week before the presentation, no one had cracked it but a couple of teams had got close including Ross and me. They decided to put a load of stuff into research and somehow, nobody really knows how, Rackmill came up with an idea that the committee hadn’t seen and got it bunged in with the rest at the last minute.
     “If the committee had seen it, it wouldn’t have gone into research. I mean the idiot missed the point entirely. His line was, ‘Shaves you twice as fast’, can you believe? The ads were all about blokes shaving while on their way somewhere, like there was a taxi driver in his cab, a bloke on a bike, a city gent on a bus. It was absolute crap. BUT, and you’re not going to believe it, Rackmill’s rubbish came out top in research. The researcher must have been working for the other side or something.
     “The trouble was that we were stuck with it. We had to use the client’s own chosen research company and nothing that hadn’t been researched could be presented. There was no way we could dump Rackmill’s stuff because the research company sent Gillette a full report on their findings before the presentation. We had no choice but to go ahead and work it up for presentation.
     “Of course, Rackmill was over the moon. He made a real big deal of sending scripts out for storyboarding and kept turning stuff down for obscure reasons, he really wanted everyone to know he, and he alone, was in charge of the agency’s destiny. I met one of the studio reps in the corridor after Rackmill had turned down the storyboard drawings for the 3rd time saying they didn’t capture the genius of the comedy in the scripts. I knew the bloke well, and he was livid. He told me that if the mad bastard ever talked to him like that again, he’d punch his lights out for good.”
     “It gets worse. Things got completely out of control. Rackmill’s stuff became the front-runner and because no one wanted to present it, Rackmill nominated himself. Then two days before the presentation, we got word that there had been a problem with flight arrangements from New York and that the Gillette boys were going to arrive a day late and that as they were scheduled for a meeting in Cologne the following day, they wouldn’t be bale to make it to the agency and that we’d have to meet them at Heathrow in between fights. Also, the Gillette big wig, a guy named Gordon Fielding, was going to be at the presentation.
     “This was really bad news. Fielding was a man who ate and slept the company line and was totally bereft of anything resembling a sense of humour. He was a big, mean-looking bugger with a long cliff of a face like something from the Mount Rushmore Monument. Even his minions were scared shitless of him. He was nicknamed ‘Stoneface’; a moniker invented by the agency but picked up and used by some of the guys from Gillette themselves.
     “So on the morning of the big day, we all trouped out to Heathrow in a fleet of Limousines. Everyone who was everyone from JWT was in the cortège and Ross and I went along as our idea came in second in research. It wasn’t a posh hotel suite we had to make our presentation in though, it was an old one storied brown brick building, like an old factory or something. Stoneface and his compatriots were already sitting behind a long table at one end when we got there. They all had their hands folded in front of them. They all had their overcoats on as the place was like a fridge.
     “We all sat in lines of old wooden chairs like a vergers’ film club audience in a church hall. A few brief words of intro were uttered and then someone from the planning department made a short, nervous preamble and then Rackmill was given the floor. He shot to his feet with his pile of cardboard under his arm, which he stashed against the wall underneath a long shelf that ran the entire length of the room below a line of windows a few of which were broken and letting a pretty strong draft.
     “Rackmill was like some kind of demented windmill waving his arms about as he pranced about acting out the scripts as he read them. Every now and then, he’d stoop down and scoop up one of his presentation boards and stand it on the shelf. Trouble is the draft from the holes in the windows blew it over again and he had to make a grab at it as it floated to earth like a paper aeroplane. In any other circumstances, it would have been hilarious but at the time it was cringe-makingly embarrassing. A couple of the junior suits got up and tried to help him by holding the boards on the shelf but there were soon too many for them to cope with.
     “Stoneface and his henchmen sat motionless throughout the entire charade until at last, after what seemed like an eternity, Rackmill’s spring seemed to uncoil completely and he collapsed into a chair panting like a shagged out dog. You could’ve cut the silence with a scalpel. Stoneface looked down at the white pad in front of him for a what must have been a couple of minutes before looked up and spoke. This was the first time he’d been exposed to the creative work and his soldiers were as nervous as we were.
     “Thank you, J Walter Thompson for your presentation,’ he said kind of slowly and looking each of us right in the eyes in turn. “Now what I’d like you to do is to pack up all your cardboard and bits of paper and put it all in your little black bag, take it back to 40 Berkeley Square and burn it.’
     “With that, they all stood up and followed their leader out the door, most of them expecting to be fired, I reckon. The next day, Rackmill was gone from the agency.”
     “I can’t top that. What an areshole.” Mellisa punctuated her comment by igniting another Silk Cut and hungrily sucking in a lungful of the addictive chemical crap they stuff into the things along with the nicotine.
     “Oh, I don’t know, I’ve heard that underneath that tosser-like exterior he was a complete tosser.” I looked at my watch. It was coming up to 4 ‘o clock. “We should be getting back.”
     Melissa refilled our glasses, “Nonsense, dear boy. Anyway, you haven’t finished telling me about the Somme. Mind you, I think I’ve heard of your Rackmill character. There was something in ‘Campaign’ about him a few years back.”
     “Was there? I don’t remember. Anyway, I thought you wanted me to carry on up the Somme.”
     “He was murdered in New York. Yes I remember now. Someone stabbed him up some dark alley. It was one of those apparently frenzied attack jobs, guts up the wall stuff. Probably some hit man from JWT. Anyway, back to the front.”
     I took a deep breath. No, I it a cigarette and then took a deep breath of smoke and joined Melissa in her wilful act of self destruction, “There’s not much more to tell. Anyway, I never said it was the Somme. I’ve no idea where it was. I’ve even researched it, looked at old pictures and stuff to try and find out but I didn’t get anywhere.”
     “There must be a bit more.” Melissa said not about to let me off the hook.
     “The next thing was, I was flying again.”
     “Back over Hampstead Heath?”
     “No. I don’t where it was. This time there was no landscape. There wasn’t anything. Just darkness.”
     “How did you know you were flying?”
     “There was no rush of air but a definite sensation of pelting along at 90 miles an hour, and a kind of roaring in my ears. And there was no particular direction – just a kind of frantic spiralling motion. That made it all the more frightening.”
     “Why?”
     “I can’t explain it really. But it was a definite sensation that I was fighting for my life.”
     “But you already had been. When you were on the battlefield.”
     “No, I hadn’t. That was different. I was scared then, sure. But I was just an observer. I wasn’t really part of it – and I knew it at the time. What was frightening then was all the noise and mayhem.”
     “So why were you so scared now, as it were.”
“Do you have bad dreams? Nightmares? What do they call them, night terrors, I think. That’s what my shrink calls them?”
     “You have a shrink?” “
     “Yes. You’ve met him.”
     “Have I? When?”
     “A couple of months ago, in the King and Queen. I introduced you. He was the guy in the wheelchair.”
     “Yah, I remember. He was quite nice - quite attractive, apart from the wheels. You didn’t tell me he was your shrink.”
     “It’s not the sort of thing you usually drop into an introduction: ‘This is Tony. He’s my physiatrist.’”
     “I suppose not.”
     “Anyway, you asked him if he still fucked and if he did, how he managed it.”
     “I did no such thing!”
     “You did. He remembers it, too.”
     “I must have been pissed.”
     “You were.”
     “Hmmm, pity I can’t remember. I’d be interested to know what he said. Do you remember what he said?”
     “He changed the subject. Said something about the colour of your hair - how pretty and attractive it was.”
     “That sort of stuff doesn’t usually wash with me – ooh, what a dreadful pun. Wash and hair?”
     “You went all coy and bashful. Must have been the way he said it – shrink technique and all that.”
     “I must have been really pissed. Anyway, you were telling me why you were scared.”
     “I wasn’t. I was telling you I was scared. I didn’t say why.”
     “Well?”
     “We were talking about dreams.”
     “You were. I wasn’t.”
     “Do you have them?”
     “Never.” Something in the way she said it told me she was lying through her teeth and I would’ve put money on the fact that she had them quite often.

     I didn’t tell her that I had bad dreams since I was about 5 years old and that our Maltese Dr, Dr Baldachino, said it was because I was listening to too much Dick Barton on the radio, as he stood warming his bum by our stove, farting like a bear and declaring it was a ‘natural function of the body’.

     I didn’t tell Melissa I still had them. Dreams, I mean. I didn’t tell her that a few months previously, I’d been staying with a mate at his cottage in Brighton and that I slept on his sofa bed and that I woke up in the middle of the night on the floor in a cold sweat. I was shaking all over. As I took some deep breaths and tried to relax, something I’d got used to doing ever since my days in the nuthouse, I thought I saw something move in the corner of the room. There was nothing there of course. It was just one of those weird imaginings we all get when we’re stressed or overtired, or just plain shit scared generally.

     The next day, Will, my friend and I were having breakfast at his kitchen table and he told me he’d been woken up in the middle of the night by a blood curdling scream, ‘Jeesus! It was terrible. Like someone was being murdered. I must have been dreaming.’ I didn’t comment. I certainly didn’t tell him he hadn’t been dreaming and that I’d been the one doing all the screaming.

     “My Mum has them – bad dreams,” I carried on, “She remembers them quite vividly. There was one in particular dream she told me about. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever heard. It put the shits right up me, I can tell you. She was running down a country lane, in her dream, that is. She kept turning round, looking over her shoulder. And she could see the headlights of a car some distance behind her, and she knew she was being chased - that the car was chasing her. Anyway, she came to a gap in the hedge and went through it off the road and into a field. It was a potato field, you know, with those tall furrows and with the potato plants poking out the top. There were rows and rows of them and she started running between them. She said she was looking for a somewhere to hide. She got to somewhere in the middle of the field and crouched down behind the plants.
     "She could see the headlights of the car coming along the road and waited for them to go past. But they didn’t. They came straight through the gap in the hedge without slowing down. They went along the edge of the field and turned into the rows of spuds. They went up one row and down the next, then up the next row and down the next, all the time getting nearer. She tried to run but couldn’t move and the lights just kept coming and she could hear the sound of the engine revving higher an higher, like it was excited by the chase she said.”
     “Christ, that is scary. What happened?”
     “She woke up.”
     “Damn. Just as it was getting interesting.”
     “What about my poor old Mum?”
     “Yah, Must have been terrible for her.” Melissa said without a hint of genuine sympathy, “Anyway, what’s the point of all this?”
     “That image of the headlamps in the field has lived in my brain ever since she told me when I was about 12. Until now, I could only imagine what that feeling of being chased was like but I reckon I go pretty close to it when I was flying after the trenches thing.”
     “How so?”
     “Because I was being chased. I couldn’t see what was after me, but I just knew I was being chased.”
     “By what?”
     “Like I said, I don’t know. What I did know was that whatever it was, if it caught me, I was for it, whatever ‘it’ might be.”
     “And did ‘IT’ catch you?” she said with emphasis on the ‘it’.
     “Apparently not. The next thing I remember was being on the pub ceiling looking down at myself lying on the floor. People were holding me down. Some girl was screaming. I could see a few faces I recognised, and the backs of heads as people leaned over me or what I thought was me. Funny, but I looked revolting. I didn’t want to go back inside. My body, that is. The room seemed to be full of bright lights with funny, flashing zigzags, like green lightning. But I was also scared of what was after me and I knew I wasn’t safe. I had to go back. Then there was this horrible ripping sound and I was back in my body and feeling a lot of pain. Maybe it was because I was struggling and trying to get up and people were holding me down.
     “It was all a bit vague. I kept drifting in and out of consciousness. I remember a red blanket being put over me and being in an ambulance and someone talking to me in a kind voice – telling me not to worry and that I was going to be all right. It was one of the ambulance guys, I think. I vaguely remember his face and him smiling at me. He put his hand on my arm when I was on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance. There was something about his manner, I’m not really sure what, that had a very strange calming effect on me… Apparently I’d gone berserk and attacked a couple at the bar. I hit the bloke with something, an ashtray, I think, and I was screaming and raving that they were servants of Satan or something. That is according to some of my ‘mates’ who were there, and I use the term mates advisedly. One of the fuckers put the stuff in my drink. You’re right, you don’t have any friends in this business.”
     “That isn’t exactly the kind of thing I meant.”
     “Well, I don’t believe now you have any mates period. And that’s about it - a couple of months in hospital climbing walls, loads more nightmares, medication, hypnosis - the works. And then good old Tony Rawlings came along. He saved me from total lunacy, I’m quite sure. I’d still be a gibbering, dribbling idiot if it wasn’t for him.”
     “So when will that clear up?”
     “What?”
     “You being a gibbering, dribbling idiot.” Melissa smiled softly.
     “Bitch.” I smiled back.
     “What about the nuthouse? What was that like?”
     “Another time.” I said, “That’s a saga all its own.”
     “OK. Thanks.”
     “What for?”
     "For telling me. For trusting me enough to take me into your confidence.”

     I shrugged, though I was strangely touched at her sentiment. I’d left quite a bit out, of course. There was a lot I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell her the rest of what went on in the trench. I didn’t tell her about the other soldier who appeared. How he was dressed in the same British Tommy uniform. Or that he carried a rifle with the bayonet fixed like all the others.

     I didn’t tell her how he came walking along through the mud and thick rain mist behind the line of poor sods lining the oozing clay of the trench wall, how one of them, the one nearest me, turned as he passed and looked at him. I didn’t tell her that the soldier stopped, thrust his bayonet through the poor bastard’s gasmask and into his face, then withdrew it and shoved it into his body and twisted it this way and that.

     I didn’t tell her how about the jet of blood that cascaded over me like a fountain and how the soldier pulled the bayonet out of the man’s body then shoved his own arm into the wound right up to his elbow and pulled half the blokes guts out and just tossed them on the ground as the body dropped with it like a sack of shit. I didn’t tell her how the murderer walked along the line of half a dozen of the poor sap’s mates hiding their faces in the wall of mud and butchered them all much in the same way.

     I didn’t tell her how it turned and looked at me – how I looked into its face – how it had no eyes behind the glass of the gasmask or how it lifted the rifle and pointed the bayonet right at me and how it came for me.


Chapter 8: LYSERGIC ACID DIETHYLAMIDE


     The day after the party, Val Symonds knocked on the open office door as she walked in uninvited. “You have one half of a creative team missing. Pip hasn’t turned up for work and he hasn’t contacted Don or me and they’re very busy on Project Slime.”

     ‘Project Slime’ was the code word for a new margarine that both the CIA and MI5 would obviously have killed to know about. As a senior team, Melissa and I were part responsible for marshalling some of the creative work and acting as creative directors.

     “Right, let me think about it. I’ll talk to Don and find out how far they’ve got. We don’t want to start hiring freelancers unless we have to. If they’ve got an idea, Melissa and I will have a look at it and if they haven’t, we’ll have a crack ourselves.”
     “You’re the boss,” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm.
     “So your other half’s gone AWOL,” I said as I wondered into Pip and Don’s office, “I thought you shared a flat together.” I really had no idea whether they did or not, not caring to have anything to do with either of them unless I had to.
     “Nor, ‘e luvs in Queen’s Park. Me, Ar gorra flut in Neesdon, wi’ soom meets from college’ n thut.”
     “Right.” I said showing as much interest as a dog might for a dead cat.
     “Ah’ve trard ringin’ ‘im boot there’s nor replar.”
     “Maybe he drank more than he could handle.”
     “Thut’d be a first,” Don said, “’Ed ardly go’ started last neet compared to what ‘e normally puts away an’ ‘e’s aways as reet as narnpence next dee, lark.”
     “Ok, what’ve you got on Slime?” I said, as a picture of Pip unaccountably flashed in front of my eyes for a split second. He didn’t look too well, but then he wouldn’t have with most of his stomach and his arms missing.

     Don was the less nasty of the duo in the same way that the Australian Taipan is only slightly less venomous than it’s desert cousin, the Fierce Snake. He seemed slightly nervous without his partner-in-crime to back him up and I knew I was going to enjoy shooting their ideas down in flames regardless of whether they were any good or not.


     A great Creative Director once said that the secret of good casting is to choose characters against their stereotypes: if you want a judge, cast who you think looks like a milkman and if you want a train driver, cast who you think looks like a university professor. That way, he said, your casting will be more realistic. It was obvious that the great man himself had cast Tony Rawlins as a psychiatrist because he looked exactly like a ticket collector to me.

     “Hi, Al, how’s it going? How’ve you been?” he said as he leaned across his desk and held out his hand. “You’re looking pretty good, I must say.”
     “I’m good,” I said, not sure how convincing I was.

     On reflection, Tony looked more like a Captain of rugby at a public school than a shrink except he was in a wheelchair as the result of a motorbike accident. TR, as staff and patients at the hospital popularly called him, couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than me, if he was older than me.

     “Any flashbacks?” said the Smiling TR as he lit his briar pipe and settled back into pipe smoking posture.
     “No.”

     I’d tried a pipe myself once and though I loved the strong tobacco taste and the massive fog of smoke you could get going, I found that I had to adopt ‘the position’ whether I liked to or not. It took quite a lot of effort to keep the bloody thing alight. I had to keep stoking it and poking inside the bowl with one of the silver toothpick things that I kept like a miniature Swiss Penknife in the pocket of the old tweed jacket I borrowed from my uncle Charlie. I had to wear it because it was the only thing that had pockets big enough to hold all the pipe smoking accoutrements I had to carry with me. I automatically ended up with my back hunched, one leg crossed over the other to support the elbow that was attached to the hand that warmed its fingers round the bowl. The other hand, I planted on a hip not knowing what else to do with it.

     I caught sight of myself in a pub mirror once when I was mid pipe. I looked like Sherlock Holmes – or was it Shylock the Jew? I immediately bashed the pipe out in the nearest ashtray and chucked it over a bridge into the Regent’s Canal on the way home.

     Tony examined me with his big, blue, twinkly eyes, immensely satisfied with the massive, swirling blue cloud he’d just created. “Any blackouts or Purple Meanies? Any pink elephants, tortoises on roller-skates, flying rabbits?”
     “No.”
     “Sorry, got to ask you this one - the Mental Health Act, you know. Do you see things or hear voices?” I shook my head and TR ticked some boxes on the pale pink Xerox sheet in front of him.
     “I only see things when I’m really drunk, and that’s because there are two of everything, and the only voice I hear is the voice of my copywriter, and that’s mainly during a nightmare.”
     TR grinned wider and puffed out another huge, blue cloud. “Oh, yes. That’s the one with the red hair and the ghastly voice that I met in the pub that time. God, I’d love to do a study of her. I bet she’s got some really juicy skeletons tucked away in her cupboards. Do you know, she asked me if I still managed to fuck and if I did, she wanted to know how, cheeky cow. She said it just like that. She didn’t say ‘make love’, or even ‘do it’, she actually said, ‘can you still fuck?’ I couldn’t believe it. I mean I’ve heard some pretty outlandish stuff come out of the mouths of the mentally ill in my time. But she…well. I told Jessica about her and what she said.”
     “Jessica?”
     “My other half. She’s a sculptor. Teaches at the Royal College of Art. If you think your Melissa’s a tough cookie you should meet Jessica. She scares the shit out of me - even frightens herself sometimes.”
     “I can’t imagine anyone more frightening than Melissa.”
     “Jessica said to point her out sometime so that she could rip her eyes out. I think she would, too.”
     “Sounds like that could be an interesting contest. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to do a study of Melissa, believe me.” I said, in a doom laden tone that came out quite naturally.
     “Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Make an interesting case study, though. But I’m sure she’d be enough to drive anyone nuts – oh, sorry. That was a wee bit careless of me.”
     “Was I then?”
     “What?”
     “Nuts.”
     “Depends on your definition of nuts. You were sectionable – almost, even though you weren’t – sectioned, I mean. Schizophrenia is a very serious illness.”
     “Jesus.” I said, a bit taken aback. “That’s the first time anyone ever used that word to me. I just thought I’d had a bad trip, not that I’d ever had one before – any kind of trip - apart from the roller coaster ride at Dreamland in Margate. I’d just heard it said by a couple of droopy hippie types I knew back in the Seventies.”
     “Hmmmmpfffffft!” said TR as he applied the flame from another Swan Vestas match, “Unfortunately, it’s not all ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’. A lot of it is fire breathing dragons with the heads of babies, eyes on storks and mouthfuls of maggots.”
     “I wish you hadn’t said that.”
     “Sorry.”
     “So am I Schizoid? Was I Schizoid?”
     He shook out the match and cocked his head slightly to one side. “Schizophrenic,” he corrected. “Technically: no. Symptomatically: you were for a while - at first, anyway. It’s quite common amongst long-term users of LSD.”
     “But I only took it once. At least, you say that’s what it was.”
     “Very few things would have produced the same symptoms, not as quickly anyway. And in your case, the sudden shock was paramount.”
     “Why?”
     “Most people who took the stuff, or who still do, have some idea of what to expect. They’re ready for it. Whereas you…instant ‘Nightmare On Elm Street.’ God, that’s a really scary movie. Have you seen it?”
     “Fucking bastards. No. Sounds like it’s the last movie I’d benefit from seeing.”
     “Who are fucking bastards?”
     “Whoever put that crap in my fucking drink.”
     “I can’t disagree with that particular character assessment - obviously a person or persons with pathological disorders and probably paranoiac to boot, with definite redirected sado-masochistic tendencies, and certainly deficient in the father department. Yes, a complete and utter fucking bastard or bastards. Or, it could just have been a joker with half a brain who got it all wrong. You’ve still no idea who did it?”
     “Not a clue. I still can’t really remember who was there at the time. It was just a common-all-garden Friday night in The King And Queen. The next thing I remember was being in an ambulance.”
     “What about work. How are you coping?”
     “I’m coping with Melissa. If I can cope with her, I can cope with anything.”
     TR rolled his eyes to signify an agreement. “What about the stress of the job itself?”
     “There doesn’t seem to be any.”
     “I thought advertising was a notorious pressure cooker.”
     “It is. But since I’ve been back, it doesn’t feel like it any more.”
     “Interesting.”
     “Really?”
     “Yes. From all our conversations over the last 2 years, I’d’ve said you’d been a fairly highly-strung individual, much like most creatives I’ve met. You were a bit of a sensitive flower, but you seemed to have calmed right down.”
     “Maybe it’s the medication.”
     “Unlikely. What I’m giving you isn’t a tranquiliser as such. It regulates the flow of particular chemicals in certain areas of the brain, that’s all, but it won’t shut you down. There are some drugs we use for acute Schizophrenia that would, but they don’t apply to your condition.”
     “Which is?”
     TR prodded one of his tiny spike things into the bowl of the pipe and sucked hard. “You were just suffering from a kind of allergic reaction to something. A bit like an overdose with bells on.”
     “You mean I’m allergic to LSD?”
     “Maybe.”
     “Teriffic. I’d love to get my hands on the areshole who invented it.”
     “What, LSD?”
     “I don’t mean Aspirin.”
     “Quite. You’d find that pretty difficult.”
     “What?”
     “Getting your hands on the arseholes who invented LSD.”
     “You think they’re aresholes?”
     “Lets just say I think they were irresponsible.”
     “So why would I find it difficult getting hold of him or her?”
     “On account of the fact that it was a whole team of people and not just one gadgie.”
     “What, you mean a load of whackos got together to create that crap for fun?”
     “Definitely nor for fun.”
     “For some sick joke, then?”
     TR leaned back in his wheelchair, sucked gently away at his pipe and stared reflectively into the middle distance. “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, or LSD as you call it, was intended as weapon of war.”
     “You’re kidding.”
     “I wish I were. If you knew about half the things that are developed in the name of so-called peace initiatives, which, incidentally, really mean, ‘let’s keep the opposition chatting then clobber them with something before they discover it and clobber us first’, you hair would stand on end.”
     “I thought it already had.”
     “Only when you were given ECT.”
     “What the bloody hell’s that?”
     “Electro Convulsive Therapy.” I shrugged, none the wiser but was immediately put in mind of Charlie Richardson’s own electric therapy machine that Tony Wall had described so eloquently. “Luckily, you won’t remember. They pass an electric current though the side lobes, here.” TR placed the tips of his two index fingers against his side temples level with his eyes.
     “What?” I was somewhat alarmed at the revelation. “And what the fuck does that do?”
     “You’ll find this incredible, but no one actually knows.”
     “Terrific! You’re kidding, of course.”
     “I wish I was. There’s a temporary loss of incidental memory - you know, recent stuff that’s still being processed by the brain. You still know who you are and so on. I underwent it voluntarily a couple of times to find out what it was all about. I just woke up with the worst headache I’d ever had. Oh, they do put you out. Not like in the old days when they did it cold. The pain then must have been indescribable.”
     “Is that what they did to Jack Nicholson in ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’?”
     “That’s right. Just after the scene when the Indian Chief talks for the first time. I think ECT is barbaric crap. But it’s still used for depression and in some cases of Schizophrenia – usually, as a last resort, when nothing else seems to be working. It shakes the brain up but who knows what internal damage it does? We know so little about the brain anyway. You might as well put you brain in a blender as far as I can see.
     “The original use of electricity as a cure for “insanity” dates back to the beginning of the 16th century when electric fish were used to treat headaches. ECT originates from research in the 1930’s into the effects of camphor-induced seizures in people with schizophrenia. In 1938, two Italian researchers, Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, were the first to use an electric current to induce a seizure in a delusional, hallucinating, schizophrenic man. The man fully recovered after 11 treatments, which led to a rapid spread of the use of ECT as a way to induce therapeutic convulsions in the mentally ill. Trouble was, some of the convulsions they induced were so violent, people use to break bones – some even died.”
     “Jesus. How much of a shot do they give you?”
     “You mean how much of a shock?”
     “Whatever.”
     “Well, they don’t plug you straight into the wall. That would kill you. As I said, they gave me enough of a jolt to give me a thundering headache afterwards and a temporary loss of short term memory but apart from that, I didn’t really learn anything.”
     “Well, that’s all right then.” I was starting to feel disgusted. And betrayed.
     “They use a standard 12 volt car battery. It’s perfect for the job. It’s fits onto a bedside trolley nicely and is relatively inexpensive.”
     “I hope it was an Ever Ready and not Bosch. I hate fucking Germans.” I said with more than a modicum of conviction. TR almost choked on his pipe and gave himself a coughing fit. “Christ, T. It wasn’t that funny.”
     “It is if you know the significance of what you just said. I think ECT was a German invention even though it was first used by a couple of Italians. So either way, the Hun got you.” TR paused for a good cough to get rid of the congestion and the laughter.
     “Anyway, back to good old LSD.” He leaned forward and placed the pipe in an ashtray then wheeled himself tight under the desk and folded his arms. The friendly smile dissolved and his expression changed to one I’d never seen on him before – solemn and grave, with a hint of sadness. “In short, LSD was originally the centrepiece of the CIA’s top secret MK-ULTRA project which was a pretty ambitious undertaking conducted from the 1950s through the 1970s designed to explore the possibilities of pharmaceutical mind control.
     “Hundreds of people, or ‘subjects’, as they’re known in experimental circles, including CIA agents, government employees, military personnel, prostitutes, members of the general public, and mental patients were given LSD, many without their knowledge or consent. The experiments often involved severe psychological torture, and quite a few victims, a more accurate description of the poor bastards, committed suicide or wound up in psychiatric wards on permanent vacation.
     “The boffins eventually concluded that LSD’s side effects were too varied and uncontrollable to make it of any practical use as a truth drug. And the project moved on to other substances. There’s no real evidence to back it up but it’s generally believed that the Soviets had a similar programme going and conducted their own experiments during the Cold war. The Soviet Government actually did own up to doing it’s own tests with AMT - Alpha-methyltryptamine - during the sixties. They actually administered 5mg doses to all their soldiers to keep moral up, as it had been used as an over the counter anti-depressant.
     “It helped soldiers stay awake longer, but they started developing schizophrenia, and those with a family history of the disease, went on to develop the full-blown mental illness, but also, 50% of soldiers without family history of the disease also developed it. That’s when they stopped mucking around with the stuff. At least, that was the official line.”
     “Jesus.” was the only contribution I could come up with at that point.
     “Actually, LSD was discovered as far back as 1938 and is one of the most potent mood changing substances we know about, or that’s been made public. It’s manufactured from lysergic acid, which is found in ergot, a fungus that grows on rye and other grain type plants.
     “You can bet your bottom dollar the Krauts were messing around with it during the war as well. There are some weird things from witnesses at Auschwitz and other such places about Jewish prisoners ranting and raving and tearing each other’s faces off while the Nazi guards had a good laugh. Apparently, they even held little derbies and bet money on a likely winner when two of the poor bastards were shoved together. They treated it like cockfighting. Ten to one there wasn’t a winner because they probably shot whoever was left standing.”
     “We Brits weren’t exactly squeaky clean, either.” TR was talking fervently now, like he was on a mission, “In 1953, LSD experiments were carried out on RAF volunteers at Portland Down. They were told that the experiment concerned a new truth drug, and at first, those that took it experienced symptoms like being drunk.
     “They laughed uncontrollably. They said that everything in the world around them seemed funny. They were given stronger doses and although the feelings of mirth were still there, the symptoms started to change and visions that were far more alarming began to form in their minds. They thought they could see inside each other. Skulls seemed to be exposed, faces melted before their eyes, floors and walls turned to liquid made up of millions of tiny, writhing worms.
     “There don’t seem to have been any cases of schizophrenia – none that were recorded, anyway. The whole thing was abandoned and hushed up under the Official Secrets Act and what went on was only revealed when the surviving guinea pigs left the service and later retired. I talked to a couple of them and got the info first hand.
     “To my knowledge, LSD is still very much an unknown quantity - in my view, research was abandoned too early for the thing to be made safe. I think it’s a bomb waiting to go off.”
     “You seem to know a lot about it.”
     TR let out a small laugh. “It was going to be the subject of my thesis at Cambridge. I was dissuaded from doing it but by then I’d already done quite a bit of my own research.”
     “Dissuaded? By whom?”
     “I was summoned to the Dean’s office one afternoon and introduced to a man in a military uniform and another one that looked like an insurance salesman, though he was obviously a bit more important than that. I’d been asking a lot of questions around other universities and research establishments and I suppose they got to hear about it. The military guy made it very plain that to carry on with my study of LSD was not in the public interest and certainly not in my own.
     “They didn’t say as much, but it was implied fairly strongly that I’d have a tough time finding lasting employment in any field when I left university. I could have made a stand on principle, I suppose, but I was in my last year and I’d worked too hard to throw it all away. So, reckoning that I could maybe take up my research later in my own time, I signed the Act.”
     “And have you? Carried on with your research?”
     “Not in any big deal way. I just keep my eyes and ears open for bits that are occasionally published here and there, but I’m far too busy treating blokes like you. They gave me you because I reckoned I knew what the causes of your breakdown could be. The hospital big wigs didn’t seem to have much of a clue, so I was given the case, so to speak.”
     “I’m glad you were.” TN just nodded.
     “The effects of LSD are unpredictable. They depend on the amount taken: the user’s personality, mood, expectations – as I said, in my view, that was the problem in your case – and the surroundings in which the drug is used. Usually, the user feels the first effects of the drug 30 to 90 minutes after taking it. The physical effects include dilated pupils, higher body temperature, increased heart rate and blood pressure, sweating, loss of appetite, sleeplessness, dry mouth, and tremors.” TR was beginning to sound like he was delivering a lecture but I didn’t feel I could interrupt him. Also, I thought it might help me understand the recent spasms I’d been having that I wasn’t about to tell him about in case I wound up in the nuthouse again. And that was something I was going to avoid at all costs.
     “The sensations and feelings caused by LSD change much more dramatically than the physical signs. The user may feel several different emotions at once or swing rapidly from one emotion to another. A large enough dose can cause delusions and hallucinations - the senses of time and self, change. Sensations may seem to ‘cross over’ giving the feeling of hearing colours and seeing sounds. As you can imagine, these sorts of changes can be very frightening and can cause panic.
     “Experiences can also include feelings of severe, terrifying thoughts of losing control, fear of insanity and death, and total despair and there have been several fatal accidents to some victims whilst on the drug.
     “Flashbacks to any of these symptoms can occur long after the user has stopped taking the drug, which is why I’m always asking you if you’re experiencing anything odd. The whole LSD thing is a bloody minefield. Sorry. I didn’t mean to go on so much. Anyway, it’s as well that you’re aware of the facts in case you get any ‘wobblies’. You might be better equipped to deal with them if you’re better informed.”
     “Thanks.” I said, though part of me wished I hadn’t heard a single word of what he’d said. He gave me a repeat prescription and we chatted on about the year’s upcoming Isle Of Mann TT races for about 10 minutes, then he suddenly said,
     “How’s your libido?”
     “My what?”
     “Have you exercised your loins recently? Had it off? Got laid? Got your end away? Made love? Shagged someone? Got your bone home? Indulged in any kind of fornication?”
     TR had become more of a mate than just my shrink in the last year and a half and I always felt relaxed in his company. Making me feel that way was probably part of his art, which I thought was pretty clever if it was. “That’s all you headshrinkers ever think about. Bloody sex. Freud was a pervert.”
     “Doesn’t everyone think about sex all the time? Those who don’t are liars. And you’re right about old Siggy. He was a pervert, but you haven’t answered my question.”
     “I haven’t been very active in that department lately, I have to confess.”
     “I’m not asking you to confess to anything. I’m not a priest, thank God. I couldn’t be doing with all that – listening to people’s confessions.”
     “Isn’t that what you do, anyway?”
     “In a way, I suppose I do, but I don’t have to forgive them or judge them. Not that I give a shit what people get up to in their spare time. As long as it’s interesting, it’s fine by me. You still haven’t answered my question.”
     “Yes I did.”
     “You said you weren’t active, but I want to know if the inclination is still there.”
     “I haven’t turned the other way, if that’s what you mean. And I haven’t turned into a monk either.”
     “I’m glad to hear it - that you haven’t taken on the sackcloth and ashes, I mean. I don’t give a bugger whether you’re homosexual or not. Oh that’s quite good, ‘give a bugger’,” he paused momentarily to marvel at his accidental witticism. “The other thing is a complete waste of time, but don’t get me going on that subject. Do you realise that almost every war since the beginning of recorded history has been over religious differences? It’s such crap - all of it. The concept of religion only came about because man can’t seem to accept his own mortality. It’s pathetic.” TR was a convinced and committed atheist and blamed all the troubles in the world on religion. I thought he had a point, but I wasn’t on fire about the subject, as he seemed to be.
     “Can I ask you something?”
     “That’s what I’m here for. Fire away.”
     “Do all Certified Schizophrenics tend to be violent?”
     “Not all Schizophrenics are Certified but those that are, are probably considered more a danger to themselves more than to others. The level of paranoia is the major factor. The most deadly snakes in the world probably won’t do you any harm if you leave them alone. Make them feel threatened, and they’ll bite you. Why do you ask? Do you think you’re violent?”
     “No, but I seem to have become a bit, how can I say, a bit of a cold fish in certain respects. A little while ago, I occasioned to have my hands around Melissa’s throat. I knew I could’ve killed her and not felt a thing. Not only that, but I found the prospect of doing the cow in quite attractive.”
     TR felt this was significant enough for him to scribble something on his pad. “I wouldn’t worry about it. I’d imagine there have been quite a few who’d readily put her lights out for good. You don’t have any general feeling of wanting to kill people, do you?”
     “No, but sometimes I feel sort of detached, emotionally uninvolved.”
     “That’s called being able to stand back and rationalise things. It’s a plus. An asset. If more people had that ability, there’d be fewer breakdowns and I’d probably be out of work, so don’t spread it around.” He grinned again, leaned back and relit the bonfire in the bowl of his briar.

     Soon after, we shook hands and I left.


* * * * * * *

     Rachel stopped coming into work four days after the JMPA party. As soon as I noticed her empty desk, I went to Val Symons and, trying to display nothing more than casual interest, asked where Rachel was. Val fixed me with a look that said “I know you’ve been in her knickers, but it’ll just be our little secret so a long as you’re a good boy and tell me all about it sometime.” before saying she had no idea and that Rachel hadn’t called in sick. “I called her half an hour ago but the number she gave us wasn’t recognised. I do hate it when people aren’t straight with you, don’t you?” she said with the kind of nasty little smile you might find on a cobra’s face just after it’s bitten your ankle.

     I didn’t answer and turned away. People seemed to be making a habit of disappearing. First Pip hadn’t surfaced since the night of the party and Gordon Skeens who, according to ex-Desert Rat, Pat, hadn’t been seen since the exiting Du Rollo’s with a mighty dose of what East Enders called ‘the right ’ump, and now Rachel had gone AWOL. Don had called at Pip’s place a couple of times but the landlord who lived in the building hadn’t seen him and was pissed off that he was behind with the rent. He’d even phoned his parents in Keithly who didn’t seem that perturbed having got somewhat used to the animal ways their son developed since entering his teens, often disappearing for weeks on end. They assured Don he’d turn up before long.

     The crazy notion that Pip had actually absconded with Rachel and taken her off to some cave on Ilkley Moore to have his evil way with her flitted briefly across my frontal lobe but I knew I was just behaving like a petulant child. Anyway, if he had rummaged through her pants while she was still wearing them, I told myself her attraction certainly wouldn’t be quite so strong as it had been which was maybe a good thing. Yes, he was quite welcome to fill his boots, as Terry would say, the way I was feeling right then. Quite welcome.

     “Fuck ‘em!” I said aloud and involuntarily, thinking of no-one in particular, “Fuck ‘em all.”




Chapter 10: ABBIGALE’S PARTY


     There was nothing in my in tray the next day, or the one after that. No yellow envelope. Nothing. Then, the next morning, I stopped by the secretary’s bay to check again. But again the tray was empty.

     “Is this what you’re looking for?” Val Simmond’s voice invaded my thoughts with the effect of mustard gas. She held a yellow envelope next to her face and sniffed it. “Smells nice. Could it be from whom I think it might be from?”
     “I’ve no idea who it’s from.”
     “Really? Strikes me you have the look of a man who’s expecting something.”
     “Not at all. Anyway, why’ve you got it?”
     “Someone put it in our tray by mistake but it’s addressed to you.” I stretched out my hand but she withdrew the envelope and I groped thin air. “Maybe you can tell me what she’s up to – if and when she’s coming back, that kind of thing. When you’ve read it, perhaps you could let me know.” She handed me the envelope just in time to prevent me from smacking her on the nose, peeling back her face, and taking the envelope before any of her blood spilled onto it.
     “Like I said, I’ve no idea who it’s from.”
     “I believe you,” she said sarcastically, “but a crowd half the size of the population of China wouldn’t.”

     I snatched the yellow envelope from her, turned and stomped back to the office muttering to myself that our post boy was nothing if not efficient at his job and didn’t make mistakes like leaving mail in the wrong fucking tray. As I opened the office door, Melissa’s voice hit me like a blast of ice-cold air. Brian McFarland, a young, homosexual account man on the RAF business, was being given a particularly bad time.

     “But Melissa, be reasonable. I was trying to help,” his pathetic pleading made me lose any sympathy I might have had. I could’ve told him that his best course of action was to shut up and take it like a man, or in his case, half a man. I would have told him that arguing with Mellisa when she was in full fury was futile to say the least and potentially suicidal.
     “If I ever need your help I’ll ask for it, which I have to tell you is an extremely unlikely occurrence,” she ranted at full volume, “as you are clearly quite incapable of grasping the concept of reasonability or anything above the level of toddler’s sand pit.”
     “Look, if you’re just going to hurl insults…” I winced at his mistake. He’d have been better off putting the barrels of a loaded shotgun in his gob and pulling the rigger.
     “This conversation has now ended.” she snapped, swivelling her chair round to her desk and turning her back on the pathetic account man on the sofa.
     “Oh, come on, Melissa. I thought we were mates.” He was red in the face like he was about to burst into tears. Melissa began pounding away at her typewriter as if he didn’t exist. I sat down, caught his eye and nodded towards the door. After a second, he got up and left wearily, crushed, defeated and psychologically damaged for life with a bit of luck.
     “What was that all about?” I said, only mildly interested in what the poor sod had done to upset her if only for future reference.
     “You don’t need to know at this particular moment,” she said with smoke still pouring from her fingertips. That suited me fine. I toyed with the envelope and, believe it or not, actually sniffed it, careful not to let Melissa see. It was just a common scented envelope and I was disappointed there was no hint of the perfume Rachel wore. I slowly eased back the flap from the glue, trying to make as little noise as possible. I should’ve gone to the gents to read it but I was damned if I was going to behave like some love struck adolescent. I also should have known Melissa had the ears of a cat, spending as much time on her own with the moth-eaten El Puzzo as she did.
     “Is that from her?” she said, still pounding away. I didn’t answer but took the yellow notepaper out and unfolded it. The effect of the words inside was like a kick in the stomach from a pretty miffed carthorse.

Dear Alan.

I can’t see you any more. I thought I’d be able to explain but it’s too complicated.
It’s for the best believe me.

I’m so sorry.

Love, R.


     I felt like I'd been kicked in the guts by a horse. Why did she have to use the fucking L word? What the hell did she know about L? She was too young to comprehend such a concept - to understand the real pain of it – the depth of it – how it can suddenly trip you up or come at you out of the sun when you least expect it. Funny that – how most of us spend our lives looking for it and hoping it’s just round the next corner and when it suddenly turns up we don’t know how to deal with it. To her it was just a word politely tossed away at the end of a postcard from some boring seaside resort or other.

     She’d even used the L word when we were alone. She said it to me – that night in the edit suite when everyone had gone and it was dark and only the neon sign flashed through the window – or was it the light from an oscillating street lamp? I couldn’t remember. We were on the floor dressed as nature intended. I was on my back and she was astride me. Beads of sweat dripped off her nose onto my chest and she giggled softy, then she leaned down and pressed her little breasts against my own damp body and whispered the word in my ear: ‘I love you.’ she said. Then she said: ‘No, that’s silly. I can’t do. I don’t even know you.’ Then she kissed my ear.

     I didn’t return the sentiment. It didn’t seem right and anyway, I’d have overplayed my hand. Trapped myself, possibly. We were in the aftermath of half an hour of passion - the ‘afterglow’ or whatever incurable romantics call it. You’re supposed to bathe in this afterglow stuff when all you really want to do, is light a fag, which, luckily, had become an acceptable, almost mandatory, part of the ritual.

     For a few minutes, sometimes longer, depending with whom you’ve been wrestling, you wonder what all the fuss was about. It’s the time when everything feels squalid and damp. It’s the time when you feel elated and deeply depressed at the same time - when you’re capable of saying anything - when whatever you say won’t mean a lot. I didn’t even say it when we’d been up there on cloud 9 a few minutes before when she was clawing my back with her nails. At least, I don’t think I did. So I was hardly going to say it then, in the aftermath - a much more appropriate word, it seemed to me.

     Now I’d never have to worry about having to say the stupid fucking word to her now – letting it slip out and then worrying about it for the next three weeks or in the worst case, the rest of my life. She was gone, the dreaded word and all accompanying concepts with her. I should’ve been grateful really.

     The clattering of Melissa’s typewriter became like the rattle of machine gun fire. I got up and knocked my chair over, as I made for the door, anxious to escape. “Fuck her!” I said under my breath, almost pulling the doorknob off the door as I wrenched it open and flung myself into the bay, “Fuck her!” Half an hour later, having calmed down a bit, I went back to the office thinking Melissa had calmed down too. She hadn’t. The room seemed fuller of smoke that usual and she was in the process of lighting another Silk Cut.

     “The next time that snivelling little rat interrupts me when I’m talking to a client, I’ll garrotte him with his own fucking tie. I had Jim Routledge cornered. I’d covered all his petty grievances with the RAF Technician’s script and he’d run out of steam. We’d won. And then that fucking weasel, who makes the dubious claim of having been to Oxford and has the audacity to call himself an account director, pipes up and introduces another obstacle. One that the client hasn’t mentioned in the last two meetings.”
     “What was that?” I said, feigning interest.
     “You were in the meeting. Perhaps you were asleep or thinking about your missing bit of skirt,” I resisted the temptation to turn her desk over on top of her along with the boiling beaker of coffee and ashtray of volcanic fallout, and tread on her face. “Routledge mentioned in his usual paranoia a couple of weeks ago, that he had a concern with suggesting the Tornado was science fiction to a Technician’s Father because it wasn’t science fiction but a real state of the art bit of modern weaponry. It was carefully explained to him at the time that that was the whole point of the voice over making such a statement in the first place. I mean saying, ‘To Your Dad It’s Science Fiction, But To You It Could Be An Every Day Fact Of Working Life,’ is the whole fucking point. The whole fucking idea! Then after he still twittered on about it and Bill Kelley, his superior fucking officer, told him to shut up about it, it was forgotten. And then our home grown maggot of an account director sees some obscure reason in his unfathomable wisdom to bring it up again just when they’re about to sign their approval to the production estimate in yesterday’s meeting. It took me another half an hour to shut Routledge up again. Wanker.”

     It wasn’t altogether clear to whom the label was supposed to apply. It could have been Routledge, Brian Macfarland or me. Whichever, I didn’t give a shit. I just felt numb. Melissa, the RAF, the agency, could all go to Hell.


* * * * * * * * * * * *


     Suzie persuaded me that I should go to Abbi’s party. I wasn’t in the mood and she knew why. We were such good mates, I regularly told her everything that was going on in my life and she told me everything going on in hers.

     “I know it’s a bit of a toughie, you poor old sod, especially as you’ve been having a great time with Rachel banging away like a couple of rabbits. But it could have its good side, her leaving like that. It could be a way out from you getting too stifled. Anyway, I think you should go to Abbi’s Party. It’ll do you good to get out of yourself and out of it at the same time. And you might get lucky. You’ve always fancied Abbi. You know you have.” Suzie saw right through my mock surprise at the suggestion that I’d I had carnal ambitions involving the delightful, young Ms Grey.
     We sat in the dark secluded corner of Lee’s Bag, a wine bar in Great Portland Street. Suzie was her usual lively self, her animated mass of freshly washed hair perfectly framing her stunning features, the hazel eyes bright with boundless energy. “I don’t want to get lucky. Anyway, Abbi’s out of the question as far as a leg over is concerned. She’s not really Christian’s Sister but his half sister and he’s claimed her for himself. I don’t want to screw up our friendship.” I sounded like a grumpy child.
     “You’re obviously smitten, but like I said, Rachel’s given you a way out.”
     “I don’t want a way out.”
     “You probably don’t right now, but things don’t stay that intense for ever. Better this way than having to worry later about how you’re going to let her down when it all becomes dull and mundane, as it will.”
     “Are things dull and mundane with you and Nick?” Another Northerner, though considerably more intelligent than both Don and Pip put together, Nick was the ambitious slime-bag of a media buyer Suzie had been going out with for a couple of years.
     She giggled convulsively. “Sometimes, but he’s so unpredictable, it kind of keeps things bubbling along.”
     “Like when he knocks you about.”
     “I asked for that.”
     “What, being hit?”
     “No, your comment. Anyway, it’s not as bad as you think. I get my own back on him sometimes. Like the other evening, it was so embarrassing.” She threw her head back, the giggles cascading into full blown peels of laughter.”
     “Why? What did you do, fuck someone else in front of him?”
     “Christ no. He’d kill me, and the other poor sod.”
     “It’d be worth it.”
     “What?”
     “I’d willingly die for a chance of screwing you.” I said truthfully. I didn’t know any bloke who knew Suzie who didn’t fantasise about getting into her knickers and those who didn’t were liars.
     “You’re terrible.” She whacked me playfully on the arm.
     “So what happened?”
     “Oh, it was awful. We’d been out drinking and I’d had quite few Pils – too many. I was completely pissed. We were both pretty horny and when we got home, we ripped off our clothes and got at it. I was giving him head…”
     “As one does.”
     “As one does,” she could hardly make sense she was laughing so much, “When I think of it, oh my God.”
     “What? What for Christ’s sake, spit it out?”
     “I didn’t have to. Things didn’t get that far.” Suzie was always explicit and left little to the imagination. Tears streamed down her face. “But then, I did, in a manner of speaking.”     
“What?”
     “Spit it out. I threw up all over him. I’ve never seen a hard on disappear so fast. It looked like it was in shock, like it was having a nervous breakdown.”
     “You’re joking,” the thought of puke mixing with Nick’s pubes was revolting and hilarious at the same time. “Christ. What did he do?”
     “I haven’t got a clue. I passed out.” We both fell against each other across the table, wracked with laughter. She lent her chin on my shoulder and I greedily breathed in the scent of her hair. If anyone on earth could cheer up a man who was down in his bones, it was Suzie.

     Suzie and I decided I should fix myself up with some kind of sophisticated costume for Abbi’s party, and that going as a clown or something as frivolous would hardly be appropriate my mood being the way it was. We decided on white tie and tails and took a taxi to Moss Bros in Covent Garden.

     “Very horny,” she said when I came out of the changing booth and paraded myself, “Give us a twirl. Ooh yes. All those gorgeous young Grey girls at the party’ll fall at your feet looking like that. I’m beginning to feel quite moist myself.”
     “You say I’m terrible but I couldn’t hold a candle to you.” I said, involuntarily fantasising about the two of us entwined in some kind of erotic activity.
     “I’m just being honest. If I wasn’t attached, I might persuade you back to my place for a quick roll in the hay.”
     “You’re such a fucking tease.”
     “The bow tie’s not quite straight.” she leaped up and across the shop and shoved her body tight against mine so that she could adjust the thing and I clasped my hands behind her back as she fiddled with the bow. Again the delightful smell of her hair filled my nostrils.
     “Behave yourself,” she tapped my cheek with the tips of her fingers as she felt something stir against her.

     The Grey family commandeered The Rose And Crown in its entirety for Abbi’s party. Abbi, as always, revelling in the attention, met everyone the door dressed as a Hula girl, wearing the top bit of a green Bikini and a grass skirt. She kissed me on the cheek as I gave her a bottle of Champaign with the ‘Vintage Abbigale Reserve - Bottled for 18 Years’ label I’d faked up for the occasion. I wore the number 18 on my chest like I was a contestant on Come Dancing that also bore the inscription ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’ which seemed to hit the spot.

     “Definitely!” she said with a wink. At any other time, I’d have been overjoyed and relished the prospect of dancing with her cheek to cheek later on. I thought of asking her if she’d seen or heard anything from Rachel but declined the temptation.
     “Ullo, gorgeous. Fuck my! Seems like only yesterdee you was knee ‘igh to a fuckin’ grass ‘opper.” The unmistakable TV villain’s theatrical drawl of Tony Wall from over my shoulder sent a freezing cold signal rushing down my spine to the soles of my shoes. He shoved past me and grabbed Abbi, lifting her off the floor to her squealing delight. “’ow are yer, doll? You look fucking stunnin’. If I was 20 years younger, you’d aff-ter watch aat.”

     As more people poured through the doorway, Wall suddenly turned to me and spoke in a low voice. He still wore the sunglasses but there was no sign of fancy dress, so I assumed he’d come as a criminal. I chose not to mention how convincing he was as the immaculate teeth gleamed in the phoney smile, the eyes invisible like they were the last time I saw him on the day of the crash. He placed a hand firmly on my shoulder and ushered me to one side, his other hand gripped mine and squeezed it slowly like the tightening of a vice. “Ullo, Al. Nice to see you again. Listen, you and me need to have a little talk…in private…later on. OK?”
     “Sure,” I said,” at the same time praying the floor would open up and swallow me, or preferably, Tony Wall.”
     “Watcher, Tone. Glad you could make it.” Terry came pushing through the quickly growing mob as a stream of people, some in costumes, crammed into the pub thrusting parcels in mostly tacky, over- the-top wrapping with sparkling bows into the hands of the delighted Gabby. He and Wall hugged each other Mafia style after Wall had asked Terry what he’d come as. Terry who was wearing the same designer tramp gear he always did replied through a cloud of choking French fag smoke: “A fuckin’ film director.”
     “You cunt.” said Wall, whose breadth of vocabulary seemed a bit lacking for a writer but then most of the dialogue he wrote for the violent TV dramas that were his metier - I mean you hardly need a Churchillian command of English to write ‘leave it out’, or ‘you’ll get yours one day, copper,’ do you? The two hugged each other laughing like the proverbial drains.

     I was starting to feel sick. Tony Wall didn’t know me from Adam apart from meeting me for the first time at the Ringside just before the Roller made its surprise appearance. It was obvious there could only be one reason why he wanted to talk to me and it had to be to do with Rachel.

     My brain performed a medley of excruciating contortions trying to anticipate what he was going to say - how he was going to come at the subject of my connection to Tommy Farr’s darling daughter. Would he just threaten me or would he drag me into the alley at the back of the pub and beat me senseless? Maybe he’d remove my testicles with a rusty hacksaw, or something worse, and I had no doubt Wall was eminently capable of dreaming up something worse up without too much trouble. But Wall was a reformed character according to Terry. Well, actually, Terry hadn’t said that. Terry had just said he wasn’t driving getaway cars for a living any more since he’d become a successful TV writer.

     Maybe the reason he wanted to talk to me had nothing to do with Rachel. He knew I was a creative. Maybe he wanted my opinion on a script he’d written. Maybe the script had something to do with the advertising game and he needed an expert to help him out with a few details. Maybe pigs really could leg it down the runway at Heathrow, flap their trotters and take off for Marbella. Maybe.

     “Al, you got a mo?” A more friendly voice demanded my attention. It was Terry. To my temporary relief, Tony Wall had disappeared into the crowd leaving Terry grinning into my face through the customary cloud of French fag smoke squeezed from his lungs, “How you doin’, Al,” he shook my hand, “You all right, mate? You look a bit peaky.”
     “Yeah. I’m fine.” I lied through as genuine smile as I could conjure up.
     “We got the print back,” his eyes sparkled in excitement.
     “What? What print?” I really hadn’t a clue what he was on about, my mind still reeling at the prospect of my certain trip to the back alley and God knew what.
     “The print of the ghost.”
     “Ghost? What Ghost?”
     “Not the one you look like you’ve seen - the one from the Milk shoot. You know, the soldier at Bray. The fucker in the gasmask.”
     This I didn’t want to hear. “Oh, right.”
     “I’ve got a print back at 28. Nip round in the morning and I show you. It’s fuckin’ weird, I tell you.”
     “Yeah, OK. I’ll come round in the morning.”
     “Great. Look at ‘er,” he pointed a thumb at the crowd now obscuring Abbi, “She fuckin’ loves all that attention. I dunno,” he said in a resigned tone, “she’ll open her legs for any old Tom, Dick or bleedin’ ‘arry. She’s just so much honey for a load of randy bees. The private bar’s upstairs,” he said switching subjects drastically, “C’mon. Let go and get a drink.” I followed him as he pushed his way through the crowd and doorway to the staircase at the back of the pub.

     In the private room on the next floor of the old Victorian building, a long table crammed with food stretched along the entire length of the front wall by the windows. Christian in a green suit, green shirt and green tie stood behind the bar pulling a pint of Young’s Bitter. Terry went straight to the bar.

     “Ullo, Gooz. I see you’ve got the right idea. What’s with the green whistle?” (Gooz, short for Gooseberry, was the family pet name for Christian whose head of spiky hair apparently looked like a gooseberry when he was newborn.)
     “Watcher, Tel. I’m a bogey. Large CC and American, I presume? What about you, Al? Pint of Guinness?”
     “You can see I brought ‘im up right, can’t you Al?” Terry said through a guttural laugh.
     “I’ll have large brandy, thanks Chris,” I said, trying not to sound desperate.
     “Getting’ in the mood the short cut way, eh,” Terry said, skilfully producing the end of a cigarette from the corner of his continental style cigarette packet with a flick of his finger on the bottom of the pack. He leaned an elbow on the bar, and settled into the position I knew he’d adopt for the duration.

     A couple of faces I didn’t recognise but whom clearly knew Terry and Christian very well came over to the bar and the four of them immediately engaged in fairly riotous conversation with much back slapping and the marauding Viking type of laughter that Terry and his drinking companions always indulged in. Christian quickly handed me my drink then turned back to the visitors. Relieved at not having to engage in chit-chat myself, I moved away, gulping down most of the very large brandy in one.

     In the centre of the room stood another apparition. Dressed as a circus ringmaster, complete with whip, top hat, red waistcoat, white jodhpurs and knees length black boots was Lorna, Terry’ second eldest daughter by his first marriage. She looked amazing, the crisp white ringmaster’s shirt struggling to accommodate her bust, deliberately thrust as far forward as she could manage. Judging by her defiantly confident posture, she knew just how good she looked. She stood with feet apart and the whip held across her bottom, pulled taught with a hand at either end of the shaft, her pretty, smiling face framed by her short bob of freshly washed honey blonde hair. For a moment, I was back in the land of the living.

     “Hi, Al,” she said in a deliberately breathy voice, “How’re you doin’?”
     “Hi Lorn, you look great.” I wasn’t lying. She looked mouth-wateringly wanton though I knew it was only her usual way of flirting.
     “Well, thankee, kind sir.” She crossed her legs and bent her knees in a sort of curtsey. A bow would have been more appropriate but nowhere near as sexy.
     “It’s good to see you, Al,” she fixed me with knowing kind of look, “It’s been a long time.”
     Lorna used to live with her parents at number 28 Parson’s Close, but she and Abbi couldn’t share the same space without rowing ferociously and in the end, Lorna left and went to live with her Grandmother in Beckenham. She and Abbi were really quite good friends so long as they didn’t have to live under the same roof.

     For the first time since I’d met Rachel, here right in front of me was someone who measured up to her admirably. Not that I’d ever done anything with Lorna, who, as another 17 year old daughter of one of my best friends, I felt was out of bounds. But I had, on a couple of occasions, come pretty close to being really naughty with her. Like I said, Lorna was an accomplished but subtle flirt, who even at her tender years knew how to use her generous endowments to great effect and potentially drive many a man to destruction. (No I didn’t mean distraction.)

     The Grey’s house was open to their friends twenty four hours a day and there was usually a soul or two wandering around or sleeping off the effects of something or other on a sofa or floor. Late one particular evening, Lorna and I were the last two left standing after a lengthy meal in a local curry house followed by a couple of boozy hours around the Grey’s kitchen table with an assortment of family and friends.

     Mum and Dad Grey had gone to bed or ‘crashed’ as they put it, and Christian had gone back to the flat. He always left a party suddenly after announcing with a slur that he had to go to sleep. That left just me and Lorna, who’d been wondering about in her knickers and a jumper just long enough to cover her bottom, though thankfully, not that well.

     I’d have gone home with Christian but the knowledge that Lorna had only two hours earlier returned from her evening shift as a waitress at her Grandmother’s mediaeval themed restaurant in Poplar where she played the part of serving wench with great enthusiasm. Having only got out of her bed in the middle of the afternoon to go to work, she wasn’t in the least bit tired, a state that signalled the possibility of some kind of shenanigans with the fair young maiden, however slight.

     As it happened, we retired to the sofa in the Grey’s huge sitting room to watch a video of Nick Roeg’s ‘Don’t Look Now’. The fact that I got through the extremely erotic scene of Donald Southerland and July Christie ‘getting it on’ as they prepared for a dinner date, without losing control and ravishing the very relaxed Lorna cuddled up next to me was a nothing short of a miracle, or as a few of my male friends would have said, an act of total insanity.

     The fantasy of what might have been evaporated as Mat, Lorna’s boyfriend, whom I hated because of his Adonis looks and endearing personality, suddenly towered over her. He put his arm round her shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. She kissed him back and snuggled against his huge, athletic body which, in a fleeting vision, I saw opened up from throat to navel, his entrails tumbling onto the old Victorian floorboards on which we all stood.

     “Hi, Al. How’re y’doing?” he extended a massive hand as Lorna snuggled further into his armpit. She was flaunting him as well as herself and I recalled the bloody scene and added her split, headless body to it as company for his.

     I went back to the bar and helped myself to another large brandy, the first one already making it’s presence felt. Christian and Terry were still engaged in the laughing competition with their two friends and paid me no attention. Abbi and her entourage entered the room as the disco with it’s cheap flashing Christmas tree type lights started up in the corner, belting out ‘The Police’’s ‘Roxanne’ at max volume.

     The next couple of hours flew by in a distorted dream of blurred, gyrating figures, ear splitting noise and general party mayhem, enhanced by several more double brandies. In an attempt to abandon my cares to the great Gods Alcoholic and Le Piss-artiste, I think I was actually enjoying myself. Maybe Suzie had been right in her diagnosis. Maybe I was taking life too seriously. Tony Wall? Who the fuck was he anyway? He was just a hack TV writer living in the past.

     As for Tommy Farr, I began to think he didn’t really exist and if he did, he was just another has-been. His way of doing things was already over, to quote ‘The Godfather’ yet again. This was the 1980s. People like Farr were out of date and belonged to an era when people needed thugs and villains to protect them from other thugs and villains and the Old Bill, as your average diamond geezer described the Nation’s police force back then. Those glory days were long gone. Farr and his kind were a joke. They were all losers at the end of the day, ‘the end’ being the best part of the place best suited to see them in their true light – some wanky TV series or other probably written by Tony Wall. Even he knew what a joke they all were. At least he was making money out of them.

     The brandy and the atmosphere made me feel invincible again. I felt I could face anything – anyone. As for that stupid little tart, Rachel, fuck her! I remember dancing with Abbi fairly early on and then with Bernie, her Mother, and at one point with her half brother, Christian, who seemed to find the experience hilarious. Bernie introduced me to her Mother, a dark haired 70 year old with what seemed slight Red Indian features, telling her that I was a really special person whom she’d love one, if not two of her daughters to marry. The squaw woman stared blankly at me with no sign of interest whatsoever which was not surprising as her own daughter was hanging on to her arm off her tits on God knew what aside from the usual gallon of vodka and orange she consumed at party time with the enthusiasm of a thirsty camel.

     I managed to dance a fairly elaborate Foxtrot with Sandra, the 40ish, overweight Landlady of The Rose And Crown, who whispered in my ear that were in not for her beloved Henry, the boots of whom the rest of the male guests weren’t fit to clean, she’d be more than happy with me as a companion and bed-mate.

     Our manoeuvres swathed a path through the crowd, the members of which were forced into the role of spectators. Round and round we twirled, Sandra’s neck leaning outwards in sympathy with her arched back in elegant ‘Palais Glide’ mode. She was a very good dancer, and took the lead when I faltered not that anyone would have noticed. Then the floor came up and hit me in the face. That’s what Christian told me happened sometime afterwards. I don’t remember. It was back to the operating theatre scenario I’d described to Melissa. One minute I was there, the ne…


* * * * * * * * *


Chapter 11: THINGS THAT GO BOMP


     “I think he’s comin’ out of it,” the semi-familiar voice sounded like it was speaking form an echoey bathroom ten miles away and I could have sworn I saw Tony Wall’s face bang up close to mine. But I was mistaken. It was Terry’s ugly mug with its characteristic missing top front tooth, grinning stupidly.
     “’E is fuckin’out of it!” the raucous cackle confirmed Terry’s close proximity, but no, it was Wall. I could’ve sworn it had been Terry. There was something pretty horrible in the mirrored reflection of Wall’s bloody sunglasses. A semi-familiar, pathetic pale green face lolled uncertainly on the front of someone’s head, which also could have been mine though I wasn’t altogether sure. I wasn’t altogether sure of anything.
     “You all right, son? Al? You in there?” The expanse of gleaming white teeth confirmed it was Wall’s grinning face, his flat nose almost touching the tip of mine and in an aside to no one in particular, he declared, “These fuckin’ kids ‘aven’t got a fuckin’ clue, ave they?”

     I was hardly a kid at 37, but Wall probably considered anyone who lived outside the seedy, ferocity of the world he inhabited, with it’s dodgy dealings, murder and mayhem, contempt of the law and society structures and seat of the pants existence, to be a virgin where real life was concerned - the term ‘kid’ being in his mind a fitting and appropriate description of such a naïve, uninitiated individual as me.
     “Fuck you.” were the thankfully un-uttered words that sprang to mind.
     “I’d better get back to the fray,” I heard Terry say from somewhere in the room, followed by, “Watcher, Keith, ow’s it goin?” as the door opened then slammed shut as, I assumed, he walked through it, through the open doorway, I mean, though Keith could’ve walked through the door itself without much of a problem.
     “Now, Al. About that little chat I mentioned,” Wall said quietly as a chair scraped against the floor and someone sat heavily down with a wheeze and a grunt. It must have been Keith. “ I’ll get straight to the point. You alright, Al? Get ‘im a glass of water, Keefy.”

     The chair scraped again and the floor creaked as Keith got up and walked across the room. I heard a tap being turned on and water pouring into a glass. I made out the shape of Keith’s massive frame in the half gloom a she handed a grimy looking mug to Wall who held it up to my lips. He pinched my nose with his other hand, forcing my mouth open. He pressed the rim of the glass between my teeth and, still holding on to my schnozzle, he pushed my head back and poured. The water was warm, coming probably from a tap marked H and it flooded my mouth and cascaded down my chin and onto my shirt. I gagged and half-choked.

     “That’s better, innit?’ said Wall, knowing the statement couldn’t be further from the truth. “Now then, sunshine, it’s come to the attention of certain parties, or to be more precise, one party in particular, that you’ve bin seein’ a certain young lady. Bin seein’ quite a lot of her by all accounts, yeah? Ah, I see by the expression on your boat race that you know who I’m talkin’ about.”

     I started to focus on Wall’s own grinning visage. He was close enough to kiss me though I was pretty sure he wasn’t about to. He was sitting on a chair that he’d dragged close to face the one I was sitting on. His knees were between mine so there was no chance of escape even if I’d been rash enough to try – not that I could’ve stood up in the state I was in.

     “It’s like this, Al,” he continued, the soulless grin still displaying the shiny white dentistry that looked eminently capable of tearing strips of flesh off me if the fit took him, “This certain party has a daughter over whom the certain party is besotted, shall we say. And this certain party is a bit concerned that his precious offspring has gone AWOL, that is to say, fucked off somewhere without tellin’ the certain party where or when she might take it into her pretty little head to come back again, know wha’ I mean? And as the offspring of the certain party is the very young lady you’ve been seeing so much of, the certain party thought it was possible you’d know where she’s hidin’, if you get my drift.”

     I shook my head.

     “Oh, we know it’s you, Al,” he went on, “I knew it was you when we met at the Ringside the other day the day when the fuckin’ Roller came through the fuckin’ winder après lunch. If you remember, I mentioned the certain party and his offspring when you and me and Tel walked back to his motor. I mentioned the certain party and his offspring deliberately just to see if you reacted. And, guess what. You did. You went white as a fuckin’ ghost. Keefy here ‘as bin followin’ the pair of you. ‘e’s Rachel’s minder. Has bin ever since just after her Mum passed on. And old Keefy’s very fond of young Rachel. Hasn’t got any family of his own, and Rachel’s become a kind of supplement for that. It’s as if she was his own daughter – the one he never ‘ad ‘imself. So old Keefy adores the sweet young thing as if she was his own. He’d do anything for her. Even kill, if he had a mind to, which in his case is quite likely if anyone put her in harm’s way.
     “That’s how we knew it was you what’s been seein’ her. Keefy’d seen you together. ‘e might be a clumsy fucker when it comes to house breakin’ an’ that, but when it comes to mindin’, and especially when it comes to mindin’ Rachel, there’s no one on the planet that does a better job. We was goin’ to have our little chat with you then, after the lunch. She’d bin missin’ for a week or so before that and then, hey fuckin’ presto, she turns up right out of the blue, just like that, behind the wheel of her old man’s…the particlular party’s motor, and makes her entrance frew the Ringside fuckin’ winder. So you was let of the ‘ook, so to speak. She gets herself a dose of concussion…I trust you haven’t given her a dose of anything else, Al, and then while Keefy’s takin’ a leak, she disappears again. Get’s up out of her hospital bed, grabs her clobber and whoosh, she’s gone again. No one’s more pissed off than Keith that she’s gone’, cos he feels responsible, except maybe the certain party. And he’s very pissed off believe you me. You sure you’re all right, Al?”

     Wall could see I was far from all right. He was enjoying putting the shits up me. I mused for a mili-second which ‘certain party’ he was referring to - Labour or the bloody Tories, as most East Enders called Mrs Thatchers mob. This stupid witticism was quickly snuffed out like the flame on a birthday cake candle as the room started spinning in horrible whip like movements and the promise I’d made so many times before that I was never going to let a drop of alcohol pass my lips ever again reaffirmed its intention once again while the sudden onset of a searing migraine began tap dancing on the inside of my eyelids.

     Wall leaned back in his chair and took a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and a gold Dunhill lighter from his trouser pocket. He flipped open the discreet expensive looking top, clicked the discreet, expensive looking flame alive and applied it. He inhaled deeply and blew the indiscreet expensive smoke straight in my eyes.

     “You see, Al,” he spoke in a soft, patronising, almost co-conspiratorial manner, that couldn’t have sounded more threatening or sinister if it tried, “We’re really hoping – the particular party and Keith (maybe it was the Liberal party he was talking about) and I, that you could help us out. I mean we’ve tried everything to find the sweet young thing. We’ve tried the university, where it seems she ain’t been for almost a year, and all her mates, at least the ones we know of, all her old hangouts – clubs, pubs - every fuckin’ where and we ain’t come up with nuffin’. Zilch is all the information we have about her whereabouts. It’s like she never fuckin’ existed. So we thought you might be able to throw some light on the mystery, you and her havin’ bin so close, an’ all, know wha’ I mean? Like you can tell us where she is, yeah?”
     “But I don’t kno…” I started to say. Wall leaned forward and put his hand on my shoulder. Then he squeezed and dug his fingers into a muscle, which until then I didn’t know I even had.
     “It’s all right, Al. There’s no need to panic,” he said, unclamping his fingers, “You’ve got plenty of time - a week, actually. From today, all right? You just give the matter a bit of thought, yeah? See what you can come up with. Give me a call when you’ve sorted things out. Tel ‘ll have a number where you can reach me. Me and Keefy’d better get back to the party or they’ll wonder where we are.”

     Wall stood up and Keith heaved himself to his feet in what came across as a pathetic gesture of blind obedience. “Oh, one more thing, Al. Just in case you might have thought I exaggerated the little story about the particular party and the bloke with the missing thumbs…I didn’t.” (So it was the Nazi party Wall had been referring to all along) Still smiling, he turned and walked past Keith through the doorway the big man had made available for him. Keith followed and closed the door behind him.



* * * * * *



     My bedroom was pitch black. Actually, it was painted white but the thick curtains were still drawn from the night before and I didn’t bother to put the light on. I hardly remembered staggering back from the pub through the secluded alleyways of the Crown Estate or putting my key in the lock but somehow I made it. I stepped across the room and fell onto the bed whose ancient, well-worn springs squealed in protest. Luckily, the bed was where I’d left it, and though I couldn’t see it, my instinctive aim was good. I curled up into a ball and faced the wall folding my hands between my knees, which were quaking uncontrollably. I’d never sucked my thumb as a child but at that moment I wished I’d developed the habit.

     My body was still awash with the effects of the variety of boozy concoctions I’d swallowed in my attempt to obliterate the fears and forebodings that had wracked my brain an hour or so previously. Now, weirdly, though my body felt like wet sponge, my brain was sober, the thin veneer of invincibility the alcohol had credited me with having disappeared with one long, rasping exhalation of wind from my bowels brought on by the agitated flock of budgerigars chattering frantically in my stomach. Panic had me in its iron grip and was squeezing with all its might.

     A continual torrent of thoughts flooded my mind, one swilling over another in a desperate attempt to make some kind of sense of the ludicrous situation I found myself in. Each thought contradicted the next. One wave of defiance was followed by another of simpering self-pity. Just who did Tony Wall think he was with his pseudo tough gut act? This was 1982, not 1948. We weren’t living in some Graham Greene black and white post war movie starring Richard Attenborough as an unlikely villain with scar on his cheek and a phoney South London accent. (‘Come and get me, copper’ This was real life and people just couldn’t get away with going round threatening innocent bystanders like that. Wall could get stuffed and that great blancmange, Keith, could get stuffed along with him. I’d tell him to his face. What was he going to do, anyway? Pull my fingernails out with pliers? Stick a rattlesnake down my pants? Plug my balls into the National Grid? Crucify me? This was Maggie’s civilised society and such carryings on were absurd – unthinkable.

     But I’ll tell you who Tony Wall thought he was. He thought he was a nasty tough guy and his act wasn’t pseudo – it was real like his South London accent and he could go round threatening as many innocent bystanders as he liked. But he wouldn’t pull out my fingernails with pliers or stick a rattlesnake down my pants or plug my balls into the National Grid. He wouldn’t crucify me either. He’d get Keith to do it for him. They’d find a nice wooden fence in a lonely spot down by the docks where no one would hear me scream and Keith would get busy with his four pound hammer and six inch masonry spikes. Wall would just stand and watch, smiling that soulless smile of his.

     “Well, Al, we did ask you nicely for that certain bit of info we wanted. It’s just a pity you didn’t keep your side of the bargain. Never mind, maybe a bit of honest to goodness, DIY will help dislodge whatever’s blocking that old memory of yours. What do you reckon? Bloody ‘ell! That one went right through your mit and into the wood with just one wack of the ‘ammer. Strong as an ox, our Keefy is, aincha, Keefy. Mind you, I never could stand the sound of crunchin’ bone, me. I’ll just wonder off and have a fag while Barry Bucknel here finishes the job. Unless, that is, you’ve suddenly remembered something you might want to tell us.”

     I started to cry loudly like a child who’d lost its mother in the hostile crowd of a department store but a sudden loud thump like something falling on the floor sent a jolt of shock through me automatically spinning me round into a sitting position with my feet planted on the floor and my eyes straining to focus in the darkness.

     “Whaaagh…” a pathetic shriek echoed off the walls, my mouth gaping wide enough to net a swarm of Bluebottles. The unmistakable clack of a Zippo lighter being flipped open and the skid of the wheel against the flint as the flame ignited told me I had company. The ghostly bottom half of a face flickered momentarily then disappeared as the Zippo lid snapped shut. “Whoooaaagh!” my gob shrieked again. I heard someone exhale and the dry smell of cheap cigarette smoke invaded my nostrils.
     “I say, Alan. We are jumpy, aren’t we?”
     “Miles? What the hell are you doing in here? How the fuck did you get in? You scared me half to death.”
     “I don’t think its me that’s scared you half to death. More like Mr T. Wall and that great fat toad, Keith.”
     “How do you know about all that? How did you get in here?”
     “I simply followed you in. You were in such a state I thought it would be quite a wheeze to see if I could get by you without you noticing. I overtook you on the stairs. I could’ve picked your pocket on the way past and you’ve never have noticed. You did seem somewhat preoccupied and I don’t think it was just the amount of cheep plonk you’d been guzzling. I got up the stairs first. You really should close your bedroom door, Alan. You don’t want everybody prying into your naughty little secrets, do you? Or perhaps you do.”
     “Give me a cigarette, Miles. What are you doing here?”

     The table light I kept on the desk in the corner clicked on and I squinted against the sudden glare. Miles, sitting on the chair by the desk, placed the lamp, which must have been what had fallen on the floor, back on the desk, and crossed one bony knee over the other. He offered me the cigarette packet and I took one. They were non-tipped which I hated but at that moment I wasn’t fussy. He flicked open the Zippo again and grabbed my wrist to steady my shaking hand, the bony fingers clamping tight like the nightmare tentacles of the horrible fertility hand in Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’. He let go and I inhaled, immediately choking on the hot smoke.

     “Christ, Miles, why do you smoke these cheap fags? They’re enough to peel the lining of your lungs like wallpaper.”
     “We don’t all earn the obscene amount of money you do,” he said petulantly, “Some of us are forced into a hand to mouth existence through no fault of our own.”
     “That’s debatable in your case.” I said reaching down to the ashtray on the floor and stubbing out the cigarette.
     “I’ll have that, if you don’t mind,” he said rescuing the bent stub and putting it back in the packet. “If you weren’t going to smoke it, why ask for it in the first place?”
     “I don’t remember seeing you at the party.” I said, trying to engage in some kind of thought process other than the one of self-pity that was occupying too much space behind my frontal lobes.
     “I was very discreet,” he said smugly. I found this hard to imagine. Miles didn’t exactly cut the kind of figure that camouflaged easily. With his emaciated frame wrapped in the ridiculous double-breasted striped suit he always wore, his sticklike arms poking from the sleeves like bits of two-by-two, he stood out like a single deckchair on a deserted beach. Yellowy, sunken cheeks, a long hook nose and dearly departed type eyes like black olives in baggy dried, prune-like sockets made him a front runner for the part of Uriah Heep in anybody’s production of David Copperfield. A thick, unkempt mat of hair with the consistency of wire wool perched above a greasy brow, supported by eyebrows from the same hardware store, completed the picture. “You really do seem to have got yourself into a bit of a pickle, don’t you Alan?”
     “And you have a natural talent for stating the bloody obvious.” I felt myself shivering even though it was hot in the bedroom. Miles sucked in a huge lungful of smoke until the insides of his cheeks touched. Amongst the seething mass at the party, quite a few of whom I’d never laid eyes on before, there were some pretty weird individuals I’d have to have said. There was the usual mob of artist lefties led by the ever-boisterous pain in the arse shape of Andy, who was predictably spouting his ant-Thatcher crap to all and sundry. There was a flock of feral types with matted, rat-infested dreadlocks and a handful of punks complete with war paint to go with their Mohawk hairdos and the usual bunch of villain mates of Terry’s and their molls from Central Casting. It was a pretty ubiquitous mixed salad of partygoers to say the least and I had to admit it was a possibility Miles would’ve blended in quite well and gone relatively unnoticed.
     A cloud of expelled smoke momentarily formed a fog around the sallow, shrunken skull that vaguely resembled a human head perched on Miles’ shoulders and I found myself briefly wondering how such an unattractive creature had managed to attach itself so limpet-like to my life in the way that it had. It was during one of my nightmare, hallucinogenic panic attacks that had suddenly arrived unannounced as I was walking along Drury Lane late one evening that I first came across him. It was not long after I’d been let out of the loony bin.

     Somehow, I’d found myself amongst the usual pissed, stoned, or both throng of habitual revellers in the mega trendy Zanzibar cocktail lounge off Drury Lane, propping myself up against the bar surrounded by a mob of high-as-kites cocaine heads. I desperately needed an influx of alcohol and even possibly some of that white powder stuff I hadn’t until that moment ever considered shoving up my snout or anywhere else. But I couldn’t speak, I was shaking so badly, and the bar staff were studiously ignoring me.

     A hand waving a twenty pound note thrust itself over my shoulder and a gravel-textured, well spoken voice barked an order in a manner that cut through the din like a razor and got an immediate response from a blonde half clad in a designer dress full of ragged holes who snatched the money and grabbed a couple of tall glasses from below the bar in one reflex movement. “Two Mega Blitzes with extra Bourbon and make sure the glasses are clean.”

     The girl stared fiercely past me at whomever the voice belonged to as she mixed the drinks. The bony hand stayed suspended by my right ear until she handed the two glasses of purple liquid to the owner who produced another hand and took the drinks.

     “That’s 30 quid. You haven’t given me enough,” yelled the barmaid triumphantly above the screeching babble of the crowd. The skinny body thrust its way between me, and the bloke next to me. He slapped one glass down on the bar and produced a ten pound note, thrusting it at the blonde.
     “Here you are, collector of tariffs. That’s outrageous - an insult to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and a cultured palate. 30 quid for this crap?”
     “If you don’t like it, you can always fuck off and drink somewhere else,” she snapped with the aggression of a pissed off alligator. She grabbed the money and turned her back not having a door at hand to slam in his face. “Here you are, he said, sliding one of the glasses along the bar till it touched my hand, “Sip it through the straw. It’ll get to you quicker.” By the way, I’m Miles Davis.” For a moment, I just stared at him, believing he was just part of the bad dream, “Go on. It won’t bite you, unlike that stupid bitch,” he cocked his head towards the bar. Tentatively, I bent my head down and took the straw between my lips, half-turning my face towards him trying to take in the sight of the of the face that looked like it belonged to someone who’d not long since died of some horrible disease. “Hello,” he said, “I’m Miles Davis,” I’d heard him the first time, but he didn’t look much like the trumpet genius to me. “It’s OK, go ahead.” I lip-read his words he uttered quietly suddenly softening from the abrasive creature he’d been a moment before.

     There was something oddly reassuring about the presence of my peculiar companion. His eyes, tired-looking and bloodshot, nevertheless had a weird kindness about them and he allowed the corners of his thin mouth to relax slightly suggesting the ghost of a smile.

     He was right; sipping the purple liquid through the straw accelerated the effects of the alcohol and I began to feel the familiar spreading warmth of relaxation. I didn’t care if this guy was Miles Davis, Mantovani, Jack The Ripper or the Man in the Moon. Somehow, and I didn’t care how, he made me start to feel safe again. At that moment, I needed someone to cling to. Anyone. And this weirdo fitted the bill just and not just because he was there.

     Miles ushered me quickly to a table being vacated by 4 trendy looking advertising types – 3 blokes with spiky hair and a fairly drunk girl in a very short black dress, her jacked up, under-wired tits spilling over the ultra low cut top, and threatening to avalanche their way into full view at any second. She stumbled as she stood up and one of the blokes grabbed her arm just in time to stop her sprawling across the table. Several other people made for the empty chairs but Miles shoved them rudely aside and sat down much to their indignation.

     “I hope you topple into your grave just as quickly,” said one who was built like King Kong.
     “I’ll be happy to oblige as long as I don’t have low life snot like you for company,” Miles tossed the comment over his shoulder like a half chewed chicken leg ignoring the neck-less quarter back type’s obvious ability to unscrew heads with a flick of his wrist. The gorilla just turned away into the crowd with his companions, thankfully deciding to take his anger out on the next unsuspecting winger he came across on the rugby pitch. I sank down onto a chair opposite my companion without removing the straw from my lips.
     “You clearly need to feed your habit. If you’ve run out of the necessary I can fix you up with just about anything you can swallow, smoke or inject that you’re probably familiar with and quite a lot you aren’t. You can pay me later,” he said with a sickening air of arrogant authority. So he was a fucking dealer. At any other time, I’d have gladly sliced through his very prominent Adams Apple with a razor blade but until something better came along, he was Florence Nightingale. I looked across the table at the scrawny mess opposite and a second later it screwed up its eyes and leaned forward scrutinising me like a doctor might. “Oh, I see. You don’t have a habit at all, do you? But something’s obviously fucked you in the arse, hasn’t it?” He wasn’t Florence Nightingale after all. She definitely wouldn’t have said ‘arse’.
     My straw made a gurgling sound as I drained the glass of purple stuff. It really had hit the spot and I was feeling a lot less like I was plugged into a wall socket. “My shout, I think. Fancy another?” I said, managing to unclamp my lips and trying to get to my feet and reach into my pockets at the same time, but finding I could do neither with any degree of accuracy.
     “Steady on, I’ll get them,” said my companion as I tottered uncertainly and sat back down, “but I’ll let you pay. The last round cleared me out. Just give me the cash and I’ll go and chat up Cinderella’s third ugly sister.”

     He disappeared into the crowd and I wished he hadn’t. I wanted him to stay with me, whoever or whatever he was. A wiry little bloke in a silk suit with the sleeves rolled back along his forearms sat down in Miles’s chair and pulled a girl with a ragged blot of head hair onto his lap. With the speed of light, my hand shot out and grabbed his arm by the bicep and squeezed it, the fingers digging into the muscle. The bloke screwed his eyes tight in pain but I didn’t give him the chance to speak.

     “Get your arse out of that fucking chair unless you want me to tear your liver out and make her swallow it,” came a voice from somewhere deep inside my chest.
     “Jesus fucking Christ!” he said through clenched teeth, “My arm!” He was right there. I certainly didn’t have hold of his leg. He tipped the girl off his lap and stood up trying to pull away. I was confident that I could crush the bone and muscle in his upper arm to pulp but I decided it wasn’t necessary and my fingers loosened their hold on his arm but still gripped the cloth of his jacket. He wrenched himself free and there was a ripping sound as a strip of it came away in my hand.
     He stared at the tear in amazement, “You cunt. What d’you think you’re doing? That’s fucking Georgio Armani!”
     It just looked like a piece of jacket to me. The girl pulled him away which was just as well as I was contemplating sinking my teeth into his face,
     “Leave it Ray. He’s off his head. Look at his eyes, he’s a fucking nutter.” She didn’t know how near the truth she was.


* * * * * * * * * * *


Chapter 12. LOONY TUNES

     The room was small and cramped and smelled of furniture polish and disinfectant. The consultant psychiatrist, a largish woman in her mid fifties, sat sideways to the old wooden clerks’ desk slammed up against the wall to save space and facing me as I sat on a plastic chair with my back to the door. Dr Smedburg, as the name badge on her lapel announced, wore a dull pink tweedy woollen suit with flecks of dark purple woven into it like bits of beetroot in pink blancmange. Just visible beneath the high collar of the jacket was a thin, cashmere beige sweater. The suit had brass buttons who’s brashness cancelled out the single, delicate row of cultured white pearls around her thick neck and she wore grey glasses with transparent frames exactly matching her transparent, permed silver grey hair.

     The make up was thick, applied hurriedly and inexpertly, the lipstick an over ripe, violent pink extra crust of skin culminating in a dried ridge on the outer edges of her bottom lip. A tall, thin Indian bloke in a white coat, severe horn-rimmed glasses and grave expression stood with his back against the medicine cabinet his, arms folded sternly across his chest. His name badge said he was Dr Gosh.

     A Caucasian male nurse in a short white smock buttoned to the neck with side buttons across one shoulder Ben Casey style and a 1950s ridged, wavy hairstyle stood next to him, hands casually placed in his trouser pockets. His tanned skin was almost the same colour as the Indian’s and he displayed an open, friendly smile through gleaming white teeth. His name badge told me he was Charge Nurse Peters.

     A third man in a tweed jacket, cream shirt, ill-adjusted tartan tie and cheap, non-descript grey trousers bearing the merest suggestion of creases, having never been ironed since the day they left the store, clearly radiated the description, ‘Social Worker’, and held a clipboard half obscuring his face in one hand, scribbling spasmodically with the cheap, utilitarian Biro held in the other. He didn’t wear a name badge but I reckoned he was a Colin or a David or maybe a Phil. His expression was one of concerned scrutiny, occasionally flashing me a patronising half smile when I caught his eye, confirming his occupation as a thorough going dyed-in-the-wool do-gooder.

     Dr Smedburg’s face widened in a well-rehearsed, furrow-browed smile stretching her lippy far enough beyond its recommended tolerances which could’ve sent it snapping off her bottom lip like a catapulted elastic band if she wasn’t careful. “And how are you feeling today, Alan?”
     “OK. Fine, actually.” I looked around the group for a reaction. There was none save for Colin/Dave/Phil scribbling with renewed vigour.
     “Good. Good,” said Dr S., half turning and picking up her own Gold plated ballpoint and jotting a couple of illegible hieroglyphics on her notepad.
     “How did I score?” I said. She turned back, clearly not understanding the joke or more likely ignoring it. Charge Nurse Peters giggled silently. Dr S. continued, “Do you remember arriving here at the hospital?”
     “I remember arriving here, vaguely,” I said truthfully, “But not at any hospital.”
     “Really?” she said putting her lippy through even more stress. “Where do you think you are, then?”
     “The nuthouse, the loony bin. The asylum. There’s probably an official title. You tell me.”
     Dr S.’s professional camouflage obscured her distain for the over-privileged upstart in the plastic chair in front of her. “This is the Psychiatric Wing of Fouracre General Hospital,” she said as if she was reading from a script.
     “Like I said, the nuthouse.” I wasn’t as with it as I was trying to pretend, I have to say. In fact I was pretty near on the edge of raving and, although I would never have admitted it, was fairly sure and thankful in a funny way that I was in the right place. I was desperate for help and praying there was somebody in this place who could supply it.
     “Do you see things?” There it was. The first of the two most dangerously leading questions you can ever be asked. I shook my head too violently. She asked the next one, “Do you hear voices?” I shook my head less violently in an attempt to appear less agitated. Dr S. drew a couple more hieroglyphics on her pad. “Do you remember what happened yesterday? In the dining room?”
     “I’m not sure.” I looked down at my hands in my lap clenched together so hard they were white and quivering like demented jellyfish, the tremors spreading through my whole upper body as if trying to find a way out via my skin. I didn’t want to think about the previous day in the dining room but my brain took me back there anyway ignoring my feelings of dread and guilt, obviously intent on punishing me for something.

     After a couple of days in the Hampstead hospital immediately following my brief encounter with the wicked little pill someone had slipped into my drink, I’d been transferred to the Psychiatric wing of Fouracre Hospital, in Kent for observation on the advice of the resident Hampstead shrink who wore dandruff on the shoulders of his Saville Row, Huntsman suit like a light fall of fresh snow.

     The visit to the Kent institution was voluntary, I was earnestly informed, though I knew if I turned down the offer I’d be chucked in the back of a white van, marked ambulance, and end up there anyway. By the time I’d made the 20mile trip to Locks Bottom just past Orpington I was feeling OK – almost normal if a bit spaced out.
     I‘d been at Fouracres for about a week and was chatting away quite happily with a pleasant bloke called Jerry who was suffering from depression brought about by lack of cash, as he put it, and Geoff, a schizophrenic, who, though obviously medicated to his eyeballs judging by the slight slurring of his speech, was disturbingly witty about all our predicaments, and Gordon a red faced, podgy Managing Director and alcoholic who was in for drying out treatment. Gordon had been put on a therapy which involved him being given 3 or 4 large brandies on the trot having first been administered an alcohol rejection drug which was meant to make him violently sick if he even sniffed alcohol in the hope that his system would eventually nail him firmly onto the wagon. The only effect the therapy achieved was to make him giggly pissed and looking forward to the next round of drinks, and doubly elated because he didn’t have to put his hand in his pocket. He’d occasionally look at his watch and declare with a silly grin that the sun was almost over the yardarm once again as the time for his next tot approached.

     We sat at our own table in dining room for lunch though we shared the room with about 25 of the unfortunate creatures that were detained permanently under Her Majesty’s Mental Health Act. The two other members of our party were Burt Ogden, a dour Yorkshire man and early retired hospital administrator complete with Bobbie Charlton comb-over, Burton’s tweed jacket, brown brogue shoes and grey Marks and Spencer regulation trousers, (an ensemble that probably contributed more to his own depression than most other things) and a window cleaner called Barry who’d had managed to convince himself that his heart was about to give up the ghost despite the fact that he was fit as a fiddle, had a perfectly normal pulse rate and his arteries were as clear the London Tube network during a strike by the T&G.

     We temporary inmates shared a dormitory at one end of the old Victorian building, as far away from the permanent inhabitants as was possible while a new outpatients wing and day centre was under construction. The original, purpose built formidable structure had all the character you’d expect a loony bin to have, with its cold, dark, grey brickwork, narrow windows covered in chicken wire, tall ceilings and heavy doors. It was about as convivial as a mausoleum in winter and would have fitted comfortably into the set of any Hammer Horror film. The sudden arrival of a driverless coach hauled by four snorting, black-plumed, blazing eyed horses shrouded in their own portable fog pulling up outside wouldn’t have registered much of a surprise to anyone.

     Our billet was to all intents and purposes a normal hospital ward complete with iron frame beds, a mobile oxygen cylinder and a set of screens on casters, the only difference being that our ward was locked at night. I wasn’t sure if this was to keep us in or to keep other inmates out. It was probably as combination of both. When I arrived, my new fellow travellers and I exchanged mental states along with names, which seemed to be a ritual practise when a newcomer arrived. It was also reassuring. It was a kind of comfort to find myself in the company of otherwise seemingly normal individuals and the swapping of information about each person’s predicament seemed to make my own feel less serious.

     “We’re all nutters in here,” announced the heavily doped up Geoff, a 6ft baby-faced 26 year old with the same side parted, quiffed hairstyle he’d had since he was 5, “I’m a schizophrenic. You know, split personality and all that malarkey – two pains in the arse instead of one. Thought I was bloody Jesus, I did. Stood at the top of the stairs in our house and yelled at the old lady to ‘get thee behind me, Satan’ whilst preaching from a copy of the Sunday Times Colour Supplement like it was the Holy bloody bible. Frightened her to bloody death I did, not to mention the bloody kids who thought I was a raving bloody lunatic, which I was of course. I’m all right now though, he announced through a hazy, uncertain air of tentative confidence. It was pretty clear to the rest of us that he wasn’t all right or ever likely to be again. “Overwork was what did me,’ he went on, “Doing two jobs at once. Did the day job as a draftsman and then came home and sat down to make a load of suede belts, you know, like what Hippy girls wear. Me and my mate, Ted, were making a bloody fortune flogging ‘em down East Lane, you know, East Lane, as in Peckham.”
     I did know, as it happened. I used to buy ‘winkle picker shoes’ from East Lane. Actually it was called East Street though ‘Lane’ sounded better – more like Petticoat Lane – and gave the place more credibility as a street market, I suppose, back in the late Fifties. For some reason, the shoes you could buy in East Lane had longer, sharper points than anywhere else. I flogged my old Hornby Double O train set for 4 quid when I was 14 to buy a pair with toes so far from the ankle that I had to put metal bars in the things over night to stop the them curling up like Arabian slippers.
     Geoff continued, “Anyway, one day I started seeing things and hearing voices. Imagined I saw soldiers coming through the bloody walls. Can you credit it? Bloody soldiers, with gasmasks, rifles, bayonets, the bloody lot. Well, I knew I was going off my trolley for sure then but I just kept going and ignored the symptoms till one day I ended up in here. That was last week…or last year, I’m not really sure.” He burst into peels of laughter and a few minutes later repeated the tale of his demise all over again, which apparently was something he was very fond of doing.
     “What about you, Al. What you do to get yourself banged up in here?” Geoff had asked the question several times before but had forgotten.
     “Nobody’s banged up, Geoff,” Burt cut in, “except some of these other poor bastards.” He made a sweeping gesture at the permanent inmates with his dinner knife.
     “Attempted suicide, was it?” Geoff persisted, totally unaware of his lack of tact, “That’ll do it every time. What was it, hosepipe to the old exhaust, a couple of bottles of Aspirin, the old razor blade through the wrists number?” He grabbed my arm, twisting it so that he could examine the bit where the arteries are. Disappointed with the lack of jagged scars, he let it flop back onto the table.
     “Alan’s in here for depression like most of us Geoff.” said Jerry saving the day.
     “That’s what they all say,” said Geoff spluttering bits of mashed potato everywhere as he laughed over a mouthful, “He could be a bloody murderer for all we know.”

     Nobody bothered to explain to Geoff that if that were the case I really would have been banged up but in Broadmoor not Fouracres. Under normal circumstances, he’d have understood this anyway, but these were not normal circumstances and Geoff was anything but normal himself, poor sod.

     Having managed along with the rest of us to shove down the worst apology for food since the days of the good old Kent County Council school dinners, Burt lit a cigarette and sat back. Geoff and Jerry left the table and went through to the dayroom to play snooker leaving me with Burt and Gordon. Barry was still in the dormitory lying on his bed no doubt wondering which of the next minutes would be the one during which his heart actually stopped beating. He was in for a long wait of maybe up to 50 years.
     “There’s no cure for depression of course,” Bert announced in a voice of gloomy authority, “I’ve retired and I’m only 51. Didn’t think I was capable of doing my job. Never did, though I managed to kid my employers I could for nigh on 25 years. I kidded myself as well. Of course, you get elated as well, like I am now, (he could’ve fooled me, droning on the way he was) but you just have to accept it and get on with it.”
     “He’s the one I feel sorry before, “ interjected Gordon, nodding in the direction of the day room, “He’s a very sick boy, is our Geoffrey. Very sick indeed.”

     The next thing I remember was being on the floor held down by a couple of burly charge nurses. The table was upside down, a couple of the regular inmates were screaming like frightened children, Gordon was also on the floor sitting on his arse and Burt sat transfixed in his chair with his mouth sagging soundlessly open, a fork protruding from his left cheek.

     As snatches of the dining room incident came spitefully back at me, I started to cry. “What’s happening to me? What’s going on?” I looked around at the faces in the room. They looked back at me all with the same blank expression. No one moved. No one stepped forward to comfort me. There was no reassuring hand on my shoulder. They just stared. “For Christ’s sake!” I bellowed, “I don’t understand. Help me. Help me. You’ve got to help me.”

     The tears flowed like a mountain river in Glen Coe. The Glen of Weeping, they call it, ironically. I could hardly see, just like the time when I drove through there and the rain was so heavy the windscreen wipers couldn’t cope and I had to stop the car. Coe is probably the most beautiful Glen in the Scottish Highlands – lush and green - it’s where the Campbells ambushed and slaughtered almost the entire McDonald clan back in the 17th Century during a bloody local war.
     The Massacre of Glen Coe, as it was known, was a pretty nasty affair and occurred early in the morning on February 13, 1692, during the era of the Glorious Revolution and Jacobitism. The massacre began simultaneously in three settlements along the glen - Invercoe, Inverrigan and Achacon, although the killing took place all over the glen as fleeing MacDonalds were pursued. Thirty-eight of the MacDonald Clan were killed by the guests who had accepted their hospitality, on the grounds that they had not been prompt in pledging allegiance to the new king, William of Orange. Another forty women and children died of exposure after their homes were burned. Lovely, eh?

     The rain in Glen Coe that day I had to stop the car was the most incredible rain I’d ever seen, but then Highland Rain is like no other rain on Earth. It’s tumultuous and sudden unlike the continual, sweet ‘Irish Mist’ associated with the Emerald Isle. Scottish rain is fierce - mostly horizontal, whipped up by the wind and it attacks rather than falls. It stings and soaks through anything in a split second. When it rains in Glen Coe, the entire hillsides become living patterns of hundreds of raging little rivers cascading down the walls of the mountains.

     “That’s what does it, “ I heard myself babbling, “The mountains. They’re so close – right next to the roads, unlike the Alps, which always seem to be in the distance and it takes forever to reach them. In the Highlands, when a cloud gets punctured by a the peak of a mountain and you happen to be passing, you get the full force of whatever weather is going on a thousand ft or so, above you. It’s like the clouds try to sneak by unnoticed as they shroud the mountain peak from view. But the mountains always win and the cloud gets split open and spills its lifeblood on those below. Then the cloud’s gone and the rain stops as suddenly as it started. The sun comes out again illuminating the still cascading rivers making them sparkle like a thousand acres of spilling diamonds, and there are rainbows you can hardly believe.”

     Right then, in the dingy, frightening, smelly room, with those droids ogling me in my pathetic misery, I wished I was in Glen Coe, leaning forty-five degrees into the wind, the rain stabbing at my face with the force of a million needles. I tried to focus on the image as I sat rooted to the plastic chair but the tremors just increased.

     Scanning the faces of my examiners, just for a moment, a fleeting moment, my blurred, watery vision described 5 figures standing in the room instead of four. But no, there were just 4. Did I see things? No. I sometimes thought I saw people, but then People aren’t things are they? They’re people. Whatever, I wasn’t about to explain that to them. My captors, that is. My guardians. My jailers. Whatever they were.

     I’d spent the previous night in the padded room across the corridor from the ward. They took out the table and the bed and put down a mattress. I didn’t try out the walls though I might have done if they hadn’t injected with the kind of tranquiliser that would’ve knocked out a rhino and I was comatose for the duration. Someone shook me awake the next morning and I opened my eyes to see the smiling face of Charge Nurse Peters grinning down at me. There were also two uniformed policemen in the room and they weren’t smiling.

     “Hello, Alan. How are you feeling?” said Peters in his usual kindly tone.

     I didn’t answer. I thought his well-meaning question was also a stupid one. I mean how did he think I was feeling? I’d gone through some kind of nervous trauma in public, caused injury to an innocent bystander and screamed the place down just for starters. I didn’t stab Burt – well, not directly. It was a bit of a fluke really. I actually threw the fork at the wall along with a couple of plates, knives and a jug of orange juice. The wall was about 6 ft from the table, which, incidentally, got turned upside down in the melee. The fork sprang off the wall at the perfect angle to connect with the hospital administrator’s fizzog like a dart to Treble Twenty. It would have been a perfect shot had it been intended and it was a pity no one got it on film. It was the kind of thing that any special effects director worth his salt would’ve died for.

     I assumed the police had been called because technically, a stabbing had taken place and I got the distinct feeling that the cops were disappointed that they couldn’t make an arrest. Peters turned his back on me and mumbled a few things to the two of them. The meanest looking one kept his beady little eyes on me over Peter’s shoulder suspecting, no doubt, that I might leap up and sink my teeth into his jugular. Strangely enough, a similar notion had occurred to me but I’d thought better of it. As Peters ushered them out of the room he turned and gave me another of his oh-so-friendly grins before closing the door behind him and relocking it leaving me still to contemplate what the hell that bloody soldier in the bloody gasmask had been doing standing against the dining bloody room wall like that having just bloody walked through it.

     They kept me in Fouracres for about 6 weeks, 3 of them due largely to the dining room escapade I think. Being a resident was an experience I’ll never forget. Not so much because of the recurring spasms which began to diminish as the days went by, but the thought that if I wasn’t careful and let too much out of the bag about what I sometimes saw and the peculiar, increasing sense that I’d become invincible – that somehow, psychologically, I’d acquired the strength of a buffalo and a kind of inner cold-heartedness, and if I didn’t watch it I could end up as a permanent guest.

     It was during this time I first began to notice a strange preoccupation. I found myself staring at people now and again for no particular reason other than that they were there. It seemed I could, without too much trouble, assess and weigh up the passage of their life up until that point. And I knew my summation was accurate. It wasn’t a judgmental thing. I didn’t really care about whoever one way or the other, I just knew by looking what a person really was underneath their skin.

     Part of me seemed to have become detached from the main frame. I was still me with the usual sentiments, daft romantic notions about life and stuff but there was now a definite other side. A bit that I didn’t really understand – that I could sometimes switch to at will. But as I’d always been a nervous, indecisive type who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, unless threatened or shouted at, of course, the idea of having an alter ego was quite appealing but I decided, at least for the time being, to keep it well hidden.

     Was I schizophrenic? I had no idea and I didn’t want to bring the subject up in front of the jailors in case I was. I just wanted to get out of this place as quickly as possible. I thought of talking to Geoff about it and asking him if he thought I was I schizophrenic but I decided this wasn’t a particularly good wheeze as it probably go off at some irrelevant tangent and, as he had a big mouth, was likely to tell the world.

     “‘Ere, guess what. Old Alan thinks he’s caught my disease. He thinks he’s got the jolly old twin syndrome. It must be spreading. Pretty soon they’ll be twice as many of us and they’ll have to double the number of beds. Or sleep two up. Bags I get to sleep with Burt.” No, talking to Geoff wasn’t a clever idea. I decided from then on not to talk to anyone.

     Pete Walker made that decision impossible to maintain – about not talking at all. A hospital cleaner by trade, he was always accompanied by his mop and bucket which admirably complimented his usual attire of dark blue boiler suit and grubby white plimsolls. Mopping the odd bit of floor as he went, and compulsively chattering like a budgerigar on steroids, he was the ultimate embodiment of the cheerful, charming cockney character, albeit that Fouracre Hospital was a good 35 miles from The Old Kent Road.

     Infuriating as his constant chatter could sometimes be to those incarcerated in the desperate, deep abyss of clinical depression, it could be argued that his carefree intrusion onto their darkest thoughts was good therapy, and staff in the psychiatric unit seemed to overlook his shortcomings as a cleaner in favour of his unbridled friendliness towards the patients and passion for challenging them to games of snooker on the well-worn three quarter size table in the day room. I’d never been any good at prodding the stupid little balls around the green baize with the even stupider poles but it has to be said Pete improved my game no end. The only way to shut him up was to accept the challenge, get off your arse and try and give the little bastard a run for his money. The tabletop was pivotal so that by turning it over, it doubled as a table tennis table, a game, which Peter also had competitive compulsions about.

     With his diminutive, pixie-like frame and Punch and Judy features displaying his sparkling dentures in his customary cheeky smile, he’d sweep into the room twice a day, bucket and mop clanking against his ankle and throw down the gauntlet to anyone who happened to be sitting around.

     “Morning, Al. Alright? Come on, up on your pins and let me give you a thrashing. You can break, not that it’ll do you much good. Tell you what - I’ll give you 3 red pots start. ‘Ow’s about that? Or d’you fancy your chances at Ping Pong? You choose.”

     Whichever game, he played with great speed and ferocity and games didn’t last very long. “Best of free?” he’d say after the first demoralising trouncing, then, after the next, “Best of five?” Then when it was 3 – nil, he’d lay down his cue or paddle, pick up his bucket and mop and lie: “You’re definitley getting’ better. Won’t be long before you wipe the floor with me,” completely missing the irony in his departing comment.

     The only person who disapproved of Pete’s therapy sessions was the matron. If he was at the table when the tight-lipped middle-aged spinster made her daily rounds she’d sternly suggest that he might be better employed clearing up the mess on the dining room floor. But Pete didn’t jump to it as the average jobs worth might have. He just carried on playing and answered her without taking his eye off the ball.

     “Won’t be a mo, Matron. Almost completed the massacre,” then as she stomped away on her square heeled, highly polished, squeaky shoes, “She really wants bonin’, that one, know what I mean?” At the time, I had no idea what he meant and the thought of anyone removing her ribs from her spine as if she was a piece of Place on a plate was a totally incomprehensible one.

     Apart from when we played snooker or watched the telly, the inmates of ‘The Goldfish Bowl’, as we called our ward on account of the fact that there was a window through which the charge nurse could keep a watchful eye on us and make sure that we weren’t gouging each other’s eyes out or peeing on the floor, we didn’t use the dayroom that much. It was too depressing. Throughout the day the chairs which lined every inch of wall around the room were fully occupied by the permanent male inmates who sat dressed in their ill-fitting second hand clothes staring at the floor or the ceiling, whichever seemed to be more interesting, and waiting for the next meal, the next breath or maybe nothing at all. I wouldn’t imagine that in the various degrees of sub-normality they were all in, there was much anticipation of anything.

     Except for the sound of the TV, which was on all day, and a toothless old guy in a flat cap and muffler called Pat, who seemed not to be able to exhale without sounding like a buzzsaw, the place was silent. There was no conversation, except from the odd person who spoke to himself.

     “Hey, kid zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz,” Pat said as I passed, “Got a fag for uzzzzzzzzzzzzz?”
I offered him one from my packet and he took 3, none of which I begrudged him in the slightest. Apart from his timber yard imitation, there didn’t seem much wrong with him at all. “Thankzzzzzz, kid.” he buzzed, “You’re a pal.”“No I’m not,” I thought, “and, unlike you, you poor sod, I’ll be out of here soon.”

     Then there was Billy who occupied his time counting his buttons out loud. Billy, a grey haired chap and in his late 50s, who definitely had a few pegs missing from his washing line and though probably completely harmless was pretty scary in his wild-eyed, bucktoothed way. He always sat in the same chair by the window away from the others. I sat down next to him once and out of a kind of sadistic curiosity asked him how long he’d been in the hospital.

     “Ooh, long time. I dunno, really. Can’t remember. One, two, three, four five…no, better start again. I remember the ambulance, though. White, it was. One, two, three…”

     I got chatting to one inmate who seemed to be a sort of trustee and asked him the same question. Another Bert, he was toothless, fortyish with a thin, spiv moustache and a pudding shaped stomach held in with a tie taking the place of a belt.

     “I bin ‘ere about 10 years. ‘Ad a nervous breakdown.”
     “You seem all right now.”
     “Yeah, I am.”
     “Why are you a still here then?”
     “Voluntary, in I?”
     “You mean you don’t have to be here?”
     “’S right.”
     “Why the hell don’t you go home then?”
     “’Aint got no ‘ome. Not now. Not since she took up wiv a nuvver geezer,” he said without a hint of sorrow.

     I assumed he was talking about his wife. “Never did like ‘er that much. She was a real cow. Can’t remember the last time she came an’visited me. I’m better orf in ‘ere. It’s much easier. Don’ ‘ave no responsibilities an’ the foods free.” His expression didn’t change during the conversation. He didn’t look me in the eye letting his gaze wander where it might. How anyone could allow themselves to be incarcerated in such a place by choice was also totally beyond comprehension.

     Mr Anderside, a huge man of eighty odd with a stomach the size of beer barrel that placed the buttons of his waistcoat under enormous stress, had the features of a weathered bull with a bloated, purple nose that could comfortably have accommodated a Hereford’s nose ring. He’d sit stone-faced like a Buda in a leather Partner’s chair that appeared moulded to his massive frame beside the snooker table, hands on knees, his whole bearing describing the history of a hard but solid life. Suffering from dementia, Mr Anderside hardly ever spoke except for the odd irrelevant outburst. Just when I had an infrequent certain pot lined up, his deep voice would suddenly boom like thunder.

     “His arse was the colour of that fucking table. Couldn’t tell him anything. Never belonged in the fucking Navy in the first place.” It could be more than an hour before he said anything else. “Pissing down, it was. I lost my watch. I forgot to mow the fucking lawn as well.”

     Then there was Len. Len was a gypsy who shared our billet for about a week. He’d worked himself into a state because he couldn’t stop smoking and thought he was dying of the lung cancer that had killed both his parents in their early fifties. True, he did have a pretty rough-sounding cough but that was about all. No one was sad to see him go after the six days he was with us - not that he wasn’t an extremely pleasant, affable character, but his body smell was overpowering. It wasn’t even a particularly unpleasant smell – a mixture of Vaseline, which he plastered on his thick, black hair, tobacco, straw, and a couple more herbal type smells that I couldn’t identify. It was just that his aroma was just too rich for the ordinary, unaccustomed palette.

     Len sat next to me on the edge of my bed once and I found myself leaning away from him at an awkward angle.

     “We’s traders, swat we are. Not gypos like what everyone says. We earn a honest livin’ doin’ this an’ that. We like to keep movin’ an that’s also what folk wants – us to move on. We don’t mind. We just wants to be left alone to get on wiv our life like anyone else. There’s good an’ bad in all sorts, but we’re not a bad lot really. They wants to put us all in council ‘ouses, but I don’ want that. Couldn’t live in an’ouse if I tried. An’ you can’t move it along wiv you. That’s the worst part.”

     I seriously thought of asking him if I could join his merry band of wayfarers when I was let out. It seemed like a rather carefree, untroubled life though in truth it was probably quiet hard. It was Len’s smell, which decided me against the idea. I probably would’ve got used to it – even ended up smelling the same way, but I bottled out. A life without a daily shower or bath I just couldn’t contemplate.

     Most strange of all was Eric. He first appeared when I was in the Charge Nurses’ office one morning talking to Peters. The door was thrust open just wide enough for Eric to shove his face into view. This sudden apparition of tragic, clown-like features would’ve been quite a shock at the best of times but as I was in desperate shake mode and was gibbering at a very calm Peters, begging him to help me, Eric’s weird, gap-toothed, crazy eyed expression just about finished me off.

     “Any messages, Mr Peters?” he said agitatedly.
     “Not now, Eric. I’m busy.” Eric withdrew his head and closed the door. Two minutes later the door opened again and Eric stuck his head through the gap for an action replay.
     “Any messages, Mr Peters?”
     vPeters got up and Eric’s head immediately disappeared. Peters locked the door and sat down again. “Sorry about that,” he said, still smiling, “He means well but he can be a pain in the arse.”

     Despite the second hand clothes, Eric was well turned out. He always wore a tie and clean white shirt. His trousers had razor sharp creases and the toes of his shoes shone like mirrors. He wore his hair in a military style short back and sides. When Peters was on duty, Eric would stand outside the office and agitatedly keep looking through the glass door panel and when it seemed he could contain himself no longer, he’d poke his head round the door and ask if their were any messages. Nine times out of ten, there weren’t, but on the rare occasion when Peters found him a message to deliver, he’d hand him a piece of paper and Eric would grab it and scuttle off to return a little later and ask if there were any more messages.

     Peters could never send Eric far as he wasn’t allowed out of the grounds of the hospital and sometimes, if the Charge Nurse was in conference and his door was locked, Eric would stand outside for hours on end occasionally producing a gleaming Ronson gas lighter and lighting the rolled dog end he always kept jammed in the corner of his mouth.

     As far as I could tell, Eric never spoke to the other patients and when I once tried to talk to him myself, he didn’t answer or make eye contact. His head just bobbed about and he kept looking over my shoulder as if someone or something was behind me. He didn’t seem to like being in such close proximity to another person and soon shoved past me and rushed off towards the office to see if there were any messages.

     Eric also seemed to particularly upset one of the inmates, a small, grey, wire-haired man, Reg Parfait, who, as Eric must have been, was in his late sixties. Several times, I saw Reg attack Eric and punch him in the face when he was sure none of the male nurses were watching. Eric just brushed him off and scuttled away in his usual manner, and even though he was a much bigger man than Reg, he didn’t retaliate.

     Most of the regular inmates had the same strange, vacant expression in their eyes, but the look in Eric’s eyes was different. His darting, furtive glances conveyed something more specific. This was a deeply worried man. Towards the end of my stay at Four Acres, when I was a bit more compos mentis, I asked Peters about him.

     “It’s all a bit sad, really. He was a regular soldier when World War 11 started. He was a corporal in the Green Howard’s. Apparently, he was an exemplary squaddie and was promoted because of his natural abilities as a leader. Having survived Dunkirk, he got a second chance and took part in the D Day Landings. He went ashore with a full platoon of young conscripts in his charge. He got them all safely across the sands and dug in at the foot of the cliffs without taking a single casualty, despite having to face machine gun fire, heavy mortar bombardment and God knows what else. A couple of hours later, he was found wandering about the beach in a sort of daze. He had no helmet or rifle and was shaking like a leaf.
     “Maybe he was shell-shocked but he was in such a state he was taken on board a destroyer and shipped back to England. 5 members of his platoon were killed – all of them bayoneted. The others made it off the beach. It was crazy. There was no hand-to-hand fighting with the enemy, it was all long-range stuff, so it was assumed someone on our own side had gone berserk and killed his own mates.
     “Eric was immediately put in the frame for the murders but someone found his rifle and the bayonet was clean. There was no sign of any bloodstains. He was interviewed at great length by army doctors and physiatrists and the only thing they were able to ascertain was that Eric had seen something – some kind of event that was so dreadful, it buggered his mind. Now whether it was the murders he saw or some other kind of mutilation is anybody’s guess. I don’t know about you, but I really can’t imagine what it must have been like for those poor bastards on the beaches.
     “When he was questioned, Eric just kept pointing and screaming as if he was still there where whatever it was had happened. He quietened down after a few weeks but pretty soon became the mental recluse he is today. The only thing he remembers, or wants to remember how to do is be a soldier. But he needs superior officers. And he has to serve them. That’s what the messages par larva is all about. He was eventually discharged from the army, of course and has been here ever since, poor sod.”

     I didn’t tell Peters that I had my own idea about what Eric might have seen. And I certainly didn’t mention to Dr Smedberg and her entourage the soldier with the tin hat and gas mask who’d come through the wall of the dining room and taken a step towards me.


* * * * * * * *

Chapter 13. MILES DAVIS


     When we left The Zanzibar the night I met him, Miles hailed a cab, first checking I had enough money to pay for it. He took me to his nasty, damp, ground floor flat in Darville Road, Stoke Newington where the mould in one corner of the kitchen had eaten a sizable chunk of the lino. Miles got me to lay down on an extremely ancient leather sofa in the living room, which most probably was crawling with bugs but I couldn’t have cared less. He covered me with an old army blanket and an even older Eiderdown and sat on a fishing stool in the middle of a carpet so filthy that all the colours had merged into one brown smudge. He hugged a mug of coffee, watching me, his bony knees almost touching his ears, his head and torso sagging wearily between his gangly legs. He looked like some kind of giant insect.

     It seemed ironic that in the company of this strange creature whom I’d only just met and didn’t know from Adam, tucked up in used bedclothes that smelled of body odour and old socks, in a house that the Munsters would have felt entirely at ease with, I felt safe for the first time in a very long time and my eyelids began to flutter and I drifted off into a deep, blessed sleep.

     I slept for 2 days without waking and when I did finally open my eyes, I was confronted with Miles’ smiling face about a foot from my own. It wasn’t a pleasant sight to wake up to but the plate of eggs on toast and steaming mug of tea he held in his hands were. He watched in silence while I attacked the eggs like a savage, wiping the plate clean. I sat back against the grimy pillow clutching the mug of tea in both hands and Miles lit 2 cigarettes and gave one to me. I took several long, satisfying drags and began to feel light headed but relaxed.

     “Do you want to talk about it?” Miles said quietly.
     “What?” I said defensively.
     “Whatever it was that put you in the state you were in when I found you.”
     “I don’t know what you mean, and no, I don’t want to talk about anything.” I was making as much sense as a pre-pubescent teenager.
     “It might help.”
     “I don’t need any help.”
     Miles shrugged. “Up to you.”
     “Fucking right.”

     Then I started to talk. It was as if he’d turned on a tap. I told him everything - my whole bloody life story right up until the present time including the LSD, the hospital, the hallucinations, the tremors, my marriage, Terry Grey, my job, Melissa – everything. He just sat there on a tatty old floor cushion, which looked a bit more comfortable than the fishing stool, with his knees folded up to his ears. He didn’t comment. He just listened, his eyes fixed on mine. Why I was laying myself bare to this freak I didn’t know from the Man In The Moon was inexplicable, but I just kept on talking until I simply ran out of steam.

     When I’d finished, he didn’t comment on anything I’d said. He got up, took my mug and gathered up my plate and cutlery.

     “I have to go out now. I’ll leave you a key and you can let yourself out. Don’t worry about the Chubb lock, it’s broken and there’s nothing worth stealing in here. You can come back here any time you want whether I’m here or not. Just let yourself in.” Then he left. I waited 5 minutes, used the toilet, which was unexpectedly spotlessly clean. I had absolutely no intension of ever going back to Darville Road but I slipped the key into my pocket anyway.


* * * * * * * * * *


THEY SEEK HER HERE THEY SEEK HER THERE.

     Lawrence Keogh, the Billinghurst Breweries Head of Marketing, had droned on and on. He’d been pontificating about the British canned and draught lager markets and the threat from the influx of bottled American and German beers. We were ensconced in one of the agency’s presentation theatres, which are like tiny cinemas with a projection booth and a projectionist the account director could bark orders at when a commercial was to be shown. Melissa looked as bored as I felt. Also, I had more pressing things on my mind, like how the hell I was going to find Rachel and save my legs from being crushed to powder. Before he left the flat and disappeared into the night like some kind of ghostly vampire, Miles had promised he’d try and track her down through his string of dubious contacts.

     “I stand more of a chance of finding her than Sherlock Holmes himself, if I may be arrogant for a moment. (I’d never known him to be anything else.) That thug, Wall, and pudding face Keith, haven’t got a clue what day of the week it is.”

     Melissa had just presented a script to Keogh for the launch of new larger called Pers Extra, an upmarket lager type liquid in a posh black can. The script involved a pastiche on the famous Bob Hope, Bing Crosby ‘Road’ films and featured amongst things a talking camel. It was a very zany commercial with some very expensive production values (those were the expensive, flashy bits and special effects that made the films look rich and sumptuous) and would cost an arm, a leg and the rest of the body to make. Keogh, stretched out on a leather sofa with his feet on the coffee table, listened very intently as Melissa read the script. She never sounded quite as enthusiastic as she did when presenting an idea she cared as passionately as I knew she did about this one and when she’d finished, Keogh’s face showed every sign that the idea had gone at least 6ft over his head and that he hadn’t a clue whether it was any good or the biggest load of crap he’d ever heard.

     He allowed himself a slight smile as if he’d been mildly amused by some aspect of subtle humour that ordinary mortals wouldn’t have noticed, but avoided eye contact with Melissa and began to spout some left field marketing rubbish which I suspected was to give himself time to say think of something relevant to say about the proposed commercial. I didn’t envy him. He knew he had to be careful when mixing words with Melissa and would have to pretty sure of his ground if he didn’t want her to tear his imaginary intellect to shreds and publicly blow gaping holes in his already dodgy credibility as a marketing man of any substance.

     He’d made the mistake once before of launching in on a Melissa script when she and I had first been put on the account. He’d said simply that he didn’t like the idea. Fair enough, you may think, but Melissa didn’t think anything of the kind. She didn’t bother asking him why he didn’t like it but pointed out that his personal likes or dislikes were irrelevant particularly as he wasn’t part of the target audience and that he should judge the work objectively against the criteria set out in the brief which she would be happy to re-affirm in case he’d forgotten what they were, and which, without giving him time to recover, she duly did.

     Now, Keogh faced picking his way through a minefield if he didn’t want to upset her again and only those with suicidal tendencies ever upset Melissa more than once. Keogh always patronised creative teams by trying to act as if he was one of them at heart and understood their art and what they suffered for it. He believed they liked him or even respected him in return, though Melissa’s fairly blunt opinion of him would have gone some way towards popping that particular fantasy bubble.

     “Prick.” had been her post meeting character analysis the first time we’d met him.

     Lawrence Keogh suffered from small man syndrome, which meant he was a bullying little shit. What made it worse was he had no style whatsoever. Somehow, a bullying little shit in Giorgio Armani would’ve been more acceptable. As he was, Keogh was totally, completely and utterly visually offensive to the point of being quite insulting.

     He must have stood 5ft 6 in his socks and his mode of dress did nothing to compensate for his lack of stature. His suits were probably expensive and though originally well cut, might as well have been draped over a clotheshorse the way they sagged from his skinny frame. His choice of heavy grey tweed topcoat and pork pie hat didn’t help matters. He was no Frank Sinatra, but a boyish looking 40- year- old ambitious little bastard who’d stitch up his own mother to further his progress up the slimy ladder to the top. His masquerade as an already made it mature 55-year-old chairman of the board missed its target by such a margin he could have been mistaken for a blind archer.

     Obviously wracking his brains for a way of commenting on our script without being hung out to dry by Melissa, Keogh took his feet off the coffee table and stood up, taking a gold cigar trimmer form his waistcoat pocket. His jacket was tossed casually over the back of the sofa, his shirtsleeves billowed like pillowcases pinned against his upper arms by those silly silver bands that would’ve been more at home on a croupier at a Las Vegas gaming table. Still rabbiting on about Christ knew what, he strolled round the back of the sofa to the coat stand and took a long cigar tube from the top pocket of his overcoat. Sitting back down on the sofa, he slid a ridiculous Groucho Marks sized cigar from the tube and with the concentration of neuro surgeon applied the clipper to the sharp end. He produced a box of Swan Vestas matches and, placing to cigar between his lips, leaned back into the sofa and swung his legs up to place his feet back on the table.

     Unfortunately, he hadn’t noticed that when he’d stood up, the sofa had moved back a tad and as he allowed the weight of his legs and feet to drop back onto where he thought the table was, it wasn’t – where it was, that is. Well, it was, but the sofa wasn’t – where it had been. His feet completely missed the table and carried on till they hit the floor. The effect of this was to jack-knife his body out of the sofa and pitch him forward in a sprawl.

     Cigar, matches, plastic cups of a coffee and Keogh himself along with and any faint smidgen of credibility he may have had, went everywhere. The account director, Simon Rowe, made a futile grab for him and missed completely, perhaps on purpose as no one hated Keogh with more vehemence than he did once suffering the indignity of having to leave a meeting on a different account and rush around trying to procure 2 Centre Court tickets for the forthcoming Wimbledon Men’s’ Singles Final after Keogh telephoned and demanded them on pain of the entire Billinghurst account being moved to another agency.

     Melissa merely shifted her feet sideways to avoid the cascading coffee, her expression and posture changing not a jot. Luckily, she and I were sitting just out of range. Rowe attempted to grab Keogh under the armpits, not a manoeuvre I’d have relished, but Mr Nasty elbowed him away firmly declining the offer of assistance.

     “Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!” he yelled from his crouch on all fours as if he was imitating a horse for a child, albeit one with rabies. He heaved himself back onto the sofa, at which point I clamped my hand over my mouth as if I was about to broadcast diced carrots to all and sundry and fled from the room.

     Across the corridor, I crashed into the gent’s toilet as the first guffaw cannoned against the tiled walls. Expanding my lungs to breaking point with a huge intake of air I let out another raucous scream of laughter, doubling up and clutching my chest with both hands. Again and again the waves of laughter burst uncontrollably from my throat, each preceded by a long maniacal scream. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!” I sounded like the Laughing Policeman at a million decibels.

     The sight of Keogh being catapulted off the sofa wasn’t that funny, at least not for a normal person, which I knew by then I wasn’t. By the time I heard the outer door open, I was sitting on the floor of a cubicle, my knees under my chin, tears streaming down my face. Simon Rowe escorted Keogh into the washroom just as I another let another earthquake of laughter rip. Simon’s arm jerked into the cubicle and pulled the door closed.

     “What the fuck’s that?” Keogh demanded, “Does someone think something’s funny?”
Simon should have said he thought that was pretty damned obvious but he did his intrepid account man number instead, “No, that’s just someone being ill. Probably had too many Zambookers at lunchtime.” was his pathetic attempt at diffusing the situation, “Are you OK, Lawrence?”
     “What do you think, you prat?” said Keogh in his usual diplomatic manner, “My shirt’s soaked in hot coffee and I’ve scorched my bollocks in front of that snooty bitch in there. I want those two imbeciles off the account NOW. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT, OTHERWISE, YOU COULD FIND YOURSELF LOOKING FOR ANOTHER JOB. Get away from me. Leave me alone. Just fuck off.”

     I heard the outer door slam as Simon fucked off as he was told. Of course, Keogh didn’t have as much control over the destiny of the agency staff as he would have liked. Simon Rowe would probably get a pay rise in return for his promise to stay on the Billinghurst Breweries business and facilitate Keogh’s every whim as most other account directors would rather have slit their throats than take on the job.

     I heard the taps being turned on and the sound of running water followed by the sounds of Keogh splashing about and muttering under his breath, “Fucking bastards. Who do they think they are? With their flash cars and expense accounts. I’ll fucking show them. I’ll fucking show them what’s what. As for that snooty cow, I’ll fuck her up some back alley. Shag her stupid. That’ll teach her. That’ll fucking teach her.”

     I’d stopped laughing. The hysteria had dissipated. I lifted myself quietly off the floor and sat on the bog seat, my feet curled under my chin Leaning forward, I slid the bolt on the cubicle door. It stuck half way and then snapped shut with a loud CLACK. Keogh stopped muttering. The only sound I could hear was the running water. Then the cubicle door almost caved in as Keogh, obviously having forgotten in his blind rage that someone was inside and been reminded that this was the case by the noise of the bolt, kicked at it with all his might before storming out of the toilet.

     The idea of going after him, reaching into his belly, pulling his guts out and showing them to him before flushing them down the toilet briefly flashed across my mind but I dismissed the idea, more concerned about what had come over me in the last 5 minutes. I had a sense of humour but it was based mainly in subtle irony and not usually turned on by slapstick. Maybe it was just Keogh’s sudden, spectacular demise that I found so amusing. I couldn’t really work it out. I’d never laughed like that in all my life. Not even when Teddy Elliot turned the brazing gun on the metalwork master at secondary school and whacked his foot hard on the bellows.

     The ex-Royal Engineers Sergeant Major, Ernie Kingsway, with the dubious title of senior metalwork master and fresh back from bullying Germans POWs in World War 2, had been giving Elliott hell all afternoon and the 15 year-old lad had suddenly flipped. A 4 ft long white-hot flame shot out across the metalwork shop and the bastard’s white coat, ginger military moustache and quiff disappeared in a puff of smoke and a smell like fried Weetabix. His pride singed along with his facial hair, the ex-sergeant major beat seven bells out of Elliott who must have thought the thrashing worth it just to see the look on the Ernie’s face as he shat himself when the flame licked perilously close to his lips.

     I went back to the presentation theatre after I’d extracted myself from the bog but it was empty. There was no sign of Keogh, Melissa or Simon, but there was a big dark stain on the sofa and the coffee table was awash with sticky looking pool of gunj and few beached dog-ends which concluded that I hadn’t dreamt that the sewer rat from the brewery had fallen flat on his face and made himself look a more of a complete prick than he already was, which until that point, I’d hadn’t thought possible. Melissa was pounding away mercilessly at her typewriter when I got back to the office and didn’t look up when I entered the room.

     “There was a call for you. An extremely rude person called Dizzy Gillespie said he had something important to tell you.” She tossed the information at me as if it was a piece of dog shit.
     “Did he leave a number? I take it you meant Miles Davis,” I said in as disparaging a tone as I could muster assuming she was taking the piss. I had no idea she was interested enough in jazz to know the names of at least 2 of the most famous trumpeters on the planet.
     She snorted like a dragon with toothache and hissed, “If he’d said Miles Davis, I’d have said Miles Davis. It was DIZZY GILLESPIE. I wrote the number on your pad along with the bloody stupid name.” Any illusions that Melissa did know one great jazz trumpeter from another, disappeared like the pop of a soap bubble.

     Thankfully, she finished her typing and tore the sheet of paper from the machine. Grabbing her jacket and fox fur she swept out of the room. “I’m off to Lunch with some people from my last agency. I won’t be back till about 4 for the Triana meeting with (Triana was/were a cosmetic client) and I’ll probably be drunk. You might ask your friend, Dizzy Davis, which kindergarten he lives in then I can tell all my friends with brats to avoid it.”
     I punched the number on my pad into the phone. It only had time to ring once before Miles answered it. “Alan.”
     “How’d you know it was me? Have you any news? About you know what?”
     “You mean, ‘you know who?’ don’t you,” he said, doing a pretty good impersonation of William Franklin from the Schweppes TV commercials. “Not as such, but I have found out some rather interesting things. I think we should meet up and have a chat.”
     “But what about the other thing? Haven’t you got anywhere? I need to know, for Christ’s sake. What about all your so-called bloody contacts?”
     “Calm down. There’s no need to panic. Not yet, anyway.”
     “I’M NOT PANICKING!’ I yelled knowing full well that my autopilot had already given the ‘scared shitless jets’ full thrust, “It’s now Tuesday, and I’m running out of time.”
     “You’ll run out of breath if you’re not careful. You’re a bit young for a heart attack, Alan, but you’re going the right way about introducing yourself to one.” Miles’s calmness did nothing to reassure me.
     “Why the hell did you tell my partner your name was Dizzy Gillespie?” I said wanting to admonish Miles for no particular reason other than the fact he was Miles.
     “Something about the way the snooty bitch answered the phone. I didn’t think she deserved to know my real name. What a voice she’s got. Jesus wept. It represents very firm grounds for arguing the validity of euthanasia.”
     “You should listen to your own voice sometime. You sound like you’ve a dozen plumbs stuck up your arse.” For some peculiar reason, I found myself defending Melissa.
     Miles ignored the comment. “As I said, we should meet. As soon as possible.”
     “I just want you to find…”
     “It’s in your interests that we meet ASAP. Tonight. I’ll come to your place.”
     “No, I’ll come to yours.” Though his excruciating manner didn’t bother me that much, I didn’t want Miles upsetting anyone back at the flat, especially Christian who was far too nice a bloke to have such an unpleasant creature as Mr Davis foisted on him out of the blue.
     “See you at 7 then. Sharp. Don’t be late.” The phone went dead before I had time to ask him whom the fuck he thought he was giving orders to.
     “Watcher, Al. How’re you doin’?” Along with his knuckles producing a sharp rap on the door the ever perky, cheerful voice of Pete Cockersel, one of the agency traffic production men, pushed the mire of self pity aside for a split second, “I’ve got these RAF proofs I’d like your moniker on ASAP, my man. Where’s the old cow this morning? Off sinkin’ her fangs into some account man’s throat, no doubt. Poor fucker, whoever he is. No-one deserves that, not even soppy old XXX XXX. Y’know I swear he’d been crying the other day when I went to see him just after a meeting he’d had with the horrible old bag.”

     A bloke like Pete Cockersel, who was nothing, if not bloody good at his job, would never show you anything that wasn’t damn near perfect, given that he only had what you gave him as artwork in the first place in terms of typesetting and pictures. And if there was nothing wrong with that, you could rest assured that what he showed you in a proof was as near art as it was going to get. All you had to do then was to sign it off. You hardly needed to look at it which was just as well if you weren’t capable of focusing on much as I wasn’t at that particular moment.

     These days, of course, its all much simpler, depending on which way you look at it. It’s all done down the wire or over the airwaves, as they say. Computer technology has taken over like it has with everything else. Everything’s done on the Apple Mac. Proofs still have to be signed off but there are no bits of cardboard to go missing or get damaged. It’s all out there somewhere in hypo-space.

     The traffic person’s other job is to keep the account people off the backs of the creative teams but also to make sure the creative team don’t piss about too much and do the work on time. A good traffic/production person makes a good friend and will always get you more time if you need it. Make an enemy of one and you’d find you’d have less time than you thought you had – probably no time at all. In short, you’d be fucked.

     “This came in the post,” Pete said, “It was in your in tray but that drunken bitch who calls herself the creative administrator obviously couldn’t be bothered to hand it over. She really needs bonin’, that one.” I seemed to have heard the expression before but I couldn’t remember where or when. He tossed a cardboard tube onto the desk. As soon as he’d gone I slid 2 rolls of paper out of the tube. They were a bromides or photographic prints to the ordinary bloke in the street, and accompanied by a note from Terry.

Al.

Take a gander at this.
Alarming or what!

Tel.


     The first picture was a wide angle shot of the Milk Commercial set showing the Vauxhall Chevette parked halfway through the white coving with only the front half of the vehicle showing. Standing slightly to the front of the car and facing the way the vehicle was pointing there seemed to be a figure. The car and the figure would have been positioned about 50 ft from the camera; so on the print, the figure was quite small. The second print showed the figure and the front wing of the car in close up. My scalp shrank tight over my skull. If ever it was possible for blood to run cold, mine was already in the fridge.

     The image of the figure was soft around the edges owing the extent to which it was enlarged, but there was no mistaking that I was confronted by the nightmare that had been dogging me ever since whatever lower form of life it was had spiked my drink. I was looking at the soldier I’d seen disembowelling the poor bastards in the trench.

     The thing wore what any other British soldier in that God forsaken hell-hole would’ve worn – a tin helmet, gas mask with the familiar flat glass eye circles, a rain cloak, putties, a supply pack and boots and everything caked with mud. But this wasn’t just any soldier. There was something about the posture, the way it stood, the way it held its rifle fixed with a bayonet that made it different. It stood erect despite the exploding shells and flying shrapnel. The other poor swine I’d seen in that place were crouching, cowering, their stance nervous, quivering uncontrollably as they stared certain death in the face. I’d been one of them. I’d felt what they’d felt - abandoned, alone, petrified, discarded, and lost.

     But who was this executioner? A spy? A deserter? Why had he been he killing his own comrades? Maybe he was some unfortunate shell-shocked individual who’d been driven nuts by the boiling mayhem of battle, though his actions in the trench had given away no sign of someone who’d become demented or unhinged. But this bastard had seemed utterly in control of his actions. Whoever he was, he had a distinctly cold, methodical, almost mechanical approach to his work – like he was detached, unfeeling and uncaring - soulless.

     I let the bromides snap back into their rolled up state. I dropped the wide shot into the wastepaper bin and put the close up one in my desk draw and locked it. I lit a cigarette and asked myself a few more questions. Why did this murdering apparition keep turning up? What the fuck was it doing on the Milk shoot? How come no one could see it? How come a camera could?


* * * * * * * * * *


Chapter 13. RIPPING YARNS

      “…So it has to be my conclusion that the script fails to deliver on several levels, the most significant being that the notion of ‘double take’ as described in the action and by the MVO as a response to hair shine attributed to the product didn’t come across as a desirable motif to the discussion group as a whole.” The mousey, be-spectacled researcher in the one piece knitted frock leaned back in her chair with a satisfied, smug half smile and waited for the client to comment.

     She’d smiled at the end of every negative she’d delivered, of which there were quite a few, and seemed to enjoy shooting our proposed commercial down in flames. I hated her kind. She was typical of the Guardian Reading socialist types who worshipped the opposition leader of the time, Neil Kinnock, and loathed Margaret Thatcher and everything she stood for. She worked for the sort of research company that was staffed by people just like her, who adored any chance to bring the advertising industry into disrepute in any way they could, and to highlight the incompetence of one of it’s over paid, overrated, in her view, eminent creative teams, was a huge bonus. She seemed to have forgotten that the industry she thought so vile paid fifty percent of her fucking wages. Unfortunately for her, however, she hadn’t allowed for the eventuality of coming across someone of the calibre of Melissa Tarry.

     There were about 10 of us sitting in a semi circle in a presentation theatre listening to the mousey woman’s debrief – half from the agency, half from the client end. The sounds of bums shuffling on chairs from the agency account people as they felt their bowels shift involuntarily and a few seconds uncomfortable silence followed until Melissa’s voice cut through the atmosphere like a machete through a ripe melon.

     “Were they blind?”
     “I’m sorry…?” The researcher blinked flickeringly in the direction of Melissa’s voice.
     “Your research group. Were they blind? Perhaps they were hard of hearing as well.”

     The researcher smiled uncomfortably and looked around the circle of people for some sign of support. There was none. Not even, Ed Wolsey, the senior client from Triana Cosmetics, relished the idea of mixing it with Melissa. She was fairly pissed having lunched at the Natraj with a girlfriend and a couple of other colleagues from her previous agency and had consumed at least one bottle of wine herself and probably a couple of brandies. When Melissa was pissed, she was no less coherent than when she was sober. She was just a bit slower and usually swayed in her seat in the manner of a cobra weighing up the pros and cons of a strike. “I don’t quite follow, “ Miss Mouse, the researcher, tried.

     “In which case, allow me to explain,” Melissa said in the most condescending manner imaginable, almost falling sideways off her chair but skilfully managing to maintain her balance and pulling herself upright. “I assume the group members understood the ‘double take’ concept; that they did know what a double take was, given that it’s been a comedy device since time immemorial and was used by Charlie Chaplain, Buster Keeton, Laurel and Hardy, The Pythons and in just about every comedy genre one could ever imagine?

     In fact I’d hazard a guess that most of the women in the group experienced a double take first hand on their wedding night, either to the positive or the negative, when their new husband removed his pyjama trousers.” Someone giggled then coughed loudly trying to disguise it. The cobra wasn’t even smiling.

     Miss Mouse just reddened, her smile awkwardly fixed and she uttered something like: “Mmmmm…”
     “Excellent,” declared Melissa, “Then we have established the research group weren’t blind. I assume you played them the music track?”
     “Yes, it was part of the animatic*.”
     “Yes, I rather assumed it would be, but did you play the track separately?”
     “No, that would have been unrealistic…”
     “An animatic is hardly realistic, it’s just a diagram of a proposed commercial. These were not realistic conditions in which you were conducting your research, furthermore, I should point out, as you seem to have overlooked that fact, that…”

     And so it went on. Having slightly more pressing things on my mind than watching Melissa dissect some plain Jane research Walla in comfortable shoes, I switched off fairly early during the cabaret and actually missed the bit where my copywriting other half managed to persuade the entire meeting that the commercial should go ahead into production despite the research results and that the final cut should be researched before it went on air. Miss Mouse was no longer smiling but tight-lipped and seething. The meeting broke up and Melissa heaved herself unsteadily to her feet grabbing my arm as I went past.

     “We should go to the Barley Mow and celebrate with a little something, she half whispered.”
     “I can’t I’ve got to meet someone.”
     “Oh, is Madam Butterfly back?”
     “No and I’m meeting Miles Davis.”
     “I thought his name was Dizzy Gillespie.”
     “Whoever, I’m meeting him at 7 and he doesn’t even play the trumpet.”

      Reluctantly, I agreed to have just a quick half of beer with her, determined to do just that and not get pissed which was tantamount to diving into the Thames in the belief I wouldn’t get wet and by the time I got to Darville Road I was pretty pissed. Apart from being several sheets to the wind herself Melissa had been in a strange mood. Usually, when she was in that state, whatever modicum of self- control she did possess evaporated, but she seemed oddly withdrawn. Not that she showed me any mercy, insisting I swallowed a couple of large Scotches as a prelude to the 2 pints of Stella she placed in front of me. We sat in a booth at the back of the pub and she gulped down half of one of the Stellas herself before burping loudly.

     “I do beg your pardon,” she said, placing her hand across her mouth, “I really needed that. I have the thirst of ten camels for some reason – probably too many fags. She wrapped both hands around the glass and stared into the beer. “Don’t keep looking at your watch,” she said without looking up, “you won’t turn into a pumpkin. Anyway, you’ve got plenty of time and I’m going myself in a minute.” She took another slug of beer, “I had a real fright last night.”
     “Yeah? Why, what happened?” I stopped myself looking at my watch again. I wasn’t really interested in Melissa’s nightmares, or some spider she’d come across in her Battersea turret bath, my mind being about 15 stops northbound on the Piccadilly Line away from the Barley Mow at that moment.
     “My cat attacked me,” she said, again without looking up.
     “Your cat?” I said, failing abysmally to hide the silly grin in my voice. I was going to make a joke about all witches getting what’s coming to them but thought better of it when she pulled up the sleeves of her loose fitting YLS sweater and showed me the deep gouges forming a bloody map of Clapham Junction on both her forearms.
     She pulled her sleeves gingerly down again. “She didn’t get my hands because I had hold of her stomach fur and tail but I couldn’t stop her kicking me like a rabbit with her back feet claws while she held on with her front ones.”
     “Jeesus!” I said pointlessly, “That looks really sore.”
     “Trust an art director to state the bloody obvious,” she said trying to smile, “Actually, it’s fucking agony. I’ve put Germalaine on them, which soothes for a bit but not for long. S’why I got pissed.”
     “You should see a doctor. You might get infected. Christ knows where El Puzo’s claws have been.”
     “Thanks. That’s very comforting.” she said, screwing up her eyelids.”
     “So what brought about this savage confrontation? D’you forget to give Her Ladyship her regular dose of Belugar? I really like El Puzo. She’s always strikes me as a really friendly old tart, who knows on which side her bread is buttered. It’s really unusual for a cat to turn on its food supply like that.”
     “And you’d be an expert of course.”
     “As a matter of fact, I would. I was brought up with cats. We always had a couple about the place and as soon as one got poisoned or squashed by a lorry on the local arterial road, we’d get another. I’m a real cat man, me. I love the little bleeders. They’re independent and cunning with a capital CUN, and totally in control. I respect them. They’re better than any old dog, a lot less smelly and 100 times more intelligent. You must have noticed how your own pussy always perks up when it lays eyes on me.” I said through a wide and totally misplaced grin. “She knows a cat person when she smells one.”
     “I told you before, I hate that expression.” she said through her teeth.
     “Whatever. Anyway, what did start her off?” I offered her a light for the Silk Cut she’d pushed between her lips and she stopped rummaging in her bag. She took a long drag of then looked me straight in the eyes. For the first time since I’d met her Melissa Tarry looked scared. Really scared. “I was sitting on the sofa sewing swags and tails for my new bay window curtain arrangement,” Melissa continued, “El Puzzo was curled up asleep on her usual armchair by the fire and I had the Pastoral Symphony playing. I suppose it was about 11.30 and I was just thinking about going to bed. The lights suddenly went down and the record slowed to a groan. It was like a power cut, but it all perked up again. El Puzzo woke up - just lifted her head at first, then she started to growl, you know like they do when another cat is invading their territory. It turned into a horrible, long wail like I’ve never heard from her before.
     “She got up on her haunches and her fur stood on end and her ears were flat back against her head. Her tail was pumped up to twice its normal size and she was growling, spitting and wailing all at the same time. The room turned cold – freezing cold. What was really frightening was that the cat was looking at me while she was doing all that shrieking, as if I was some kind of threat or something.
     "I started to talk to her, you know, trying to comfort her but that just seemed to make her worse.” Melissa took another slug of beer and I noticed she no longer sounded pissed. “Then the noise started. Christ, I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.” She cupped her forehead in her hand and I thought she was going burst into tears. But she took her hand away again and splayed the fingers at the same time screwing up her face. “It was like, I don’t know, like flapping wings or something… or a flag in a gale? I can’t really describe it. It was inside the room somewhere and it was oscillating, you know, coming and going.”

     It pissed me off that she assumed I didn’t know what oscillating meant but then wasn’t the time to show it, “And there was this draft of air rushing around…hot then cold, like something was moving around the room. But I couldn’t see anything. And in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t smashed. I only had one glass of claret all evening and I didn’t finish that. There was a moment when thought I saw something, like a shadow, but I can’t be sure…it was only like a flash out of the corner of my eye. She lit another fag from the stub of the one she’d hardly smoked, “I put out my hands towards Puzzo – I was going to try and pick her up - and she sprang at me. I managed to catch her, but I overbalanced and fell on the floor. I had to pin her to the carpet to stop her getting at my face and, well, you saw the result. Then it all stopped. As suddenly as it had started. Puzzo calmed down and I let her go. She seemed exhausted and dragged herself over to the hearthrug and lay down panting. It was horrible, Al. Really horrible.”
     “What do you think it was?” I said stupidly.
     “How the hell do I know? You know me, a born sceptic with knobs on.” I didn’t know that. We’d never discussed anything to do with the things that go bomp in the night or during in the day, and such things for that matter except in the Natraj when she insisted I talked about my experiences with LSD and she never really commented on all that. I just assumed she was as devout an atheist as I was - she was just too intelligent for it to be any other way. “It could have been anything,” she seemed to want to reassure herself. “Some atmospheric disturbance, subsidence. God knows. All I do know is it frightened me and El Puzzo half to fucking death. Why else would she have attacked me?”

     I had thought about reaching across the table and laying my hand on hers by way of comfort but remembering what happened the last time she was in a vulnerable state in the agency car park and I resisted the temptation.

* * * * * * * * * *

     Stoke Newington is the arse end of North London and Darville Road is the arse end of Stoke Newington. No 26 is the arse end of Darville Road. Miles referred to it as 10 Rillington Place and he wasn’t far wrong in his analogy. It wasn’t difficult to imagine mass murderer, Christie, peeping round the grimy curtains, or even dear old luvvie, Richard Attenborough, who played the film part so creepily well. I could see a light in the small window where Miles’s flat was on the top floor. The rest of the place was empty now that John, the semi-demented pensioner who lived in the basement, had been carted away by social services for almost setting fire to the entire building for about the third time after his electricity ran out due to the bill not having been paid and him having resorted to using candles. His gnarled, arthritic fingers were not the precision instruments they once might have been when it came to striking matches and holding them steady enough to ignite the odd wick and not the odd tatty curtain.

     I rang the bell to flat 5b. Only half the street lamps in Darville Road were working as usual and the air felt damp, complimenting the smell of the house itself, which had begun to prod at my nostrils. I pulled my collar up with a shiver. This was the street everyone wanted to forget, including the local council. It was as if they thought if they ignored it long enough it would go away like an unwelcome knock at the door. I rang the bell again and pressed my ear to the door as I did so. I heard the bell ringing from somewhere far away and I kept my finger on the button for about 15 seconds. There was no response and I stood back and looked up at the lighted window hoping for some sign of movement and cursing under my breath in the assumption that Miles had forgotten our appointment and gone out to one of the devious dives he frequented more often than not.

     I was about to take my leave of the Rillington Place and it’s foreboding, doom-laden presence, when I remembered the latchkey Miles had given me in case I ever needed a safe house, he’d said. What a laugh that was. I’d shoved the thing on my key ring but made up my mind there and then I’d never use it, electing not be barbequed by the involuntary arsonist who still lived in the basement at the time.

     The overpowering musty stink invaded my sinuses as I pushed the front door open. I had to put my shoulder to it as the frame was warped and the thing always stuck whenever the temperature fell below boiling.

     “MILES!” I yelled, running my fingers along the wall to locate the light switch. The dirty, dank hallway became illuminated by an insipid yellow glow from the single, inadequate 40watt bulb that hung like a huge trapped insect from a jungle of cobwebs stretching to the walls and ceiling. The dim light showed off the hideous glory of wallpaper who’s ghastly floral pattern had been dead for at least a century and should have long since have been cremated. I picked my way stealthily along the mouldy carpet to the stairs anxious not to make foot contact with anything that might be living in it. A loud creak emanated from the first lino clad stair I trod and I paused to call again. “MILES?” A sort of scampering sound came from the floor above and I shuddered and froze in my tracks. The noise also stopped and in a fit of complete madness, I made my way cautiously and slowly up the stairs. “MILES? IS THAT YOU?” I shouted again.

     The meagre light from the hall made little impression on the next flight of stairs and I found myself crouching and feeling my way forward with the fingertips of my right hand on each step, my left hand feeling it’s way along the wall opposite the banisters. About half way up the 2nd flight, my fingers touched something soggy, and being as crazy as my brain, my digits decided to examine what they’d found in the same way a blind person might examine the features of a loved one. The fingers obviously thought a thorough grope was necessary and the information played back to my brain revealed the soggy thingy stretched over several stairs in time for my left hand to find another light switch.

     What would you do if confronted with what for a split second looked like the innards of a gutted chicken spread out in front of you? Probably not much until in the next split second your brain decided it would have to have been a pretty big bloody chicken – speaking of which, it was everywhere. Blood that is. Up the walls, on the ceiling – the banisters were soaked in the stuff. The Sherlock Holmes in me deduced that this wasn’t the remains of a chicken because chickens don’t have feet. Well, they do, but not human feet, and there was one standing (if you can call it that) on a stair about level with my eyes. It was just a foot and ankle, jagged flesh and bone protruding from the stump where it was once attached to a leg. It was a pretty dirty foot, the gnarled; filthy toenails almost creating more of an impression than the more obvious gore, pointing towards me as they were.

     “MILES! FUUUUCK! MILES!” someone screamed from inside my chest. I swivelled round and leaped down to the landing and turned onto the lower flight of stairs only to stop dead in my tracks. In the dim light of the hall below, I saw something move. It was a figure – I thought. But the hall was empty. Maybe my mind was playing tricks, unsurprisingly in the circumstances. Whatever it was had gone. Maybe it was just a shadow. Maybe I had just imagined it. Maybe I was stark staring mad. I felt my armpits go suddenly damp and my bowels heave and I knew someone was standing right behind me. Whoever it was, didn’t give me time to turn around.


Chapter 14: ABSOLUTE INSANITY


     I knew I was dreaming this time. It’s funny that. Some dreams are so real it never occurs to you that you’re actually in one or that the monster with the 10ft axe and 3 heads is some ridiculous fantasy dreamed up by your brain, which for some reason wants to scare you to death just for a laugh. Not that the giant cat cradling Melissa against its enormous, fat stomach wasn’t frightening in a comic sort of way and when it swallowed her whole it was a bit grisly, I must admit, especially after it spat out her bones. But I wasn’t particularly perturbed and simply shot the thing dead right there and then. Mind you, I didn’t know the cucumber was loaded. I don’t even remember pulling the trigger or if it even had one. It just went off with an almighty bang and blew El Puzo to smithereens all over Melissa’s nice new curtains. That was the bit I didn’t care for overmuch, the way those chickens’ entrails spread over such a wide area. I reckoned then was a good time to wake up - except I couldn’t.

     Fading out in one scene of my life and fading back into in another had become a rather boring habit over recent times with more and more frequency. I just wasn’t in charge of my destiny any more, if any of us ever are. It was like someone else had the script. Maybe Terry Grey and a hidden film crew were following me around getting everything in the can for some new kind of drama documentary where even the leading actor, in the this case me, had no idea what was going on.

      This time, however, I didn’t fade out, at least not straight away, though everything did go black, but that was because whoever was behind me in the hallway of 26, Darville Road bunged something over my head, like a blanket or a coat. Whatever it was it stank to high heaven. The next thing I remembered was being bundled down the stairs and outside and being shoved along, stumbling as I went, then a hand grabbed the top of my head and I was shoved into the back seat of a car. The door slammed and the car roared off with a ’Sweeny’ type screech of tyres, further proof that I was actually in one of Terry’s Godforsaken TV crime dramas praying for a commercial break. Then I got this sharp pain in my arm and guess what – I faded out, back on script again.

     Anyway, back to the dream. The experience of being in a dream and trying to wake up is horrible – worse than any actual nightmare. It’s like being trapped in a kind of no- man’s-land where you can’t breath or move and if you’re in a dream where there’s some kind of threat, like the big 3-headed bastard with the axe, you’re fucked. The ‘trying to wake up’ thing paralyses you, and if there are nasties in your dream, they seem to know you can’t move and the buggers come after you. That’s what causes you to scream – well, it does me.

     One of the most horrible events in this particular scenario was that I was sitting next to Miles and he had his arm round me – both arms, as if he was cuddling me. He was looking at me with a sickly smile on his face, confirming I was in a dream because I knew Miles was dead. I’d seen his innards conjoined with the stair carpet and his blood decorating the walls at ‘Rillington Place’. Then there was a flight of stairs – or was it 2 – I’m not sure. I was going up, not down and I wasn’t alone – there was someone else ushering me along. Whoever it was, had their arms around me in quite a grip and my legs felt like rubber. Terry had an expression for a certain stage of drunkenness, which he called ‘Rubber Bunny’ syndrome. It’s the stage before the one where the pavement pays your face a visit at 90 miles and hour. Maybe I was at Rubber Bunny stage then but somehow, I didn’t think so. No, I was in ‘Cheshire Cat’ stage because that’s what greeted me when a heavily, panelled oak door was pulled open suddenly in front of me. This particular Cheshire Moggie had the widest, teethiest smile I’d ever seen, like the one in my dream about Melissa but much sicklier than the one I’d seen Miles wearing in the more recent dream. Confused? So was I.

     The Cheshire Cat smile said, “Hullo,” in a very strange voice that I could only describe as patronisingly chocolaty in tone, “You must be Alan, please come in.” Cheshire Cat disappeared behind the door and I was ushered into a dark hallway. “How is he?” said the chocolaty voice to the octopus which still had me in its clutches. The octopus must have been a mute as there was no answer, but Cheshire Cat, a short, boyish looking bloke of about 30, stepped in front of us and opened another door. Cheshire Cat gestured inside the room with his arm as if he was the butler. “In here, I’ll see if our friend is around.”

     The octopus and I plonked down into a deep sofa and the thing released the pressure of its grip slightly. Cheshire Cat reappeared and started plumping up the cushions on the armchair facing the sofa and clearing up some crumbs with a dustpan and brush. “The kettle’s on.” he announced while he brushed, as if the act of boiling a bit of water was going to solve all major world problems in the Northern Hemisphere at least. “Do you take sugar, Alan?” the ghastly grin asked, then to the octopus, “Does he take sugar?” as if I was a retard and incapable of understanding a simple question.      “Two and a half,” said Miles…I mean the octopus…I mean…
     I hurled myself sideways and broke free, landing at the other end of the sofa in a single shimmy. I turned to see Miles sitting at the other end. “WHATHEFUCKMILES? I thought you were dead. YOU BASTARD.”
     “Charming. No, Alan. Sorry to disappoint you. No such luck. I’m very much alive and kicking, well alive, anyway.” He put two fingers across his wrist as if to feel his pulse, “Yes there it is. Weak, perhaps, but definitely functioning.”
     “What the fuck’s going on, Miles? And who did die, because I’m bloody sure that wasn’t any fucking chicken guts daubing the stairs at your place?”
     “You’re absolutely correct. Someone did indeed expire, unfortunately. All is about to be explained, I assure you.”
     “What the hell are you talking about? You think this is some kind of fucking game, don’t you?” I hissed the words at him – for some reason, it didn’t seem quite right to start shouting in this place wherever it was.
     “I can assure you I don’t think any such thing,” There was a distinct lack of cynicism in Miles’ voice for the first time since I’d met him which I found oddly disconcerting. There was no sign of the usual sarcastic grin. He was absolutely straight faced, his eyes fixed on mine.
     “Where the Hell are we anyway?” I looked around the room. It was quite large with a high ceiling and moulded Victorian cornices. The room was immaculately clean, the white paintwork almost gleaming, the vast expanse of the walls freshly painted in a very bright, sky blue, obviously applied by someone with not even the merest sniff of taste. A fine chain hung from the ceiling, ending about 3 feet above the armchair with what looked like small glass ball attached to the end. Unless he’d disappeared up the chimney, which wasn’t likely due to the merry little coal fire sparking in the grate below the marble fireplace, Cheshire Cat had left the room with his dustpan and brush.

     There was a tap on the door behind me and someone entered the room. Miles shot up onto his feet like he was on springs and turned to greet whoever had entered the room.

     “Hullo Miles,” said a soft American female voice.
     “It’s good to see you, Miles.” said another.
There was the sound of kissing, probably of cheeks, and two women came into my view and sat on the floor. One was short and round without being fat, with close cut brown hair and rimless glasses. The other was tall and slim with long blonde hair tied back with a hippy style scarf folded like an Alice band, and droop earrings. They both looked like throwbacks from Woodstock but much cleaner than 1970s Hippies. They sank onto their knees and sat on their heels smiling at me. Miles, who was still standing, introduced us.
     “This is Alan, a good friend of mine,” I’d hardly have said we were friends. “Alan, this is Mina,” pointing at the short one, “And this is Star.”
     “Hallo, Alan,” they both said in perfect Everly Brothers Harmony, extending their right hands. The handshakes were firm and positive and they kept smiling. Cheshire Cat returned and seemed pleased to see them both, crouching to kiss them on each cheek. Mina gave Cheshire Cat a half ounce of Golden Virginia and a packet of red Rizlas though you would’ve thought by the look on his face she’d just given him the best blow job of his life. He fawned and bowed in his practised Uriah Heep manner and if there’d been a bucket available I’d have made use of it as throwing up on what looked like a very clean and well-maintained Persian Carpet didn’t seem quite the done thing.

     Talking of Persians, Cheshire Cat moved to the corner of the big room and opened the lid of an ancient looking radiogram. He took an album from its sleeve and placed it on the turntable. I was expecting to hear the opening chords of ‘Voodoo Chile’ but instead it was a distant, gentle violin sound – almost one prolonged note that seeped into the room in quite a pleasant manner. Cheshire Cat stepped back across the room to the table where he’d placed a tray of mugs.

     “Do you know the Planet Suite, Alan? This is my favourite track – ‘Saturn – The Bringer of Old Age’. I noticed that Cheshire Cat’s pale blue pullover was almost the same colour as the walls. “Have you got a headache?” Cheshire Cat looked at me, suddenly grave and concerned. I did have a pain in the top of my skull but it was something I’d grown used to since being introduced to the delights of LSD. It came and went and I hardly noticed it. “Yes, it seems to near the top of your head. I can feel it.” Cheshire Cat pointed to the top of his own skull. Then he smiled again. “It’s OK. Humans are capable of the most amazing things and we’re very sensitive to one another. It’s just that we’ve forgotten how to feel.”

     Smiling again, Cheshire Cat handed me a mug of tea, which I took in both hands at the same time eyeing him suspiciously. He handed the rest of the mugs round then placed the last one on a small table next to the empty armchair in front of where I sat. He pulled a chair from under a dining table and placed it next to the empty armchair and sat down with his mug of tea, still grinning like a loony. Mina, sitting closest to him on the floor, leaned towards him and he tipped his body sideways so that she could whisper in his ear. She then folded her hands in her lap, lowered her head and closed her eyes. He fixed me with his loony grin, which confirmed that whatever Mina had whispered was about me.

     “That’s a very interesting ring you’re wearing Alan,” he said without changing his expression, “It’s a cameo, isn’t it?” I looked down at the ring on the 3rd finger of my left hand. I didn’t think it was particularly interesting. It was a cameo of a small blue enamel bird on a branch on a white background which an old girlfriend had given me and which I decided to keep after she’d taken off with one of my best friends. I didn’t really care about Clara and Dave buggering off like they did and I couldn’t have been less tempted to fling the thing into a canal in a fit of hurt pride if I’d tried. “Did you know that’s the Sun finger - the finger you’re wearing the ring on?” went on Cheshire Cat, “The Ancient Egyptians took the wearing of rings very seriously, you know. To them a ring wasn’t for decoration but signified….” Cheshire Cat broke off and I felt a draft as the door was thrust open again and he almost fell off his chair in an attempt to spring to his feet again. “Hallo, Norman. It’s good to see you.” he almost stuttered.
     A thin wiry man of about 30 strode into the room. He wore a sweater similar in colour as the one Cheshire Cat wore. “Sorry, I’m late, everyone,” he said as he hurriedly went through the kissing and shaking hands ritual, “I was on the phone to somebody. I couldn’t get rid of them.”
     “This is Alan, Norman. The chap I was telling you about.” said Miles.

     The man turned to me. His hair was cut very short and close to his head and he had a large, broad nose. His skin was pink, almost like a baby’s and he smelled of bath salts. Again the trusty Sherlock Holmes in me immediately deduced that he’d just got out of the bath. He held a 2oz tin of Golden Virginia in his left hand and he shook my hand vigorously with his right.

     “Hullo, pleased to meet you. Me name’s Norman. Don’t get up,” he said in an East London accent. I had absolutely no intention of getting up. Norman sat down in the empty armchair, placed his GV tin on the arm and produced a neatly folded clean handkerchief from his pocket. He opened the handkerchief up entirely up and applied a corner of it to his very broad nose which he blew with the sound of a rogue elephant with an in-growing toenail and placed the handkerchief back in his pocket. Settling back in his chair, Norman removed the lid from the GV tin, deftly turning it over and attaching it to the underside of the tin. His fingers removed a cigarette paper from its wrapping and, selecting a skein of tobacco, began loosening the strands and stretching them across the thin sheet, unaided by even a glance from his pale blue eyes which had locked onto mine.

     The face which held the pale blue eyes was smooth with a large mouth and protruding lips, the features almost Negroid in proportion, though entirely white Caucasian in structure, the mouth softened by the slight hint of a smile. He tilted his head this way and that as if he was studying me. The smile broadened for a second as his fingers completed their task to their satisfaction and offered the cigarette to his lips perfectly choreographed to meet the flame from a gleaming Ronson gas lighter. In other words, he lit his fag.

     “Before we begin, Alan, I’ll tell you a bit about us and what we do so that you feel relaxed and comfortable. You are, of course free to leave at any time, either now before I begin or maybe a little later after you’ve heard a bit of what I have to say, OK?”

     I didn’t comply by repeating ‘OK’ because I was anything but. I didn’t know who these people were or what they did and wasn’t the slightest bit interested. Something in the tone of the man’s voice, however, persuaded me that I’d let him have his a bit of a say and then I’d leave. I also thought it was nice of him to tell me that I could leave though I was damned if he or anyone else was going to detain me for a millisecond without my consent and, anyway, if he knew what he was really dealing with, he might actually request that I scram right there and then.

     “You see, Alan,” began Norman, “A lot of what I’m going to tell you won’t make much sense at first. In fact, you’ll probably think you’ve stumbled across a bunch of raving lunatics.” He smiled, as did the rest of the gathering, Cheshire Cat, already contributing his ultra wide cheesy version, gave an audible giggle.

     Norman continued, “In normal circumstances, we would take considerable time leadin’ someone to the point where we may impart the kind of information which we are about to impart to you. The information itself is of a very sensitive and rarefied nature and a person would usually need months of preparation to get them to a point where they could safely take it in – were we to decide that the person was worthy of such confidences at all. In this case, though, there’s no time for all that. If what Miles tells me is true, and if what I think has been happening to various unsuspecting wretches throughout London has been happening, there’s not a moment to lose.” I hadn’t heard that expression since my old form mistress read The Famous Five to the class back in 1956. I had a feeling this encounter could prove to be extremely amusing, or more likely a thundering bore.

     “I understand you were quite ill in the not too distant past, if you don’t mind me mentionin’ that fact,” Norman cocked his head to one side in a quizzical gesture and I shrugged. “Good. I want to you to understand that you are among friends here and that no-one means you any harm and that we will endeavour to accord you proper respect at all times and that any questions I may ask are not out of idle curiosity but because of a need to know for all our sakes, yours and ours. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

     I nodded though I didn’t have a clue what he was on about. “Good.” He said again.
     He relit his rollup again and sat back in his chair. “As regards your unfortunate illness, there may be ways we can help you, as I believe you may be sufferin’ from, shall we say, certain side effects. But we’ll come to that later. Can I ask you to unfold your arms and uncross your legs?” I thought he was taking the piss and the way I was sitting wasn’t actually top of mind but I complied. “Thank you,” he said, “You see, if you sit with everything crossed it means you’re not open to what I’m saying, if you follow my meanin’.” I nodded again convinced that this albeit fairly charming man was absolutely bananas. “OK. First of all you probably need to know a bit about us, and what we do, yeah? “ I didn’t give a shit about who this bunch of screwballs were or what they did but he carried on anyway. “I suppose you could call us researchers.” (Tossers was more the descriptive that sprang to mind.) “And what do we research?” I couldn’t have cared less. “Anythin’ and everythin’. We study the ancient civilisations, amongst other things - ancient religions, cultures, their laws, disciplines, arts, ceremonies, architecture, burial rites, sacred dance, symbolism - that sort of thing.” (Mind-blowing, I thought, wondering if the pubs were still open.) “We also possess arts of our own which we practise on our own account. Arts such as healin’, astrology, palmistry, clairvoyance, the Tarot – oh, not the tarot most people know, which is common place, that’s rubbish - but the real tarot whose true meanin’ has been lost for thousands of years. I see you’re a sceptic.”

     That wouldn’t have been hard to spot. The expression of utter disdain on my face would’ve been obvious to a blind man. Norman stood up and took a small, velvet bag from the mantle piece. He sat down again and pulled the bag open. A small object about the size of a golf ball and wrapped in tissue paper rolled into his hand. He peeled away the tissue paper held up a glass ball similar to the one that dangled above his head. “Here, see what you make of this,” he said offering me the ball, “Go on, take it.”

      Reluctantly, I extended my arm and he placed the glass ball in the palm of my hand. The ball was heavy and shone brightly as if it had been polished. I just looked at it. So it was a glass ball. So what?
     “It’s a pure crystal,” Norman said, relighting his roll up yet again, “It’s belongs to me and contains a lot of my essence. Feel it. Close you fingers over it. You see, Alan, crystal balls are misunderstood like a lot of things. The idea of fat gypsy women starin’ into them and seein’ someone’s future is a load of old rubbish, but you can feel things about a person if you hold a crystal that belongs to them if you’re open to things and know how to interpret them. It’s one of the lost arts I was talkin’ about - somethin’ that at one time we all had the ability to do but which we’ve lost.”

     I felt it was time to leave. I’d heard enough of this bloke’s rubbish, and, inoffensive as he seemed to be, it was time to go. I was about to give him back his glass ball when I was caused to drop it instead. A jolt of what felt like electricity shot up my arm and ignited that awful sensation you get when you bash your funny bone, though why it’s called a funny bone, I’ll never know. I yelled and the ball fell from my grasp and rolled along the carpet. Cheshire Cat sprang from his chair, grabbed the ball and handed it back to Norman.

     “Don’t worry, it’s quite natural. It’s a bit like when someone rides a cowboy’s horse in the old westerns,” Norman said, though he was smiling like he’d quite enjoyed seeing me drop the ball like it was a hot coal. “They always know when the wrong person is on their back and they react accordingly. Ten-to-one, the invadin’ rider ends up in the cactuses.”
     He meant cacti, of course, but at that moment, I wanted to stuff his crystal ball up his arse, along with the rest of the people in the room. “It’s because the energy that runs through me is of a very fine nature,” he carried on, “And as this crystal stores a lot of that energy, it doesn’t mix well with the energy that runs through you at the moment and that creates a reaction. What you felt rushin’ up your arm wasn’t from the crystal, was your own energy in retreat. The energy what runs through you, is much more courser that what runs through me, if you understand what I’m saying.” he said, stumbling over his grammar. “Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to insult you, but what you have runnin’ through you is what runs through most people out there.” He nodded towards the window. It runs through me as well during the day when I do my daytime job, but when I get home, there are certain things I can do, certain disciplines, if you like, what I follow to get rid of all that coarseness and replace it with somethin’ more rarefied. I can put myself in a state where I can be receptive to certain things that can only occur because of that state.”
     This guy was obviously stark staring mad and belonged in Fouracres as far as I was concerned. I suddenly felt incredibly sick. My stomach churned and I felt my throat tighten. Cheshire Cat cut in. “I think we should take a break, Norman. I think this has moved a bit too quickly for Alan.”
     “I can see that.” Norman said curtly as if Cheshire Cat was stating the blindingly obvious, “Unfortunately, we can’t afford to ease up too much. There’s too little time. We’ll have a break for 10 minutes and have some more tea. Then we’ll carry on, with our friend’s permission that is.” Norman looked at me quizzically but I didn’t react. “Good.” he said, then he got up and left the room, followed closely by Cheshire Cat and the two women leaving Miles and I alone. As soon as the door closed behind them, I turned on my companion, the idea of tearing his upper body away from the lower half foremost in my mind.
     “What the fuck is going on, Miles? Who are these fucking morons? Are you more out of your fucking mind than I thought? I’m going to kill you for this, Miles.”
     “That’s very likely, as it happens, Alan. That’s why we’re here.” Miles looked oddly calm for someone about to have his blood mixed into the weave of the Persian carpet in a sudden gush.


Chapter 15: RIGHT ROUND THE BEND


     “What the hell are you talking about, Miles?” I was feeling the rage begin to grow.
     “As I said,” Miles carried on, “ Norman will explain everything, if you’ll give him the chance, and believe me, Alan, it really is in your best interests.”
     “My best interests? What the hell would you know about my best interests?” I was yelling at the top of my voice. The door opened and Cheshire Cat entered the room followed by the girl called Star.
     “The tea won’t be long. Here are some biscuits to be going on with,” said Cheshire Cat as if a plate of Digestives would solve anything boiling a load more water wouldn’t. “I hear you’re a very good guitarist, Alan.”

     I ignored him and watched Star as she knelt down on the floor, put her hands on her knees and closed her eyes. She was very attractive in a hippy sort of way. She was slim, quite small breasted and had very long fingers and wore a ring on her left index finger. The wisps of blonde hair poking out from beneath her headscarf reminded me suddenly of Rachel and the predicament I was in due to her whereabouts, or more accurately, the lack of. I’d lost track of time and wasn’t sure which day this was and how much time I had left to find the stupid cow before I got a visit from Keith itching to practice his insect dissection technique and pluck off my arms and legs.

     “What sort of music do you play?” CC continued.
     “Nothing you’d like,” I said as dismissively as I could, hoping he’d shut up. He didn’t.
     “Oh, you’d be surprised. I’m interested in all kinds of music, though I’m not a musician myself. Star sings. Don’t you, Star? And so does Mina. Mina also plays the piano. We have a few musicians amongst us and we compose our own music.” Star opened her eyes for a second and smiled then returned to her trance or the kip she was having. “Do you know the Ancient Egyptians used music for healing amongst other things? They also used it for purposes of regulation and sometimes punishment. Music can be a very powerful thing. In ancient times, certain civilisations used particular frequencies and pitches, for the horns and trumpets they sounded as they went into battle – frequencies that attacked the nerves of the opposing forces but had the effect of charging the adrenalin of their own soldiers. Isn’t that incredible? It sort of throws a new light onto the legend of the Walls of Jericho, don’t you think?”

     Cheshire Cat’s grin was even wider and I wanted to reach into his mouth and extract all his teeth along with his tongue but Norman came back into the room followed by the girl called Mina who was struggling somewhat under the strain of carrying a large tray of mugs. CC leaped up as if on springs and took the tray from her and set it down on the table. Norman was obviously too important to carry trays of tea. He sat down on his throne in front of me. “Right. Lets press on,” he said lighting a newly made roll-up with his Ronson flame-thrower. Any normal person would have got up and left without so much as a goodbye to all these idiots but for some reason, I couldn’t. My legs just didn’t want to move. I tested myself for paralysis and shuffled my feet but everything seemed to be working, and the next thing, Norman had launched into his big speech. “What I’m going to tell you is all true, whether you believe any of it or whether you don’t, makes no difference. What is…is. And there’s nothing you or I or anybody can do about it. All right? Right. I’m going to make this as quick and concise as I can in the time we have. I’ll ask you not to interrupt as there’s a lot to get through but you’re welcome to ask questions of any of us at the end. That’s only fair. I may ask questions of you on the way which I’d appreciate if you’d respond to because it’s very important that you are properly engaged in what we are going to be talking about – that you take in the essence of what I’m saying, otherwise it’ll be waste of time. You can answer with a simple yes or no if you like, so long as you do respond, OK? If you don’t, you won’t understand anything because nothing will go in and it’ll all come bouncing back to me and make me ill. It’s a bit like breathing out then breathing back the expelled air – the thing that was giving you life – oxygen – becomes poison, if you understand what I’m sayin’.
     "It’s a curious thing, isn’t it, that people talk about ‘things going in’ when they’re imparting information to someone. If only they knew or understood the true meanin’ of such a concept – that that’s exactly what happens – that sound is matter, that it contains physical elements generally and that sound which is spoken from one human to another contains certain, shall we say, forces. You see, what a person contains, they can pass on to another just like flu bugs or cold germs, do you see?” He paused for a second and I found myself nodding to the positive and my voice automatically said ‘yes’, not that I had an earthly clue was he was babbling on about. Seemingly satisfied with my response, he carried on:

     “Good. So what a person contains varies greatly depending on what it is that fills them most – on what that person’s majority is. I mean, if you’re a 12 pints of beer a night man and you spend most of the rest of your time engaged in supporting and thinking about a major football team, that’s going to be the majority of what you contain. Parts of your brain will be addled by the amount of beer you take in and the rest filled by whatever things are floating around in the essences of those you associate with. Basically, like it or not, you become like the rest of the crowd – the majority, and your majority, what’s in you, becomes what’s in the rest. It’s often been said that ‘like runs to like’ and that’s very true. What’s also often been said is that you become what you think about which again is very true. It’s like that idea that people who have dogs and are besotted with them eventually end up looking like their pets. You must have seen it. A man walks down a street with a bulldog on a lead and you look at the man and he looks like a bulldog in certain respects. He’ll even walk like the dog, though I don’t mean on all fours, of course.” He giggled at his puny joke and Cheshire Cat let go a guffaw cementing the notion in my mind that he was a complete sycophant. The two women just smiled sweetly.
     “Like I said,” Norman continued, “Like runs to like and when someone chooses a pet, ten-to one they’ll go for one that resembles their own characteristics. They don’t really know they’re doing that of course – it’s an unconscious thing. Then the more time they spend with the animal the more they seem to become to look like it. It’s what passes between them, the animal and the owner, that causes this to happen, because what passes between them has physical elements like I described. You’ve heard people described as being ‘horsy’, haven’t you? And it’ll always be odds on that they actually own horses themselves. None of this is coincidence, you see. Everything can be explained. And I mean everything. Oh, sure, scientists will tell you this, that and the other about so on and so forth, but scientists always set out to disprove things that they can’t explain in simple terms. And that’s the key to understanding everything. We call it K I S. Keep it simple.
     "If you learn to think like that, you can unlock all the mysteries in the world. In fact, there are no mysteries. The only enigma about the Sphinx is that it’s an enigma. Everything in the world and the universe, come to that, is interlinked and connected, but all scientists do is to put things in test tubes. And there’s this incredible, ridiculous belief that we on this little planet of ours that we call Earth, are the only living intelligences out there. I mean, I ask you, what sort of sense does that make? Just take a look through a telescope and tell me what sort of chances there are that that’s the case.” I yawned deeply and didn’t try to hide it. “That’s all right,” said Norman through a condescending smile, “That’s natural. It’s a good sign that I’m actually communicating with you properly. It’s just your system’s taking in more energy from me because it likes what it’s feeling. If you nick too much, you’ll see me yawn as well in a minute or so.” This guy really was crazy.

     “Tell me something,” Norman tilted his head in an inquisitive gesture. “Do you think it’s possible to kill with a glance?” I shrugged. “There’s that other old expression isn’t there – ‘if looks could kill’? I wonder where that came from. But we’ll come back to that. You probably think I’m talking in riddles but I’m trying to show you something by darting around all over the place, which possibly to you seems to be random. Actually it’s anything but random because there’s no such thing. Everything has an order – a place in the system. Like I said, everything is connected – part of a huge structure – like a spider’s web in the rain, though it might not appear so at first. A bit may glisten over here,” he used his index finger to gesticulate, “and another bit may glisten right over here, miles away from the first bit, but they’re both connected to the main structure. That’s how we see our research. That’s what we call our method: ‘Spider-webbing’. Maybe I’ll let one of my colleagues here take over for a while so you can see what I mean - that we’re all reading from the same text, so to speak.” He turned to Cheshire Cat. “Roger, why don’t you carry on for a bit?” Norman sat back in his chair and reopened his Golden Virginia tin and Cheshire Cat, who didn’t look much like a Roger to me – more like a Dick – took up the reins. He leaned forward in his dining room type chair and did his best to extend his nauseating smile even wider.

     “Do you like stories Alan?” he said as if I was 4 years old, “I do. I love stories. There is a great art in telling stories. Stories have been used for thousands of years to convey information and great knowledge and this is because the very act of telling a story opens certain channels in the mind so that information can be received at several levels at the same time. Provided, that is, the story is a good one. It’s often been said that a good story is captivating. This is exactly true. It’s not just an expression. You must have seen it in children when someone reads them a story and they do become captivated, entranced – almost mesmerised. It’s when this happens that things can pass from the storyteller to the mind of the listener in a way that he or she isn’t aware of. You see, there are 3 levels of consciousness in the mind; conscious, semi conscious and unconscious. This is not generally understood today where we think only of the conscious and the unconscious, which we consider to be a blank state where nothing happens. This is not correct. The unconscious mind is very active and can contain powerful forces that we are not aware of until they erupt. Have you ever had a sudden outburst – a loss of temper that takes you by surprise that you can’t account for? This can often be caused by a thought or a memory lodged at the front of the unconscious mind triggered by something someone says or by a smell or familiar atmosphere and can be catapulted into the conscious mind with such force that one can lose control and the force of a past grievance can take one over.
     "What comes out doesn’t have to be a grievance; of course, it can be a sudden outburst of positive emotion, like when you remember something wonderful from your childhood. Memory is a very powerful and wonderful thing.” CC grinned his patronising grin again and the idea of leaning forward and ripping it off along with the rest of his face briefly skitted across my frontal lobes. The smile vanished as if he’d read my thoughts and he took on a deeply theatrical, serious expression. Obviously the next bit was going to be more serious and was supposed to match the silly expression. “Unfortunately, we can’t always choose what we take in and store in our subconscious and unconscious minds, that is to say, we’ve have lost the ability we once had to control such things, and when you think how much information is hurled at us every day by television, radio, newspapers and advertising, it’s little wonder that so many people suffer mental stress. We are under constant bombardment, and depending on our mental state at any one time, we can be open to all manner of things we otherwise might not be were we more in control of….”

     CC seemed to losing his way, which was not surprising as he was talking absolute bollocks as far as I was concerned. Norman, who by now had finished rolling yet another perfect GV fag interrupted and took over.

     “What Roger is getting at is that we can be vulnerable to invasion by things and influences - sometimes, whether we like it or not. Did you ever go to the pictures as a small boy and watch a cowboy film, and when you came out of the cinema, felt you were the hero in the film? That’s if it was a good film. D’you remember that feeling of the six-guns on your hips and that you could draw and shoot someone right between the yes at any given moment even if they were half a mile away? You see, you’d taken on the persona of the hero in the film because you were open to him by being emotionally charged by the experience of what you’d just seen and been caught up in, quite literally. And those feelings you had about being a crack shot with a Colt 45 were very real. Of course the hero in the film was just an actor but by taking the notion of the character into yourself, you had actually become the person being portrayed, and, what’s more, if you’d really had those guns at your side, you actually COULD have shot someone between the eyes half a mile away.” Norman smiled. “I can see you think I’m crazy and I don’t blame you. If I was you and hearing all this stuff for the first time, I’d think I was crazy.”
     The gathering tittered as if this was the funniest remark ever uttered. “When you came out of that cinema feeling like a cowboy, you’d actually become the host for an actual entity – someone that you’d created. And this cowboy sharp-shooter was as real as you – in fact, for a short time, he WAS you, because YOU had stepped aside and let the new you take over until something else grabbed your attention or the feeling wore off. As for your accuracy with the Colt 45 – if you’d happened to have had one - you’d have been a crack shot. It’s like when you’re walking along a beach say, and you see a can lying amongst the pebbles a few yards away and you pick up a stone and chuck it at the can without thinking and hit it smack in the centre. You’re so amazed at what you just did, you pick up another stone and try again but you can’t do it. No matter how hard you try, you keep missing. That’s because you allowed YOU back into the picture. But this is the ‘you’ that’s been created by the influences of your education, upbringing and the culture we’re forced to live in. It’s not the real you. It’s the ‘you’ based in what we’ve come to accept as the personality. It’s not the ‘you’ that is your essence - the REAL you. The real you would’ve shot someone between the eyes no problem.” Norman relit his fag. Then he said quietly, “You see, it is possible to kill with a glance. And you don’t need no six shooter to do it,”
     “It’s absolutely true, what Norman’s saying,” CC interrupted with enthusiasm,” Can I interject, Norman? I’d like to tell Alan the story of the car with the seized engine.” Norman nodded and sat back in his chair as CC leaned forward in his and carried on in a very earnest, almost excited manner. “It’s extraordinary what the human is capable of – what power we can utilise if only we knew how to tap into it. I was once in a Transit van with Norman. We were delivering a piano to a house in Berkshire. I was driving and Norman was in the passenger seat. We were driving along a country lane – quite quickly, I have to confess, as we were late. From our high up position in the cab we could see over the hedges that lined the road. We were approaching a cross road but we could see there was a car travelling at high speed in the road at a right-angle to our left and it was obvious it was going to run right across the junction though we had right of way. Both vehicles were yards from a certain, horrendous collision. I applied the brakes as hard as I could but it was pretty clear we weren’t going to stop in time. Norman suddenly thrust his arm through the open window and pointed his finger at the car.” CC demonstrated, jerking his arm sideways in a kind of Nazi salute with his index finger thrust out like a sausage with an erection.      “The other car seemed to lock its wheels and went into straightline skid, its tires belching smoke. Our van also skidded, right past the junction, just in time for us to see the other car slide to a complete stop just behind the white line as we passed. It was incredible. It was just as if some unseen, giant hand had reached in from somewhere, taken control of the situation and stopped the other car dead in its tracks.” CC seemed almost overcome by his enthusiasm for his little tale and I just wished he’d be overcome generally. “We pulled into a passing place and went back to the junction. The car was still at there and there was blue smoke and steam everywhere and two huge black tire marks on the road up to the white line. The driver had his window open and his arm on the sill. At first, I thought he was dazed, but as we approached, the smell of alcohol was unbelievable. He was drunk as a skunk. The engine wasn’t running and Norman leaned in and turned the ignition key but the thing wouldn’t start…”
     “Seized. Engine and gearbox, both, I reckoned. Completely.” Norman cut in. “The bastard wasn’t goin’ nowhere, ever again. Not in that vehicle. Pardon my language, ladies. We just left him there. We were miles from anywhere. Hopefully someone came along and found him and with a bit of luck told the police. He was so drunk, I doubt if he could’ve stood up, let alone walk anywhere. You see I stopped that car with my mind. ‘Cos I know how, see? ‘Course, I don’t expect you to believe me, I just want you to consider such a thing, yeah? That such a thing might just be a possibility.”

     All I could see was a probability that blood would be spilt immanently and it wasn’t going to be mine. I’d given these idiots all the time I was going to and they were beginning to get right on my wick.



Chapter 16: FURTHER ROUND THE BEND AND RIGHT UP THE WALL


     Frankly, I didn’t care if Norman could fly to the Jupiter and back. I couldn’t see where all this rubbish he and CC were spouting was leading and I cared even less. I had enough problems of my own. I still had to find Rachel if I was to keep my testicles in their rightful place. My mind began to drift and Norman’s voice became an irritating background noise. One of the women was looking at me and smiling. The other had her eyes squeezed tight shut and her head was bowed like she was in some kind of constipation pain. Both of them were still kneeling and sitting on their haunches. The one who smiled at me, Star, was quite attractive. She was skinny and blonde – not unlike Rachel in a way. Her breasts were smaller and her features sharper but her lipstick-less lips were full and tantalizing and I fantasized about what she would be like in the sack – whether she was the passive or active sort, or maybe she was like a bed full of tigers. More likely she was like a bed full of stoned hippies.

     Norman suddenly frowned and leaned forward in his chair again. As he spoke he pointed at me with his index finger, which I noticed also contained a ring like the one the Star woman wore – a cheap looking brass job with some kind of symbol engraved on it. “Have you ever played around with a ouija board?” he said, squinting slightly and turning his head sideways, and without waiting for a reply, “Well, don’t. They’re extremely dangerous.”

     I took a quick glance round the room and they were all looking at me with the same undertakers’ expression, including Miles for whom I was forming definite plans. I started to laugh. First it was just a cackle but it soon exploded into a huge gaffaw similar to the kind of manic hysteria I was taken over by when that idiot Keogh missed the table with his nasty little legs. Norman ignored my outburst and carried on and for some reason I stopped in mid peel. “I drive an ambulance for a living,” he said again nodding his head towards the window. “I few years ago I was called to the scene of a road accident in Dalston. It was late at night – about Midnight, and these 4, 13 stone blokes somehow managed to squeeze themselves into one of those Fiat 500s, you know, the tiny little things that sound like lawn mowers. Well the Fiat had an argument with a lorry. It was a very one-sided argument as you may imagine. It was pouring with rain and though they couldn’t have been going that fast, the brakes didn’t work because of all the weight probably, and they went straight on at a red traffic light and into the path of an articulated truck crossing the junction. The car got sucked right underneath the truck, which skidded and dragged it along the road for a good 100ft. Then the Fiat exploded in a ball of fire, which in turn ignited the Truck’s petrol tanks and the whole lot went up. By the time we got there it was a right old inferno. There was nothing much anyone could do except warm ourselves by the fire.
     “The truck driver managed to get out of his cab and skedaddle and was in shock but the heavies in the car were barbecued. Weirdly enough, this happened right outside the fire station and you would’ve thought a few firemen would’ve come rushing out and get stuck in, wouldn’t you? A couple of policemen went into the station to see why they weren’t responding and one of ‘em came out and asked me if I’d go back in there with him which I did. What I found in there was quite a sight, I can tell you. On the first floor in the crew’s lounge the were 7 of ‘em, firemen, that is, sitting at a table with their hands linked - stone dead, all of ‘em.
     “It was quite a mess – a couple of ‘em had thrown up and possibly choked on the vomit but mostly I’d say they’d died of some huge kind of shock, or, to put it another way, they’d died of fright. The hair on their heads, except for one who was bald, was pure white even though there wasn’t one of ‘em over the age of 40. Their expressions were of absolute terror. I can’t find a better way of describing faces where the eyes are bulging like they almost appear to be popping out of the sockets and the mouths wide open like as if they were screaming. Fair put the wind up me, I can tell you, an’ I’ve seen a lot of things in my life that would make the average human bein’ run for cover. There’s that famous paintin’, isn’t there called ‘The Scream’ or somethin’? Well, imagine that and multiply it by 7 and you’re pretty close. On the table was a circle of letters written on scraps of paper and an upturned pint glass. It didn’t take a genius to tell me what they’d been up to.
     “They’d made themselves a Ouija board and suffered the consequences. I’d heard of this sort of thing but never actually seen it. Oh, the government knows about it but like quite a few other things, there’s a D notice on any information just like there is on UFOs. Oh, yes, flying saucers do exist. They’re very real.”

     He flashed me what I can only describe as a wry, knowing smile and I half expected some kind of antenna to suddenly sprout from behind his ears and for him to levitate up to the ceiling but there was no such luck and he just carried on with his spiel.

     “Do you know that in the last war, dear old Adolph Hitler, had a group men sitting in a circle in a Berlin Bunker thinking Churchill dead? No, I don’t supposed you did, nor that in the catacombs underneath Whitehall, the British powers that were had 32 blokes sitting in a circle thinking him alive and another circle in a different room thinking Hitler dead. Norman stubbed out the last inch of his roll up and opened his tin to begin another rolling ritual.
     “You see, Alan, a circle is a very powerful thing – oh, the last war was an occult war, I don’t suppose you knew that either. Hitler and his Nazi cronies were into the occult in a big way. Take the swastika and the iron cross – both occult symbols borrowed from Ancient Egypt. And why do you think all the allied planes had black and white stripes painted underneath the wings? Think about it. The black and white stripes used at pedestrian crossings, and that old black and white striped arm band policemen on the beat used to wear, these are occult devices used specifically to cause calmness and regulation and induce feelings of submission or, to put it another way, surrender. You could argue that the black and white stripes on the road are so you can see the crossing easily. Ok, then why don’t they use black and yellow? That would be even easier to see, wouldn’t it? The reason is that yellow causes a different kind of reaction, but that’s another story which I haven’t got time to go into right now.”

     He finished building his roll up and applied the Ronson flame. “There are some parts of France and Spain, small villages, where on market day people but and sell livestock and if a farmer whose taken some cattle to sell, and when he gets to the point of bartering over a price with someone he’ll often draw a chalk circle around a few cows so that they don’t stray. That’s all he has to do – draw a chalk circle on the ground around the animals. And they won’t move outside it. It’s as if there’s some kind of invisible barrier around them – some kind of unseen fence. I’ve seen this for myself, I can tell you.”
     “So have I. Twice. It’s quite incredible,” CC cut in. Norman flashed him a look and he reddened. Obviously he wasn’t meant to interrupt when Norman was in full flow.
     “You see those circles that the farmers draw on the ground are done with knowledge – maybe not complete knowledge – but enough to know that it works, and that’s all that’s needed so that the cattle won’t stray. It’s often said that a little knowledge goes a long way, well, that’s very true. I’d go further than that. I’d add that knowledge is power and I don’t mean that in just a philosophical or political sense, but in a real sense. If you do anything with knowledge, you power it. You cause that action to live, to have a force of it’s own. What the farmers don’t know, what we commonly call a ‘custom’, something that’s been handed down generation to generation, like maybe whistling for the wind, which incidentally, some people can actually do, that what you create on one level can sometimes exist on another level and be as real as you and me sitting here.
     “One of the most powerful actions anyone can perform is to create a circle of some kind. A circle is closed, and the power in it runs round and round and builds. It creates a kind of battery. It can transmit that power, hence the circles of men thinking Hitler and Churchill dead or alive. Oh, don’t take my word for it. Find out for yourself. Get yourself a reader’s ticket at the British Museum Library. You’ll find a lot of this stuff documented there provided you know where to look. There is some stuff you can’t get at, of course – stuff that people don’t want you to see, but anyway back to the firemen. A powered circle can also receive.
     “Trouble is, if it’s not controlled, if those that created the circle don’t know what they’re doing, the circle can be open to anything, and I mean ANYTHING. There were 7 of them, right? If there had been 8 of ’em or 10 maybe, they may have been OK, but 7s a very significant number, a sacred number, if you like, and it just so happened that they powered whatever thoughts they had collectively at the time by 7 and for a brief moment, a mili second, they were all on the same waive length, so to speak, and they opened an invitation to something, either that they’d created in their own minds or in the mind of one of them, or to something that just happened to be in the vicinity and whatever it was, it landed on the table right in front of them. It was pretty powerful because there were scorch marks on the surface of the table and the hands showed signs of the skin being scorched. These poor fellas weren’t all we found. Down the corridor in an office we found the station commander, or to be more accurate, what was left of him. He was spread all over the walls.
     “The thing what happened at the fire station was hushed up,” Norman went on, “The coroner returned a verdict of death by misadventure due to a Carbon Monoxide leak from the heating system. Families were paid huge amounts of compensation, and no one complained. The fire chief’s death would have been a bit more difficult to explain except that he was a closet homosexual who had few friends and no immediate family of his own. Government authorities are more powerful than people realize. They can cover anything over and things are soon forgotten – almost like they never happened.
     “My point is,” (I was wondering when he’d get to that,) “there’s an awful lot of things people don’t know about and there’s an awful lot of things the government and those in power, who are not necessarily the government, do know about, that they keep hidden away from the likes of you and me – the ordinary folk – for reasons best known to themselves. At least they think they keep things from us, but there are those of us who know a thing or two ourselves and in some respects, know a darn sight more than they do, or think they do.”

     Now I began to understand. Norman was Chinese and if he wasn’t, it was a pretty good impression of Mandarin I’d just heard. Cheshire Cat was grinning again and the two women were smiling - nervously, I’d’ve said. Norman flashed CC a glance, which obviously meant it was time to hand over the baton again and CC grabbed it with both hands.

     “Do you know where your soul is, Alan?” he said gravely. I almost told him that it had been in my wallet earlier in the evening and unless one of them had nicked it, as far as I knew it was still there, but I let out another huge guffaw at the next thing he said. “It’s in your neck,” he said pointing at his own neck with his index finger. CC just smiled smugly along with the rest of his idiot companions.
     “Your soul actually travels up and down your spine but its favourite place is in your neck, close to your brain. That’s where it collects its food. (Bacon and eggs, perhaps?) Everything has to feed to survive, and your soul feeds on your impressions, by which I mean everything you react to – all the anger you feel, all the pain, all the laughter, all the joy, everything you experience in your life. You soul is like a magnet gathering up your experiences like so many iron filings.
     “Your soul becomes whatever you feed it. It’s becomes a sum total of you and whatever you do with your life. If you happen to be a maniacal murderer then your soul would become the essence of whatever it is that maniacal murderers think about. You’ve no doubt heard the expression, ‘poor soul’ – I wonder what that really means?” CC shot a glance at Norman and Norman nodded back. CC was obviously doing OK because the nod from Norman signalled a new injection of earnestness and CC leaned forward and rested his forearms on his legs. “You see, Alan,” he went on as if I was 4 years old, “contrary to popular belief, your soul is not you. What’s more, your soul doesn’t even belong to you – it’s only on loan for the period of your life at this level. Everyone gets their soul 3 months into the 9 months they spend in their mother’s womb, and when they die, it goes back where it came from. Shall we say it goes back to a central core from where it was originally dispensed – back into the pot, if you like.
     “Your soul is, however, a total reflection of you and whatever you become during your life. It’s a total record of everything you are. And your soul can reincarnate. Unlike you, who can’t – at least, not at this level. But we’ll come to that.” (I couldn’t wait.)
     “It is possible to kill a soul,” Norman said casually retaking the reins. CC shot him a glance that told me he was pissed off. “If you know how, that is. And there are those that do know how. They always have, but they wouldn’t tell the likes of you and me. Hanging is the best way. The ritual snappin’ of the neck by stress guarantees to snuff out a soul just like a candle. That’s why capital punishment is important to some people. It’s why the Allies during the War were anxious to capture Hitler alive – so that they could hang him.
     “Once a soul has been killed in a ritualistic manner, it’s dead for good. It can’t re-incarnate and nip into a new body. The Allies didn’t catch old Adolf in time – or so we’re told – and he shot himself and his remains were cremated. So, like I said, he knew a thing or two. He left nothing to chance. He’d mucked it up first time around and probably fancied another go some other time and he knew if the allies got to him they’d make sure that could never happen. It’s amazing when you think about it that one man could have such an effect on the world as he did. He was responsible for the deaths of 72 million people. That’s nearly 4 percent of the world population at the time. That’s a hell of lot of people wiped out in the space of 6 years don’t you think?”

     I shrugged again. I’d never thought about it – how many people had been killed in the war. It was a lot, I supposed, but I wasn’t that interested – in fact I was beginning to feel a bit drowsy and yawned.

     “Close your eyes if you like, you won’t actually go to sleep but you’ll feel more relaxed.” My eye lids slammed shut immediately as if by command. He was right. I didn’t fall asleep. I did feel incredibly relaxed and comfortable. Perhaps the bastard had hypnotised me… “It’s OK. You’re not hypnotised. We don’t believe in it. It’s very dangerous. Your brain, your soul, your essence and your body are all born at the same time. If you put your brain out of sequence, which is what happens when you’re hypnotised, there’s a chance it’ll try and re-engage at some point when you’re not in the trance. The results can be catastrophic. Normally happy people have been known to walk off bridges or step off platforms and under trains or just start behavin’ out of character – talkin’ gibberish and stuff without being conscious of their actions. I’ve seen it quite a few times as an ambulance driver. One bloke attacked his own reflection in a shop window. Just chucked himself straight through the glass. Made a terrible mess of himself. Turned out he’d been havin’ hypnotherapy to give up smokin’ but didn’t remember jumpin’ through the window. Still carried on smokin’ ‘n all.” Norman allowed himself a little chuckle. “No, your system feels safe here, at ease. That’s why you feel the way you do. You can properly relax, maybe for the first time in your life.”

* * * * * * * * * * *



     “What makes you think Hitler was a completely an evil bastard?” My eyes flicked open but I still felt remarkably relaxed. Norman was wearing an even wryer smile. “It’s only what the official recorded history tells us, which is based on the news reports of the day, that form our opinions of him and anything else, come to that. Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure he was the completely evil bastard he was made out to be but there are other ways of looking at the whole episode of the war – both wars, come to that. Maybe Hitler wasn’t totally in charge of his actions. I don’t mean he was a loony though most people think he was. May be the notions in his head that the world would be better off without Jews or Russians and gypsies were put there. Maybe even before his birth. Maybe what he did was his destiny and that he had no control over it – like it was meant to be and there could’ve been nothing’ he could’ve done about it even if he’d wanted to do which he clearly didn’t.
     “What I’m trying to do, Alan, is put a few notions in your head - a few possibilities that maybe you haven’t considered – well, maybe you have, but somehow I don’t think so. I just want you to consider things that you may be familiar with in a different way to show you that perhaps not everything is how you perceive it to be – how any of us perceive things to be at first sight. It’s a way to lead you to a particular place, a particular moment so that we can explain the predicament you’re in, in a way that you can comprehend and understand. Having done that, we can see what we can do to maybe help you.
     “As I’ve said already, it’s critical for you to remain open so that I can get these notions across. I think so far we’re doing OK, so thanks for your patience. I must ask you to stick with it for a little while longer while I tie up a few loose ends and I promise you, that done, we’ll finally get to the point.” He grinned a broader, pretty sanctimonious grin and so did the others. He relit the now tiny dog end between his lips at considerable risk to his amply proportioned nose and carried on. “You see, maybe it was necessary to reduce the world’s population by 70 million or so at that particular time, yeah? In which case, it’s possible to see Hitler in a different light. Maybe he was doing what was needed. He might not have known that, of course, but maybe he was just fulfilling his destiny like I said. The trouble is, we only see things the way we want to see them – from our comfortable point of view even if, in reality, Nature demands certain things that don’t fit with our own concepts of how things are.
     “Nature’s funny in her way. Give Her a chance and She’ll take immediate advantage. Plant a seed somewhere, and provided the soils good and there’s enough moisture, Nature will do the rest. D’know if you plant a mustard seed and then lay, say, an old oak door over the place where you planted it, the mustard seed will push it’s way right through the wood till it finds daylight? That’s incredible, don’t you think, that something so small can have such power?
     “It’s all a question of balances and control and a system of natural laws by which absolutely everything is governed. That mustard seed has a particular place in nature – it has a particular part to play and absolutely nothing will stop it doin’ it’s job. Nothing in nature is random. I mean, look out the window on a clear night. D’you really think that all those billions of stars hanging there are random? That they’re not organized? Not part of a system? Course they are. But they couldn’t exist without the laws. And the laws aren’t difficult to understand.” Norman gestured towards the window,      “I’ll give you a simple example of one of those laws. If you jump out of this window, a natural law will determine what happens next. You’ll go straight down, that’s what’ll happen. Nothing anywhere can exist without these laws. And the important thing to remember is that EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE IS EXACTLY THE SAME. D’you get what I’m sayin’?” I nodded but I had no idea what he was on about and cared even less. “The most important of all these laws is the simplest. That’s the secret of understanding everything. Like I said before, keep it simple. The law I’m talkin’ about is what we call the law of 2 or as it’s better known, the law of opposites. It’s a well-known scientific fact that to every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Science isn’t wrong about everything – just sometimes miss-guided. It’s so simple, in fact, that it’s easy to overlook its importance. Up, down; start, stop; long, short; in, out. That’s how it goes. There are millions of things that you can think of which are examples of the law of 2. Let’s look at ‘in and ‘out’, for example. You breathe in and you breathe out. Like I said, everything breathes in and out. Everything eats and excretes as well. Even the universe does. The one we can see, that is. The law of 2 tells us that for everything we see there’s something we don’t see. There is an unseen universe.
     “At this level, on this world, there is an unseen world. And this unseen world exists alongside the seen one – the one we’re most familiar with. The weird thing is that the unseen world CAN be seen, if you know how to look. Have you ever thought you saw something out of the corner of your eye? Something you thought moved in the corner of a room? I think everyone has had that experience. A split second later, you look again and there’s nothing there, yeah? Well, there was something there. You didn’t imagine it. What it was depends on the conditions at the time – the atmosphere in the room, the temperature, whether the room is clean or dirty, and most importantly, what you yourself were thinking about.
     “Mostly what you see are things of a fairly low level, things what are quite course in their makeup. More rarefied things are more difficult to see because they respond less well to what I can only describe as Human level atmosphere. Seeing things the average person in the street can’t, or doesn’t generally, is all about radiation. It’s like blue sky, yeah? People think they see light but they don’t. You can’t see light. It doesn’t have a colour. Light is radiation from the sun what moves through the ozone layer round the earth and causes certain chemical particles to react. THAT’S what you see – the reaction, the blue you see is a chemical reaction, yeah? When the sun moves away, the sky looks black but it’s not really. The same chemical particles are still there. It’s just that there’s no radiation to illuminate them.
     “It’s the same with the unseen world. What and how we radiate controls what we see, if we see anything an all. I mean a bloke who’s just downed 6 pints of beer and half a ton of crisps isn’t goin’ to be sensitive to much except 6 pints of beer and half a ton of crisps, if you get what I’m sayin’”. He seemed to have a real down on beer drinkers/crisp eaters. “Oh, he might well see pink elephants, but that’s about all.” Once again the gathering tittered in unison, and Norman smiled broadly, obviously enjoying his joke and the reaction of the others.
     Norman rotated his head slightly so that he was looking at me from the corners of his eyes. Then he squinted. “Hmm. Interesting. Your aura is basically blue. You did know you had an aura, I take it?” He flattened his hand and leaned forward. He extended his arm as moved his hand in my direction, feeling the air as if he was trying to touch an invisible wall. When the hand was about 18inches away I felt a slight, momentary pressure against my forehead. “I just touched the edge of your aura. That’s what you felt. Your aura is your personal magnetic field. It’s just like the belt of atmosphere around the planet. Like I said, everything everywhere is exactly the same. Course, the human aura is just another thing whose existence is denied by those that control how much they want us to know and how much they don’t - by which I mean the international crooks who call themselves politicians.
     “Without your aura, you couldn’t live just as the planet can’t live without its atmosphere.” Norman paused for a few moments, while he looked at me again with the peculiar, sideways squint. “Yes, it’s definitely blue – pale, but definitely blue. You look like a sort of pale blue egg. The aura is actually egg-shaped. The blue means you’re quite comfortable and relaxed at the moment. If you weren’t and were agitated in some way, your aura would show a multiplicity of colours in sort of swirling mist. If only the medical profession accepted the existence of the aura and had the yes to see it, think what a benefit that would when diagnosing someone’s condition – especially in the area of mental illness. Anyway, that’s another discussion.
     “Your aura is also your anchor. No doubt you’ve heard of so-called ‘out of body experiences’, yeah? This is another thing what is passed off as bein’ some kind of hallucination or mental problem. That’s crap. Travelling outside your body is a reality. It’s just another of those lost arts we mentioned earlier. Hand me the statue, Roger.”
     Roger leapt up as if his balls were on fire, grabbed a small statue from the sideboard and handed it to Norman. The thing was about a foot high. It depicted what looked like a young girl standing on a black panther. The figure was painted gold, wore what looked like a bishop’s mitre and carried a staff in its right hand. “This, of course, is the boy king, Tutankhamen, and the animal is the form he took when he Astral travelled, by which I mean when he left his body and entered the Astral light. Because of who he was he was, a very highly developed human being, he was permitted to enter the ‘Light’ at a very high level. At such levels, the Astral Light has guardians – entities placed there to protect it from would be travellers.
     “These entities are immensely powerful and the boy travelled as the panther for his own protection. The panther, like the ordinary cat, was sacred to the ancient Egyptians and was revered and feared in both the seen and unseen worlds. What we call the Astral Light is in fact the Earth’s Aura, a highly rarefied, magnetic and electrical domain which amongst other things, contains a complete record of the planet’s history form the birth of creation at this level right up to the present day.
     “There were statues like this one all over ancient Egypt. The original of this one is life sized. It’s kept in the Cairo Museum at the moment and is under constant guard. No one is allowed to touch it or get too near it. Makes you wonder what they know, doesn’t it? The statue had two functions – one was as a way for the King to connect immediately with the Astral Light and to travel in the Panther form. All he had to do was concentrate on it – just as an image in his mind and he was able to cross over, so to speak. The second function was a homing device for him to find his way back to the physical easily. The Astral Light is a pretty big place.”

     He handed the statue back to Roger who took it in both hand as if it was a living thing and placed it gently back on the sideboard. “Of course, much of this knowledge has been lost or deliberately hidden over time, but there’s evidence of Astral travel everywhere. The North American Indians were frequent travellers. Their homing devises were totem poles. They travelled as the entities they created – that they carved. Totem Poles images of what they believed were Gods, which is what we’re told. Red Indians were a bloody sight cleverer that they were made out to be. Then the white man came along and introduced them to Whiskey.

     “It wasn’t long after that that they were wiped out. Just fink about that - an entire indigenous people erased from the face of the planet in about 20 years. They were seen as heathen savages, but in general, they were deeply intelligent and illumined people, snuffed out by so-called civilization. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” I yawned again.
     “The first time I got out of my body was quite an experience, I can tell you,” Norman said. “There was this funny rippin’ sound, a bit like someone breaking wind loudly, which is the sound the aura makes when you pass through it. And there I was lookin’ back at myself lyin’ on the bed. There was this strange blue, shimmering sort of chord connecting me, or what was now me, to my body, belly button to belly button. You see I was now in my blood body. That’s the shape you are when you leave you physical body. Your blood body, or Astral body, is called what it is because its shape is determined by wherever you blood has been and as that’s everywhere in your body, that’s’ what you look like when you’re outside, so to speak. D’you see?”
     I didn’t but I nodded automatically. “So there I was standing stark naked, and lookin’ a funny transparent, shimmering blue colour, in my bedroom looking at myself lyin’ on the bed and wondering what I should do next. As it was dark, I decided to switch the light on. When I reached my hand to the switch, me arm went straight through the wall.” Norman grinned and the gathering performed its usual juvenile giggle. “I was standin’ by the dressin’ table so I looked into the mirror but I wasn’t there. There was no reflection. Of course there wouldn’t be. I was now part of the unseen world – the electrical world. The lack of reflection should tell you something about so called vampires if you think about it.
     “The important thing to remember at this point is that you can see from one world into another. In fact you can see both worlds at the same time, the electrical and the physical, if you’re on the right frequency.
Mind you, you’ve really got to know what you’re doin’ if you want to go travellin’ in the Astral Light. It has a lot of levels – 7 in fact, and not all of ‘em are hospitable. Levels 1 and 2 for example, contain a lot of very nasty beings, things what are made up of the lowest forms you can fink up and a lot you can’t, they’re just too ‘orrible to contemplate. Flies belong in level 2. Yeah, ordinary house flies. There’s not a lot of things more revolting than them if you think about it - all that regurgitating and eating of excreta they do. So what are they doin’ in the physical world, you may ask. (I wasn’t about to) How can they manifest at this level?
     “Flies were let in over time by people messin’ about with things they shouldn’t have. I’m talkin’ about so-called black wizards and the like. Remember the ouija board story? In the same way that a physical being can cross over in an electrical from, then electrical forms can cross over as a physical manifestation. It’s that equal and opposite reaction I was talking about. It’s a law.
     “Did you know that eczema was let loose in the world when Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamen’s tomb and opened it up? Eczema was something the Egyptians put there to protect the sarcophagus. Carter and his crew unknowingly allowed the disease to transfer from one level of the Astral light to our physical zone. The whole lot of ‘em broke out in weeping sores within days of opening the tomb and no one knew what it was. By then it was too late and the disease spread and became established.
     “The point is (he’d already said this a couple of times but as yet hadn’t come up with one) that all kinds of things get transferred from one level to another when people mess about with stuff they don’t really understand. Which brings me to your situation.”

     So I was some kind of low level shit eating fly, was I?

     “From the details Dr. Davis has given us about some of your recent experiences, I’d say you’d definitely been Astral Travelling without knowing it.”

     Dr. Davis? Who the fuck was Dr. Davis? Norman flicked a sideways glance at Miles sitting next to me. I turned towards him. Miles closed his eyes and nodded, another sanctimonious smile curling his lips.

     “By the way, you won’t remember, but you and I have met before.” Norman said.

Chapter 16: THE POINT


     “It was my ambulance what picked you up that night in the pub,” Norman said, “Blimey, you was in a right old state. Me and my mate had to hold you down at first, but I managed to calm you down – not that you probably remember. I can see by your face that you don’t. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s very important that you listen closely now to what I’m going to tell you. If there’s anything you don’t understand from this point on, stop me and I’ll explain. I’ve given you a pretty sketchy outline of the way certain things work – and it is sketchy, I’d be the first to admit it – to prepare the ground and hopefully some of what we’ve already talked about will be useful as we go on.
     “Enabling yourself to travel safely in the Astral Light,” he went on, “is difficult. Getting in there isn’t easy ever, but with the right kind of trainin’ and instruction it can be accomplished quite simply and safely. Without the right trainin, the Astral Light can be a very dangerous dimension to enter.
     “The Astral Light is festooned with things and bein’s that would scare the socks of most sane people. A lot of these ‘items’, you could call them, have been put there deliberately to do just that. To the illumined or developed mind, to think it is to create it. Such arts have been long lost, as I’ve said, but it wasn’t that long ago, they were still practised. Take heraldry, for instance. The things that you see on a nobleman’s household coat of arms, the things and symbols displayed on his shield, would at one time, probably only about 400 years ago, have been designed with esoteric knowledge so that the stuff on the shield would also exist in the unseen world, in the Astral Light. Are you with me?” I nodded which seemed to best way to help reach a conclusion to all this nonsense and so that I could go about killing Dr Davis, or Dr Who or whatever his bloody name was, at my leisure and pleasure.
     “Gargoyles on mediaeval churches an’ cathedrals are another case in point. Again, these are images of beings that actually existed in a very powerful form. Why they’re built at a physical level at all is for 2 reasons – one is that the effigy acts as a homing device or anchor as in the case of King Tutankhamen, and the other is that when something is built physically with knowledge, a lot more power is added to the image of the object in the Astral Light, if you get my meaning.” I nodded again.
     “The 4 silver Gryphons that guard the City of London are as real as you an’ me. There’s one in the East, one in the West, one in the South and one in the North, which are connected to what we would describe as the law of 4, which also explains the existence of the Sphinx at Giza in Egypt, if that is, you know how to interpret it. He paused to acknowledge the knowing sanctimonious grins of his companions. The gryphon on Holborn Viaduct you can see easily plain as day but its electrical counterpart is a darned sight than bigger than that, believe me. I once came across it when I was travellin’ the Astral plane - really put the wind up me, I can tell you.”
     Once again the gathering tittered knowingly. If this Norman bloke was getting to the point he was taking the long way round the houses to do it. “A lot of things can cause you to leave your physical body. Shock is one. You can get catapulted out if something gives you a big enough fright. Most people that happens to pop right back in again because bein’ outside, so to speak, frightens ‘em even more. Doctors and psychiatrists say the ‘out-of-body-experience, as they call it, is an ‘allucination which of course it isn’t. Drugs are another way to eject yourself and particular diets can also do it.
     “There are some tribes in South America who cause themselves to leave their bodies by over-eatin’ certain vegetables and fruits so that they go into convulsions till the physical body ejects them. The trouble with forced ejection is that you can’t plan where you’re goin’ to land. You could end up anywhere – not just any place, but in any part of history.
     “Like we said, the Astral Light contains an exact record of every event that has ever taken place in the history of the planet. It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? Best not to try, if you ask me. You may end up blowin’ your head right off your shoulders. I take it you’ve heard of spontaneous combustion?” Norman didn’t wait for an answer but ploughed on, seemingly fired by a new momentum. Maybe we were finally going to get to the point. “Bodies are often found burned to cinders for no apparent reason. A bloke can be walkin’ down the street and WHOOSH! Up he goes, just like that. It’s been witnessed. It’s as if someone has been doused in petrol and a match struck.
     “The truth is that they’ve somehow become connected to something too powerful – that their physical body can’t contain. The human body is an amazingly powerful bit of machinery in itself and capable of conducting and projecting enormous amounts of energy, but, like any over form of conductor, it can overload and then it’s a bit like bein’ struck by lighnin’ or grabbin’ hold of a power cable. When you do that, you burn. Just because you can’t see the power source doesn’t mean it ‘ain’t there. You can’t see the electricity in a live rail, can you? But it’s there. Try standin’ on one then put one foot on the ground’ if you want proof.
     “There is a state what some Hindus and Buddhists try to reach. It’s called Kundelini and is, in their mind, the next stop to Nirvana, the highest form of conscious awareness, they believe. They consider Kundelini to be the life force energy that exists in or around the spinal cord. Remember what we said about the soul living in the spine? They liken this force to a thermometer when it’s heated, so that it moves upward from the base of the spine like an awakening coiled serpent, they say, rising through the sex organs, then into the belly, the heart, throat, forehead and finally to the crown of the head. When this mysterious power fills each space as it passes through each of these positions, it moves through each chakra, the seven main energy points within the body. Each of these energy points resemble spinning wheels that cause them to vibrate and pulse with individual vibrant colors, rather like a string of Christmas tree lights.
     “The trouble with Kundelini is that if you get there and you don’t know how to manage it properly, you might just catch fire like a Christmas tree when the fairly lights are joined to an overloaded plug. Speakin’ of fairies, they do exist, probably at the bottom of most peoples’ gardens. They’re very high, rarefied beings who do a specific job but that’s another story.
     “To the Ancient Egyptians Astral Travel was as commonplace as usin’ the Underground is to us today. Not for all of ‘em, though. 2 thirds of the Egyptian population was in slavery to the other third. That’s another law – the law of free (I think he meant 3 but his use of English was ever so slightly primitive) but we don’t have time to get in to that. The higher Ancient Egyptians were nippin’ in and out of the Astral Light all the time. Their culture was strictly controlled – regulated – it had to be for them to preserve their illumination – their wisdom.
     “They were very wise people, your Ancient Egyptians. They knew how to harness the natural power of the human body and direct it’s force where it would be most useful. You know what an ankh is, yeah? It’s that funny lookin’ thing, which is circular at one end with a cross and then a short shaft? Some Egyptologists describe the ankh as being the symbol of life but it was actually a symbol of certain death in knowledgeable hands. Quite a few of the Gods depicted in Egyptian paintings are shown pointing the ankh and there are drawing of it shown with what looks like steaks of lightning emanating from the end of it - a bit like a ray gun, which is exactly what it was. If you were caused to stand in front of an ankh held by an illumined person and you weren’t up to scratch yourself, shall we say, you got zapped and probably disappeared in a puff of smoke.
     “The ankh was an instrument of control and took its power from a huge amount of particular items placed in the Astral Light. But to control things in the physical world; you have to control things in the Astral world as well. One feeds the other. What I mean is, whatever goes on in our physical life is determined by what goes on in the Astral Light and vice versa. Whichever world has the majority of power controls and determines the state of the other, if you get my meanin’. It’s that good old law of 2 again. Crops up everywhere.
     “The Ancient Egyptians were in charge of their destiny unlike to day when no–one is actually in charge of anything, though there are many who think they are. The Egyptians controlled everything from their place in the physical world and if some kind of adjustment had to be made in order to maintain the proper balance, they’d pop across to the Astral plains and do whatever was necessary.
     “But theirs wasn’t an easy life. On the contrary, it was very difficult for those in charge – the Kings and Pharaohs really had their work cut out. They had to be disciplined and highly skilled to keep things stable. By the way, a King was much higher than a Pharaoh. You did know that, of course.”

     He knew I didn’t know any such thing. I think what I was beginning to hate most about Norman and his kind was their highly skilled ability to be so patronising. I was rather hoping for a physical demonstration of spontaneous combustion from all of them in unison. CC handed Norman some sheets of paper stapled together.

     “This is a copy of a manuscript in the British Museum library called the ‘Mysteries of Life and Death’” Norman began to read from the papers. “’Thus there is a description of solid copper, zinc and silver rods, the exact technology of their manufacturing, relates the method of their application, and defines their purpose quite clearly—the energetic potential strengthening and informational contact with higher forms of intelligence. That version surely looks more logical and credible than others, especially if the following facts are taken into consideration. Comparing with short life expectance of ancient Egyptians, the longevity of some pharaohs and priests strikes imagination: Pepy II sat on throne for 94 years, Ramesses II (the Great)—for 67 years, Thutmose III—for 54 years, Psammetichus I—for 51.
     “Modern historic science can tell us a lot about Ancient Egypt. But there is a whole layer of some secret knowledge, methods and means is left hidden, which provided pharaohs and priests with vigorous longevity, powers and wisdom to rule the country, develop agriculture, crafts, science and arts. Egyptian physicians were held in great regard in the contemporary world, and the rulers of countries adjacent to Egypt preferred to be treated by them in particular.’ This stance they’re adopting in the picture is positive – though not aggressive and put another way, all that means the human body is one huge magnet – a man’s right hand is positive, as is his left foot. His left hand and right foot are negative. For a lady, it’s the opposite way round.
     “The Romans knew a thing or two about it, which is why they always marched into battle in a kind of shuffle, pushin’ all the soldiers left legs out in front together. The Nazis also understood about human magnetism. D’you know you can throw a bolt of force by flickin’ you right arm out in a particular way? I always used to wonder how the Nazis managed to stir up so much hysteria in so many people in those huge rallies they were always puttin’ together. Charisma, they say Hitler had. With that, Norman suddenly leaped to his feet, clicked his heels together and thrust out his arm in a Nazi salute. “Perhaps he had something else as well. If you’d had the sensitivity, you’d have felt that. Imagine the effect, then, of ten, twenty thousand people all doin’ that at he same time. Well, we don’t have to imagine it, do we? We have all that film of it going on at the Nuremberg Rallies not the mention the 2nd World War itself.”

     Norman stopped talking for a moment and studied me in that odd manner again, the weird little smile creasing the corners of his mouth. Satisfied that I wasn’t about to catch fire or something, he continued. “You’ve been Astral Travellin’. On and off since you were first ill, I reckon. Nothing wrong with that - a lot of folk would be quite envious. People try all their lives to get into the Astral Light and never manage it. Trouble is, you came face to face with something that you weren’t meant to. It was going about its business but it saw you. Had it not done so, we wouldn’t be sittin’ here havin’ this conversation. There wouldn’t have been the need.

     “As it happens, you interrupted something. You weren’t supposed to be there – at least, I don’t think you were. That’s something we’ve got to get to the bottom of. That thing, entity, call it what you will – the ‘soldier’,” he emphasized the word, “you’ve been seein’, is connected with you. There’s now a link between you and it which neither you nor it can break. That was what was chasin’ you across the Heath that night, if what Dr. Davis here says is correct, and make no mistake, it was chasin’ you. It didn’t have any choice.”
     “I believe this is the fellow we’ve been talking about.” CC had handed Norman a rolled up piece of paper, which he unfurled. On it was a very detailed drawing of what looked like a First World War infantryman complete with tin helmet, gas mask, rain cape and rifle. The stance was altogether too familiar – legs apart, rifle at the ready. “Quite a formidable character, isn’t he? However, he’s not all what he seems. That’s if he is a he, which I’m not altogether sure about.
     “When d’you reckon this was drawn? 1914?15? 18? This is a print. It isn’t the original. The original is in a temple near Darjeeling in Northern India. It isn’t on display but kept hidden away with a load of other artefacts. During their travels along the Afghan trail, so to speak, Star and Mina here came across the temple and got to know one of the monks. He told them of some kind of entity that had been seen in the hills behind the temple and what he described was this chap. The monk didn’t say anything about soldiers or the war, which he probably knew little if anything about anyway but seemed to become a bit excited and agitated. Anyway. I’ll let the two ladies tell you.” He nodded towards Mina and Star. Mina cleared her throat then spoke in her quiet, gentle voice.
     “The monk took us to a cellar underneath the temple. Actually, it was more of cave except that it was remarkably warm inside even though it was quite deep under ground. He showed us a parchment, which contained the original soldier drawing and which he allowed us to photograph. There were also some scrolls, and he translated the writing for for us. The text he translated was all about the soldier figure and told how it had been seen several times throughout history and that each appearance seemed to coincide with some kind of tragic event.
     “After the most recent sighting by our monk friend, several dismembered bodies were found near the village. He was obviously very frightened and disturbed by the events but seemed to believe the figure to be that of some kind of deity who’d been sent to punish those who’d strayed from the Holy Path, as he described it. He showed us because we’d been asking him question about Astral Travel and it seems many of the monks were experts in the art. Our monk says he came face to face with the soldier during one of his Astral excursions and that it was after his return to the physical world that it appeared in front of him a few days later.”
“Tell Alan when the drawing was done.” said Norman, rudely cutting in.
     “As far as we were told,” said Star in a voice uncannily identical to that of her kneeling companion, “the text said the drawing was done by a revered, monk artist who’d seen the figure himself and who lived in the village some time during the 14th century.”

     There was a long, extremely pregnant pause, probably so that I could suck in all the surrounding oxygen in one huge gasp at this astounding fact but my breathing remained normal.

     “What, you may ask,” said Norman, sounding like Edgar Lustgarten from the old black and white crime documentaries from the 1950s, “was a soldier from the first world war doing a stone’s throw from the Himalayas in the 14th Century?”

     I didn’t think the question rated the slightest shrug.

     “That’s if it was a soldier from the First World War.” CC offered causing Norman to flash him a look which should have killed him if the ambulance driver was a powerful as he made out. Still maintaining the withering look Norman went on.
     “It is possible that a soldier from 1914-18 got somehow caught up in the Astral light and landed in the area a couple of hundred years out of kilter but if you examine the drawing closely, a few things don’t add up. As you can see, and I’m no expert, the drawing is very detailed and realistic – almost like a photograph and, if you look closely, some things don’t quite make sense. Give me that other photo, Roger.”

     Roger, obviously fearful for his survival, his hands visibly shaking, handed Norman a photograph in a cardboard frame. It was of a British First World War soldier in full battle dress complete with tin hat, gas mask, rain cape and rifle. The soldier stood alone on the wooden floor of a trench, posing for a picture probably taken by one of his mates, minutes before they were blown to pieces with their comrades as they went over the top. He held his rifle in both hands in similar fashion to the figure in the drawing. Standing with his feet apart he was looking straight at the camera.

     The figure did look strangely frightening in a cold, what I can only describe as mechanical, soulless kind of way even though underneath the poor bastard was likely as not absolutely terrified.

     “As you can see,” Norman went on, “Our soldier friend in the photograph is holding a rifle – a Lee-Enfield .303 Mark 1 short magazine bolt action rifle to be precise. It was easier and faster to use than the Mauser used by the Germans – so fast, in fact, that the thing often over-heated and caused the rifling inside the barrel to melt. Which is interesting as the rifle in the drawing from the monastery seems to have suffered some kind of meltdown as well, if you look closely.” Norman pushed the drawing of the other soldier close to my face. “Or maybe it’s the soldier’s hands that have melted because, as you’ll notice, they seem to have disappeared, or at least become moulded to the rifle itself.” He was right. Where the soldier’s hands joined the rifle butt and stock, there weren’t any. Hands, that is. The wrist parts of the soldier’s arms seemed to run right into the rifle without any kind of separation or join. The arms and rifle seemed to be all one organic thing as if they’d grown that way.

     “Strange, don’t you think?” said Norman assuming I was in the least bit interested, “And there are other weird things going on here. This, what looks like a gas mask pipe, is really part of the figure’s face in the drawing and it goes straight into the body and not into the gas mask pack thing that First World War soldiers wore. The helmet shape and the glass of what you might think at first is a gas mask and what also looks like a tin helmet is all moulded together in the same way as the arms and rifle thing are. I say rifle thing because, again, if you look closer, you’ll see it’s not a rifle at all. There’s no trigger and no rifle butt and the thing on the end isn’t a bayonet either. Hand me that magnifying glass, Roger.”

     Roger obeyed as if his life depended on it and Norman held the glass over the tip of what at first glance did look like a bayonet. “I don’t know about you, Alan, but these tiny little sharp pointy things here look like a couple of rows of fairly nasty looking teeth to me.”

     The drawing of the figure was incredibly detailed and realistic and though produced in some kind of pencil technique, it looked as if it was airbrushed in places, such had been the skill of the artist. Norman panned the magnifying glass along the length of the ‘bayonet’ shaft to show it seemed to made up almost entirely of tiny, jagged teeth. He showed me the gas mask pipe through the glass and pointed out that it wasn’t any such thing but more like small elephant’s trunk. Norman dragged the glass over the entire figure drawing, pausing to comment on various aspects as he went. The cape was a folded array of a heavy skin like substance like scales. The legs and feet were also covered in a similar skin but the surface appeared thicker and coarser like crocodile leather. Each of the boot-shaped feet, if you could call them that, had 7 heavy, clawed toes.

     “So the question is, which came first – the chicken or the egg?” Norman handed the two pictures back to Roger who stood up and almost lost his balance in his keenness to prove himself ultimately servile as he reached for them.
     “In other words, who was here first, the soldier or our friend with all the teeth?” Without waiting for an answer, Norman made his declaration. “Nothing in this world happens by chance, especially where human beings are concerned. Whoever designed the uniform worn by the British Tommy in the First World War did with previous knowledge. Knowledge that the very sight of a person dressed like that would strike absolute terror into the heart of a foe. And if that were the case, imagine what a couple of thousand of similarly dressed bods would do.
     “This other chap, if that’s what he was, has been around for a lot longer than the British Tommy. A LOT longer,” he emphasised, “Probably in the region of a couple of hundred thousand years – maybe more. There are cave paintings of him everywhere from Peru to Afghanistan, dating back to almost to the time when man apparently stopped swinging from trees, though in my opinion, which is based on research, you understand, Darwin was bananas, which is about as near as any of us ever got to apes.” This produced another rousing titter from the gathering.
     “So who, or should we say, what is this creature with the teeth and claws that looks like a soldier but obviously isn’t?” Miles entered the conversation as if on cue.
     “That’s a very good question,” said Norman obviously. “In a way, he – it – is a soldier. At least, it does a soldier’s job in a manner of speaking. First off, it kills, very efficiently. It not only kills in the physical sense, but on all levels. It’s a real exterminator. It kills the body, the soul, and all sacred organs, such as the heart and pancreas and some vital intestines all at the same time. Very often it’ll remove the head and mangle it. Get mullahed by this thing and all trace of you is eradicated for good and all. Reincarnation? The afterlife? Forget it. It’s like you never existed. I suppose you could call our friend a controller. That’s what it does. It controls things - humans, mainly. At least at the physical level – this level, where we all live and breathe. You’ve heard of the Grim Reaper, no doubt? Well, this is him. No he doesn’t have a black hood or the face of a skull or a scythe, come to that. That’s just the image he’s engendered through countless centuries of the fear and the sudden death he’s brought to all those who were unlucky enough to cross his path. And you know I’m not kidding, Alan, don’t you? Because you’ve seen him in action, haven’t you?”

     I didn’t react, which Norman must have been getting used to. Obviously Dr Doolittle-Dizzy Davis, or whatever the fuck his name was, must have told this Norman character everything I’d told him which was…everything, including the details of my flight over Hampstead Heath and the soldier boy murderer and Norman and his playmates had come up with their crackpot fairy tail to explain it all away. Well, this Norman nutcase had said he believed in fairies so it was hardly surprising. Anyway, I’d had enough and decided to part company with the lot them and went to stand up only to find I couldn’t. I seemed to be made of lead, and lifting my bum even an inch off the sofa wasn’t an option.

     “What the fuck have you done, you areshole? I can’t fucking move,” said that funny voice that seemed sometimes to come from deep inside my chest.
     “I must remind you there are ladies present and such behaviour won’t be tolerated.” Norman shouted loudly back at me in the manner of a parade ground sergeant major.
     My body immediately relaxed back into the sofa again. Then he smiled and said quietly, “I’m not talking to you Alan. I’m addressing the other fellow that occasionally resides in your aura sometimes and puts word in your mouth when he can’t get his own way. Ah, that did the trick. He’s gone. But he’ll be back unfortunately. You have a duel personality. Oh, not as described by psychiatrists which they call schizophrenia. No, you really are two people, or should I say two bein’s? Not all the time though.
     “People talk about being possessed by things – spirits, or demons that get inside a person and take them over, like in that film, The Exorcist, which was in my opinion a load of vile rubbish drummed up by someone who had a bit of knowledge of the lower levels of the Astral Light. That can’t happen. No other bein’ can get inside a human body, a human mind, or a human soul.
     “What can happen however, is that some entities can attach themselves to a human’s aura. They can actually stick to the inside of your aura in a diminished state as a parasite and use the human to transport it around, all the time preserving their own energy by feeding off the host’s. They can also tap into the human’s electrical frequencies and brain waves so that the human carrier becomes depleted and can sometimes suffer mood changes without reason.
     “The parasite can, if it wants to, create huge power surges in the host so that he feels impregnable, at least for a while. Then the host will collapse and fall asleep waking up with the biggest hangover imaginable.
     “This whole phenomenon of what I’d call electrical parasites actually explains the old folk tails about the genie in the bottle. Except the bottles were actually human auras and it wasn’t so much about letting a genie out of the bottle but trying to get rid if the bloody thing, which isn’t all that easy and sometimes isn’t possible at all. If a genie has been attached to an aura for too long undetected, it can form a permanent attachment – grow into the aura itself and use it for a homing devise while it does it’s own Astral travelling.” Norman gave me his sideways look again, “Do you see what I’m beginning to point at here, my friend?” I shrugged. “What I’m saying is that I believe is that this soldier genie has attached itself to you. In fact, I’d put money on it, if I were a betting man, which I’m not. The big question is how do we get rid of it? How do we set you free from its influence so that you can lead a normal life again? Well, it’s not going to be easy, but I think between us, we can do it.”

     With that, Norman sat back and smiled for the very last time. At least, I’d hoped it would be. I tried summoning my genie to grant me 3 wishes:

     1. Slice Norman’s head off.
     2. Force-feed it to the two American hippy broads who, after all, were in ideal head eating position on their knees.
     3. Merge Roger’s body with Dr Doolittle’s…or Miles bloody Davis as he called himself.

     But…nothing happened. As I suspected, this Norman Wisdom geezer had been talking the biggest load of bollocks I’d ever heard for the past couple of hours.


Chapter 17. BESIDE THE POINT


     “So what’s all this doctor crap about?” Miles and I had just sought refuge in a black cab having trudged through yet more rain for 5 minutes, “And who the hell was that bunch of idiots you’ve just forced me to sit and listen to?”
     “I am a doctor. At least, I was till your bloody physiatrist mate stitched me up, and those people, as you call them, are anything but idiots.”
     “What? Are you out of your mind? Oh, and another thing, exactly who was it that got turned into chicken spread on your stairs?”

     I was confused to put it mildly. We went back to Pendene Close. I’d decided to kill him only after he spilled a few more beans. We sat in silence in the semi-darkness of my bedroom competing to see which of us could pump the most cigarette smoke into the room in the shortest time. Then, unprompted, Miles started speaking.

     “That was unfortunate. The tragedy on the stairs, I mean.”
     “Just a bit. And what’s all this stuff about Tony Rawlings? He’s been bloody good at getting me back on the rails after whichever lunatic it was put bloody LSD in my drink. He’s made the stuff the subject of his life’s work, at least he would’ve done had MI, bloody 5, 6, or 7 put a stop to his research.”
     Miles threw his head back and laughed. “It wasn’t your precious Tony Rawlings who was uncovering stuff about LSD at the university - at least not to begin with - it was me. I already had a PHD and was getting dangerously close to proving that the drug was being distributed purposely by certain, shall we say, authorities. Rawlings doesn’t know about our association, does he?”
     “No.”
     “Good. I thought not. I know you’re worried about letting on to anyone about some of the nutters you associate with in case they lock you up again. That’s why I’ve behaved like someone unhinged to make sure I fell into that category. Rawlings stole my research programme and contrived to get me thrown out of the university.”
     “He told me he was forced to stop his research by some weird spooks in Whitehall suits.”
     “That wasn’t him, it was me. Pretty soon after, Rawlings managed to convince the powers that be at the university that I was selling LSD on the streets.”
     “Were you?”
     “What do you think?”
     “You have the appearance of someone who probably knows the ins and outs of the drug trade scene. You look like a dealer to me.”
     “That’s deliberate. I’ve been infiltrating the scene for sometime trying to trace the source of supply for the new LSD epidemic that’s happening out there though I’m pretty sure I already know the answer to that. It’s a matter of finding evidence.”
     “Why didn’t you mention any of this before now?”
     “Because it wasn’t relevant. Now it is.”
     “If Tony Rawlings is bent like you say, why did he tell me all that stuff about LSD the way he did – all the history and what it was used for in the first place?”
     “That would’ve been his feeble and paranoid attempt at a cover up. He needs to be seen to have God on his side and I’d wager he also wanted to find out how much you knew about the drug and its history and the best way for him to do that was to tell you about it himself and judge your reaction. Don’t forget, he’s trained to do just that. The man’s an absolute bastard, believe me.”
     “Why should I?”
     “No reason at all. Just hear me out then make up your own mind.”
     “Whose remains were they on your stairs? I mean, what the fuck is going on here?”
     “I rather hoped that the ‘Journey’ people might have convinced you about some of what’s been going on.”
     “You really are out of your mind, Miles. I mean, did you really think I was going to take any notice of a bunch of raving lunatics like them?”
     “No, not really. I thought it a worth a try. I couldn’t have explained any of it myself, at least, not as thoroughly.”
     “You mean you believe all that clap trap? And what are ‘journey people’?”
     “That’s what they call their group activities, if you like: the Journey. That’s they way they see it – that life is, or should be, a journey of discovery. And, by the way, my name isn’t Miles Davis. It’s Michael Schroeder. I couldn’t afford to use my own name, it’s too well known in academic circles. The mess on the stairs is, was, that poor wretch, John, who used to live downstairs. He’d walked out of the hospital where he was being kept and found his way back to Darville Road. Bad timing on his part, sadly.”
     “What the bloody Hell happened to him?”
     “I thought Norman explained that.”
     “What, you mean all the Grim Reaper garbage? Surely you don’t think that bloody Norman character is sane? I don’t, I can tell you.”
     “Norman’s probably one of the sanest people I’ve ever met.”
     “You ought to get out more.”
     “If you hadn’t stormed out of there like you did, before Norman had the chance to tell you how dangerous you are, maybe you wouldn’t waste time turning everything into a joke. When I go back to Darville Road, I’ll clean up the mess. No one else lives in the building. And nobody visits. I should call the police but that would only complicate matters at such a critical time. They can be told later. Nothing’s going to bring poor old John back and he’s probably better off wherever he’s gone.”
     “Oh, you mean like I’m the new Jack The Ripper?”
     “You know, don’t you?”
     “Know what, for Christ’s sake?”
     “You’ve worked it out, haven’t you?”
     “Worked what out, you moron? You’re talking in riddles”
     “That this thing, this soldier, fiend, demon, whatever, that you’re hosting is your slave and that it kills on your behalf.”
     “You really are fucking raving, Miles, or whatever your name is.”
     “Like I said, it’s Michael Schroeder. I took Miles’s name because I love his music and it’s kept me sane throughout my so-called breakdown when I was in Fouracres.”
     “You were in Fouracres? When?”
     “About a year before you. Someone spiked my drink just like they did yours. I was luckier than you, though I suppose it depends how you look at it.”
     “What do you mean?” Miles, or Michael or whatever his name was now had my full attention.
     “I just went through a period of nasty hallucinations and daytime nightmares. I didn’t react the way you did. You weren’t allergic to LSD, by the way. That’s a load of dog shit. What appeared to have sent you round the bend was simply that you had no idea what was going on. Had you understood, you could’ve controlled the circumstances totally. You could’ve travelled anywhere in time or space too and you wouldn’t have been vulnerable to invasion either. You are what is termed a ’prime sample’ by those arseholes who manufactured this new strain of LSD in the first place. You are the perfect receptacle for what they want to get out of it.”
     “Which is what?”
     “The same as every crazy son-of-a-bitch the planet has ever seen wanted - power over his fellow man. Control. The ability to get inside the minds, not to mention souls of other mortals and create as much havoc as possible at will. Hitler did it one way – Stalin was out of the same school and Pol Pot could’ve taught both of them a thing or two. But none of them could light a candle to this bunch.”
     “What bunch? Who?”
     “Whomever you like. Governments, corporations, the military – they’re all at it. Always have been. It’s been going on for centuries, in one form or another. Remember what Norman said about Hitler and the occult? That was just the tip of an already monumental iceberg. Nazi Germany was one huge coven and Hitler was the grand magician of all grand magicians, or he thought he was. Like Norman said, the 2nd World War was an occult battle apart from anything else. The Yanks used a white pentagram as their symbol, the Russians a red one. Just look at the evidence. All that stuff wasn’t just some random set of choices. They knew what they were doing. It was done with knowledge - the allied invasion force was powered by forces beyond the imagination of the average front line soldier with his rifle. There was so much more going on behind the scenes than anyone realized. Like I said, it’s been going on for centuries. I mean, d’you think the burning of St Joan was just some kind of sick torture? It wasn’t. It was an occult ritual - an attempt to purge her soul by causing it to explode. And the man they called Jesus was nailed to a couple of planks of wood and then had a spear driven into his left side – his LEFT side, mark you.
     “Scalping, which incidentally, was started by the white man and not the indigenous population of so-called North America, was also ritualistic and was thought to allow certain spiritual forces to be driven from the body in the same way that Jews try to keep them in with a silk scull cap. It’s all there for anyone to see, though admittedly, a lot of the knowledge has been largely forgotten or discarded.”
     “You sound exactly like bloody Norman,” I sneered, “Haven’t you got a mind of your own?”
     “I did have a highly respected one until its reputation was stolen from me. But I don’t care about that any more. Anyway, no-one can steal what you really think or feel or know.”
     "Oh, they can’t take that away from me…” I sang in a passable imitation of Fed Astaire.
     “You’ve stooped pretty low, Alan. I thought you were a cut above taking the piss in such a juvenile manner.”
     “You can dish it out whenever the mood takes you but when it comes to be on the receiving end it’s a different story.”
     “I explained that. It was all a necessary act.”
     “What. treating me like an absolute tosser?”
     “Also, I think if I’d behaved like any so-called normal human being you’d have been suspicious. As it was, a spaced out lunatic like Miles Davis was exactly what you needed at the time and I needed to get close to you.”
     “What the hell are you talking about?”
     “It was no coincidence that I bumped into you at the Zanzibar that night.”
     “What do you mean?”
     “I’d been keeping tabs on you for quite a time.”
     “Tabs? Isn’t that the Geordie word for fags?” I said, laughing like I was really demented.
     “Shut up and I’ll explain. Just calm down.”
     “I’m perfectly calm,” I said though I wasn’t, “What are you worried about? You think I’m going to turn you inside out? Spread your guts all over the ceiling?” I could see Miles/Michael was looking decidedly twitchy,      “OK. Spill. As in tell me about it – you being a stalker and all.”
     “You’re a guinea pig.”
     “So what’s new? I’ve been called a rat before and worse.” I said, still trying to make light of everything.
     “You were singled out.” I couldn’t think of a witty retort and he carried on, “You’ve been part of an experiment.”
     “Experiment? What sort of experiment?”
     “You’ve been a test bed for an extreme version of what’s commonly known as LSD.”
     “How the hell do you know that?”
     “It’s a long story, but I kept an eye on you when you were in Fouracres.”
     “What? You said you were there before me and I don’t remember you being there when I was.”
     “I wasn’t but I had a reliable contact on the inside. He gave me daily reports on the goings on there and especially on you and your progress.”
     “Who?”
     “Do you remember Pete Walker? The chap you used to play table tennis and snooker with?”
     “You mean the cleaner? The bloke with the mop and bucket?” Miles nodded, “Oh, so he was some kind of secret agent, right?
     “In a manner of speaking.”
     “Well, he didn’t look much like James Bond or Harry Palmer to me. He had false teeth for God’s sake. I would’ve thought you could have cast someone a bit more likely.”
     “I didn’t choose him, he was a volunteer. He responded to a small a ad.”
     “What, you mean you advertised? Where, in ‘Toothless Mop and Bucket monthly’?
     “The Orpington and Kentish Times which is the local newspaper in the Fouracres area. I did some research and discovered that Fouracres was a specialist centre for the treatment of LSD victims, and surprise, surprise, the unit was headed by one Tony Rawlings. I never came face to face with him while I was there and can only guess he kept out of the way. Lucky for him he did. I would have throttled him.”
     “I never saw you as a man of violence despite your unhinged act.”
     “I’m not generally but at the time I was capable of anything.”
     “So what did your advert say – ‘if you see worms crawling out of the wallpaper, get in touch’?”
     “I just said I was conducting research into the long-term effects of LSD and asked anyone who had knowledge of the drug to contact a box number by letter. I got replies from the usual space cadets, about a hundred actually, most of whom were obviously still users and looking for a new source, and a couple I suspected were linked to some kind of authority. I’d expected that and obviously didn’t reply. There was only one that sounded as if it might be genuine. This guy said he wasn’t in any way connected to the drug himself but a relative had been and that he feared for this person’s safety. Of course, I had to be careful. He could’ve been anyone. I just went for it and took the risk. As soon as I met him, I knew Pete was OK. He was just transparently honest but quite streetwise. He has, or had, a twin brother. They were both adopted and shared their own house in Keston after both their adopted parents had died. Pete was the stable one of the two; he always had a job of some kind but his brother never got his life together. Neither of the brothers was over-bright and never rose above the C forms at their secondary modern school.
     "Justin, Pete’s brother, had a couple of jobs when he left school but was completely devoid of any self-confidence. He was quiet and withdrawn and when his workmates in the warehouse where he worked took the piss, he couldn’t handle it and stopped going in to work. At his second job in a factory, there was an accident, at least that was what was claimed, and either Justin or someone else dropped a concrete block on his foot. He never went back to work after that and became a bit of a recluse. He just sat in front of the television all day, which was when he started smoking the pot supplied by Ted, his only friend from his schooldays. Pete didn’t like it but turned a blind eye and at least he knew where his brother was during the day – semi comatose in front of the telly.
     "This pattern of behaviour went on for a few years until Pete came home one day and found his brother in a state of high stress to say the least. He was crouching stark naked on top of the upright piano their parents had left. (I was tempted to say I did the same thing all the time but thought better of it.) He was foaming at the mouth and screaming about monsters and giant maggots and stuff.
     “He was convinced the whole house was melting and that it had become part of hell. He also said that people had come through the wall after him. It took Pete a couple of hours to calm him down and a split second to realize his brother had taken something a bit more potent than a few puffs of weed. Pete tried asking Justin what he’d taken but his brother wouldn’t play ball. Nor could he find any evidence of anything around the house. He talked to Ted who vehemently denied any knowledge of anything except the stuff he smoked and shared with Justin.
     “Over the weeks that followed, things seemed to calm down and get back to normal, if you could call it that. Then, one night, Justin attacked Pete with a cricket bat while he was in bed. Luckily, Pete wasn’t asleep and managed to fight Justin off, despite having his head split open. The two brothers ended up in the street with Justin still swinging the bat. Neighbours got involved, the police were called and the boys were carted off, Pete in an Ambulance and Justin in a police van.
     “Having been examined by a police surgeon, Justin was transferred from Orpington police station to Fouracres. Pete visited him but found him to be withdrawn to the point that he didn’t seem to recognise his brother. Charge Nurse Peters told Pete that LSD was suspected as the cause of Justin’s condition but that the medical team weren’t sure about the depth or long term consequences of the damage the drug had inflicted. Justin’s paranoia got worse and he was separated from the folk in the Goldfish Bowl and put in a secure room, which was little more than cell. His belt had been taken from him when he was admitted and he wore hospital slippers and he had nothing around him that he could use to harm himself yet he still managed to commit suicide.”
     “How?”
     “You may well ask as Pete did. Pete was told Justin tore up his shirt and swallowed it piece by piece. He choked to death. There was an autopsy confirming asphyxia but Pete wasn’t allowed to see the body until it was embalmed and ready for the incinerator. He told me he was sure the Fouracre people weren’t being entirely straight with him and that there was more to his brother’s death than he’d been told. I told him I had an interest in investigating what went on at Fouracres without actually telling him what or why and he said he wanted to be involved. He went to see charge nurse Peters and told him that he wanted to be able to help mental patients in any way he could in respect of his brother’s memory and Peters, largely out of sympathy, gave him the cleaning job. He’s been my eyes and ears inside the place ever since, which is how I found out about you.”
     “And you kept tabs on me when I got out?”
     “Yes.”
     “What did he tell you? I mean while I was in Fouracres?”
     “That you were different from most of the other Goldfish Bowl patients in some way. That he didn’t think you were suffering from any ordinary mental breakdown.”
     “And he was qualified to make such judgments was he?”
     “Almost as well as anyone else in that place. He’d been working there a year before you wound up there during which time he’d got close to a lot of the inmates in the same way he got close to you. He made notes and kept files on everyone he thought might be of interest and we’d meet up and discuss them.”
     “With what in mind exactly?”
     “To be honest, I didn’t really know. What I did know was that something wasn’t right about Fouracres and that if I kept at it long enough things would emerge to show me I was right and sure enough, just when I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere and was about to call it a day, it did.”
     “And that was…?”
     “You.”
     “I always knew you fancied me, Miles. You don’t mind if I call you that? They called Miles Davis the Prince Of Darkness which kind of fits you like a glove.”


Chapter 18. RED


     Miles ignored the dry sophistication of my wit. “Do you remember Geoff? He was one of the guys you shared the Goldfish Bowl with.”
     “The schizophrenic? Yes.”
     “It was LSD That caused his condition, not overwork as he claimed.”
     “How do you know that?”
     “His wife told the hospital goons that he and his mate had been taking it. Geoff himself didn’t remember anything about it. You know he’s now totally insane?”
     “No, I didn’t. It was pretty obvious he wasn’t very well at all.”
     “He had a sudden relapse after his release from Fouracres.”
     “I thought all the Goldfish patients were voluntary.”
     “Most were. The LSD ones weren’t. They were just told they were. You certainly weren’t. You were sectioned under the Mental Health.”
     “I asked Tony Rawlings about that and he said I wasn’t.”
     “Check the records for yourself. You’ll find he’s the lying scumbag I said he was.
Anyway, Geoff went berserk. He attacked his wife and kids and chased them out of the house then barricaded himself inside screaming that soldiers were attacking him. He’s been sectioned and is completely raving, or so they’d all have us believe.”
     “You disagree?”
     “Possibly but I haven’t the time to worry about him and quite a few others. Maybe later.”
     “Is he in Fouracres?”
     “No. He’s in a high security place called Cane Hill in Surry. He’ll never go home.”
     “So what about this guinea pig business?”
     “You’d been studied for a long time.”
     “Studied? Who by?”
     “It’s difficult to actually pin that down exactly. There are trails that lead to certain individuals but actually getting to those in command, so to speak, is really difficult, if not impossible. I can only say you were studied along with a number of others.”
     “How? I mean, when was I studied, as you put it?”
     “It started at your former agency.”
     “Walkers?”
     “Yes. Interestingly, Walkers is part of the McKenzie network – has been since it was bought by them four years ago.”
     “Why interestingly?”
     “I’ll come to that. Do you remember the course you were sent on when you were at Walkers?”
     “I’m hardly likely to forget it.”
     “Because of Paul, your writer at the time?”
     “You have done your homework.”
     “It was in your industry magazine, Campaign, and you were mentioned because you were both in Syndey together when he died. A long way to be sent for a management seminar, don’t you think? Paul drowned while you were there, didn’t he?”
     “Yes. A riptide at Bondai Beach caught him. They said it was all over in seconds. He was just standing up to his knees just paddling but they found him face down in 10ft of water. He never went out of his depth. He couldn’t swim. Those waters are notorious. What were you doing you reading Campaign?”
     “I was studying people in the advertising business at the time. It’s one of the biggest and most lucrative worldwide drug markets there is. Everything is used: Smack, Coke, Crack, LSD. You name it, it’s in there somewhere. Were you with him when it happened?”
     “Paul? No. He was with a Bloke from the Walkers Sydney office.”
     “It happened early in the morning, didn’t it?”
     “Yes. It was a couple of days before we were due to fly home. We’d been out on a bit of a bender the night before and I was still sleeping it off. Paul had a lot more stamina than me being an Aussie himself. I reckon he’d stayed out all night.”
     “Odd to find an Aussie who can’t swim?”
     “Not particularly. Not all Geordies drink Newcastle Brown.”
     “Anyway, this course you were on, it was quite intensive, wasn’t it?”
     “In some ways. I suppose it was. They used some EST techniques. It’s been done before. Some of those concepts are popular amongst a few high profile creatives. It’s all a load of wank if you ask me.”
     “EST involves a lot of confrontational stuff, doesn’t it? Getting personal demons out in the open in order to banish them, and all that stuff? And it went on for a few weeks?”
     “It was a month altogether. But we partied every night which they said was to relieve some of the tension caused by the course.”
     “Did the course itself have any effect, do you think?”
     “I don’t think so, at least not as far as I was concerned. A couple of people got really upset during some of the group stuff. Paul actually came to blows with one of the people in charge. A couple of us had to pull him off the bloke. I thought the whole thing was a complete waste of time.”
     “That’s partly why you were singled out.”
     “How do you mean?”
     “Because you rose above all the so-called therapy crap that was thrown at you. The whole thing, the trip to Sydney, the entertainment, the group therapy, the private sessions with the so-called physiologists was to test the candidates as possible guinea pigs to test the new strain of LSD. You won first prize. Was anything said to you after the course was over?”
     “Only that I’d make a good creative director. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that.”
     “Quite. You stayed in Sydney for the funeral?”
     “Yes. Brian Night was there.”
     “Really? That’s interesting.”
     “He introduced himself at the gathering afterwards. I thought he was an absolute creep. I knew of him but had never met him. He offered me a job - at least he implied he’d be interested in employing me. I told him I wasn’t interested.”
     “So how come you ended up working at McKenzie?”
     “A couple of weeks later the bastard sent me a letter. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, especially in light of the divorce I was going through. Apart from that, the main attraction was that I wouldn’t be answerable to him directly but to the holding company in Chicago. He also told me I could take my own writer with me to McKenzie. I’d known Melissa for a couple of years and worked with her a few times. We got on OK and she was bloody good at her job if mad as a hatter, so I managed to persuade her to jump ship with me. But before we could go, the drink episode happened so everything had to be delayed.”
     “What did you tell her, or anybody for that matter?
     “An art dealer friend of mine, Sandy, who’s been my closest friend since art school, came to see me in Fouracres after I’d managed to get word to him. We concocted a story about me having contracted some tropical illness on a shoot I’d done in Papua New Guinea while I was in Australia and that I was isolated and couldn’t be contacted. It seemed to work. When I got out of Fouracres I went back to work and people just asked me how I was feeling and if I was over the illness.”
     “I’m glad to see you’ve calmed down. I mean now.”
     He was right. For once I was feeling perfectly normal - not homicidal or cool as a killer shark, just normal. “You still haven’t told me about the guinea pig business. Hang on a minute; you’re implicating the agency in all this. I mean how crazy is that?”
     “You think so? Advertising agencies belong to a fantasy world where nothing is actually real. I thought you must have worked that out by now. Surely you don’t really believe all that stuff you do actually makes a difference do you? That it actually persuades anyone of anything? That it really does sell cans of beans or toilet rolls?”
     “Of course it does. Mainly because people are generally pretty stupid and gullible and greedy and live shallow lives based around materialism. Christ. Did I actually say that?
The truth is, I don’t give a shit. If people want to behave like imbeciles, that’s up to them. I just have fun and get paid piles of money for the privilege.”
     “At least you can be honest about it. Despite your tough, cynical act, I don’t think you’d ever harm anybody wilfully unlike the scum you work for.”
     “What are you blathering on about now, Miles – sorry, Mikey wikey, or do you prefer Mick?”
     “The trouble with people who get paid the kind of money you do is it makes them blind.”
     “I thought masturbation did that.”
     “What you do for a living amounts to the same thing, in my opinion. Anyway, all that’s irrelevant. What Interstella does, however, is anything but and I’m not talking about the selling of corn flakes to Sun readers. I’m with you on that. If people really choose to feed their stupidity by reading the Sun, let them.”
     “I’ve heard Interstella are mixed up with the Mafia but then most American Corporations are in all probability.”
     “That’s not all they’re mixed up with.”
     “Go on, surprise me.”
     “Have you any idea how large a corporation Interstella actually is?”
     “They own the biggest advertising stroke marketing networks on the planet.”
     “That’s only the tip of the iceberg. They’re into many more fields apart from advertising and marketing, some of them even more dubious if that’s possible.”
     “Like? Anyway advertising’s just a piece of harmless fun.”
     “You really think so?” Miles grinned a cynical grin.” Firstly, you should understand the kind of people you’re dealing with. These are the kind of people who, when they needed to create a new cigarette market on behalf of one of their clients, came up with the wheeze of simply flying over the remoter parts of various far eastern countries in light aircraft and emptying thousands of packs of the cigarettes to the villages below. As I’m sure you know, nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known but there are far more addictive chemicals added to some cigarettes. The upshot of the exercise, which was repeated many times over the same areas, was that hundreds of thousands more people became hooked on the fags. All the bastards had to do then was to import enough of the brand to sell and make a profit which they did by the shed load. Bingo. Job done."
     “That’s nothing new. Everybody knows about that. All the big fag companies do it.”
     “They do now but Interstella invented the scheme.”
     “Whatever. People make their own choices. No one has to smoke. If they hadn’t lit the bloody fags that fell out of the sky, they wouldn’t have become addicted.”
     “The bastards in the planes also dropped thousands of boxes of matches just to help those poor suckers decide.”
     “As they were suckers, as you so eloquently put it, puffing away on a few tabs would’ve come quite naturally then wouldn’t it?” I wasn’t interested in Miles’s moralistic ramblings. He was one to talk having offered to supply me with whatever mind blowing drugs were my pleasure two minutes after we’d first met.
     “Interstella pours money into 3 of the worlds most corrupt military regimes – 2 in Africa and one in South America. They’re at present wooing another in the Far East. They also have their icy fingers well and truly into American politics – on the inside – I’m talking The Whitehouse and the Pentagon. There are 2 Senators on the board of Interstella and the company has several connections on the senate Committee. The Macca Arms Company belongs to Interstella and they make billions of dollars supplying helicopter gun-ships and small arms to both Iraq and Iran who’ve been blowing each other to pieces for longer than I can remember. But all that’s small fry compared with some of the things they’ve done.
     “Interstella funded the development of the AIDS virus by the US government. Sure, most of the world believes the virus jumped from Chimpanzees to humans. If that was the case how come the United States Patent office has a patent number registered for the invention of the virus? And here’s the really sick bit. What people don’t understand is that HIV contains particles of an Icelandic sheep disease, VISNA. VISNA is from Nazi Germany. Its also manmade and the AIDS virus is a development of VISNA and was part of a thing called the US Special Virus Programme. How VISNA came into contact with Icelandic sheep is anybody’s guess. We’re told it’ll spread and that we’ve seen nothing yet. It’s estimated that in 20 years the virus will have killed millions throughout the world and it won’t be until that time that a miraculous cure will suddenly be discovered. Guess what. There is a company that already holds that cure. It’s already been invented and stockpiled until the time is right to make the maximum profit. The company who holds that cure is Witchita Chemicals of Kansas and who owns Witchita Chemicals?”
     “You’re going to tell me it’s Interstella.”
     “Right. And Interstella, not Witchita has the patent on the cure. They own it lock stock. They have the power to hold the world to ransom and believe me, they will. And they’ll make a bloody fortune.”
     “How do you know all this?”
     “I’ve travelled extensively in the last couple of years. I’ve met people. Intelligent, informed people, qualified Scientists who are worried but can do nothing.”
     “How’d you fund all that - the travel and all? I thought you didn’t have two halfpennies to rub together.”
     “You couldn’t be more wrong. The fact is I’m rich. Hugely rich. I come from money and when my Father died 2 years ago, I inherited most of the family fortune. My mother is in a nursing home. She had kind of breakdown when my father died and never really recovered. It was all a bit sudden. His death, I mean.”
     “What, a heart attack or something?”
     “No, he fell in front of a train in Grand Central Station New York.”
     “Christ.”
     “You could say that. Especially as didn’t he really fall but was pushed.”
     “You’re kidding.”
     “I wish I was. I was on my way to meet him when it happened. I was in New York visiting a couple of contacts, one of who worked for Makenzie. The guy came to see me at my hotel one evening and told me he’d met my father at the agency. Dad was over from England and he told the guy that he wanted to talk to me about something urgent.”
     “What was your Father doing at Mackenzie?”
     “He was a senior account director on the board. He worked on the Witchita business out of the Chicago office. I never got to find out what it was he wanted to tell me.”
     “How do you know your Father was pushed? I mean, how do you know he didn’t jump?”
     “My Father wasn’t like that. He would never have taken his own life. He wasn’t prone to depression and even if he were, he would’ve found a way to manage it. He was never a quitter. And there were witnesses. Someone saw who pushed him.”
     “What were you doing in the pub that night?” Miles said, switching tracks, “The night when you went crazy? Do you remember?”
     “What does anyone usually do in pubs? Getting pissed and in my case really getting out of my brains.”
     “But wasn’t it a bit more than that? Wasn’t there some kind of celebration?”
     “I don’t remember except that it was a bit more boisterous than usual.”
     “Do you remember who was there?”
     “Not specifically, just a crowd from the agency.”
     “Anyone else? Anyone that stands out in your mind?”
     “Not really. It’s all a bit hazy.”
     “You don’t remember dancing with a tall red headed woman?”
     “No.” Having said that, I had a sudden flash of a woman’s face framed by cascades of flame red curls and covered in freckles. She was laughing and very close. “…at least I don’t think…wait a minute…yes. I do remember something. Some tart was right in my face, like really close. She was laughing a lot. And you’re right. She had masses of curly red hair and orange lipstick and loads of freckles. Jesus. Why didn’t I remember her before? I can see her now as clear as day.”
     “You’ve never remembered anything much about that night, but then you weren’t supposed to. That was one of the significances of the kind of drug strain you were given – short-term memory loss. Did you know the woman?”
     “No, at least, I don’t think so. God, I really had forgotten about her.”
     “She put the stuff in your drink.”
     “Well, fuck her.”
     “I’d rather kill her.”
     “Why, who was she?”
     “Jessica Holmes, aka, Jessica Rawlings.” I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach and a huge feeling of rage started to build where the punch had landed. Miles showed me the flat of his hand, “Stay calm, Alan. Try to keep calm.”
     “Why the hell did the bitch do it? What’s all this got to do with her?”
     “Quite a lot, actually - her and her slug of a husband. It was planned - the whole thing. ‘Jessica Rabbit’ is a friend of your mate, Suzie.”
     “I’d have known if she was. I’ve never seen her.”
     “I thought you said Suzie was very popular with a wide circle of friends? You’ve probably never met half of them. Jessica taught at the art school where Suzie was a student back in the late Seventies. They became friends then. Jessica arranged the party in the pub through Suzie by telling her that she knew you. It was a going away party because you were off down under. Jessica turned up late by which time you were pretty pissed and were the life and soul of the party. Apparently, you were dancing with everybody, not just her. After she put the stuff in your drink and you started to show the first signs of trance like most LSD takers do, she tried to get you to go with her in a cab on the pretext of taking you back to her place for a shag.”
     “How do you know all this? You weren’t there were you?”
     “Suzie told me.”
     “You talked to her?”
     “I certainly did. She’s not overly clever, is she?”
     I didn’t comment but I knew he was right. Suzie was a stunning, horney, fun-loving but scatty delight. “You’ve really been poking about, haven’t you?”
     “In both our interests.”
     “How do you know this Jessica witch put the stuff in my drink?”
     “Suzie saw her do it. She asked Jessica what it was and she told Suzie it was Rohypnol, the date rape drug, which Suzie says she thought was hilarious. I really think you should cross her off your list of trusted friends on the grounds that she’s crassly stupid. Anyway, Jessica had only got you as far as the door when you flipped your lid. The first thing you did was to punch her in the mouth.” Miles grinned wickedly, “You split her lip and knocked a tooth crooked, I’m delighted to say.”
     I found myself looking down at the back of my right hand and the curious scar in the middle of the third finger. “I wondered where that came from.”
     “Then some bloke grabbed you and you hit him with an ash tray and then…bedlam. The rest we know.”
     “Why did she do it? Put the stuff in my drink? Why was she trying to take off with me?”
     “I haven’t worked that out yet. I’d hazard a guess that she wasn’t expecting you to react in the way you did. Shame when you punched her you didn’t knock her bloody head off.”
     “So who was it?” I said returning the conversation to the assassination scenario, “Who did push your Dad under the train? A bloke in a white mac and sunglasses?”
     “No, some black guy crack addict. There were loads of witnesses and they caught him. He was standing there screaming about some white bitch with red curly hair who’d paid him to do it. No one believed him, of course, but I managed to get to talk to the arresting cops and they told me. I had no proof the woman with the red hair was Jessica but I was damn sure it was.”


Chapter 19. COPS


     “You have to go straight to Brian Night’s office.” Val Simmonds’ voice informed me as I passed by her desk first thing on the Wednesday morning.
     “After I’ve had a coffee and read the paper, I’ll think about it.” I said without stopping to pass the time of day with the cow. Val Symons was another ‘Brian Night lackey’ who fawned and flopped at his every need. He’d probably shagged her along with half the agency’s other women, the thought of which made me gag.
     “You have to go right away. He’s got the police with him.” she announced with a tinge of glee as if she was council for the prosecution with a cast iron case.
     As I walked into the dark Mahogany enclave that contained Brian Night’s office suite up on the 7th floor of the building, his secretary pressed the buzzer on the intercom. “Alan Taylor’s here, Brian,” she told the little box on her desk, “You can go straight…”

     I didn’t wait for her permission to enter the inner sanctum and knocked on the door as I pushed it open. If I hadn’t known the cops were in there I wouldn’t have bothered to knock but it seemed expedient to appear like I was just another ordinary bloke. Night was seated on the sofa with his elbows on his knees, leaning across the coffee table, his podgy fingers playing idly with a Mont Blanc fountain pen. The brightness of his pink striped shirt with its starched white collar and cuffs and red braces made a very effective assault on my taste sensitivities and the look he shot me was as welcoming as a turd on a doormat.

     “Ah, Alan. This is Detective Inspector Barker and DS Roberts from the West End Central constabulary. (So far as I knew it was called West End Central Police Station.) These gentlemen seem to have a fairly urgent desire to converse with you,” he said in his usual, theatrical tone, “Inspector, this is Alan Taylor, one of our senior art directors.”

     I half expected Agatha Christie’s Poirot to step from a shadowy corner tweaking his ridiculous moustache and waffling on about his little grey cells though nobody had actually mentioned murder. But there had been one. I knew that because I’d been there. I’d seen the mess on the stairs – touched what was left of the body, unless someone really had gutted a 6ft chicken. How on earth the cops had connected me with it I couldn’t even hazard a guess. I just had an uncomfortable feeling that they had.

     Poirot’s stand-in was an immensely tall, skinny man with long straggly, sand-coloured hair and a wispy beard. He prised his bony backside from the radiator and crossed the room in single stride, extending an immensely long arm attached to a hand with immensely long, twig-like fingers. Remember what I said about casting out of character? Whoever cast this goon as a copper got it exactly right, it was so exactly wrong. He looked like another throwback from Woodstock, especially in his tailored, denim suit.

     The beard half-concealed a disproportionately small chin, which seemed to hang loosely to one side on the end of his thin face beneath a tiny mouth and an immensely long, pointed nose. The ensemble gave Detective Inspector Barker the appearance of a Jesus/Horsefly hybrid and I found his overgenerous smile somewhat disarming. “Hi, Alan. Good to meet you,” he said enthusiastically in a deep, cultured voice, then, after a brief, limp handshake, he cupped one elbow with one of his twiggy mits, stroked the beard with a couple of twig digits from the other, and said through a sudden, and grave-looking frown: “I’m rather hoping you may be able to help us out a tad.” He turned to Brian Night, and raised his eyebrows as if to prompt a response.

     “I’m afraid we have some bad news, Alan,” said Night placing his fingertips together undertaker style and glancing at The Jesus Fly who gave him a quick nod “Pip Dawson has been found dead.”
     “Christ.” I said, blinking at Him and then Night in rapid succession and trying to hide my joy. Instinctively, I stuffed my hands into my pockets though I’d scrubbed them free of all bloodstains from the gutted chicken the night before. “He was apparently found in his flat by the landlord. It’s all very distressing,” Night went on, sounding like he thought the situation a bloody nuisance rather than a tragedy.
     “What happened…I mean how..?”
     “I really don’t want to go into details at this stage,” said the Jesus Fly.
     “How did he die? Did he top himself? I mean was it suicide?” I tried to disguise my enthusiasm over the demise of the maggot bag.
     “Do you think it might have been? Was there a reason why you think he may have taken his own life?” The Jesus Fly pressed the tip of a twig finger against the tip of his nose in the patronising manor of some old fart of an Oxford Don waiting for the obvious to dawn on the lesser mortals around.
     “Not off-hand.” I said, (“Not unless he woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and recognised himself for the loathsome slime ball he was,” I thought.)
     The Jesus Fly took a longish, contemplative look at his feet: “The evidence at our disposal seems to point towards the fact that Mr Dawson didn’t take his own life.” He sat down in the other sofa opposite Night. His face still held in the rather over-the-top graveside expression, the deep-set but piercingly blue eyes fixing on mine. “When was the last time you saw Mr Dawson?”
     “I don’t really remember. He’s been off work for several days. I assumed he was sick.”
     “He was a little more than sick,” said The Jesus Fly unnecessarily. He furrowed his eyebrows as if to enhance his wanky, laser-like stare. “We understand you had an altercation with Mr Dawson at a party recently and that you offered him violence.”
     (“I offered to rip his balls off, if that’s what you mean.” I wanted to say.) “He and I had a little misunderstanding,” I said instead. “He was drunk and misbehaving and I put him straight.” I wondered how The Jesus Fly had come by this information.

     The only witness to my little scrap with the Northern maggot had been Rachel and she wouldn’t have said anything and anyway, she’d been missing for just as long as Pip had. It could have been Don who grassed me up. Maybe Pip had told him I’d threatened to castrate him but I wouldn’t have thought he’d’ve wanted to admit I’d had a go at him and he was as pissed as brewery rat and wouldn’t have found speaking all that easy.

     “Our information is that you threatened Mr Dawson,” said the Jesus Fly, his expression changing, from one of gravity to one of schoolmasterly stern.
     “I really don’t remember what I said. We were having an argument so I may have said something in the heat of the moment.” This bastard was beginning to annoy me. There was something about his incredibly superior manner that got right into my sinuses, “We all say things sometimes that we don’t really mean, don’t we?” I was already bored with the conversation. So someone had snuffed out Pip Dawson. Whoever it was deserved a medal in my book.
     “Do you often get heated, Mr Taylor?” said Jesus Fly, pressing the tip of his nose again with his finger. “Would you say you’re prone to being short tempered?”
     “Not particularly. I mean, no more than anyone else.” I really felt I wanted to rip his spleen out right there and slap it down on the coffee table in front of Brian Night, and I would’ve felt myself getting hot under the collar except I was wearing a cheap Indian cotton shirt that didn’t have a collar. Jesus Fly’s compatriot leaned away from the filing cabinet he’d been supporting and placed his feet apart like he was adopting some kind of pre-riot stance. I let my face relax into what I hoped was the kind of genteel smile one might offer someone recently bereaved in case I was looking particularly threatening. “So what happened?” I repeated, “To Pip, I mean.”
     “We’re not actually sure,” said Filing Cabinet Man, drawing himself up to his full 5ft 2 height, trying to look substantial and failing dismally.
     “But you don’t think it was suicide?”
     “Unless he managed to tear himself to pieces, it doesn’t look that way,” said Filing Cabinet Man through a curled lipped snide smile.
     “What?”
     Jesus Fly glared at Filing Cabinet Man who’d obviously let some kind of cat out of a bag. Brian Night cupped his face in his hands. “It doesn’t bear thinking about,” he said through splayed fingers.
     “I don’t ever remember seeing anything quite as catastrophic in 30 years as a police officer, but there’s no need to go into further details, save to say it was an horrendous sight,” said Jesus Fly still glaring at Filing Cabinet Man and pronouncing the N of ‘an’ the same way as Melissa did when using words that began with H, and for a nano-second the absurd image of her and Jesus fly bonking themselves stupid on a hearth rug in front of a blazing log fire flashed before my eyes and it was all I could do to stop myself from bursting into hysterical laughter. “It’s a dreadful way for anyone to end their life.” JF concluded.

     I didn’t agree. I’d hated the Northern bastard with a passion, and my brain whisked me straight back to the hideousness on the stairs at Darville Road with a degree of relish. So Pip had met his end in a similar fashion. To my mind, justice had been entirely satisfied. I just hoped it had hurt.

     In the time honoured tradition of the kind of TV cops and robber stuff that Terry Grey directed, Jesus Fly gave me his card before I left Night’s office and invited me to call him at any time should anything occur to me that may help in the investigation into Pip Dawson’s delicious ending. I wasn’t sure that JF was entirely convinced that I wasn’t a maniac and had ripped Pip to shreds in a fit of pique and the look on Filing Cabinet Man’s mush told me he was 1000% positive I was Jack The Ripper back from the dead.

     All I knew or cared about was I had less than 3 days to find Rachel and prevent Keith from turning me into Lasagne.




Chapter 20. ART


     Melissa was pounding away at her typewriter when I entered our office. This was a trifle unusual, as normally she had to have a beaker of coffee, a couple of fags and peruse of the Daily Telegraph before she could function most mornings - a set of rituals that usually took about an hour. The regulation thick cloud of exhaled smoke hung in its usual position about a foot above her head and she was wearing sunglasses again. As I pushed the door shut with my foot she spoke above the clatter of the keys but didn’t look up.
     “So what did the rossers want with you?
     “What?” I wondered how the hell she knew about that and, irrelevantly, why I hadn’t heard the word rossers since the last time I’d seen a St Trinians film. It took a split second for me to realize Val Symonds would have told her about the cops so there was no need to ask.
     “The Cops. The Filth. The Bogies. The Pigs. The Old Bill. Isn’t that what they say daan yor mannah?” she said with a pitiful attempt at a Cockney accent.
     “Pip Dawson’s dead.”
     “Bloody good riddance.” She said through a hail of machine gun fire from the keys.
     “It’s true. They found him in his flat yesterday.” She stopped typing and twisted round to face me.
     “Jeesus! You’re kidding.” She grabbed her packet of silk cut, and forgetting she had one already lit in the ash tray, rammed another between her lips and lit it all in one move, “What happened? Did he top himself or did he choke on his vomit? God, what a revolting thought.”
     “He was murdered, apparently.”
     “FUUUCK! And they think you did it?” she said with rather too much enthusiasm.
     “Search me.”
     “I’ve no doubt they did. What did they say? Come on, spill.” She’d lit up like a Christmas tree at the thought of some kind of mega scandal bringing some excitement into what she usually considered to be a rather dull and depressing world.
     “I had an argument with the scumbag at the JMB party. Someone must have seen it and told them.”
     “Ah, we have a grass in our midst. I wonder who it was. Did you do it?”
     “What?”
     “Kill the common little Northern oik.”
     “Of course I didn’t.”
     “Oh what a pity,” She sounded genuinely disappointed, “I thought at last you’d demonstrated your darker side – that you’re not the saint everyone thinks you are.”

     Without going into too much detail, and despite Melissa’s determined efforts to persuade me otherwise, I briefly outlined the goings on in Night’s office with Jesus Fly and Filing Cabinet man. She leaned forward in absolute concentration. Then she fixed her gaze on the floor and I could almost hear the noise of her brain as it wrestled with the few facts I’d told her and I waited for the ridiculous scenarios to pour forth. Instead she turned back to her typewriter and pounded away with renewed vigour

     “I saw your little girlfriend last night,” she said as she blazed away.
     “Where? Where did you see her? Are you sure it was her? Rachel, I mean.” I tried to sound calm and managed to suppress the urge to jump across the room and beat more information out of her.
     “I never forget faces unless I’m drunk. Your beloved was wearing a headscarf, but it was definitely her. She actually bumped into me. I was walking past that new gallery in Jermyn Street, what it called? 4D, that’s right. Stupid fucking name, if you ask me.” Melissa didn’t look round and kept on smashing away at the typewriter keys. “The fair young thing came rushing out of the door of the Gallery and hit me side on. We both almost went over but we grabbed each other and managed to keep upright. I was just about to ask her if she was blind or stupid or both when she looked me right in the face. She obviously recognized me as I did her but she pulled away and trotted off towards Park Lane.”
     “Did she say anything?” I said stupidly.
     “Yes we had a long conversation about the weather and how particularly nippy it was for this time of year.”
     “When was this?”
     “Yesterday evening, after I left you and you went to meet Miles Gillespie.” She reached into the expensive looking leather bucket bag on the floor beside her. “She dropped these.”

     Melissa tossed an envelope onto my desk and went back to her typing. The envelope wasn’t sealed. Inside were about half a dozen gallery postcards showing photographs of various bits of art. There were a couple of paintings, a picture of a lightshow installation and some sculpture pieces. I almost dropped the cards as I thumbed through them suddenly feeling like someone had tied a leather belt round my head and forced the buckle spike into the tightest possible hole. The last sculpture was a freestanding figure cast in what looked like bronze.

     There were two colour pictures of it – one, a side view, the other shot from the front so that the figure would have been staring straight at me if it had had eyes, which it hadn’t. It wore goggles and what looked like a gas mask, tin helmet, rain cape, puttees – the complete uniform of a World War 1 British infantry man. The figure held a rifle at waist height, thrust forward as if it was advancing. There was no mistaking it. I’d seen this bastard a couple of times before – most recently in the picture Terry had sent me.

     It was raining heavily again when I got to the 4D gallery. It was 7.30 and the place was closed though the lights were still on. A few framed drawings were attached to the sloping base of the window display. They were mainly rough charcoal sketches - a seemingly manic collection of what looked like figures made up of a series of frantic, heavy black lines as if they’d been done in a blinding hurry. It was difficult to tell if the figures were male or female. The display centrepiece was a poster suspended above the base. It depicted another figure, more agitated in style than the others.

JESSICA HOLMES – A RETROSPECTIVE

Paintings, drawings and sculpture depicting 20 years of creative development
3 –14 August
Private view by invitation only: 30 July

     I could see into the gallery beyond the poster. The room was long and thin and typically bare with a polished wooden floor. There were a few framed prints on the walls and the only furniture was a small desk and chair in the back corner. The top of a white spiral staircase occupied the opposite corner, leading, I assumed, to the main gallery below. A figure came up the stairs. I could only see it from the back at first and though the hair was black, there was no mistaking the identity. The slenderness, the shy way the head hung, the slightly pigeon toed little steps as she crossed the gallery to the desk belonged to Rachel.

     My first instinct was to bang on the window but instead I stepped sideways out of view so that I could still see her by craning my neck. I wasn’t about to scare her off now I’d found her, the desire for self-preservation overriding any pretence of friendliness or affection. The inner gallery lights went out and I quickly stepped past the window and pressed myself against the wall next to the door. After a few moments, I heard the lock being switched and the door opened. I stepped sideways into the doorway, and pushed my hand across Rachel’s mouth, shoving her into the darkness and kicking the door shut behind me.

     “Don’t make a sound.” I heard myself whisper gruffly. “Just keep absolutely quiet or I’ll kill you.” For a moment we stood in silence. I relaxed the pressure of my hand on her face and felt the tears against my fingers. I wanted to pull her close and comfort her, to tell her…I didn’t know what I wanted to tell her, but whatever it might have been, then wasn’t the time. In fact there wasn’t any time at all. I had to get her back to her father and keep body and soul together literally. “Just promise me you’ll stay quiet, I whispered, trying to sound gentle and only half succeeding, “Are you going to stay quiet? Hmm?”

     She nodded and gradually, I pulled my hand away from her face. “We need to talk, OK?” She nodded again. I could feel her shaking, quivering like she was terrified. “It’s alright. It’s alright, it’s alright. Really, it’s alright.” I sounded genuinely pathetic. In the light from the window display I could see her wide-eyed, frightened expression. “Can we turn off the light?” I asked. She reached up and pressed a switch and the gallery became completely dark. “You have to go home.” I told her. Somehow the darkness seemed to make my voice louder. Her shaking increased.
     “I can’t. Not yet. Not now.”
     “Why? What’s going on?”
     “Let’s go downstairs,” she said pulling me by the hand. I let her lead me across the room to the staircase. Our feet clanked on the metal steps as we descended. “Wait,” she said as we reached the bottom, “I’ll turn on the night light.”

     She stepped away from me and I heard her cross the wooden floor and stop on the far side of the room. Light from a couple of small spotlights seeped into the space between us then faded slightly as she adjusted the dimmer. The narrow beams caught a large object in the centre covered by a shroud. It was about 8ft high and a I felt my stomach convert into a cement mixer in recognition – the extended piece of the sheet projected away from the main mass where the rifle must have been was a dead giveaway.

     There were a couple of other similar but smaller objects against the walls in the room. For a second, Rachel was hidden from me by the figure till she stepped into view and stopped beside it as if it offered her some sort of protection - maybe from me. In the half-light, she looked small and vulnerable, just like she always had.

     “I don’t know where to start,” Rachel said, “it’s all so complicated. Can we sit down?” She pointed to an arch in the wall and I followed her through it into a
kitchen where we sat down opposite each other at a small table.
     “I don’t like the colour of your hair,” I said cruelly.
     “Neither do I,” she said automatically touching her hair with her fingertips.
     “Where’ve you been?” I said, more out of selfish interest than anything, “You have to go home, for my sake, as much as yours.”
     “What do you mean?”
     “Because if you don’t, certain people are going to do nasty things to me.”
     “What do you mean?” she repeated.
     “Keith, Tony Wall, the Mafia, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and All…anyone who fancies
taking me apart piece by piece is going to do just that.”
     “Why?”
     “Because they know about you and me and your Daddy doesn’t approve. And because you went missing, I have to get you back home or lose my balls and possibly my finger nails and a few other bits.”
     “No–oo!” she buried her head in her hands and started sobbing. For a second I was flattered that she cared about me that much. I reached out and clasped her wrists.
     “I’ll be fine. All you have to do is go home, let your Dad know that you’re all right – that everything’s cool and get him to call the dogs off.”

     She pulled away.

     “You don’t understand.” her eyes were red and wet, “My Dad wouldn’t recognise me. He’s a gibbering wreck. Tony Wall has got it in for me. He’s an evil bastard, you’ve no idea what sort of a monster he is.”
     “Oh, I reckon I’ve got an inkling. What do you mean, your Dad wouldn’t recognise you?”
     “He’s ill. He had a sort of breakdown.”
     “Is he in hospital?”
     “No, he refused to go but now he’s so much worse. Wall’s got him locked up in the house. He’s got some dreadful creep of a male nurse supposedly looking after him. He’s German - his name’s Miro. He’s really just another thug.”
     “So why did you disappear and why did you invite your Dad’s Roller to lunch at The Ringside?”
     “I found out some stuff about Wall by accident. He knew I had and he threatened me so I had to get away. I’d come home from University when Dad got ill and Wall was always hanging around. He was always there at the house. He seemed to be putting Dad under some kind of pressure despite him being ill. If things had been normal, Wall wouldn’t have dared do anything like that.”
     “Yes, your Daddy has quite a reputation.”
     “It’s not all true.” she said too defensively to be convincing.
     “I wouldn’t know and I really don’t care. At the moment, I just want to stay in one piece. So what about the Ringside?”
     “I was so worried about Dad, I decided to go home and face Tony Wall. I didn’t care what he did, I just wanted to make sure Dad was OK. I met Miro in the hall. He told me Wall had gone to Keith’s party at the Ringside. Miro wouldn’t let me see Dad at first, but I pushed past him and went upstairs to Dad’s bedroom. He was lying in bed in a terrible state. It looked like he’d been beaten up. Both his eyes were black and there were bruises all over his face.” She covered her face with her hands momentarily. “Miro said he’d fallen out of bed but I’ve seen enough people beaten up in my life to know that was crap.”
     “Why didn’t you go to the police?” I said, borrowing another line from the Godfather but in reverse.
     “You must be joking,” she shot me a scornful look. “The police don’t giver a shit about Dad. They’d probably laugh. They’d do anything to pin something on him and if I told them about Tony Wall, they’d find a way of implicating Dad too.”
     “What is there to tell? About Wall, I mean?”
     “You don’t need to know. Anyway it’s very complicated.”
     “Maybe I can help?” I said, though any intention of getting any more involved with Wall couldn’t have been further from my mind.
     “I don’t want you to get involved. It’s a very dangerous situation.”
     “Don’t I know it? I’m already involved.”
     “You’re not. Not really. Look, I’ll go home. I promise. I’ve thought about it. Tony Wall won’t do anything to me because of Keith. He was expecting Keith to go away but he didn’t. If Tony Wall even thought about laying a finger on me with Keith around… Anyway, I think he just wants me in his sight so that he can keep an eye on me.” she paused and looked down at the table. She blushed when she told me the next bit. “I was so angry. I rushed out of the house and took Dad’s car. I’d been to the Ringside with Dad so I knew where it was. I had no idea what I was going to do. I drove past slowly and saw Tony Wall through the window. He was laughing. I just lost it. I hated him so much. All I could think about was Dad lying at home and Wall didn’t give a shit. He was just…laughing and I couldn’t stand it. I turned the car across the road, aimed it at the window and put my foot down. I don’t remember anything else. I don’t remember hitting the window. I just woke up in hospital with Keith sitting by the bed.”
     “So what are you doing here?”
     “I’ve known Jessica since my school days. She’s one of the artists who use the gallery. She taught art at my boarding school and then she turned up as a part time lecturer at my university. We became quite good friends and when I needed somewhere to hide, she took me in. Her husband’s a psychiatrist. He’s a really nice guy. I told him about Dad but he said he’d need to see him before he could help and that he thought Dad should probably be in hospital. I only started work here about a week ago. Tony, that’s Tony Rawlings, Jessica’s husband, not Tony Wall, said it would be good for me to get out and about again and be involved in something and, like I said, I was planning to go home anyway. I suppose Melissa told you I was here.”
     “She said she’d bumped into you.”
     “Yes. I bumped into her really. She obviously recognised me and I panicked. I’m going home tonight, Alan. Don’t worry. Everything will be OK. Really. I’ll be fine.”

     Her show of bravado was a thin veneer. She was probably right in that Wall wouldn’t go near her with Keith on the loose from HM Government, I was sure the sweet little thing, who’s sublime fragrances still tantalised my more basic, male instincts across the table between us, was scared shitless. Not that I really cared, you understand.

     “I’ll come with you,” I said in a moment of insanity bordering on the lunatic. What was I thinking? I was safe, off the hook, out of the woods. I could turn my back and walk away with no unnecessary feelings of remorse or guilt.
     “No. There’s no need. Wall is so unpredictable. Seeing us together might provoke him.”
     “I’m not afraid of Tony Wall or Keith,” I lied. It also occurred to me that it would look better if I actually delivered Rachel to them myself and kept my part of the deal – that this would somehow ensure there could be no come back and if she were to run off again, they couldn’t pin anything on me. Maybe she’d come to the same conclusion. “I’m coming with you,” I said, gently squeezing her arm and smiling. She smiled back.

* * * * * * * * *

     The Red Tomato announced our arrival with the noise of a jet plane on performance enhancing drugs as Rachel and I pulled up outside the iron gates in front of the house. I’d decided against the sneaky approach and wanted the world to be in no doubt that I and I alone was delivering Rachel back home with as much panache as possible. The drive to the small village near Saffron Walden, Essex had taken about an hour and the house sat back from the road behind tall hedgerows half a mile from its nearest neighbour. Rachel produced a small remote control devise and pointed it at the gates and they swung silently open.

     “Where are Rocky and Julie?” she said looking anxiously around as we got out of the car.
     “Who?” I said, imagining some kind of heavy metal duo and not being far wrong.
     “Rocky and Julie, Dad’s Dobermans. They’re always out here.”
     “I’m glad they’re not.” I said delighted that I wasn’t about to play the part of the rope in a tug of war between a couple of razor-toothed wolves.

     The house was a mock Georgian Mansion surrounded by a high wall. Two white pillars supported a porch over the panelled front door. Rachel had called to say we’d be turning up and as she pushed her key into the lock, the door was pulled wide open. Wall’s face, half hidden behind the Ray Banns, peeped grinning round the door. I followed Rachel inside and Wall’s sinewy arm reached out and he took my hand in the vice-like grip and slowly moved my forearm up and down a couple of times as I imagined him measuring the strength of the bone before he snapped it in half.

     “Al. Good to see you. Glad you were able to keep your side of our little bargain. Saves us all a lot of unnecessary bother. Hello, Princess,” he said to the back of Rachel’s head as she crossed the hall and made for the foot of the stairs, “Welcome home. Your Dad’s asleep, Princess. Best not disturb him, eh?”
     Rachel stopped on the stairs and turned round. “Where are the dogs?”
     “Your Dad decided they were getting a bit too much to handle, him not bein’ quite the ticket an’ all. So we’ve let ‘em go.” She didn’t ask exactly what ‘letting them go’ meant but the look on her face said it all.
     “Right oh, Al. Thanks for bringing her home. I reckon you’d better be off, bein’ a busy advertisin’ executive an’ all.” Wall still held the door wide open.
     “It’s OK, Al, really. I’ll be fine.” Rachel said as Keith emerged from a side door and planted his massive frame in the middle of the hall between her and Wall, fixing me with his dead eyed shark expression.

     As I drove away from the house the Tomato’s temperamental engine stuttered against the damp and change of temperature. A hundred yards or so along the road I passed a clearing amongst the trees where a vintage Mercedes was parked facing the road. A red headed woman sat behind the wheel with a man next her. Unless I was hallucinating again, the man was Tony Rawlings.




Chapter 20. TRAVELLING MAN


     Astral travelling is a breeze once you get the hang of it. Like Norman had said, it’s weird at first and a bit scary. Like him, I’d tried to turn on the light in my bedroom at the flat and my hand went right through the wall. I went through the wall too and ended up in the street, level to the top of a lamppost. I was just floating there like Peter Pan. Being a bit shocked, I decided I wanted to get as far away from there as I could and in a flash found myself on a snow- covered moor somewhere. It looked like the Scottish Highlands in late evening but it could have been anywhere – Norway, Iceland or outer bloody Mongolia. I decided I didn’t like that either, fancying somewhere a bit warmer and the next thing I know, I’m looking down on a desert at what looked like Midday, the sun was so bright and high in the sky. It was just a mass of sand dunes as far as the eye could see.

     The trouble was the eye could see in four different directions at the same time, which is a bit tricky because the scenes kind of merged together.

     Also, the colour of everything was so much brighter and enhanced than normal so that it was like looking at one of those dreadful psychedelic effect films of the late Sixties where they shot sequences through bubbles of oil (like man), which made me wonder where they got the idea. There seemed to be 3 different suns and clouds rushing by at 90 miles an hour, again in all different directions. It was all some kind of visual mayhem. Pretty soon, I bottled it and found myself back in my body having landed with a bump that seemed to knock the wind out of me. I was back in my bedroom at the flat lying on the bed stark naked and looking up at the ceiling.

     Being back filled me with a sense of disappointment and a strange kind of remorse. Being ‘out’ had given me a feeling of huge elation and a sense of enormous well being though I felt distinctly revolted when I looked back at myself lying on the bed. I was connected to what I saw as the ugly mass of myself by a luminous silver-blue flexible chord about 2 inches in diameter, which floated about as if it was in water. As for the Astral me, I was beautiful. I looked at my arm and it was like a technicolour X ray. I could see all my bones and organs and the blood rushing round my veins. It was the most amazing sight I’d ever seen. I could see every part of my body functioning – every muscle, every sinus, every bone was alive and glowed the same silver-blue colour as the umbilical chord. Back in my body, I was just a boring mass of skin and flesh. Yuk.

     Getting out hadn’t been difficult. I’d been out before, of course, but I’d just been projected without having any choice in the matter. When I realized I could get back into my body by just thinking it, I decided to try and get out the same way. It was a piece of piss. All I had to do was lie down and relax – but completely relax until I couldn’t really feel my body at all and think fairly casually about getting out and then Bingo, up I went – to the ceiling. And just like Norman had said, there was this funny ripping sound as I left the confines of my physical body. It took about half an hour to get out and for a while I played at being a yo-yo just to make sure I could get back. In, out, in, out I went. Then I decided to stay out for a while. I went through the wall into the flat next door and watched a couple in bed shagging. It was more revolting than looking down at myself from the ceiling. God we’re all so ugly – especially doing that.

     I went for a slow breeze around the block and arrived back outside the flat with no problem. I did it again at speed and then again, faster still. Then I thought I’d be a bit more adventurous. I decided to take a trip to Newcastle so I conjured up a picture in my mind of the waterfront with all the famous bridges. But nothing happened. I tried again but I stayed where I was, suspended in front of the bedroom window. I thought of Kings Cross Station which was where I knew trains to Newcastle ran from and suddenly, I was there, hovering above the platforms. I conjured up the picture of Newcastle again and I was off at breakneck speed following the railway line. Seconds later, there I was at Newcastle Terminal Station. Obviously, you had to plug in a route if you wanted to go somewhere. You had to know the way. I whacked in my waterfront picture again and I was there instantly, looking at the bridges. This Astral Travel lark looked like it could be quite fun.

     It wasn’t all Thomas Cooke though. Now and again I saw him. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye like a flickering ghost. Other times he’d be standing right in front of me, his gun thingy at the ready. He didn’t seem to be in Astral form as I was though his colouring was vibrant and pulsating. Mostly, he wasn’t there at all but there was always this creepy feeling of someone looking over my shoulder.

     The early days were very frightening. I’d have some kind of angry episode then, while I was asleep that night, I’d get catapulted out. Sometimes I’d see him flashing about ahead of me but mostly there was a sensation of being sucked along. Other times, I’d arrive to see the aftermath, usually a body without a head and other bits ripped away.
Mainly these were random attacks on some poor bastard who just happened to be around like the tramp in the park. He got sliced in two, though how he got into two suitcases was a mystery.

     The demise of Pip was the worst experience. My soldier friend and I arrived at the Northern Maggot’s flat at the same moment and he went to work before I could stop him, not that I knew how to stop him then. Pip was lying face down on top of his bed. Soldier boy seemed to have transferred back to the physical and was standing next to the bed. Somehow I knew something nasty was going to happen and I tried to call out but, of course, no sound came. The soldier, or whatever it was, stuck the teeth bayonet thing into the back of Pip’s neck. There was a horrible whirring sound like a sawmill and Pip’s head disintegrated in a swirl of blood, brain matter and pulverised bone leaving the body convulsing and the arms and legs twitching and a gutted chicken mess up the wall. Pip might have had the flash of a terrible nightmare but otherwise wouldn’t have felt a thing, which on top of the shock of the horrendous scene I’d just witnessed induced in me a feeling of sadness. When, a micro second later, I landed back in my body at the flat, I thought maybe I’d dreamed the whole thing, it had been so surreal.

Soldier boy then went to work on Pip's limbs removing them from his torso with a couple of deft swipes of the tooth bayonet thing before plunging it into his stomach and removing his guts along with his spine all of which it tossed into the corner of the room like so much discarded offal.


     By the time I visited Melissa in Battersea I’d kind of got the knack of controlling him – it, whatever he or it was. He’d got there ahead of me again and was standing in her sitting room. He took a step towards her but I just thought “No.” and he stopped dead. That was when El Puzzo went berserk and slashed her mistress’s arms to shreds. Melissa had crossed my mind earlier in the evening but I don’t remember thinking any particularly nasty thoughts about her, at least, nothing violent. But I wasn’t at Darville Road until after he’d paid a visit but what I’d found on the stairs told me all I wanted to know or rather didn’t want to know.

     With the Pip thing, I’d drifted off as Rachael and I were recovering from our first real passionate encounter after the JMPA party and before I knew it, I was in the Maggot’s stinking pit of a bedroom with my soldier pal. My whole body convulsed when I came back. It must have made Rachel jump and she’d asked me if I was OK.

     “Yes sure,” I’d said, “I’ve just witnessed that Northern tosser, Pip, get ripped to pieces by a sort of tiny chainsaw. You’d have really enjoyed it. It was very spectacular.”
     “Oh, right,” she’d said, ”For a second there, I thought something was wrong.”




* * * * * * * * * *


     Melissa was in fighting mood, her foe, or more likely, her victim, being potentially whichever unlucky dumb sucker happened to cross her path first the morning after I took Rachel home to the house of horrors. Unfortunately the victim was me, or us, depending on how you looked at it. Maybe I should’ve considered my opening line more carefully. “Good morning.”
     “Is that meant to be funny?” she hissed like a rabid viper.

     I was grateful she wasn’t facing me, as she may have been tempted to spit from the pool of venom boiling away under her tongue. I did consider having her bones stripped of flesh where she sat on her bloody high and mighty throne breathing smoke over her poor defenceless typewriter but I decided to let it go and that the miserable bitch wasn’t worth the consequences of performing such an act in my own office given that I’d find it a touch tricky to explain away another gutted chicken spread all over the walls.

     I’d let Miles or Mike or whatever his name was carry on breathing along with all those lunatics in that flat where he’d taken me so why not Melissa? She was more of a mate than any of them. Mind you, the Journey people, as Miles/Mike called them, had explained a few things, like the nature of my constant companion and some of the stuff about the Astral Light was interesting for about 10 seconds. I hadn’t known the place I’d become used to visiting was called that, though frankly, I didn’t really care.

     “Our illustrious client doesn’t like the rough cut of the Milk commercial,” Melissa swung her chair round to face me and I resisted the inclination to duck even though the venom might already have been counted down for a launch. “It wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d been there to present it, but that fucking wanker, Brian Knight, bumped into the chairman of the bloody Milk Marketing Board in Chicago Airport and they travelled to London together. Our prick promised to show their prick the rough cut as soon as they could arrange a viewing, which was yesterday afternoon. What really pisses me off is that no one had the courtesy to tell us about it, not even our so-called mates on the account team. It would have been better all round if the fucking plane had crashed and burned half way across the Atlantic. It would have saved us all a lot of bother. They can all go to Hell now. I’ve booked an appointment with Phil Dior in Chicago on Thursday to go through aspects of our contract which state quite clearly that we are not answerable to Knight and his cohorts but to Interstella and theirs and that Brian Knight should be instructed to keep his slimy paws off anything and everything we do for this grubby little agency forthwith. If they like, I’ll tell him myself.”
     “How are your arms?” I said trying to change the subject.
     “Still attached to my body and making their presence felt in no uncertain terms. I’ve also booked a meeting with Terry in the cutting rooms at 2.00 this afternoon. I don’t intend to change a fucking thing but I want to look at the film and take in the imbecile client’s comments so that I know what we’re up against at the next meeting.”



     “Did you see the prints? You know, the ones of the soldier.” Terry said the moment he clapped eyes on me in the cutting room.
     “Yeah.”
     “What did you make of’em?” Luckily, Melissa wasn’t part of the conversation making a beeline for the poor editor already seated at the Moviola. The cow was nothing if not professional.
     “Weird.” I said for want of something even less involving to say.
     “Some kind of ghost, if you ask me.”

     Terry had a fixation about ghosts and ghoulies since he and his family had lived in a crumbly old Elizabethan Mansion in Norfolk they’d bought and lived in for a few years, Slathurst Manor, which he was certain was haunted. There had been so many apparitions that his other half, Toni, had demanded they sell the place and move back into London which is how they arrived in Hackney on the Crown Estate. “This hooded fucker came right through the fuckin’ wall one night,” Terry had said after a particularly late and boozy after hours session at the Rose and Crown not long after he and I had first met, “You couldn’t see his face, but he had blue fuckin’ hands. Toe and I were a bit stoned at the time but we very quickly became un-fuckin’ stoned, I can tell yer. The bastard went right through another fuckin’ wall and disappeared. That was that. We put the place up for sale and took out the lease on 18. Took us fuckin’ ages to sell. Turns out the estate agents knew all along Slathurst had other guests stayin’ there. Arseholes. They never fuckin’ told us when we were up to buy it. We lost a lot of fuckin’ money over that place.”

     Melissa turned away from the Movieola to face us, “As I suspected, the client is talking out of his anus. We are not going to change the cut. I’ll need a VHS to take to Chicago on Wednesday evening. Can you arrange that, Terry?”
     “For you, princess, anything. Consider it done.”
     “You’re so kind,” she replied without a shadow of a smile, “I have to go shopping, Al. I’ll see you back at the agency.” She swept out.
     “She’ll be off to buy ‘er fuckin’ Louis Vuitton Luggage, no doubt,” said Terry, “Christ, I pity the poor bastard who draws the short straw and sits next to ‘er on the fuckin’ plane. I’m goin’ to take the soldier prints to a friend of mine who’s a bit of a medium.”
     “What the hell for?” I said a bit too urgently.
     “Blimey, what’s got up your arse? I just want to know what she makes of it. She came up to Slathurst and had a look at a couple of the ‘spectres’ there, as she called them. It was amazin’. She put herself into this sort of trance and one of ’em appeared as if on cue. She said the presences at Slathurst were nothing to worry about and that we should just ignore them. Bern wasn’t ‘avin’ any of that and we left anyway. Can’t say I was sorry. ‘ow can you live with fuckers that keep comin’ through the wall unannounced? Anyway, d’you wanna come along when I go and see ‘er?”
     “No fear. All that stuff scares me shitless,” I lied.
     “Suit yourself. Shame really. I think you’d find ‘er quite interestin’. I first came across ‘er when she was a student at the Royal College of Art. I did a bit of teachin’ there for a few years after I graduated. She was in graphics but transferred to the sculpture school for her final year. Her stuff was pretty fuckin’ weird even then but bloody impressive - very powerful. Actually, she comes across as quite a powerful person, does our Jessica.”
     “Jessica? Jessica what?”
     “Jessica Holmes. Why, d’you know ‘er?
     “I know of her. I’ve actually been to one of her exhibitions. On second thoughts, I will come with you.”
     “Great.” he said, full of enthusiasm, “Fancy a quick half?”




Chapter 21. JESSICA.

Al.

I arrive in Chicago at 11pm their time tomorrow – Wed. My meeting with Phil Dior is at 12noon Thursday. I’ll probably have to have lunch though I’d rather not. I just hope it’s somewhere decent but I don’t suppose it will be as Americans have no pallet to speak of.

See you next Monday.

M.x


     Melissa had written her message large on my layout pad in black felt tip for all to see clearly not concerned in the slightest that she was publicly insulting the buggers who paid her salary. There was a knock on the open office door.

     “Good morning,” Very rarely, if at all, did Brian Night venture out from his cave on the 7th floor when he was in London and never did he go visiting any of his creative groups even though he was their leader, or as he saw it, their fuehrer, so I was somewhat surprised to look up and see him standing in the doorway, “I understand Melissa has flown to Chicago to see Phil Dior,” he said, “Do you happen to know why?”
I stood up to remind the little rat just how short he was and made a mental note to visit Val Simmonds in the middle of the night and remover her womb through her nostrils, certain beyond any doubt that she’d told Night about Melissa’s trip. “No idea,” I said, knowing how pissed off he’d be with my answer.
     “If either you or she have any problems, you should come and see me. Phil Dior is a very busy man.”
     “Aren’t we all,” I said lighting a fag and blowing the smoke straight down into his podgy face as he stepped into the office. His beady little eyes darted everywhere as if trying to find some clue as to why Melissa had gone travelling.

     He stopped by the shelf where the stuffed birds were perched and stared at the owl suspiciously as if it was hiding some kind of secret up it’s arse and I noticed that the heels of his brown and white, spat style shoes were built up. His whole ensemble was even more offensive than usual, the bright fluorescent green shirt and yellow braces and blue bow tie with orange polka dots invading my senses without mercy and it occurred to me if there wasn’t a law against such a blatant disregard for taste and sensitivity, then there should’ve been and that the death sentence should be brought back to deal with extreme cases.

     I almost felt duty bound to grab his bugger grippers and rip them from his jowls but was revolted at the thought of getting that close to him and whatever might be nesting therein. Without another word, Night turned on his built up heels and left. He would have talked to Dior already but still wouldn’t have known why Melissa had gone to Chicago; the American himself only having been told the meeting scheduled was to do with contracts.

     Ten minutes later, my phone rang and an excited Terry Grey started gabbling about a meeting he’d set up with Jessica Holmes as soon as I shoved the receiver against my ear.

     “OK, Tel,” I said trying to stem the flow, “I’ll meet you outside Gallery 4D at 8.00. Have you told Jessica what you’re going to show her?”
     “Nah. Thought I surprise ‘er. Can’t wait to see the look on ‘er boat race when she cops a butcher’s. See you there.” Terry hung up.

     I couldn’t wait to cop the look on her boat race either when she copped a look at mine. She wouldn’t be sure if I remembered her or where from so I was looking forward to having some fun at the bitch’s expense.

     Terry opened the door of 4D when I rang the bell at 8.15. with his usual Candian Club and American Dry in his mit, “Whatcha, Al. C’mon in. Jessica’s just nipped out to get some wine.” We crossed the gallery to the stairs at the back. “Pretty alarmin’ drawin’s, ain’t they,” he said gesturing at the frantic giant charcoal scribbles in the frames on the walls, “Fuck knows what sorta mood she must have bin in when she did these.”

     I wasn’t surprised to see that the big shrouded figure that had stood in the downstairs gallery was no longer there. In the little kitchen where I’d sat talking to Rachel, two prints of the soldier were spread open on the table and held in place by a couple of empty wine bottles and a glass ash tray. We heard the outside door open and close and footsteps crossing the floor above and clanking their way down the metal staircase.

     “That, you, gorgeous? Hope you got some decent plonk. You know how I hate that cheep fuckin’ crap.”
     “It’s not exactly Chateau Lafite but it’ll do,” said a chocolaty, cultured female voice. A tall figure in a short, full skirted, black corduroy dress black tights and lurid green high heels stepped out of the shadows at the foot of the stairs came through the arch into the kitchen and stopped in its tracks as if it had run into a set of invisible buffers.
     “This is the mate I was tellin’ you about. Al, meet Jessica Holmes as in THE Jessica Holmes. Jessica, this is Alan Taylor, Guitarist and art director extraordinaire.”
     I sprang forward and shoved out my hand, “Jessica. I’m delighted to meet you. I’m quite a fan of yours,” I said gushingly, enjoying the look of shock on her face.

     I’d never seen so many freckles in the same space. It was as if a can of orange paint had exploded in mid air right next to her visage. The hair, a tight mass of Jimi Hendrix style curls, was as red as red hair gets, the eyebrows thin, black, pencilled arches above eyes that matched the colour of the shoes. Garish, pillar-box red lipstick completed the picture. I took her right hand in mine, her white-knuckled left one clutching the bottle hard enough to crush it between her fingers if someone didn’t relieve her of it which I did.

     “Ah, Rioja. Fab,” I said, taking the piss along with the bottle, “Just the thing for a cosy evening in the kitchen.”
     The pillar-box red stained lips stretched ear-wards to reveal a set of large, randomly pillar-box red stained teeth wedged into a tense smile. Her hand felt cold and limp like it was dead, “Hello, Alan. It’s lovely to meet you,” Meet could easily have been ‘kill’ such was the icy snap in her voice. If her eyes had been lasers, I’d have been fried to a crisp where I stood.

     Jessica was a striking individual it has to be said - not what you’d call pretty, but she had a kind of stark in your face beauty that was hard to ignore. She must have been close to six foot tall in her heels with breasts like dirigible Zeppelins threatening to burst out of the buttoned top of her dress and overwhelm all before them. She was big boned but there wasn’t a smidgen of fat anywhere as far as I could tell and I’d’ve guessed she was quite fit. With her high, mascara enhanced cheekbones, large but perfectly proportioned facial features and body she would’ve fitted Hitler’s idea of the perfect Arian woman like a glove apart from the red hair. All in all, Jessica Holmes was a site to behold.

     “Come and have a gander at these Jessica, ”Terry said, handing me a corkscrew he’d taken from a drawer. A discrete whiff of expensive perfume danced fleetingly round my nostrils as Jessica half pushed past me on her way to the table, “Fuckin’ weird, or what?”
     Jessica leaned over the table with her back to me allowing me a brief glimpse of her green briefs before moving her hands round to her hack and pulling the hem of her flouncy skirt down and in. For at least half a minute said nothing. Then she straightened up, “How did you come by the pictures, Terry?”
     Terry went into excitement overdrive and described the Milk shoot in great detail including the antics of our Sterling Moss impersonator and culminating with a description of the flashing electric cables, the drop of temperature and the images on the Moviola, “You couldn’t see a fuckin’ thing with the naked eye. I mean nobody saw this geezer in the flesh until we saw him on bloody film. Must be some kind of entity, some kind of ghost, don’t you reckon? What d’you think?”
     “Hmm. I’m not sure,” Jessica said, “I’ll need to have a think and examine the pictures at length. May I keep them? As you say, they could represent a spectre of some kind, which wouldn’t have been visible to the naked eye. It’s all to do the with the frequencies that such things work on and atmospheric conditions etc.”
     “Sure, princess. Go ahead. Fill yer boots. Be interestin’ to know what you come up with.”
     “If it’s anything at all, it’s likely not to be of any significance. As I’ve said in the past, so-called ghosts are around us all the time but they rarely amount to anything other than a passing trace of something from another time and space, so don’t get your hopes up too high.”
     She turned towards me and I offered her a glass of her wine, “I know your old man,” I said.
     “Really?” she said suspicion oozing from every freckle.
     “Yes. I’m a patient of his.”
     “Really.” She sipped her drink and eyed me over the top of the glass.
     “Have been for a couple of years since some sick arsehole put LSD in my drink.”
     “Really.”
     “Fuck, I didn’t know that,” Terry cut in.
     “Yes. Really,” I imitated Jessica’s intonation, “It’s amazing how some people get their kicks, don’t you think?” I said at the freckled mass.
     “It takes all sorts, I suppose,” the mass replied.
     “I always thought you were round the fuckin’ bend, Al,” Terry said, spluttering with laughter, “Anyway, gorgeous, when do you think you’ll have some kind of answer as to what this fuckin’ soldier is all about?”
     “I don’t know - a few days maybe. It depends. There’s no rush is there?”
     “Nah. I’m just intrigued.”
     “That’s if it is a soldier.” I said, looking for a sudden blush in Jessica’s cheeks but detecting no such thing.
     “What you on about? It looks like a fuckin’ soldier to me. What else would it be?”
Terry leaned over the prints for a closer look.

     I moved over to the table and had another squint at the pictures. The figure certainly did look like a World War 2 infantryman but the images were slightly burned out and soft round the edges and it was hard to see if any parts genuinely merged together as they did in the drawing the Journey people had shown me.

     “So if it’s not a soldier, what do you think it is?” said the 6ft spotty carrot as cool and calm as you like.
     “Well, whatever it is, it’s armed to the teeth, I’ll grant you that.” I emphasised the word ‘teeth’.
     “All soldiers are, ain’t they?” Terry looked at me as if he was beginning to think I was on something a bit stronger than wine, “What the fuck are you on about, Al?”

     To be honest, I wasn’t sure myself. If her sculptures and drawings were anything to go by, I was pretty sure Jessica knew the figure in the pictures wasn’t just some common oik from the Western Front but I wasn’t sure how much she did know about his origins. I’d have preferred to have had her shredded right there and then for putting that crap in my drink but that would have meant having the same done to poor old Terry. The cow was dabbling in something with that paraplegic fink of a husband hers that I wasn’t particularly interested in except I was curious to know why they’d singled me out for whatever bizarre experiment they were conducting and why they’d been sitting in the lay-by near Rachel’s house in their manky old Mercedes.