London Noir

Backgammon by Desmond Barry

Soho

At three o’clock, on Thursday, September 5, I was supposed to be at Soho House on Greek Street to meet with Jon Powell, the film director. Jon was interested in a script I’d written called Rough House about nasty goings-on in Soho in the late ’70s. He’d had a top-ten box office success with his last film, Anxiety — a horror flick with reality TV overtones — so sitting on the tube train from Kilburn down to Piccadilly Circus, I don’t mind admitting that I was well gassed up and a bit nervous because I really wanted it all to go well. The thing is, I had to eat something fast, both to silence the juices gurgling away in my stomach and to deal with the lack of blood sugar making me more nervous and edgy by the second. I was lucky. I still had an hour and a half to kill before the meeting, and the Ristorante Il Pollo, which serves the best lasagne in Soho, was close to the corner of Greek Street where the meeting would take place. The Pollo was definitely going to be my first stop.

I jostled up the packed escalator of the tube station, pushed my way up the stairs, and I was out onto the Dilly — Eros, lights, action. I dodged a couple of taxis and ducked up Great Windmill Street. It could have been a scene from the film script: beautiful girls on the doors of the strip joints, all with flashes of cleavage, coy smiles, or lewd words to tempt me inside. But I wasn’t biting, was I? I had work to do. I turned right onto Brewer Street and then jagged right and left onto Old Compton Street, where I got the eye from the pretty boys sitting at the tables of the cafés and leaning in the doorways of the hip gay boutiques. Everybody wants something in Soho. I wanted lasagne.

I pushed through the glass door into Ristorante Il Pollo and breathed in the rich meat and tomato smells oozing out of the kitchen and the whiff of coffee from the Gaggia machine that roared behind the counter. The Pollo had been selling the same lasagne in steel dishes for at least thirty years and probably longer, and I was really counting on that béchamel and meat sauce and a nice glass of wine to sort me out before the meeting with Jon. The waitress seated me at a little table in the front.

That’s why I didn’t see Magsy at first. Not until after I’d dug my way through the crusty cheese and into the soft green pasta and scraped the brown and crispy bits off the edge of the steel dish. It was a shock to see the old bastard come walking down between the booths from the back of the café. Twenty-six years ago. How did he happen to be in here right at this moment when I hadn’t seen him in twenty-six years? We had a bit of a history, me and Magsy, I got to admit. I pushed the steel dish back and smiled at him, but my shoulder muscles got tight and my knee started bouncing as if somewhere inside me I was all ready to run for it. Like a lot of people who’d gone bald these days, Magsy had shaved his head

But then there was that old Mickey-taking smirk on Magsy’s face when he saw me. He wasn’t a tall bloke, about 5'8
, still five inches taller than me though. He looked well enough off in his cord jacket, checked shirt, and jeans. I’d heard he’d gone to live in Spain after he’d come out of prison. Twenty-two years back that must have been. But he didn’t look at all tanned. He’d been through some real damage, I reckoned: the tiredness around the eyes, the deep wrinkles, the grayness of the skin of a longtime smoker.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

I got up from the table and I even gave him a hug. It was a bit stiff to tell the truth, but he still had that pleased-to-see-me grin on his face when we stepped back.

“I got a meeting,” I said. “Business thing in about...” I jerked my sleeve so the watch showed on my wrist, “ten minutes.”

“What business you in then?”

“I’ll tell you about it later, if you like, if you gonna be around.”

“Half past 4 in Steiner’s,” he said.

“Right,” I said.

Steiner’s, yeah. One of our old haunts.

We came out of the Pollo and into the sunshine on Old Compton Street, walked the few yards to Greek Street in the glare, and then crossed the road to the shady opposite corner.

“You working down here again?” I said.

I hoped he wasn’t.

“Nah, I live in Bridgwater now.”

“Bridgwater?” I said. “What you doing in Soho then?”

“Meeting Richie when he gets off his shift.”

Richie was one of Magsy’s oldest mates, though I didn’t know him that well myself.

“He still work here?” I said.

“Yeah. Manager of about four Harmony shops.”

“Corporate porno.”

“Fully licensed and legit,” Magsy said. “New Labour, son. As long as it makes money, it’s all right. Liberal attitude, innit?”

“Fair play,” I said.

“So I will catch you in Steiner’s?” Magsy asked.

“Yeah, right,” I said.

He just walked off then. I watched him as he headed west. Weird that I ran into him in the Pollo after all those years. It gave me the wobblies a bit. But I checked my watch. I was bang on time for the meeting. I had to get Magsy out of my head for now. I rang the bell on the door of the club and then went up the stairs to meet Jon Powell.

On the roof of Soho House, in the bright sunshine, over a couple of bottles of sparkling mineral water, the meeting went okay. Not great, but okay. It would appear that trying to get a film made is a process that requires a lot of patience. I told Jon that I wasn’t sure how the producers who’d got the soft money for me to write the script planned on coming up with the hard cash to get this thing into production but they did have some serious coproduction interest. That’s filmspeak for a lot of hot air that might one day float a balloon. Jon said that he really liked the script and promised he would pass it on to someone he knew with Pierce Brosnan’s company who might well be interested in the project, and that Jon would do that as soon as he came back from the Toronto Film Festival and a trip to L.A. This was all very positive. But no one had, as yet, signed on the line, or was eating a bacon sandwich on the set of the first shoot. This was either a great way to make a living, or I was chasing a total mirage. Still, I’d been paid for the script and I’d get more money if the film got made, and the sun was shining. It was not a bad way to make a living. I swallowed the last of the mineral water and we went down about five flights of stairs to the street. Mineral water? Christ, I’m losing my identity. I can’t even drink much coffee these days.

I shook hands with Jon and he set off north toward Soho Square while I went west along Old Compton Street toward Steiner’s. I was going to meet Magsy — if he was there. Me and Magsy had been mates together in the mid-’70s and I’d spent long hours back then in his flat, just lying around and listening to music. He’d lived there with his girlfriend, Penelope. I was in their flat in Camden so often that I practically lived there. I did live there when the lease ran out on my own little gaff in Chalk Farm. Then, after I’d crashed there for six months, him and his girlfriend found a place for me in Dalston, “through a mate of Penelope’s,” they said.

So they didn’t have to officially throw me out. We had some times, me and Magsy. Incredible times. Like... just before I was due to move into the new gaff on a hot July afternoon in 1975... me and Magsy decided we’d celebrate my last night in the flat. We bought a 100-gram bag of salt and half a dozen lemons from a corner shop, and three bottles of tequila from the offy on Camden High Street. Then we picked up Penelope from her job at the Royal Free Hospital. She was standing outside the gate with this petite longhaired girl, Angela. We hadn’t expected this at all — we had just planned on going back to the flat and getting blasted on the tequila — but Angela invited us all to dinner at her place on Cornwall Gardens, just off the Gloucester Road. Cornwall Gardens — now that is a class-A address, mate. And it was a bright and lovely summer’s day, and we had the salt and lemons and tequila to donate to the proceedings, so I felt okay. We drove down Haverstock Hill and through the West End and into Kensington in Angela’s car, and Angela said that her boyfriend, Ted, owned the flat that I was just about to move into in Dalston.

Ah, I thought, the flat connection.

So we turned onto Cornwall Gardens. Angela had a permit to park on the street and she opened this big Georgian door for us and took us up in a lift to a lovely three-bedroom flat with all these Persian carpets in the lounge. It was gorgeous. And the balcony overlooked the fenced-in private gardens.

Angela started cooking a vegetarian dinner in the open-plan kitchen. She said she always ate macrobiotic food, but she kept having a break from the kitchen every now and then so she could smoke a cigarette, which didn’t seem somehow kosher to me, her being macrobiotic and that. Ted arrived home about half an hour after she’d begun preparing the dinner. He wasn’t that big, a bit skinny with wire-rimmed glasses and a ponytail. A bit of an old-time hippy. He’d been out doing business, according to Angela. What with the sunshine and the shooters and the fresh taste of the lemons, by this time we’d already finished the first bottle of tequila: at least, me and Magsy had; the girls had been chatting most of the time in the kitchen.

So then we all sat down around a tablecloth that Angela spread over the Persian carpet in the lounge and we polished off the brown rice, pickles, and veggies. I was feeling really healthy after that meal. We slumped back against the giant cushions and started on more shooters of tequila, and Ted brought out this lovely pearl-inlaid backgammon board. We all tried to concentrate on the game. That was when Ted produced a large mirror and laid out five enormous lines of white powder that he said was Colombian cocaine. Ted vacuumed up a line of powder and took the tails off the other lines and handed the rolled-up note to Magsy. Magsy dug into it and then Penelope had a line. I had a sense of relief when Angela said she didn’t want any. It made me feel a little less like a dork when I said, “Thanks, but I’ll stick with the tequila.” I’m not a prude — but I get these terrible asthma attacks if I breath hostile flower pollen, let alone cocaine, and I didn’t want to risk anything at all, given the state I was already in. The black and red and white triangles on the backgammon board already had a glow all their own after we’d finished the second bottle.

So we threw the dice and moved a few counters and then Ted laid out another set of lines of the Colombian coke and I downed another three shots of tequila and I felt a lot less nervous about the heavy drugs the boys on my right kept snorting and we threw the dice some more and we finished the third bottle of tequila and I was feeling all sunny even though it was dark and time to go home and I stood up and my knees didn’t seem to work so good and I thought, well, it’s all right because I’m going to go home now, and I really hadn’t realized just how good I was at backgammon. I thought, I really wouldn’t mind meeting Ted again, even if he is a bit of cokehead. I really wanted to play another game with him.

But you know what? I never did get to go back to that flat... not ever again, did I? I’d been there by chance, really, I suppose. I mean, it was Magsy and his girlfriend who Angela had meant to invite and I’d just happened to be along with Magsy after we bought the tequila. So I had no real business being there, did I?

Just as we were about to leave, Ted grabbed Magsy by the arm, all friendly.

“Hey, Magsy,” he said. “Think you can shift some coke for me?”

Magsy’s face lit right up. A business opportunity... Magsy liked that... and no doubt he really had enjoyed all that marching powder, and Ted liked him so much that, right there and then, he laid a couple of ounces on Magsy and told him to pay it back in a week. Even with all that liquor in me, I knew that this was probably a bad idea, but Magsy was dead thrilled. Fair play, I know for a fact he paid Ted back on the fronted coke two days before the week was up.

Ted, of course, was now my landlord. That made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but after a month or so a lovely woman of thirty-one by the name of Sheri moved in with me and I was glad I had my own gaff. Sheri was a real cockney. I met her when I got a job as a shipping clerk in Mile End. I had to pay the rent somehow. I took her round to see Magsy. He was still my mate, wasn’t he? By now he was doing a brisk trade. What I felt though... when we were around there... was that Magsy seemed a lot happier to see his clients than he did to see us. I thought, well, he’s my mate. I’ll confront him, like.

“What’s going on?” I said. “You know, really going on?”

He knew what I was talking about, when you’re mates, you do; but he just said, “I’m doing fine, son. Doing well. Just the sniffles, like. It’s just like having a cold, really. No bother at all.”

The sniffles? What the...? I wanted to push him on it, but right then Ted walked in. He had this bloke with him called Danny. Danny had a very good haircut, a very expensive suit, a black crewneck cotton pullover, and a camel’shair coat. He was not an old-time hippy at all. He was very definitely an old-time villain — even if he was only about twenty-eight or so. Danny oozed charm.

“Magsy,” he said, “how would you like to make a very sound investment, my son?”

“What’s that?” Magsy replied.

“How would you like to take out a lease on a small pornography outlet on Dean Street? Reckon it might be the perfect front for your proper business.”

Magsy’s proper business was now, very definitely, hardcore narcotics.

“Yeah,” Magsy said, big smile on his face. “I could get into that — a finger in every pie, innit? Sex and drugs and rock and roll.”

I laughed along with him. He was charmed. I was charmed. But I still didn’t know if this investment was a good idea at all. I didn’t know the financial details, of course. But who was I to know, anyway? At that time I had a shit job in a shipping office on the Mile End Road while Magsy was about to move up to the West End with all the villains. And he did. After he opened up the porn shop, I used to go up to Soho every Friday night to have a drink with him after work.

To tell the truth, I enjoyed meeting all those strippers and hookers and pimps and hustlers — who all seemed to be his mates — especially after I’d just spent the previous five days filing bills of lading. I felt like I was a very well-connected desperado... Well, not exactly... just a sort of desperado by proxy, really, wasn’t I? Magsy moved with the big fish like Ted and Danny, and, more and more often, the time came when we were out for a drink and he’d say, “Sorry, Dex, I got to push off. There’s a party at Ted’s flat.”

I used to go home to Sheri then.

“He’s leaving you behind, love,” Sheri would say. “He don’t give a damn about you, does he?”

“No, he’s just busy with all that business,” I’d respond. “Ted probably don’t want him bringing his mates around there, does he? Got to keep a low profile and that.”

But it hurt, I tell you that.

I still met Magsy every now and then for a drink. I still liked it when he’d spin all those yarns about all the gangster stuff.

So this one Friday night we were on the cognac in Steiner’s and Magsy said, “Hey, Dex, remember that flat on Gloucester Road?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Me and Penny are moving in next week.”

“Get away,” I said.

“Ted got tipped off, didn’t he? The Old Bill are looking for a major bust, so him and Angela got to leave the country in a hurry. He asked me and Penelope to house-sit for him.”

“Ace,” I said.

The weird thing was... Magsy never — ever — invited me round to the flat in Cornwall Gardens... not once.

“Why d’you keep meeting up with that bastard?” Sheri said. Meaning Magsy.

“Well, a mate’s a mate, innit?” I said. “He’ll come round...”

But I didn’t see him for about three months after he moved into Cornwall Gardens. Then I met him on Old Compton Street one weekend.

“What happened to you?” I said.

Magsy’s face was swollen on both sides. And the skin was all swirls of green and yellow and purple.

“Let’s have a drink,” he said.

He had his jaw wired shut so he spoke through clenched teeth. We went into Steiner’s.

“Ted sent me this blotter acid from the States,” Magsy sort of hissed and gurgled. I think he was all coked up so he kept on talking. “Mr. Natural tabs. Pure acid. One drawing of Mr. Natural perforated into four parts. Ted fronted it all, didn’t he? Told me to sell it on for a pound a go and he’d collect when he came home. A few months later, Ted did come home — very sudden. And when he came home, he came to collect. Fair enough, I thought. But he went berserk. Claimed I was giving him only a quarter of the money I was supposed to. I said that he told me to sell the Mr. Naturals for a quid apiece. Ted said I should have sold them for a quid per perforated square.”

I wondered if Magsy was bullshitting me. How much was this a genuine misunderstanding with Ted and how much of the money might have gone up his nose?

“So he did you over?” I said. I found that hard to believe. Ted didn’t look that hard.

“Not just Ted. His family and all...”

“Ah,” I said.

“They’re all old-time villains — just like Danny. So I had to leave the flat, didn’t I? Under some duress... with the aid of all of Ted’s brothers and father and uncles and Danny, who, when they were finished with the duress, like, threw me down the stairs, didn’t they?”

He hissed a bit as he laughed. I was glad he could laugh about it.

“How’s Penny?” I asked.

“They didn’t touch her. She’s with some mates of hers out near Epping.”

“Where you staying?” I asked.

“Sleeping on the floor of the shop.”

“Come back to my flat.”

I thought, well, those bastards have done him over, maybe he’ll drop all the gangster crap and get back to normal. He shook his head.

“Nah, gotta stay in Soho,” he said.

We arranged to meet the following Sunday at Steiner’s, and in those few days the swelling on his face had gone down a bit, though the bruises had started to take on some very spectacular greens and blues. I got us in a couple of pints of Stella Artois.

“I gotta meet someone here,” he said.

Ah shit, I thought.

This curly-haired bloke with a squashed nose and a lot of gold chains came through the door. He went down to the gents and Magsy followed him. Then they came back out and Curly left.

“Got to pay off the debts to Ted,” Magsy said. “Had to borrow some money.”

Ah no, I thought.

Magsy was practically bouncing all of a sudden — his fingers drumming on the bar, the shift of his shoulders. And he was probably low on coke, which gave him a sort of added drive. Magsy necked his lager in three large swallows.

“Sorry, Dex,” he said to me. “Gotta score. Adios, amigo.”

So off went Magsy to buy a load of coke and I went home to Sheri.

And, truth to tell, that was the last I saw of Magsy. Not that I didn’t think about him. The police must have been watching him for ages and they decided to pay a visit to his Dean Street porno shop very early the next morning. They found about an ounce of coke and a weight of grass. Magsy got four years in Brixton. I never went near him in there.

Twenty-six years later and I bump into him at Ristorante Il Pollo in the heart of Soho and we were going to meet in Steiner’s, the last place we’d seen each other before he went down. I took a breath and pushed through the door into the saloon bar. There was Magsy, standing at the bar with Richie Stiles, an old mate of his, who was as tall as ever but plump now, with a receding hairline and fuller cheeks. He was in an Armani suit though.

“Dexie!” Magsy said. “Good to see you, son.”

He and Richie were already three sheets to the wind on the shots of tequila and Corona beers that were lined up on the bar. I couldn’t resist it. Blame it on old time’s sake, or maybe because I was a bit nervous, but I had a lick of salt, a shot of tequila, bit on the lemon, and then soothed the burn in my throat with a cool slug of the Corona.

“Richie!” I said. “Corporate bigwig now, son.”

“Still a party,” Richie said. “But government-licensed now, innit? Make more money being legit these days. No police raids or nothing.”

“So what are you doing with yourself?” Magsy said.

If I said I was a writer, it would have had this stink of me being a bit of a braggart — which I am, really.

“I’m a writer.”

“A writer?” Magsy said. “You make money at that?”

“I got to hustle to make a living,” I said. “But it’s okay. Better than any other job I’ve had... and I’ve had a lot since working in the shipping trade: laboring on building sites, bookkeeping, library assistant, then I decided to get a real life.”

I could see that I’d stung him a bit with that. I hadn’t meant to. What was he doing? Bookies’ clerk? On the dole? I knew he wasn’t dealing.

“God, how long has it been since I seen you?” Magsy said.

I was sure he knew well enough.

“Twenty-six years,” I said.

I was buzzed but not drunk.

“Yeah... right... since just before the trial,” he said.

I nodded. “Yeah, right.”

What he meant was: You didn’t come to see me in prison, you gutless shit.

And I didn’t, it was true, because when Magsy was sent down — call it total paranoia if you like — I was thoroughly convinced that if I had gone to see Magsy, I would be on a police list of known consorters with convicted drug traffickers and that within a very short time I would receive a similar dawn visit from the police just as Magsy had. And if the police needed to make up their arrest rate and decided that a consorter with known traffickers was worth fitting up, then I would be on the inside with him — with a criminal record and fighting off anal rapists. I just couldn’t face even the remotest possibility of it.

Now he wanted me to feel guilty for it, which he had definitely succeeded in doing, and that made me really mad

What he was doing, you see — what he was really doing — was trying to return me to that position I’d been in back then: him as Jack the Lad and me as the shipping-firm employee dogsbody. Knock me back to square one. He’d always thought of me as a bit of a wimp for not having the balls to do what he’d done: ducking and diving right into the thick of the coke dealing and the porn business. But he’d had his life and I’d had mine, and I wasn’t sorry at all with the way mine had gone. I wasn’t any shipping clerk anymore, was I? And what was he? What was he? Tell me that.

And then it dawned on me... a slow creeping-up kind of dawn. I’d never forgiven him for treating me the way he did when he was all coked up with the Soho dope dealers and porn traders, had I? He’d been in the middle of the trade, and I was just a nobody, and our being mates hadn’t counted for a thing in his eyes back then. And all that shame and rage I felt over being dissed by Magsy, of being dissed by someone I thought was a mate, and, yes... all right... the guilt of my not visiting him in prison... it was that which had driven me to use the story of Magsy’s rise and fall in Soho for the script of Rough House. I hoped he’d like what he’d see when his life story would be all up there on the big screen in glorious Technicolor. If we got the money it would be me who put him there. Magsy on the big screen. Now who was the hot shot? What was he doing — in Bridgwater of all places — while I was on the roof of Soho House drinking expensive gassy water? Well, I thought. Well, the truth is... really, the truth is... it really didn’t matter what he was doing — or what I was doing — because we were both here in Steiner’s breathing the same air and drinking the same tequila, and sucking the same fucking lemons, and nothing was ever going to put the clock back to the time before he went to prison, before his trial, before the cops, before the loan shark, before the coke, before Ted, and before that fucking game of backgammon in Cornwall Gardens. And the truth is... the truth is... I was sorry. I really fucking was.

Loaded by Ken Bruen

Brixton

Blame the Irish.

I always do.

The fuckers don’t care, they’re used to it, all that Catholic guilt they inherit, blame is like, habitual. Too, all that rain they get? Makes them amenable to bad shit. I’ve known my share of micks — you grow up in Brixton, they’re part of the landscape. Not necessarily a good part but they have their spot. Worked with a few when I was starting out, getting my act together. I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew, so sure, I had them in my early crew.

Give them one thing, they’re fearless, will go that extra reckless yard, laugh on the trip, and true, they’ve got your back, won’t let you get ambushed. But it’s after, at the pub, they get stuck in it, and hell, they get to talking, talking loose. Near got my collar felt cos of that. So I don’t use them anymore. One guy, named, of course, Paddy, said to me: “Not that long ago, the B’n’Bs... they had signs proclaiming, No coloreds, no dogs, no Irish.”

He was smiling when he told me and that’s when you most got to worry, the fucks are smiling, you’re in for the high jump. Paddy got eight years over a botched post office gig, he’d torn off his mask halfway through the deal, as it itched. I’d driven to The Scrubs, see if he needed anything, and he shook his head, said, “Don’t visit anymore.”

I was a little miffed and he explained, “Nothing personal but you’re a Brit.”

Like that made any sense, he was in a Brit nick. Logic and the Irish never jell, but he must have clocked my confusion, added, “In here, I’m with my countrymen. They see a Brit visiting, I’m fucked.”

Let him stew.

Life was shaping up nice for me. Took some time but I’d put it together real slow. Doing some merchandise, a little meth, some heroin, and, of course, the coke. Didn’t handle any of the shit my own self, had it all through channels, lots of dumb bastards out there will take the weight. I arranged the supply, got it to the public, and stayed real anonymous, had me a share in a pub, karaoke four nights a week, the slots, and on Sunday, a tasty afternoon of lap dancing. The cops got their share and everyone was, if not happy, reasonably prosperous. None of us getting rich but it paid for a few extras. Bought into a car park and, no kidding, serious change in that.

Best of all, I’d a fine gaff on Electric Avenue, owned the lease, and from outside, looked like a squat, which keeps the burglars away. Inside, got me Heal’s furniture, clean and open-plan living room, lots of wicker furniture. I like it, real laid-back vibe. No woman, I like my freedom. Sure, on a Friday night I pick up some fox, bring her back, but she’s out of there by 3 in the morning. I don’t need no permanent company. Move some babe in and that’s the end of my hard-bought independence.

Under the floorboards is my stash: coke, fifteen large, and a Glock. The baseball bat I keep by my bed.

Then I met Kelly.

I’d been to The Fridge to see a very bad hip hop outfit who were supposed to be the next big thing. Jeez, they were atrocious, no one told them the whole gangsta scene was, like... dead. I went down to the pub after, needed to get the taste out of my mouth. I ordered a pint of bitter and heard, “To match your mood.”

A woman in her late twenties, dressed in late Goth style, lots of black makeup, clothes, attitude. I’ve nothing against them, they’re harmless, and if they think the Cure are still relevant, well, it takes all kinds... better than listening to Dido. Her face wasn’t pretty, not even close, but it had an energy, a vitality that made it noticeable. I gave her my best London look with lots of Brixton overshadow, the look that says, Fuck off... now.

She felt an explanation was due, said, “Bitter, for the bitterness in your face.”

I did the American bit, asked, “I know you?”

She laughed, said, “Not yet.”

I grabbed my pint, moved away. She was surrounded by other Goths but she was the center, the flame they danced around. I’d noticed her eyes had an odd green fleck, made you want to stare at them. I shook myself, muttered, “Cop on.”

On my second pint, I chanced a glance at her and she was looking right at me, winked. I was enraged, the fuck was that about? Had a JD for the road — I’m not a big drinker, that shit becomes a habit and I’ve plans, being a booze hound isn’t among them. Knocked it back and headed for the door, she caught up with me, asked, “Buy me a kebab?”

Now I could hear the Irish lilt, almost like she was singing the words. I stopped, asked, “What the hell is the matter with you?”

She was smiling, went, “I’m hungry and I don’t want to eat alone.”

I indicated the pub. “What about your fan club, won’t they eat with you?”

She almost sneered. It curled her lip and I’d a compulsion to kiss her, a roaring in my head, What is happening to me?

“Adoration is so, like, tiresome, you fink?”

The little bit of London — fink — to what? To make me comfortable? “I wouldn’t know, it’s not a concept I’m familiar with.”

She laughed out loud, and her laugh made you want to join in. She said, “Oh don’t we talk posh, what’s a concept then? Is it like a condom?”

I’m still not sure why, but I decided to buy her the bloody kebab — to get rid of her, to see what more outrageous banter she’d produce? She suggested we eat them in the park and I asked, “Are you out of your mind? It’s a war zone.”

She blew that off with: “I’ll mind you.”

The way she said it, as if she meant it, as if... fuck, I dunno, as if she was looking for someone to mind. So I said my place was round the corner and she chirped, “Whoo... fast worker. My mammie warned me about men like you.”

I’d just taken a bite of the kebab, it was about what you’d expect, tasteless with a hint of acid. I had to ask. “What kind of man is that, a stranger?”

She flung her kebab into the air. “No, English.” Then she watched the kebab splatter on the road, sang, “Feed the birds.”

Bringing her back to my place, the first mistake — and if it were the only one, well, even now, I don’t know what was going on with me, like I was mesmerized.

She looked round at my flat, and yeah, I was pretty damn proud, it looked good.

“Who lives here, some control freak, an anal retentive?”

Man, I was pissed, tried: “You have some problem with tidiness, with a place being clean?”

Fuck, you get defensive, you’ve already lost.

She was delighted, moved to me, got her tongue way down my throat, and in jig time we were going at it like demented things. Passion is not something I’ve had huge experience with — sure, I mean, I get my share, but never like that.

Later, lying on the floor, me grabbing for air, she asked, “What do you want?”

She was smoking. I didn’t think it was the time to mention my place was smoke-free, so I let it slide, not easily, bit down. I leaned on one elbow, said, “I think I just had what I want.”

She flicked the butt in the direction of the sink; I had to deliberately avert my eyes, not thinking where it landed. She said, “Sex, sex is no big deal. I mean in life, the... what do they call it... the bigger picture?”

I wanted to be comfortable, not go to jail, keep things focused. I said, “Nice set of wheels, have my eye on—”

She cut me off, went: “Bollocks, fecking cars, what is it with guys and motors? Is it like some phallic symbol? Got me a mean engine.”

Her tone, dripping with bile. Before I could get my mouth going, she continued, “I want to be loaded, serious wedge, you know what I’m saying?”

I nearly let slip about my stash, held back and asked, “So, you get loaded, then what?”

She was pulling on her clothes, looked at me like I was dense. “Then it’s fuck you, world.”

She was heading for the door, I asked, “You’re leaving?”

That’s what I always wanted, get them out as soon as possible. Now, though...

Her hand was on her hip and she raised an eyebrow. “What, you think you’re up for another round? I think you shot your load, need a week to get you hot again, or am I wrong?”

That stung, I’d never had complaints before, should have told her to bang the door behind her, near whimpered, “Will I see you?”

Her smile, smirk in neon, said, “I’ll call you.”

And was gone.

She didn’t... call.

I went back to the pub, no sign of her. Okay, I went back a few times, asked the barman. I knew him a long time, we had, as they say, history, not all of it bad. He was surprised, said, “The Irish babe, yeah?”

I nodded miserably, hated to reveal a need, especially to a frigging barman, cos they talk to you, you can be sure they talk to others, and I didn’t want the word out that I was, like... bloody needy, or worse, vulnerable. That story goes out, you are dead, the predators coming out of the flaming woodwork. He stared at me. “Matt, you surprise me, hadn’t figured you for a wally.”

Bad, real fucking bad.

I should have slapped him on the side of the head, get the status established, but I wanted the information. I got some edge into my voice, snapped, “What’s that mean?”

He was doing bar stuff, taking his own sweet time, stashing glasses, polishing the counter, and I suppressed my impatience. Finally he straightened, touched his nose, said, “Word to the wise, mate, stay clear, she hangs with that black guy, Neville, you don’t want to mess with that dude.”

Neville, story was he offed some dealer, did major trade in crystal, and was serious bad news. I moved to leave, said: “I knew that.”

He didn’t scoff but it was in the neighborhood. “Yeah, right.”

Fuck fuck fuck.

The bitch, playing with me, I resolved to put her out of my head, get on with my business. Plus, I had to get a new carpet, the cigarette had burned a hole right where you’d notice.

A week later, I was in the pub where we had the karaoke nights, nice little earner, punters get a few on, they want to sing, did brisk sales those nights. I was at the back, discussing some plans with the manager, when I heard a voice go, “I’d like to sing ‘Howling at Midnight.’”

It was her, Kelly, with the Lucinda Williams song, one of my favorites, she no doubt saw the CD in my gaff. I looked quickly round, no sign of Neville, the pub hushed as she launched. Her voice was startling, pure, innocent, and yet, had a hint of danger that made you pay attention. When she finished, the applause was deafening. The manager, his mouth open, whispered, “Christ, she’s good.”

Then she hopped off the stage, headed in my direction, small smile in place. I resolved to stay cool but to my horror whined, “You never called.”

Even the manager gave me an odd look.

“What happened to hello, how have you been?” she asked.

I moved her away, touching her arm lightly, and just that small gesture had me panting. She said: “Yes, thank you, I would like a drink.”

I ordered two large vodkas, no ice, and tonics. She took the glass. “I’d have liked a Bushmills, but shit, I just can’t resist the alpha male.”

The touch of mockery, her eyes shining, that fleck of green dancing in there. I was dizzy, decided to get it out in the open, asked, “What do you want?”

She licked the rim of the glass, said, “I want you inside me, now.”

Never finished my drink, never got to mention the black guy either. We were in my place, me tearing off my shirt, her standing, the smile on her lips, I heard: “White dude is hung.”

She’d left the door ajar. Neville standing there, a car iron held loosely in his hand. I looked at her, she shrugged, moved to my left. Neville sauntered over, almost lazily took a swipe at my knee. I was on the floor.

“Cat goes down easy.”

Kelly came over, licked his ear. “Let’s get the stuff, get the fuck out of here.”

He wanted to play, I could see it in his eyes. He drawled, “How about it, Leroy, you want to give us that famous stash you got, or you wanna go tough, make me beat the fucking crap outta you? Either is, like, cool with me. Yo, babe, this mother got any, like, beverages?”

I said I’d get the stash, and he laughed.

“Well get to it, bro, shit ain’t come les you go get it.”

I crawled along the carpet, pulled it back, plied the floorboard loose, Kelly was shouting, “Nev, you want Heineken or Becks?”

I shot him in the balls, let him bleed out. Kelly had two bottles in her hands, let them slide to the floor, I said, “You’re fucking up my carpet again, what’s with you?”

I shot her in the gut, they say it’s the most agonizing, she certainly seemed to prove that. I bent down, whispered, “Loaded enough for you, or you want some more? I got plenty left.”

Getting my shirt tucked into my pants, I made sure it was neat, hate when it’s not straight, ruins the sit of the material. I looked round, complained: “Now I’m going to have to redo the whole room.”

Rigor mortis by Stewart Home

Ladbroke Grove

I’ve been in the Mets all my adult life and I’ve spent most of that time pounding the mean streets of West London. After the war the area around Ladbroke Grove was known as the Dustbowl. This was where smart property developers came to make their mint. Back in the ’50s and ’60s, during those thirteen glorious years of Tory rule, anyone who wanted to could make a bomb from the slums. Houses changed hands over and over again, with their values being inflated on each sale. Before the introduction of ridiculously strict controls on building societies at the start of the ’60s, it was common for property speculators to off-load houses to both tenants and other parties with one hundred percent mortgages which the seller had prearranged. Despite the prices paid under such arrangements being above market value, ownership still proved cheaper than renting. Unfortunately, it was all too common for the new owners to take in lodgers to cover the costs of their mortgage, rather than working to earn their crust like a free-born Saxon. The resultant overcrowding bred crime and this law-breaking stretched police resources to the limit.

The investigation I’ve just completed took me back nearly twenty years to the early ’60s. I knew Jilly O’Sullivan was dead before I arrived at 104 Cambridge Gardens, and in many ways I considered it a miracle she’d succeeded in reaching the age of thirty-five. I’d first come across Jilly in 1962 when she was a naïve young teenager and I was a fresh-faced police constable. I’m still a PC because rather than striving to rise through the ranks, I long ago opted to take horizontal promotion by becoming a coroner’s officer. This job brings with it substantial unofficial perks, and I’m not the only cop who’s avoided vertical advancement since that makes you more visible and therefore less able to accept the backhanders you deserve.

Returning to O’Sullivan, when she arrived in Notting Hill she rented an upstairs flat on Bassett Road for five years before moving to nearby Elgin Crescent in 1966. The bed in which Jilly died was but a few minutes walk from her Notting Hill homes of the ’60s. I’d first called on her at Bassett Road after the force was informed that one of her brothers was hiding out there. My colleagues and I knew parts of the O’Sullivan clan like the backs of our own hands. The family was involved in both burglary and protection. Jilly and her brother had grown up in Greenock, but headed for the Smoke as teenagers. Jilly was doing well back in the early ’60s, making good money in a high-class Soho clip joint, and at that time she even had a pimp with a plumy accent and public school education. Jilly’s brother was eventually nicked alongside a couple of his cousins while they were doing over a jeweler’s shop and that’s how I learned he’d actually been hiding out with his gangster uncle in Victoria. After he’d served his time in a civil prison for burglary, Jilly’s brother was sent to a military jail for being absent without leave from the army. By the mid-’60s, when her brother was finally let out of the nick, Jilly was the black sheep of the family. It wasn’t prostitution but an involvement with beatniks, hippies, and drugs that alienated O’Sullivan from her kith and kin.

If Jilly had been smart she’d have married one of her rich johns and faded into quiet respectability. She worked with a number of girls who had the good sense to do just that. Jilly was a good looker, or rather she’d been a good looker back in the day — anyone seeing her corpse would think she was in her late forties. That said, right up to her death O’Sullivan’s eyes remained as blue as a five-pound note. When Jilly was a teenager, these baby blues had men falling all over her petite and innocent-seeming self. O’Sullivan’s eyes looked like pools of water that were deep enough to drown in, and naturally enough, she made sure her carefully applied makeup accentuated this effect. O’Sullivan lost her looks through hard living, and since I knew the story of her life, I didn’t need to take many details about her from the woman who’d found the body.

I didn’t even bother to ask Marianne May how she’d got into Jilly’s flat; I’d already heard from Garrett that he’d left the door to the basement bedsit open after finding O’Sullivan dead in bed and making a hasty exit. Being a dealer and a pimp, Garrett considered it wiser to disappear than inform the authorities of his girlfriend’s death. Even if he wasn’t fitted up for his Jilly’s murder, Garrett figured he’d get busted for something else if he stuck around. After I’d got the call to go to the back basement flat at 104 Cambridge Gardens to investigate a death, I’d headed first for Observatory Gardens, where I found Garrett nodding out with Scotch Alex. Garrett lived with Jilly, and since only one death had been reported, I’d figured that either one or both of them would be in “hiding” at Observatory Gardens. Before I got to Scotch Alex’s pad I hadn’t known who’d died, and I’d entertained the possibility it might have been one of their heroin buddies.

Garrett told me what he knew, which wasn’t that much. He’d gone home after cutting some drug deals and found Jilly dead in bed, so he’d left again immediately. Garrett was inclined to think O’Sullivan had accidentally overdosed, although he considered it possible she’d been murdered by some gangsters, who’d threatened to kill her after she ripped them off during the course of a drug deal. I told Garrett not to worry about a court appearance, since I wasn’t about to drag him into my investigation if he was cooperative. He got the idea and handed me a wad of notes, which he pulled from his right trouser pocket. I patted down the left pocket of Garrett’s jeans and he realized his game was at least partially up. He removed another wad of notes from the second pocket and gave them to me. After I’d prodded his abdomen he stood up and took more bills from a money belt that was tied around his waist. I then made Garrett take his shoes and socks off, but he didn’t have any cash secreted down there.

Satisfied with my takings, I told O’Sullivan’s pimp that in my report I’d state that Jilly was living alone at the time of her death. I didn’t tell him that I’d have done this even if I hadn’t succeeded in shaking him down, since recording that O’Sullivan lived with a heroin dealer would make matters unnecessarily complicated for me. Although Garrett was scum he wasn’t stupid, so I didn’t need to tell him it would be a good idea if he found a new place to live. Likewise, I had absolute faith in his ability to find some fool to rip-off in order to provide PC Lever with his cut from the drug money I’d purloined and cover various other debts he simply couldn’t avoid meeting if he wished to remain alive and in reasonable health. While I was in Observatory Gardens I also took the opportunity to touch Garrett’s junkie host and co-dealer, Scotch Alex, for a few quid.

Marianne May, the woman who’d called the authorities to report Jilly’s death, was middle-class and respectable. What Marianne had in common with Jilly were some bizarre New Age religious interests. Aside from this she was the ideal person to have found the body since she created the impression that O’Sullivan’s friends at the time of her death were middle-class professionals. In all likelihood, prior to Marianne’s arrival, a stream of junkies had called at the flat hoping to score, and having found the door open and Jilly dead in bed, departed without telling the authorities there was a corpse stinking up the bedsit. Garrett wouldn’t have left his drug stash in the pad, and there probably wasn’t anything else worth stealing. If there had been it would have disappeared long before my arrival.

There wasn’t much I needed to ask May, but for the sake of appearance I had to make it look like I was doing my job properly. I told her to wait upstairs with Jilly’s neighbors while I made some further investigations. I was able to go through the flat and remove used needles and various other signs of drug use before the medics arrived. I then examined Jilly’s body. As you’d expect it was cold to touch. O’Sullivan was lying on her side, naked on the bed.

After the corpse had been loaded into an ambulance I went upstairs and told May she could go home, saying I’d contact her if there was anything further I needed to ask. I had no intention of troubling Marianne again, but since she was a middle-class professional, I had to make it look like I was doing everything by the book. May had fine manners and excellent verbal skills, so there was an outside chance that if she was moved to make a complaint about my investigation, what she had to say would be taken seriously.

Because Jilly certainly had traces of heroin in her body, it was important I arranged things so that any need for toxicological analysis was avoided. That said, since I knew O’Sullivan was an intravenous drug user, there was nothing to worry about in terms of a purely visual inspection of the body. Indeed, even in instances of suicide brought about by the ingestion of pills, evidence of a drug overdose is only visually detectable in fifty percent of such cases. Likewise, there is necessarily a good deal of mutual understanding between all those involved in the investigation of a death, one which is sometimes greased by the circulation of used fivers. I have many good reasons to request a particular result from a pathologist, and the croaks I work alongside know this without my having to spell it out. Aside from anything else, I don’t have time to properly investigate the circumstances surrounding every death that occurs on my beat. It would waste a considerable amount of taxpayers’ money and my time if the circumstances in which every miserable junkie overdosed were fully investigated. Every pathologist understands, regardless of whether or not a fistful of fivers are being pressed into their greasy palms, that the police know what’s for the best.

Given that I wished to avoid an inquest into Jilly O’Sullivan’s death, it wasn’t much to ask of medical science that it should back up my false contention that she’d died from natural causes. Something will invariably be found in the lungs after death, so bronchopneumonia would provide a suitable explanation of Jilly’s passing, as it had in so many other instances where I found it imperative to avoid a full-scale investigation. Death, of course, is always the result of the failure of one of the major organs, and according to the legal rule book, what matters is the chain of events leading up to such a failure. In practice, the letter of the law can be safely ignored in favor of its spirit. Only the elderly and homeless die from bronchopneumonia in truly unsuspicious circumstances. Bronchopneumonia is often brought on by a drug overdose, but my colleagues and I will nonetheless routinely treat it as a natural cause of death in a young addict. We see no point in arriving at an accurate conclusion that will only upset and confuse the family of some wastrel who didn’t deserve the loving home she grew up in. Grieving is a difficult process and I’ve done countless decent parents a huge favor by making it possible for them to avoid facing up to the fact that their child was a good-for-nothing junkie degenerate.

To shift the focus once again to the particular, there wasn’t much in O’Sullivan’s basement flat. Jilly and her pimp Garrett had only lived there for a few weeks. They’d occupied an equally spartan Bayswater bedsit over the autumn. Junkies mainly use possessions as a form of collateral, they rarely hang onto stuff, personal items tend to be stolen and sold as required. However, Jilly’s diary was in the flat and the final entry was dedicated to Garrett:

I knew this nonsense was merely one of many pieces of proof that Jilly’s drug use had been ongoing. That meant jack shit to me because my considered professional opinion was that O’Sullivan’s death was entirely unsuspicious and solely due to natural causes. Any police officer worth his or her salt knows that to lie effectively one must stick reasonably closely to the truth. Therefore, in my official report I wouldn’t gloss over the fact that Jilly had been a long-term drug addict. Aside from anything else, the pathologist couldn’t ignore the track marks on her arms. All I needed to do was claim that her addiction was well in the past.

After acquiring some cash from Jilly’s landlord in return for overlooking the fact that drug dealing was taking place in his gaff, I phoned my chum Paul Lever to acquire suitable evidence to back up the fictional content of the report I was in the process of compiling. PC Lever had a thick file on Jilly and this included several of the fraudulent job applications he’d directed her to make. Back in the mid-’70s Paul had wanted to know exactly what was going on in various local drug charities, so he’d sent Jilly into them as a spy. He provided me with a copy of a successful application she’d made for a job as a social worker at the Westbourne Project. In this Jilly claimed to have a degree and postgraduate qualifications in philosophy from UCL, despite the fact that she’d left school at sixteen and had never attended a university. Something else that made the document Lever handed me fraudulent was Jilly’s claim that although she’d been a smack addict, she’d cleaned up in 1972. While I knew this was untrue, it placed her long-term drug addiction seven years in the past, which was good enough for my purposes.

Since the general public is blissfully ignorant of the problems police officers face, people are often surprised to learn of my working methods, should I choose to speak openly about them. What needs to be stressed in relation to this is that since it is impossible for the police to completely suppress the West London drug scene, the next best thing for us to do is control it. Only dealers we approve of are allowed to carry on their business, and cuts from their profits serve to top up our inadequate pay. Likewise, Paul Lever and various other police officers, including me, had been getting our jollies with Jilly during the early ’70s.

Lever had the evidence, both real and fabricated, to get O’Sullivan banged up for a very long time. To avoid jail, Jilly had made a deal with him. O’Sullivan had to sell drugs on Paul’s behalf and provide him with information about anyone who set themselves up as a dealer without his approval. She also agreed to see us once a week at the police station where we had a regular line-up with her. Jilly wasn’t the only junkie Paul had providing us with sexual favors, all of which might give the impression he’s a hard man. Certainly this is the appearance he cultivates, but actually he’s somewhat sensitive about his macho self-image. Back in 1972, Jilly had the singular misfortune to be around just after a colleague made a crack about Lever always taking last place in our gang-bangs.

Paul, like any virile male, enjoys slapping whores around while he’s screwing them, and on this particular occasion he was determined to prove through sheer ultra-violence that he didn’t harbor any unnatural sexual desires. As I gave Jilly a poke, Lever grabbed her right arm and broke it over his knee. O’Sullivan was in agony, but Paul took great pleasure in amusing himself by making the bitch indulge him with an extended sex session before allowing her to go to the hospital. On the surface this might sound somewhat sick, but Paul is basically a good bloke, and he genuinely believes that being a bit psycho is the most rational way to deal with whores and crims. After all, the only thing these reprobates respect and understand is brute force. Indeed, what other way is there to deal with someone like O’Sullivan? In the early ’60s she had offers of marriage from more than one of her upper-class johns, but she turned them down and became a junkie instead.

It was Jilly’s decision to live the low-life and what she got from us was no more than she had coming for choosing to subsist, as her extended Irish family have done since before the days of Cromwell, beyond the pale. Jilly wasn’t just a junkie and a prostitute, she was also a pickpocket, a thief, and she engaged in checkbook and other frauds. Any reasonable person will agree that without laws and police officers prepared to carry out a dirty job vigilantly, society would collapse into pure jungle savagery. That said, there are still too many do-gooders who love besmirching the name of the Metropolitan Police, and an inquest into Jilly’s life and death would in all likelihood bring to light the type of facts that fuel the enmity these bleeding hearts feel toward us.

Police officers like me deserve whatever perks we can pick up, providing this doesn’t impinge upon the rights of law-abiding citizens. Bending the rules goes with the territory of upholding the law; if I stuck to official procedures my hands would be tied with red tape. Punks and whores really don’t count as far as I’m concerned, nor do the pinkos who bleat on about police oppression. In a sane society criminals wouldn’t have rights, and the police wouldn’t have to break the law to protect decent folk.

Maida Hell by Barry Adamson

Maida Hill

Above the sound of sirens, my view is as always: stark, sullen, and eldritch. I’m prone to believe that it’s a vile and disgusting world below.

Where I stand, the Harrow Road Police Station is to my right, and Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church is to my left.

Crime and redemption carved into each set of knuckles.

I catch myself on the turnaround — reflected in stained glass. I am at once as black as night and yet somehow as white as a sheet.

Moiety me!

I hang my head and lean on a knee that sways gently. The smell of tumble dryers and fried food pique my hunger for something more than the reminders of a not so comfortable existence.

Beneath me: the Harrow Road. This is the main artery that divides (at this juncture) Notting Hill and Maida Vale into an area uncommonly known as Maida Hill.

More commonly known as Maida Hell.

If it were a pen it would be broken. The scribe’s grasp sullied by an unthinkable, irremovable liquid; marking him forever as the guilty one.

If it were a book it would be stolen. Pushed into a dark alley; fingers around its throat; gasping and bleating for its very existence to be ratified before being hauled over the coals and the very life beaten out of it.

Sucked in.

Chewed up.

Spat out.

Stepped on.

MAIDA HELL.

I spy with my little eye; the red, white, and blue blood vessels that jam their way through this darkened gray conduit we’ll refer to as the “Harrowing Road.” The number 18 bus domineeringly crawls the entire length of it like a fat, hideous tapeworm; its red and shining sixty-foot body bulging with sweating parasites. This Dipylidium caninum heads as far west as one can imagine, taking in “Murder Mile” Harlesden, where you could very well be “starin’ down de barrel of a ’matic,” as though you were merely being greeted by an old friend. Then forever you’ll sit on your backside next to some undesirable with few manners, as the nauseating carrier snakes its way through Wem-ber-ley and finally sets in Sudbury. Which is as far west as one can imagine.

Or: it heads northeast, over Ballard’s Concrete Island; ceremoniously known as the Paddington Basin (which, in my opinion, is as good a place as any to let go of the contents of a now infested stomach!). Scolex features, then slithers up the Marylebone Road, and finally breaks itself down by Euston Railway Station to complete its lifecycle and let everybody get the hell out to the rest of the country. Which is precisely what I intend to do when all this is over.

Not a hundred yards from where I stoop, the Great Western Road jumps over the lazy Harrow Road and becomes Elgin Avenue. This is also the sector where Fernhead Road comes to an end, along with Walterton Road, creating a psychic wasteland of sorts. This circumambience consists to my mind of five corners. (Traditionally four. Nineteenth-century ordinance survey maps will forever testify that Walterton and Fernhead came much later. However, bananas to all that.) These five corners shall become evinced and bring into our very consciousness the indurate domain of:

THE SPACE BETWEEN.

I’ll take you there.

On one corner: the bank.

Always full and with few tellers, most of who are off shopping in Somerfield and grabbing all the reduced-priced stock before it goes out of date later that day. Outside of the bank, they’ll flirt with the locals they looked down upon not a moment earlier. (Don’t kiss her, she’s a teller!) Then stroll lazily back to the jam-packed treasury, where one guy is now screaming the place down.

“YOU KNOW ME! NIG NOG. WHERE DID HE GO?”

The toothless, yellow-eyed man with the pee stains on his coat then begins to cry, and shamefully leaves.

“Tosser. Jennifer, will you buzz me in?”

The teller then shirks in to stuff her face with tuck and gossip, before slipping into a dream of tonight’s date with the new business manager, Clive. Twenty-two. Looks a bit like Ronaldo without the skills.

He’ll part my lips with first and third and slip in the second. He’ll stare into me. Through me...

Cream oozes from the doughnut she scoffs and lands on her skirt, which she wipes off with her hand. The rest of us? Well, we just lose another day silently practicing the art of queuing; bemoaning a self-confidence we just don’t seem to have been born with.

On the other corner: the mobile phone shop.

“Mobile phone, please?”

A skinny girl in a tight sweater hands out flyers, which nobody takes, except this one bizarre-looking guy who lurks ominously, scratches his crotch, and then approaches her with a greasy smile.

“Oh, this is the new Ericsson, right?”

“Yes. Please. To take. My boss...”

“It’s the flattop, isn’t it?”

“Please, just take.”

“Yeah. It’s got those buttons that really stick out. You could play with them all night. What are you, love? Polish? Latvian?”

“Please, I don’t...”

He gives her the killer’s stare.

“Mark my words, love. You fucking do. And you fucking will. All right?”

He holds her gaze before leaning away and into the distance. Feeling exposed by the coruscating sunlight, she pulls her coat together, mumbles an idea of faith while thinking about her mother and the friends she left behind, and moves onto the next.

“Mobile phone, please?”

On the other corner: the public toilets.

Usual setup. Standard, heading underground. Disabled, at floor level. Toilet of choice for drug addicts.

“The animals went in two by two, hurrah, hurrah.”

“Fuck off. Give me the gear.”

“You make me feel like dancin’, gonna dance the night away.”

Lucy takes the first boot. The back of her knees fold and immediately she’s scratching like a monkey.

“Gimme that.”

Sandra, not singing for the first time since these two scored, squirts Lucy’s blood into the sink and then rinses the syringe in the toilet bowl before drawing up the heroin, tying up, shooting up, tying off, and time ending and trouble saying goodbye. She looks to Lucy who now slides down the wall like a lifeless doll, smashing her head on the toilet bowl in the process.

“Get up, you stupid bitch.”

Nothing.

Sandra gets the hell out of there. She makes a fuss to an oncoming guy who’s wheelchair bound.

“They’re broke, love. You should try downstairs.”

The guy looks at her. “Un-fucking-believable.” Finally she notices the wheelchair; scratches her face in slow... motion.

“Sorry, love. You must have done all right though, eh? Couldn’t lend me a fiver, could you?”

On the other corner: Costcutter. The most expensive twenty-four-hour supermarket in the world.

What the fuck are they on about? Nine pounds sixty for a couple of newspapers, some fags, and a drink?

“Nine pounds sixty.”

Someone bursts through the door.

“Give me a single, you get me?”

The shopkeeper (There’re six of them. Remember the time some posh kid walked in followed by fucking Crackula himself, wielding a crook-lock and swinging at the poor cunt, whose only crime was to point out that the Count could take a piss in the bogs instead of in the road?) responds with, “No more singles. Out. Get out.”

A couple of stray Australians, believing themselves to be in the warmer reaches of Notting Hill, wander in. Seeing a chance to exercise an act of old-country benevolence, the Aussie guy pulls out a smoke and gives it to this arsehole. Now this idiot’s all over him.

“Nice one, bruv. SEEEN. Let me carry you shit for you.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“I WASN’T TALKING TO YOU. I WAS TALKING TO THE LADY.”

“It’s cool, buddy, just er...”

“Just what?”

He stares hard into the Aussie guy’s eyes and presses his head against him, the poor sod now reeling; purblind; red in the face and his girlfriend is starting to really get the shits.

“Tell him to go fuck himself, Dobbo.”

Dobbo decides to wade in, kakking himself.

The shopkeepers surround the scene and the guy walks, lighting the smoke; grinning and staring between the Aussie girl’s legs as she puts some breakfast stuff, eggs and the like, on the counter.

“Nice nice nice nice nice.”

“Rack off, numb-nuts.”

“Lay down, gal, let me push it up, push it up.”

“Look, mate, just fuckin’...”

“Leave it.”

“Twenty-four pounds thirty-eight.”

“What?”

On the final corner: the pub.

Well. I wouldn’t know about that anymore, would I? Be the last place I could afford to be seen in. I mean, what if they decide to reopen the case? Then what?

When Mary tells me that it’s “the best craic in town,” I undoubtedly always agree with her that it just might be, and change the topic as fast as I can, save that she might see me faltering.

The ways of W9 lives are reflected in the otherwise preposterous comparisons with the South Bronx.

The five corners.

The five boroughs?

Preposterous.

Henceforth, the tradition of tolerance for the rights of ordinary fucked-up people, a communal tradition that was fought for in the ’70s right on this spot by the one and only Joe Strummer and company, intertwines and combines to make up the disfigured landscape.

Truth is, there’s no shrugging off the fact that these folk are forever condemned to scrape around like lunatics, sucking for dear life on yesterday’s rotten air, cast over hill and vale.

Hanging over W9, Mr. Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower watches as the nuclear sun sets down. This architectural abomination stands creaking, turning a blind eye to Japanese photographers, while at its roots, skulls are caved in and crack rocks are sold to whoever the hell wants, by dealers who freewheel the nearby Grand Union Canal on stolen bicycles.

Meanwhile Gardens is also apparent as it skirts both canal and tower and is the divider and last breathing space before visitors to this hellhole say goodbye to common logic. Forever.

On the canal itself, most are as oblivious to the Canada goose; Gray heron; Mallard; Kestrel; Coot; Moorhen; Black-headed gull; Wren; Robin; Song thrush; White throat; Chiffchaff; Willow warbler; Starling; Greenfinch; Goldfinch; Woodpigeon; Gray wagtail; Dunnock; and Blackbird, as the birds are to them.

Best keep it that way.

Meanwhile.

Gardens.

The underdeveloped.

The youth.

The hood rats and the squeaks.

Hood rats (mainly black), who like any young voluble yet asinine revolutionary, guise themselves and any sign of vulnerability in a uniform of oversize sports clothes; hoods pulled down low over cap even lower, with one hand always down the trouser front. Listen listen listen listen. I do what the fuck I want. Don’t arsk. A gun is a gun and I DO have one. Next to my blade. Live at my mum’s, innit. My sister’s got three kids and she’s younger than me, innit. My dad? Don’t know, mate. Don’t fuckin’ know. Three guys, right. Chase me in my car and I get mashed, innit. Don’t want no fuckin’ hospital though, innit.

Squeaks (mainly white), who like any terrified young revolutionary, guise any sign of vulnerability by wearing a uniform of tight-fitting sportswear which also doubles as a mask for the lack of a soul. Obsessive about their appearance to the point of perfection, their goal is to have you believe that the projection of superiority is indeed true. Nice trainers. Gleaming. I do the right thing by me mum. If you (dirty filthy fucking animal) do anything to hurt any one of my family or their kids, I’ll fuckin’ kill you. I’ll clump you with a fuckin’ hammer. I’ll cut your fuckin’ heart out (after I’ve cleaned the house for me mum and taken me gran up to the hospital). All right? Have you been fuckin’ smokin’?

A community of chagrins and fighters set against a world of cheap booze and even cheaper promises.

Fighters against a war they started.

Fighters for peace.

Secondhand peace.

A community of losers and bruisers.

A community nonetheless.

Life made difficult is practical by default, with little room for the spiritual.

Even less room for the likes of me.

My mobile rings.

“Hello?”

“Johnny.”

“Yes. This is...”

“I fuckin’ know all about you, you cunt. You won’t get away with it this time.”

Then the line goes dead.

I look at the last caller to find the number withheld and flick a somewhat tentative snarl into the eye of my fear.

Loud pangs begin in my temples. My throat tightens, and remembering to breathe, I look around to see where I might fall if I were to pass out. The world begins to swim around me and the deafening sound of an ambulance threatens to pop my right ear. As though a six-foot tuning fork has been struck at the core of my very being, I vibrate from the inside out. Then I stumble to a chair and clench my eyes as a million pinpricks pepper my forehead, squeezing out tiny beads of alternating hot and cold sweat. I don’t know if I will ever see again as I open my eyes and hear a high-pitched wail that accompanies the darkness. A backward scream travels into my chest, and as though a light has just exploded, I begin to make out solarized shapes in front of me. I can also hear my heartbeat and I know I’m back. After a few deep breaths, I manage to look out of the window from behind drawn curtains. Fade up to a rat and a squeak and a Mazda. Music so, so loud.

Their own heads bop up and down together, as though choreographed like two ornamental dogs that people used to place in the back window of their cars in days gone by.

Arseholes.

Easy now.

Remember the foundations of morality and grace.

Hovering on Johnny’s lowest periphery, Colleen O’Neill staggers along Harrow Road toward Our Lady and curses those red-nose buggers in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Her bright red hair ambuscades the crowd; the stench of sperm keeps them at bay. She is literally dying for another drink. She now sweeps aside her blazing locks to reveal a face that resembles a weather-torn cliffside, as she sniffs an air not quite good enough for her and surveys the space with a condemnation reserved for the damned. Her goal is to head out of the space for Westbourne Park Road, where she just might get lucky with a punter, preferably three.

Since the age of eleven, Colleen has been fucked into one bad situation after another. At the age of twelve, when she realized she could get paid for getting laid, there was no looking back. There were also no trips to the seaside. No hopscotch. No crushes on boys. No Bunty or Judy magazines with cutout dresses and little tabs attached to place on figures that you could also cut out and keep. No bedroom where she and her friends could practice kissing on their arms. No “what’s for tea today, ma’am?” Just no one. When the boxer said he’d take care of her, he kept his promise: beating her to a pulp, using her as an ashtray, and raping her daily. The drink became her only means of protection from a world that offered ineffectual amounts of faith, and little by little the price of that protection got higher and higher and higher.

I walk around my own little “space between” and straighten everything, catching parallel lines and matching them up to other lines, like the edge of the carpet with the sideboard, the table with the edge of the carpet and the sideboard. Crouch down. Oops! That’s got to be out by two millimeters. I dust and vac just to make sure and straighten the cushions. Then I wash all the dishes. Well, they need it and you never know, do you? I dry them and put them away and wipe down the sink. Polish it? Go on, then. Wow. What a smell. The guy who makes CIF or JIF or whatever they’re calling it now is a genius. Removes even the most stubborn of dirt. That’s the truest statement I’ve heard today. I breathe in synthetic alpine drives and here I am.

Back from the dead.

Kelly Mews.

Kelly’s eye. Number one.

Ready?

As I’ll ever be.

I wash my hands and face several times so I can only smell the soap and brush my teeth again. Then I decide on a shower, where I’m tempted into an act of turpitude, but no. Come on. We all know that the devil makes work for idle hands. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. Next to! Alongside!! The very next thing in line!!! I towel down and look at my lean body. Not an ounce of fat. I iron five shirts and lay out several tracksuit tops and stand before them.

Days off always did throw me into a spin.

How to blend in? Achieve total stasis?

No. Freedom. Freedom of choice. That’s the key.

I pick my clothes for the evening and after several changes of mind (real freedom) I agree on smart but casual and decide I will roam into the open before catching up on some paperwork at the office.

Into the open.

Into the space.

I double-lock the door and then unlock both locks and reenter to straighten out a couple of the cushions that seem to be slightly sagging at their corners. I then stand still. Quite still. I can’t see or hear any dust and breathe yet another sigh of relief. I double-lock the door and bounce down the stairs but the smell and the din of human life begin to take ahold of me, sending my guts into a whirl.

Here comes Manny. I know him but I don’t know him so neither of us trades any goodwill.

Best keep it that way.

In fact, I quickly decipher that he thinks I am not me! That, for all intents and purposes, I am somebody else. He gives me a You’re not who you say you are, are you? kind of a look, and since, truth be told, I am in all earnest pretending to be somebody other that who I really am, I have no argument with the man. At all.

I turn onto Harrow Road, past the “bus stop of doom.” Twenty people on mobile phones, waiting for a number 18, piled on the pavement and not moving as I approach. The signal of an oncoming bus sends everyone into a frenzy and I just get past before possibly ending up a victim of a human stampede.

I cross the corner of Woodfield Place and Harrow Road and a 4x4 speeds up to get around the one-way system; it could have all ended right there. Luckily I glanced down to where his indicators are and, seeing no light flickering and knowing that the art of indication has been lost forever, guessed he was going to turn right. I jumped back as the deafening sound of throbbing bass covered the sound of my own aorta. He missed me by an inch. I imagine his face behind the blacked-out glass panel and give him the stare. He stops the car dead in the middle of the road with a screech.

Suddenly I’m the people’s choice, Mr. Fiduciary!

I continue to stare at the blacked-out window, letting him know that if someone has to die, let it be me. The door is about to open and I raise the stakes as I spread my arms in a gesture of fearlessness.

Time stops.

The light goes on.

He pulls away with another screech and I cross the road next to an old West Indian gent, in a très chic outfit from Terry’s Menswear. He sees an old flame on the other side of the street; her stockings falling own by her ankles; her stained pinafore billowing in what he perceives to be a lucky gust.

He calls out, “Old stick a fire don’t tek long to ketch back up!”

She laughs out loud. “Tiger no fraid fe bull darg!”

He takes his time crossing.

Nobody minds. Except for a Prammie (Eighteen and born pregnant, with a hand extended to the council. Hair scraped back, causing a do-it-yourself, council-house face-lift meant to reverse the ageing process. Cigarette extending from an expensive manicure. Two kids and another on the way. Shell-shocked and suicidal seventeen-year-old boyfriend carrying a maxi pack o’ nappies), who pushes out in front of the old guy and kisses her teeth in disdain.

I hit the five corners.

Situated here, circus performer and audience participation reach their mutual understanding.

Crossing at the lights, I see seven drunken Bajans cussing and laughing outside the bookies. They pass the bottle from plastic cup to plastic cup. Close your eyes and you might think you were listening to a bunch of Dorset farmers discussing the price of beef and Mrs. Mottle’s lumbago.

I see a drunken redheaded woman and walk into the beginnings of a bad dream.

Sancta Maria, Mater Deu, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.

A performer runs out into Harrow Road, just in front of where I’m positioned. He cajoles his potential crowd.

“You tink me nah got money?” Everybody turns and laughs.

Within a moment.

A lean yoot, one jeans leg rolled up to the knee but not the other, chews on a matchstick and stares into the eyes of potential protagonists.

A woman in her sixties — jeans emblazoned with the words Foxy Lady across the buttocks, swinging her hips veraciously — blows a bubble from too much gum and bursts it loudly, laughing and adjusting her bra.

A man in track pants, too short, no socks, beaten-in shoes, and unshaven forever, stands rooted to the spot and dribbling.

A guy selling scratch cards and methadone is able to pick someone’s pocket as she turns to see what the fuss is about.

Someone asks for change.

Someone asks for a cigarette.

Two crackheads: “See my fucking solicitor?”

“See my fucking selector?”

Somebody screams.

The performer stops the traffic dead.

A couple of hood rats, left hands disappearing down tracksuit bottoms as though hiding some obscene disfigurement, steel themselves.

“If yuh no ketch me a moonshine, yuh nah ketch me a dark night.”

Someone’s mobile pipes up with an unrecognizable series of beeps meant to be the popular tune of the day.

The guys outside the bookies carry on arguing about irrigation, feigning oblivion to dis stupidness.

A Fiat Punto’s tires screech as the driver just misses the performer, who is now hitting himself on the head and throwing tens and fives into the air. He then sets about grabbing an aluminum chair from outside of Jenny’s bad food restaurant and throws it at the window.

Loud smash.

Applause.

I enter the chemists opposite the commotion and feel a slight nausea as I automatically smile at the dirty-blond transvestite who works at the sales counter. She knows I know she knows, and I enjoy watching her hoodwinking the locals, our secret tryst sending me into a childish bout of rubescence.

The chemists is like Doctor Who’s Tardis, as from where I came in; I now stand in a huge space filled with the cheapest goods possible. A queue forms in front of the pharmacist, who’s stationed in the top left corner. Mr. Pill for every ill. He’s got the purple rinses and the overweight hooked into his whole world and is dazzling in his diagnoses.

I stare at Mishca’s hands, and catching me (as she’s telling some old bat with a mole that’s sprouting more hair than is on my head), she seemingly mocks us both: “Yes. It will work on you every time.”

She quickly rubs the crotch of her jeans to guide my eye toward her. I over-stare and feign arousal before looking at the various ’70s shaving foams and after-shaves that I remember seeing in Mike’s bathroom at the home.

My knees begin to knock and I want to fight somebody.

I approach the counter, not sure what I’m to say.

“Pack of Wrigley’s, please.”

“What flavor?”

Everything grinds to a halt. Freezes, and the natural sound fades out.

What flavor? How about fucking... COQ AU VIN, eh, Johnny? Be there at 6; bring the van round the back or I’ll fucking kill your sister, all right?

“Er. Spearmint...? No freshmint.”

The chemists now seems small. Dirty. That pharmacy guy should be shot.

So much for providence.

Mishca licks her lips. “Anytime, sugar.”

She then turns and reaches up to the shelf for the gum and I’m taking myself out of this place fast.

I move quickly so that she imagines me to have been merely an apparition.

I’ll deal with her later.

I walk back toward Kelly Mews.

Looking skyward and seeing red, I remember it all.

Red sky at night, Shepherd’s cottage on fire.

Cops are clearing the place out, as that idiot who threw the chair is being pushed, shirtless, into the back of a van. One slimy copper is talking to a girl of about fifteen and asking her where she lives, with a grin.

I’ll deal with him later.

The redhead is talking to some old woman and nodding her head as though she was a kid being told where bad girls go, and catching a ray of hope reflected in my eye, looks to me like the ghost I might have just become. She makes toward me but the woman holds her arm, pulling her back.

“Just listen to me, Colleen, and you might learn something.”

I dip my head and keep moving. Someone bumps into me, he’s about seventeen and I can just make out his eyes beneath that hood. I think twice as I know he is armed. He recognizes me. His face widens as I get in first.

“How’s your mum?”

“Yeah. She’s good.”

I’ll have to deal with him later.

I cross the road by the bank, or at least try to. The lights are on red but the cars just keep coming, afraid that if they were to stop, someone would drag the driver out and beat him to death. I walk out anyway, knowing I’ve got the law on my side. Hit me and I’ll sue you for everything you’re worth, after I’ve dragged you from your vehicle and beaten the life out of you, of course!

Haven’t been in a gym for a while, but you never lose it. Right cross. Uppercut. Jab. Pow. Pip. Pow. Super-middleweight titleholder from ’74 to ’77. Mike said he’d never seen a lad like me. Said I had the “killer’s gaze.”

I get to the other side. Away from the din. I cross again and dip between east and west, keeping an eye on Woodfield Place in case the 4x4 has found his stomach and decided to come back and face me.

No one.

I’m on the home stretch thinking about later, now I’ve made my decision.

A drunk is relieving himself against the bins outside the futuristic Science Photo Library next door to mine. A trusta-farian, some spill from the Hill seeking a cheap thrill, opens the door from one of the flats upstairs, and seeing what the drunk’s up to, pretends, It’s all good in da hood, bro.

“Don’t mind me.”

The guy spits, “I fucking won’t, cunt.”

After dumping his rubbish, I’ll fucking dump him in a minute, he shuffles off back to where he came from, counting out his father’s money, no doubt, in his ironic “chav” Burberry pajamas and fluffy slippers.

He glances, the guy still peeing, and he gives me a limp smile before hopping back indoors.

Life on the edge of a very plush cushion.

Indeed.

Something in the air catches me and sends me spiralling back through time.

Bernadette: Diorella.

Eileen: Diorissimo.

Margaret: Chanel № 5.

In the distance, a crackhead screams for all she’s worth, maybe for all we’re worth.

“THE WHORE OF BABYLON! THE WHORE OF BABYLON!”

Blood songs coagulate in the black currents of a cold cold night.

The need to believe.

Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem.

Ready?

Ready as I’ll ever be.

I approach the mews and should I go in and change or just get on with it? I decide to perform the latter and go to the office. I skip around the back of the building and turn the key, walk in, and head for my desk. Mary approaches me with a smile.

“Father Donaghue?”

“Yes, Mary?” I toss my keys onto my desk. “What is it?”

“Well, Father, I know you’re very busy, but I was wondering if you might be able to add a few prayers tomorrow for my sister. A remembrance, if you would.”

“How long has it been now?”

“It’s been five years, Father. Five years since he took her away from us.” She begins to cry.

I put an arm round her and remind her that the Lord is with us. And to call me by my first name, which is Johnny.

She begins to feel a little uncomfortable, questioning my grasp ever so slightly with her eyes, and so I let her go and then offer her a drop, which she accepts.

“Father. I didn’t know.”

I stare at my glass.

“Neither did I, Mary. Neither did I.”

Mary takes a sip as I put my glass down onto the desk and pick up my crucifix.

We both laugh now and chat about the bargains to be found at Iceland and Somerfield and how the new pound shop is really quite amazing. Mary lowers her now empty glass back onto the tray by the whiskey decanter.

“Thank you, Father, I feel so much better now. Yourself? Settling in? Getting used to our little neighborhood? I know it seems a bit on the rough side, but...”

“Oh, I’ve seen worse, Mary, believe me. Now. I’ve plenty to do, as you can understand?”

“Oh, forgive me, Father, for taking up your time.”

“Not at all, Mary. And I’ll be sure to mention...”

“Molly.”

“Molly. Yes. I won’t forget.”

“Goodbye, Father.”

I sit and wait. For an hour. I fill my glass as tears begin to well up in my eyes and roll down my face.

Poor me. Poor me. Pour me a drink.

Believing in Him. Not believing in Him.

Deus Meus, ex toto corde poenitet me omnium meorum pec-catorum, eaque detestor, quia peccando, non solum poenas a Te iuste statutas promeritus sum, sed praesertim quia offendi Te sum-mum bonum ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris. Ideo firmiter propono, aduvante gratia Tua, de cetero me non-peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum...

The phone rings and the glass smashes in my hand, just as I bring it to my lips.

“Johnny. You know I will have to kill you.”

A smile widens across my face. “How can you kill what’s already dead?”

Twelve Canadians were the first to welcome the next day as they took off from the Grand Union on their way to the much gentler climate of Kew. Their wings making a terrific, terrifying noise. Pete, the cleaner of the Grand Union pub, was mopping up the beer garden; lost in the fight with his wife, who’d said before he left at 5 in the morning, “Panic, stupidity, and withdrawal. That’s all you’ve got to fucking offer.”

“Fuck away from me.”

When he first heard the noise, he almost dropped dead believing, This is it, expecting Osama himself in a Harrier jet, with eleven henchmen in tow.

Pint and eleven white wines for the ladies?

Pete was mysteriously taken by the magnificence of those beasts and marveled in slow motion when they, first down low and then rising up under the Halfpenny Step Bridge, yelled out as they made their ascent, “What a beautiful sight!”

He looked around to see if Carmel was about.

“Carmel, you should see this. Come here.”

Carmel shook her head from inside the pub, and thinking about her eldest daughter’s latest abortion, snapped, “What is it now? Don’t you fucking play games with me, because I’m in no mood.”

Carmel threw a rag down and turned again to see Pete standing there like a frozen statue. She laughed to herself and walked out toward him. “What’s got you all fucking excited?”

Pete was still motionless, as though aliens had taken his soul. He was now white as a sheet. “Jesus.”

“Oh yeah? And I suppose the fucking holy Virgin Mother of Mary, too...” Carmel’s voice trailed off, as now she understood.

Tied by the wrists to the railing under the bridge.

Black tights pulled tight around her white neck.

Eyes, nose, ears, fingers, and lips removed.

Half-submerged in the canal.

Dead as a fucking doornail.

Legs severed at the thighs.

Red hair ablaze.

Senseless.

Legless.

Beneath the sound of sirens, my view is as always: stark, sullen, and eldritch. I’m prone to believe that it’s a vile and disgusting world above.

Where I’ll die, the Harrow Road Police Station, now a hive of cordoned-off activity — choppers and coppers setting the landscape on fire — is to my right. Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Vincent de Paul, where in less than half an hour I will asseverate Mass before a shaken community, is to my left.

A community brought together by God only knows whom.

A community of chargrins and fighters.

A community no less.

Fighters for peace.

Secondhand peace.

Crime Time West Nine.

Meanwhile.

Gardens.

Animals.

Birds.

Amen.