To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

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,