Bleeding London

MARINA

Mick Wilton sat at the bar in one of the expensive, laughable hotels at Chelsea Harbour. He was reading a leaflet he’d picked up. It extolled the virtues of the Thames Barrier, both as an engineering feat and as a tourist attraction. It went so far as to claim that the Thames Barrier was the ‘Eighth wonder of the world’.

Mick, naturally enough, had never been to the Thames Barrier, though he did remember seeing something about it on TV, and he thought this leaflet might be overstating the case. He read how the barrier was the world’s largest movable flood barrier, though it didn’t name any of the world’s other flood barriers, movable or not. The barrier was said to be a great triumph for British designers and constructors although apparently some ‘Dutch specialists’ had also been involved. And then the leaflet said that a visit to the barrier was a ‘memorable experience’. He thought this was pretty weak. A visit to Madame Tussaud’s might be a memorable experience. A visit to the eighth wonder of the world ought to be something a lot more dramatic.

Mick was bored, by the leaflet, by his surroundings, by the waiting. It would soon be time to deal with Jonathan Sands, but it was only fair to wait, to give him a chance to finish the business he was currently engaged in. Mick looked at his watch. Another ten minutes then he’d have him.

With its new hotels and restaurants and blocks of flats, Chelsea Harbour looked like a resort out of season, deserted, ominously clean and ordered, something futuristic and authoritarian. There were lumps of modern sculpture dotted about, all new, all looking as though they had been bought off the peg to give the area a bit of class.

Mick felt out of place, but who wouldn’t? There were only two other people in the bar, otherwise everyone he saw was an employee of the harbour, carrying tools, buckets, bundles of electric cable.

He looked towards the angular, irregularly shaped marina. It was small, no wider across than an easy stone’s throw, and that was where the boats were moored, not many of them either, not more than fifty. The jetties were new and recently swept and well endowed with ‘Keep Out’ signs. The marina connected to the river via a long, narrow lock and Mick was amused to see a traffic light on the marina side. To Mick it looked like no more than a car-park with water, but the boats themselves were a lot more impressive than the kind of thing you’d find in most car-parks. Some were sleek white wedges of state-of-the-art machinery, with great tangles of navigational gear atop them. Others belonged to the classic school, older, more soulful craft with varnished wooden cabins, teak decks, curls of gleaming brass.

Mick had always detected something nautical about the way Jonathan Sands dressed out of work hours. He’d seen him wearing bright red and blue waterproof jackets with too many zips and pockets, with elasticated cuffs and storm flaps. Sands’ boat was a motor cruiser, about forty feet long, sleek, all white and silver and angled glass. Inside it was spacious, with a central wheelhouse saloon, and two separate cabins, one fore, one aft, each of these spaces being considerably larger than Mick’s room at the Dickens.

Mick had followed Sands to the harbour a couple of times previously. Sands seemed to go there for some sort of solace, for peace and quiet, away from his wife and child. Once there he usually simply sat inside the boat, lounging on one of the padded benches in the wheelhouse saloon, doing nothing except sit and stare. It would have been easy enough for Mick to pick him off on these occasions but the perfect moment hadn’t yet presented itself.

Tonight the pattern had changed. Sands had returned late from work, stayed in the house just long enough to change his clothes, then gone out again. But instead of heading for the harbour he’d gone to an expensive bar off the King’s Road that was done out like a Mexican cantina.

Sands was a good-looking man. In certain ways he was more classically handsome than Justin Carr. His face was more conventionally that of a film star, and he carried himself in a manner that advertised his wealth, his style, his self-confidence. He would never have trouble picking up women. Nevertheless, Mick was surprised when Sands left the bar after only an hour or so with two girls in tow. They were very young, very drunk, very King’s Road, and Sands had one on each arm. He hailed a taxi and Mick watched as they drove away. There was a great temptation to get into another cab and pursue them but Mick resisted. He knew Sands would be taking them to his boat, and Mick certainly intended to follow them, but the time it would take him to walk there would be just enough for the party to get into full swing.

Sure enough, as Mick entered the marina he could see that the lights were on in the aft cabin of Sands’ boat, and that the curtains had been hastily drawn, so hastily that they didn’t quite meet, and once he’d positioned himself direcdy outside the window, he was able to see in through the thin gap.

He peered in. The cabin was done out as a bedroom, with wood panels and brass light-fittings, and most of the floor space was taken up by the bed, the foot of which was curved to fit into the specific contours of the boat. Sands was at the centre of the bed, naked and happy, looking regal, lordly, captain-like, and he still had a girl on either side of him, but now they were also naked, lying flat on their stomachs, their firm little buttocks raised and taut as they wriggled around and took turns sucking Sands’ cock.

Mick thought of Sands’ wife alone in that big Chelsea house, looking after the child. He thought what a shit Sands was. It was easy enough to feel disapproval, distaste, but at the same time Mick found it impossible not to be a little envious. He’d never been to bed with two girls at once, never had two girls take turns sucking his cock. He tried to stop himself thinking about it. He couldn’t allow himself to be envious. He had to be a better man than Sands, so that he retained the authority to hand out punishment.

As Mick continued to watch, the two girls started kissing each other, started touching each other’s breasts. He had to walk away. It was too much for him. He felt unbearably cold and alone. He saw himself as though from a distance. He was a sad outsider peering in at somebody else’s good time, desperate for warmth and having to make do with revenge.

And yet he knew that when the moment came, punishing Sands would be particularly sweet. But that moment hadn’t arrived yet. It would only come after the girls had been finished with and packed off home. That was why he had to wait. That was why he was in the hotel bar, reading a leaflet about the Thames Barrier, waiting for Sands to finish.

♦

When the time was right Mick downed his drink and sauntered back to the marina. He was on time. When he got to the boat the girls had gone, the light was off in the aft cabin and Sands was again to be seen sitting alone in the wheelhouse saloon. He was wearing a nautical T — shirt, jeans, no shoes, and even though the hatch was open to the cold night he didn’t seem to feel it. Mick walked up to the hatch and said cheerfully, “Nice boat.”

“Oh, well, thank you,” Sands replied.

He was not surprised or startled by Mick’s sudden, unannounced presence but the politeness of his response was automatic, not to be taken as a willingness to talk. His thoughts were a long way away.

“This is the Turbo thirty-six, isn’t it?” Mick asked, having read the name on the side of the boat.

“That’s right,” Sands said.

“What’s your top speed?”

“It’s very happy doing twenty-five, twenty-seven knots,” Sands said, then realizing he might be sinking into an unwanted conversation with a dodgy stranger he said, “Do you own a boat here? If not I should point out that this is a private jetty and we have very good security.”

“That’s my boat over there,” Mick said, and he gestured with all possible vagueness towards the boats in the centre of the marina.

Sands was not convinced but he didn’t intend to cross-question this intruder. He just wanted him to go away. He decided to ignore him. He turned his body, said nothing and sank back into his brooding silence, and Mick seized this moment of weak acquiescence to step on to the boat and in through the hatch.

“I wonder if I can borrow a cup of sugar,” he said as he entered.

“What?”

“Isn’t that what new neighbours are always supposed to ask for?”

“I think you should get off my boat at once,” Sands said.

He moved towards Mick, his intentions vague though hostile, but Mick only smiled. He continued to smile as Sands tried to grab him by the arm and frogmarch him off the boat, but Mick wasn’t having any of that. He turned, slipped out of Sands’ grasp and kneed him in the balls with neat, well-directed force. Sands crumpled. He sagged. Mick took Sands’ outstretched arm and dragged him across to the wheel, and in one sharp, dexterous manoeuvre he handcuffed him to it.

“OK,” Mick said. “What’s going to happen is this. You’re going to get your boat in motion, get it on the river, point it upstream. Then I’m going to start asking you questions about London, twenty questions in all, from out of this book.” He waved the copy of Unreliable London that he’d bought from Judy’s shop. He’d always known he’d find a use for it. “Then, each time you get an answer right we’ll go forward to the next bridge and so on. If you get one wrong, don’t worry, there’s no penalty, you don’t have to go into reverse or anything.

“And so it goes on for twenty questions. Now, for our purposes I’m going to call the Thames Barrier a bridge as well, the final one, like the winning post. And I’m not going to count Hungerford or Cannon Street ‘cos they both look like poxy little bridges on the map. And if we’ve arrived at the Thames Barrier by the time you’ve answered the twentieth question I’ll ask you to put me ashore and you can go happily on your way. Look at it another way, there are eleven bridges before the barrier, so if you can answer twelve questions right out of twenty you’re home and dry. OK?”

Sands looked at him in frightened bafflement. He had no idea what was going on, but the handcuff on his wrist told him it was serious. Coming so soon after the session with the girls it had a preternatural air of divine retribution about it.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“Oh yes, you can,” said Mick, and he clubbed him round the back of the head with his fist.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Sands said wretchedly, “but the fact is, the tide is out.”

Mick thought for a moment. He knew nothing about rivers and tides and Sands had no reason to be telling him the truth. But then he remembered that when he’d done a circuit of the marina earlier he’d walked past the lock and it had indeed been dry, and the river end of it had opened out on to nothing but a wide mud bank. It dawned on him that Sands was probably telling the truth.

“Oops,” said Mick. “Bit of a balls-up, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to think about this.”

He began to think, looking round the cabin for inspiration. He saw a stack of nautical charts and immediately saw that they offered possibilities, since a couple of them showed the Thames in a scale that he could deal with.

“OK,” he said. “It’s a shame about the tide, because I was really looking forward to the boat trip, but I guess we’re just going to have to do it theoretically, do it in miniature like a board game, OK? And I think we’re going to have to conduct it in one of the cabins so that you can’t try anything fanny like attracting a security guard.”

Mick unlocked one end of the handcuffs and Sands immediately launched himself forward away from Mick, trying to break free and escape from the boat. Mick yanked him back, grabbed his hair, smashed his face against the wheel, and dragged him into the aft cabin. The bed was still unmade from when he’d been there with the girls. The room smelled of women’s perfume, not cheap. Wine bottles and drug paraphernalia were scattered about the tiny area of unused floor. Mick clocked them with disgust and knocked Sands about a little more harshly as he handcuffed him to a suitable light fitting.

He stripped the covers off the bed to give himself a flat surface on which to lay out the charts. Sands felt the blood running out of his nose and watched Mick in continuing confusion.

“OK,” Mick said, jabbing the map with his finger, “you’re here. If you answer this first question right, then off we go upriver to Battersea Bridge. Here, I’ll make it easier for you to see where you are,” and he reached into his pocket and produced a tiny model ship, a counter from a game of Monopoly, which he placed in the centre of the river, outside Chelsea Harbour.

“Number one,” Mick began. “Who said that when a man is tired of London he’s tired of life?”

Sands looked at him suspiciously. Could he really be asking such a ridiculously simple question? Well, possibly. Perhaps that was only an overfamiliar quotation if you happened to be a Londoner.

“What on earth makes you think that I’m going to play this ludicrous game?” Sands asked.

Mick looked hurt, as though Sands’ failure to understand was a personal slight and a great disappointment to him.

“You’re going to play out of fear,” Mick explained. “Because if you don’t play then I’ll inflict all sorts of terrible pain on you, and I assume you’d rather I didn’t do that. Why not play a ludicrous game if it saves you getting a beating?”

Sands nodded. He wasn’t stupid. There was already no doubt that Mick could inflict a very efficient beating on him. If playing along was going to gain him even the smallest advantage he realized he might as well do it. He said, “As a matter of fact the answer is Samuel Johnson.”

“I’ve got Dr Johnson down here,” Mick said, “but I guess that’s near enough. That’s very good. How did you know that?”

“My expensive education wasn’t a complete waste of money,” Sands replied.

Mick moved the tiny boat along the chart, sat it on Battersea Bridge and said, “Then you’ll probably get this one. Question two: in which London square will you find a statue of Mahatma Gandhi?”

“No idea,” Sands said dismissively.

“Don’t want to guess?”

“Not really.”

“It’s Tavistock Square. Hard lines.”

Sands shrugged to show it meant nothing to him. Mick thumbed through the book looking for another question and said, “It must be nice coming here of an evening, watching the ships roll in and then watching them roll away again.”

“I like it,” Sands replied.

“But it must cost a packet to keep a boat here.”

“Yes, mooring fees aren’t cheap.”

“You ought to tie your boat up in Filey or Robin Hood’s Bay, somewhere a bit more scenic.”

“Unfortunately, I happen to live and work in London.”

“What line of work are you in then?”

“Insurance,” he said.

“We have insurance in Yorkshire too,” said Mick.

“I’m in marine insurance. You need to be in London if you’re in marine insurance.”

“Yeah. Obviously. Because you see so many boats in London, don’t you?”

Sands gave a lightly exasperated sigh. In his current circumstances he was not inclined to embark on an explanation of the workings of the marine insurance industry.

“Forgive my ignorance,” Mick said. “Right, question number three: how many black cabs were there in London in 1982? It’s an old book. I assume they must have had a recount since then, but go on. Have a guess, to the nearest thousand.”

“Twelve thousand,” Sands said.

“Hey, not bad, I’ll give you that. Was that a guess? The answer’s 12,560, and they were all diesel except for seventeen of them. You’re doing well. Now tell me, how do you get two girls to go to bed with you just like that, the way you did with those two tonight? This isn’t one of the twenty questions by the way. I mean, what do you say to them? How do you get the conversation round to the subject of three-in-a-bed sex?”

“Charm has something to do with it,” Sands said. “And offering to give them drugs.”

“You give them drugs?”

“I offer them drugs. I don’t slip them a Mickey Finn.”

“Drugs,” Mick tutted. “Don’t you have any respect for your sexual partners?”

“I have as much respect for them as they have for themselves.”

“Don’t you worry about them, don’t you ever think what you might be doing to them?”

“What is this? Do you know those girls? Are you a boyfriend or brother or something?”

Mick made a gesture that said neither yes nor no. He was happy to have Sands remain uncertain.

“I mean, if you are, then what can I say except sorry.”

“Sorry’s not enough,” said Mick. “Now, question four: what is the origin of the place name Soho?”

“I know that,” Sands said. “It’s a hunting cry, like tally-ho, from the days when the area was still parkland and used for hunting.”

“That’s amazing,” Mick said. “It’s an amazing fact, and it’s even more amazing that you should know it. So, what about your wife? What would she say if she knew what you’d been up to with those two girls?”

“She’d be very glad that I’d had sex with somebody else so that I stopped bothering her.”

“It’s like that, is it?”

“As a matter of feet, it is.”

“Have you tried charm and drugs on her?”

“Not recently, no. But I know what the result would be. You’re not a friend of my wife’s, for Christ’s sake, are you?”

“I’m everybody’s friend,” Mick said. “I seem to be able to establish this easy rapport with people. They tell me all sorts of things. I mean, you’re probably wondering why you’re bothering to answer these questions about your sex life. Is it because you’re scared I might kill you?”

Being killed was not one of the options Sands had so far considered. He fought against it but he couldn’t stop a shudder running through his body. Mick pretended not to notice.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think that’s the reason. I think the real answer is that you realize how good confession is for the soul.”

“I’ll remember that,” Sands said.

“OK, question five: what was the subject of John Evelyn’s Fumifugium, written in 1661?”

“I don’t know. Smog, fogs, London particulars?”

“I can only accept one answer,” Mick said.

“London fogs,” Sands said, sorry to be dealing with an idiot.

“Very good. I didn’t think you were going to get it. What were you going on about London Particulars? That’s a bookshop.”

“It’s also a name given to London fogs.”

“Get away!”

Sands looked exasperated as well as scared. Mick wondered if it was time to hit him again in order to make him more compliant, but he decided to wait a little longer, see how it went. He moved the toy boat one bridge up the river.

“Question six: the name of which London district contains six consecutive consonants, one after the other?”

Sands looked at him as though he was being ridiculous, as though there was no way any English place name could possibly contain such a configuration. Then suddenly it came to him.

“Knightsbridge,” he said triumphantly.

“Very good.”

“It’s a bit of a cheat actually,” Sands pointed out. “I mean, obviously it was once two separate words and the ‘s’ would have had an apostrophe.”

“What does it matter?” Mick said. “You got it right. You ever paid for sex?”

No longer surprised by the turns of Mick’s mind, Sands replied, “Only when I was very young and living abroad.”

“Doesn’t count then. You ever forced yourself on somebody? You know, like date-rape or whatever they call it.”

“Of course not.”

“How about when not on a date, just straightforward rape?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“OK, question seven: whose last twelve symphonies, and that’s numbers ninety-three to one hundred and four, are known as the London Symphonies?”

“That’s Haydn,” Sands said immediately.

“Very good. Haydn it is. Twelve symphonies written between 1791 and 1795. I don’t suppose you can whistle any of them.”

Sands made a brave attempt to whistle a passage from one of the symphonies.

“That’s good,” said Mick. “I’m tempted to give you a bonus mark, but no, I’ve got to be fair. You’re still doing amazingly well. You’re at Westminster Bridge already. Let’s hope you can keep it up, as the Chelsea girls said to the man in marine insurance. Right, question eight: who, in a song, didn’t want to go to Chelsea?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Sands said.

“Oh, come on, everybody knows that.”

“Not me.”

“Of course you do.”

“I’ve said I don’t.”

“Hey, don’t get stroppy, Jonathan,” said Mick, and he punched him twice, once in the face, once in the stomach. He felt they were both overdue. Sands’ stroppiness disappeared, but from then on things started to go marginally less well for him. As well as not knowing that it was Elvis Costello who didn’t want to go to Chelsea, he didn’t know that Charles II first met Nell Gwyn in the Dove Inn at Hammersmith. Equally he had no idea that Crouch End derived its name from crux, the Roman word for a cross. He made a stab at guessing the population of London at the time of the Norman conquest, but he was nowhere near the right answer, which was somewhere between fourteen and eighteen thousand.

After eleven questions he was still at Westminster Bridge, still some way from the Thames Barrier, and Mick belted him across the face a couple of times in order to encourage him, help him to concentrate, and this time it did seem to help. Things started to get better for him. He knew that Woolwich was the site of the first London McDonald’s. He knew that the Marylebone line was the first tube line. He knew that Christopher Wren was a professor of astronomy at the time he drew up his plans for rebuilding London after the Great Fire. To Mick’s amazement he also knew that London’s Dog Cemetery was to be found in the north-east corner of Kensington Gardens, behind Victoria Lodge.

“Hey, this is too easy for you,” Mick said. “Maybe I should change the rules, have you go back a bridge for every answer you get wrong.”

“No,” Sands insisted loudly. “You set the rules at the beginning, now you stick by them.”

“OK, OK,” said Mick. “Don’t get so excited. It’s only a game. Question sixteen: whose grave at the church of St Mary Magdalene in Mortlake is in the form of an eighteen-foot-high stone Bedouin tent?”

“Oh shit,” Sands said, angry at himself. “I ought to know that. Damn it. De Quincey?”

“Well, it says here, Sir Richard Burton and his wife Isabel, which seems a bit rum to me, because I thought Richard Burton was buried in Wales and I didn’t know he was ever knighted, and I thought his wife was Elizabeth Taylor, and I suppose that could be a misprint but I didn’t think she was dead. Still, you live and learn.”

Sands shook his head; he was not going to educate Mick about Sir Richard Burton. Mick thumbed through the little book, halted at one page, was about to ask a question, then changed his mind, and kept looking.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Sands demanded. “Are you trying to find an impossibly difficult question to ask me?”

“I can ask you any question I like,” Mick said.

“Yes, well.” Sands hesitated, realizing the truth of what Mick was saying, realizing the absurd weakness of his own position. “Well, anyway,” he added, “just ask me questions that I have some hope of answering.”

“Sure,” said Mick. “Question seventeen: in The Young Ones Cliff Richard is the leader of a youth club in which area of London?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Sands. “I don’t know that. How would anybody know a thing like that?” He took a wild guess and said, “Paddington.”

“Yes!” Mick said, and they both let out a sort of a whoop, prolonged in Mick’s case, instantly stifled in Sands’. Mick moved the toy boat up the river to Tower Bridge.

“Hey,” said Mick, “you’re going to walk this. Three questions left. Get any of them right and you’re there. OK, where in London would you find the death mask of Tom Paine and a lock of his hair?”

“Oh, come on,” Sands said, genuinely angry. “How am I supposed to know something like that?”

“Maybe you’re not,” Mick replied. “The answer is they’re in the National Museum of Labour History, Limehouse Town Hall, £14.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Sands.

“Yeah, doesn’t exactly sound like a white-knuckle ride, does it? But it’s all right, no need to panic, here’s question nineteen: what’s the name of Boadicea’s father?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”

“What’s the matter? You wouldn’t want me to make it too easy for you, would you?”

“This is insane. Why don’t you just say I’ve lost and have done with it?”

“Come on, try. It says here he died and had his estate taken away from him by the Romans and that was why Boadicea revolted. Does that help at all?”

Sands was livid at the difficulty of the question. “This has nothing to do with London,” he insisted. “Boadicea was queen out in the wilds of East Anglia somewhere. She only came to London to burn it down and as for her fucking father—”

“No,” said Mick, “I don’t think you’re going to get it. His name was Prasutagus.”

Sands took a deep, chest-puffing breath. He was frustrated and hugely angry, yet determined to retain some dignity.

“Well, that’s really good to know,” he said.

“So, the moment of truth, the final question,” said Mick. “And I want you to know I’m on your side, Jonathan. I really want you to get this right. OK, question twenty: who wrote those immortal words, ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’?”

“Wordsworth,” said Sands at once with a kind of adolescent glee, and he let out a long sigh of relief.

“Oh, Jonathan, that’s such a shame,” said Mick. “I really thought you were going to do it, but I’m afraid the answer’s Flanders and Swann. They’re talking about London buses.”

“No, no,” Sands screeched. “The original line is from ‘Composed on Westminster Bridge’ by William Wordsworth. The line in Flanders and Swann is a parody, a deliberate reference to the Wordsworth.”

Mick looked at Sands disapprovingly.

“Now come on, old chap, play the game. It’s here in the book in black and white.”

“Then the book’s wrong,” Sands shouted.

“Well, it is called Unreliable London,” Mick said. “But you know this is the book we’re using. This is my authority.”

“Then the book’s a piece of idiocy. A piece of crap. Ask anybody. Wordsworth wrote ‘Earth has not anything to show more fair’. Ask anyone.”

He was sounding desperate to the point of hysteria. Mick slapped him again to calm him down. Then he slapped him again for luck.

“You’ll have noticed,” said Mick, “that until now I’ve been very careful not to tell you what I’d do if you failed to get to the Thames Barrier by the twentieth question…”

“This is a fix,” said Sands. “This isn’t fair. It never was.”

Mick listened carefully to what Sands had to say, then shook his head sadly, as though disappointed that he was being such a bad sport.

He said, “It’s true that the evening really hasn’t turned out as planned. Not for either of us. By rights we should be out on the water by now, somewhere not too far from the Thames Barrier. I really wanted to go there and see it and have a memorable experience. But anyway, it didn’t pan out. You were expecting something different too. But the fact is, what I always intended to do if you got the answers wrong was take this gun,” and he showed Sands his gun, “and I was going to load it with a new magazine…” He loaded it with a new magazine.

“Ask me another question,” Sands shouted. “You nearly gave me a bonus point for whistling Haydn. Come on, be reasonable…”

“And I was going to pull the trigger a few times and empty the magazine, not into you, you’ll be pleased to hear, but into the bottom of your boat.”

“No,” Sands screamed. “This isn’t right. You know that. Ask me another question. A decider. Double or quits. Please.”

“And you know the other thing?” Mick said. “You’re right. This isn’t fair. It was never meant to be fair. It was meant to torture you a little. The truth is, whether we’d got to the Thames Barrier or not, I was still going to empty the gun into the bottom of your boat.”

“No,” Sands cried out.

Mick was as good as his word, and he was a long way from Chelsea Harbour, and Sands’ sinking boat was a terrible, terrible mess, before any of the sluggish security guards arrived to see what the noise was all about.