To Indigo Read online

  4

  My first search of 6, 66, Saracen Road had been fruitless. I went to a grimy window in the main room and looked out and down. Below, the street, and then Joseph’s park of “Huge trees and rhododendrons”. A few people were sunbathing there, I now saw. The June sun had brought them out like certain flowers. From up here they had a flowery quality too, already tanned and in bright colours. How easy it looked, to sample life.

  As luck would have it, I peeled off the rubber gloves I had donned, because of their sticky hotness, and stuffed them in a pocket.

  It was when I turned back into the room, wondering if all I could do now was go away, I heard the flat door, (already smashed and undone by me) pushed briskly open.

  I thought instantly it would be him. Joseph. Sej.

  Therefore, when the burly middle-aged man in shorts and T-shirt came into the room, I felt a most inappropriate near relief.

  He stopped and gawped at me. He had a newspaper in one hand, and a six-pack of beer in the other.

  I said, “Christ, can you believe it? Someone broke in.”

  “Er – yeah,” he said.

  I recognised, hypersensitive as perhaps I was in that moment, the voice of No 3A, he who had let me in via the main entrance.

  “I came up here,” I blustered on, “to deliver this bloody packet…” I pointed at my fake delivery, which now lay on the floor. “I meant to leave it by the door. You never know, do you? I mean, the table downstairs, anyone might have had it.”

  “You’re fucking not wrong there,” he rewarded me.

  “And someone’s smashed the glass window. Been in and taken – well – everything from the look. Even the carpets.”

  Roy was on form again, indeed he was. But I’ve said, I write this sort of drivel for a living. Improv comes with the job.

  3A gazed round. He looked both disgusted and sullen. I sensed immediately he was not astonished, had been up here before and knew the flat was always basically exactly as now.

  He said, “Like, I don’t think they took nothing much. Tina don’t have much to start with.”

  Touché, monsieur. Now he really had floored me.

  I said, “Tina? But the name on the packet is for a Mr Trazcool. But I suppose she’s his partner?”

  “How should I know?”

  How should he?

  “But surely he lives here. Look…” I’d put a lot into the fake package and confidently picked it up and held it out to him.

  He shambled over and scrutinised it. “Tra – skull, that his name?” he asked. (He could read).

  “Presumably. The address is right, is it?”

  “Yeah, man. That’s right.”

  “So Tina…?”

  “She’s the only one lives here I know of. She gets people up here sometimes. I thought you was one of ’em.”

  Below us, the noise of No 5’s bad music abruptly ceased.

  Both 3A and I stared down at the floor.

  “He’s going out,” said 3A. “Thank fuck for that.”

  3A, it seemed, didn’t like 5’s music either. But whether that was due to its volume or its type, remained obscure.

  My mind turned back to what he had said just before.

  People coming up… he’d thought I was one of them.

  Was she, this Tina, on the game? A prostitute. I didn’t want to ask. He too had come up here, had he not, with his paper and beer.

  “Oh well,” I said, with generated slight annoyance, “do you think we should call the police?”

  “What the fuck for? They won’t fucking come, man. If they did, what they gonna do? This place… ‘s always like this. Sometimes there’re some chairs. Once there was a music centre – a fridge. That lasted about two weeks. I don’t know how she pays her rent, but I gotta idea.”

  He had confirmed my own. Tina, whoever Tina was, was a whore.

  “Well,” I said, “I can’t waste any more time. I’ve got things to do.”

  And that was when he emerged from his inertia. He squared up to me and said, quite pleasantly, “Yeah, but hang on a bit. How’d I know what you gotta do with all this?”

  “All what?”

  “The fucking door wrecked. Like what the fuck are you up to?”

  “I’ve said, I brought his post up – or her post.”

  “Nobody fucking bothers to do that. These fucking stairs, no way. It’s like climbing up Mount fucking Everlast, or whatever the fuck it’s called. So if you wasn’t after Tina what was you after?”

  I hung my head.

  “You’ve got me there. Obviously it is Tina.”

  “Then why,” unfortunately astutely he inquired, “all this bollox with that letter thing?”

  “Well it was for her flat – I found it on the table downstairs when I was here last time. Took it. Wanted an excuse to come back. Then when I tried the bell she didn’t answer.”

  “Nah, she didn’t. ’Cos she was ’sposed to be seeing me, man. Me. OK?”

  “OK. Fine.”

  “I don’t like all this,” he said, sniffing at the air as if to detect, like a bloodhound, the clues of treachery. Perhaps he could. I was certainly sweating.

  I said, “Look, I’m sorry if I’m in your way. I really don’t want anyone to know I was here to see Tina. I don’t want my wife to know.”

  “I bet you don’t, man.”

  “In the past I’ve met her – other places. I didn’t know it was your – time.”

  “No. OK. Right. Well, she ain’t fucking here anyway is she? She’s fucking off her head. You’ll know.” He leered abruptly. “’S’OK, man. Just wanted to be sure.”

  We were comrades-in-arms, love or war.

  He added, “Reckon I know who done this anyhow. The door, I mean. That fucker from No 2. He’s a headcase. She wouldn’t touch him neither. Nasty cunt.” Did he mean her? Presumably No 2. He looked at me for confirmation, so whoever it was dutifully I nodded. 3A went on, “Might pay him a little visit later. As for Tee, well, she’s off somewhere. Both you and me had better make other arrangements, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give your old woman some Cream di Month or something. You never know. Might see another side of her.”

  “Yes…”

  He had moved out of sight, back into the outer hall of the flat. I didn’t dare take the package with me I when I left. It was now officially Tina’s. I dropped it again, and for a second stood regarding it, not wanting to leave such evidence. But in the hall 3A swore loudly. Sounding aggrieved he said, “You walked up them fucking stairs barefoot? Trying to scare me, eh? Eh?”

  On the unpapered wall I saw two vague shadows thrown, mingling and unsure, 3A’s and another’s.

  TWELVE

  Outside the BBC I watched a well-known politician sweep through into the building, with his entourage. I’ve seen a few well-known persons going in there over the past twenty odd years.

  I did some nondescript shopping in Oxford Street. I didn’t see Joseph.

  Before I walked back to the hotel I went into Lang Gardens and called Lewis Rybourne on my mobile.

  They told me he was in a meeting.

  “Please get him to phone me. I’m at the Belmont Hotel until tomorrow afternoon.”

  I was just getting up from the bench when the phone made its noise. I don’t have a piece of music. It simply imitates the old fashioned sound of a phone ringing.

  The call was from Rybourne.

  “Roy – oh, good, good. Sorry about that. She didn’t know I was back. Did your boy catch up to you?”

  I said, carefully, “Which boy?”

  “Ah. Joseph, I think he said.”

  “Joseph? I don’t know a Joseph.”

  “Oh, lord, Roy, I think maybe you do. He said he was – a relative.”

  “No. I don’t have any relatives left.”

  “Oh come on, Roy. Your…” There was a long, dramatic pause. His voice had dropped and become intense, “…son.”

  I now left the interval.

>   “Hello?” he said. “Are you there?”

  “Yes, Lewis. I thought you said son. Obviously you didn’t.”

  “Of course, I shan’t tell anyone. Strictly confidential.”

  “What are you talking about, Lewis?”

  I could hear him breathing. Then he said, “A young man called us, said it was an emergency, insisted on speaking to your editor. Me. He told me he was your son, Joseph, and he was concerned as there’d been a family problem and he wanted…”

  “I don’t have a son. Who was this man?”

  “I told you, Roy. He gave his name as Joseph – Joseph something or other. It sounded foreign. She has a note of it I think, but she’s not in the office…”

  “I have no son.”

  “All right. OK, Roy. The thing is, you’d already called me and you sounded – upset.”

  “I was.”

  “And then I spoke to this Joseph, and he wanted to know how he could trace you. He was already at your home. I made sure of the address. He knew you, and your house. Well.”

  “Really? That’s news to me. What did you say to him?”

  He breathed now like an obscene caller.

  “I – er – I told him the hotel you were at.”

  I left a space. Then I shouted “You did what?”

  “Roy, Roy, listen…”

  “You told a complete stranger, who claims to be my son, and over the phone, which hotel I’m staying in?”

  He said, with an awful meaningless contrition, “Have I done the wrong thing, Roy? I’m so sorry. I was just…”

  “I’m being stalked, Lewis. Yes, I know, it’s crazy. I don’t know who he is, but he turned up at my house and gave the neighbours the same yarn – that he is my son. I threw him out. And yes, he has been at my hotel. Now I know who to thank for that.”

  “Christ. Roy – have you told the police?”

  “Yes. They don’t believe me, or they think something else. And you have informed this lunatic of my hotel.”

  “God – Roy…”

  “Think of something, Lewis. He may be dangerous. I need your help. This is your fault.”

  “Christ. Oh, Roy. What shall I do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I suggest you come up with something.”

  I broke the connection.

  To be truthful I wasn’t sure how much, if any, use this would be. But the fact of Sej’s pursuit of me had been established at last, with an independent and non-vulnerable source. Potential?

  Having attended to that, however, I sat down once more on the bench.

  The phone went again.

  I looked at it.

  I let it ring. I’d check any message later. Let Lewis Rybourne stew, if he was capable of it.

  Meanwhile the images of the afternoon revolved slowly in my mind. I kept thinking of the women he’d helped, and the dog, its sad tail hanging out of his shirt – now ruined by blood and lost. And the piano. How he played. And how he had gone so suddenly away.

  Bells were ringing from various places, including the nearby church. It was six o’clock.

  I got up and walked to The Belmont. In the foyer a young woman came straight up to me, all smiles.

  “Excuse me, but that guy who played the piano – you know him?”

  “Didn’t he give you a card?”

  “Well, yes. Only I called the number and there was no answer.”

  I would have to bear in mind, Joseph was not only brilliant, but good-looking. This young woman was clearly smitten. I said, with a stiff smile, ‘I don’t know him well. Just keep trying the number. I think he’s out until later.” And walked to the lift leaving her there, crestfallen. Another stalker. This time of Joseph?

  Tonight was my last night here. I couldn’t afford any others. The entire excursion would already make quite a hole in what I call my Emergency Fund, that is my building society savings.

  Would he come back to The Belmont? If he did, what then would happen?

  I ordered dinner in my room and watched TV. Now I thought more solidly of my house and the possible damage that could have been done to it. Strangely, I didn’t think he had caused damage. Partly too I wished not to go back. But I hadn’t anywhere else to go. Perhaps, now Rybourne had some idea that Joseph was a danger, if the police confronted him at Gates he would have to tell them what had gone on. And any DNA test would show Joseph was nothing at all to do with me.

  Unless…

  Had he been Lynda’s child? Hers and mine. That would make him only twenty-eight. Less? He didn’t look quite that young, did he, or only when unconscious.

  He wasn’t Lynda’s. He was neither like her, nor me.

  The TV, even with its multiple channels, seemed all one chaos of unreal inanity, or desperate, unassuageable realness.

  I turned in about eleven. Check-out tomorrow was noon.

  I would go back, see to the house, pack a few extra things, then maybe myself head up north. I’d said I had nowhere to go, but it’s cheaper there, out of the main northern cities. And Matthew lived there, all on his own without adulterous Sylvia. I could go and commiserate with him.

  Before leaving however I would get some extra security added to the house. Duran, the electrician who fixed my kitchen lights and the thermostat last November, had a side line in villain-proofing. I’d gathered, from various hints, he’d been a competent burglar once, and now put former knowledge to good use for the other side. I hadn’t taken him up on any of that, last time. Now I’d better. He was a tough guy too, Duran. He might have some brainwaves.

  I slept well. Seven straight hours, waking at a quarter to eight, feeling drugged and out of kilter.

  At reception, while paying, I heard of the manager’s coming to see who played the piano yesterday. I had a last drink at the bar.

  All the time I kept looking up at the mirror, looking for Sej to walk in. But he didn’t. And I thought, Is it over? And a tide of relief swirled through me. And after the tide, a sort of pause. I can’t describe it. It was still and quiet, without shadows, quite empty.

  5

  Less than a minute after, No 3A came back into the main room, accompanied by a skinny man with long greasy yellow hair, also in shorts, and barefoot as 3A had just accused him of being.

  3A looked at me and jabbed his thumb back at the other one. “’S’im. The one I told you about. No 2.”

  No 2 smiled at me with crinkled grey teeth. He was about twenty-six, and his uncovered arms unashamedly revealed the tracks of needles. He stank of sweat and – sugar. A chemical smell you pick up by some chocolate counters.

  “Hi,” he winningly said.

  I nodded.

  We all stood there.

  “Where’s Tee?” asked No 2, smilingly bemused. “I got some lovely stuff for ‘er. I get it off of…”

  “Shut up,” decided 3A. “This geezer don’t want to know, right?”

  No 2 looked deeply at me from mad huge eyes the colour of a stagnant pond. “I seen this booful car down the road. That yours?”

  “No,” I said.

  No 2 giggled. “Tha’s good. I pissed up it las’ night. I bin a bad boy. ‘Ere,” he added, “you want any stuff? I got this wicked stuff off of…”

  “Shut up,” said 3A again. “Look, you nosed-up prick-head, Tina ain’t here. She’s gone off. And we’re just going. OK?”

  “Who bruk the door?” innocently asked No 2.

  “The postman,” said 3A impatiently, “he couldn’t get no fucking answer so he broke the fucking door in. All right? Now fuck off.”

  “That’s awful that is – the postman – we ough-a get the pigs…”

  “Fuck off.”

  No 2 seemed sad. “OK, Billy,” he said. “Look, here I go.”

  And he left us.

  “My fucking name ain’t Bill, neither,” said 3A to me with obvious emphasis.

  I nodded again.

  We left the flat and went down the stairs, leaving plenty of space for the ambling barefoot No 2 to get t
o his lair before us.

  Reaching his own flat 3A lumbered aside, went in and slammed the door. In the absence of the noisy music of No 5, the sound reverberated throughout the building.

  I hurried the rest of the way to the street.

  After I’d crossed the road and reached the far side of the park I glanced back. At each of two of the windows facing front, presumably those of No 2 and No 3A, a solitary form stood looking out. 3A simply stood guard there. No 2, lower down and perhaps made far-sighted by his ‘stuff’, raised his bony arm in a wave.

  THIRTEEN

  The train left soon after two o’clock. I sat in the long carriage, with its ultra narrow aisles and seats, and tried to read the Radio Times. There were only a handful of people in the carriage. The whole train was sparsely filled. Beyond the polarised windows the suburbs unwound under a dismal sky. I took out my notebook and made a couple of notes for the commissioned novel.

  As each station materialised, I wondered if Joseph Traskul Sej were peering out of another carriage, to see if I had alighted at an earlier stop to my usual one.

  Once a young man got off the train who bore a fleeting resemblance to him. I stared, and saw it wasn’t he.

  The train was slow. It took nearly forty minutes. When I came to my station I felt an edgy excitement, and reaching the platform, turned and looked round. A bald man from my carriage, in a brown shirt, had got off also. He was about forty. He looked straight ahead and went past me, down the steps.

  Sometimes I get a taxi, though it’s only a twenty minute walk to Old Church Lane. Today I didn’t. I’d spent enough, and if I went north soon, there’d be more to fork out.

  Then, walking up the high street, busy with afternoon shopping and kids on bicycles careering along the pavement, I considered that a taxi-driver might have been handy if any surprises were waiting. Although in fact, he wouldn’t want to be involved. Non-involvement is the key signature for most of us now, myself included.

  Just before I turned into Bulivante Crescent I noticed the man in brown again. He was about thirty yards behind me, looking in a shop window.