“That’s not very logical is it?” Mick snapped. “If you don’t know what I think you did, how can you be sure you didn’t do it?”
“That’s true I suppose logically, but in any case, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry for whatever you think I’ve done.”
“Even if you didn’t do it.”
“Yes, I’m just so, so sorry.”
There was no doubting his sorrow. There were tears in his eyes, his lower jaw was malleable as dough.
“Fine,” said Mick. “I accept your apologies. Now in you go.”
“No, don’t ask me to do that.” Masterson looked down at the water again, contemplated the drop and the width of the river and let out a bovine moan. “I could kill myself,” he said.
“You’d have to be very unlucky,” Mick said. “You’d have to fall badly, hit your head or something, get a lungful of water.”
“I could still really hurt myself.”
Mick tapped the gun in his pocket and said, “Whereas I might only blow your balls off.”
A sightseeing boat went under the bridge, the rows of orange seats meticulously laid out on its upper deck. From somewhere Masterson seemed to be gathering a few last grains of bravery and defiance. He said, “I don’t think you want to shoot me. Not here, not like this, so publicly. If you’d wanted that you’d have taken me somewhere else. I don’t think you’re totally insane.”
Mick reached over to where Masterson’s damaged hand was resting on the metal parapet, and he took the broken finger and stirred it around as though it were a spoon in a cup of coffee. Masterson lost all power of speech or sense.
“But you’re not quite sure how insane I am, are you?”
“No,” Masterson gasped.
“So I think you’re going to have to jump, aren’t you?”
“I’m too scared to jump,” Masterson said wretchedly.
Mick slapped a hand on Masterson’s bare, hairy shoulder, left it there like an epaulette and then pushed. There was no adhesion between Masterson and the smooth surface on which he was sitting, and he simply slipped into space. He went out of sight and Mick had to peer over the parapet to watch the body falling swiftly and straight into the inert waters below.
Masterson hit the surface and the sound of his splash was thin, distant and undramatic. Once his head had appeared above water, and after he’d started a forlorn, weary breaststroke towards the bank, Mick turned away, vaulted over the railing into the road and went back to the car. There was something else he wanted. He reached behind the driver’s seat for Masterson’s briefcase. He opened it, emptied out the contents until he found what he was really looking for; Masterson’s address book. That was all he needed. It would contain five vital addresses belonging to men whose names he already knew.
Mick left the car, became just another man walking along London Bridge. He was heading north though he was unaware of the fact. That direction simply looked more inviting, more dense and alive. The buildings looked grand but anonymous, distinguished and heavy with money. He suspected he was a long way from the Dickens Hotel.
A PHONECALL HOME
That evening, from an old-style, red, urine-tainted telephone box, its walls tiled with prostitutes’ cards, and empty Nourishment cans on the floor, Mick rang Gabby.
“It’s me. I’m here in London.”
“Yeah?” she said. “How is it?”
A trail bike with a metallic, unsilencered engine note blasted its way past the phone box.
“It’s OK,” he said, after the noise had gone. “It’s big and dirty and it’s not easy finding your way around.”
“I wasn’t asking for a postcard home. I meant the business.”
“Yes, well, I’m taking care of it.”
“Don’t do anything silly.”
“I’m not a silly person.”
“I know, but don’t get hurt”
“OK. But there’s stuff I need to ask you, stuff I need to know.”
The deadness at the other end of the line was so abrupt that he thought he might have been cut off.
“Are you there?” he asked.
“Yes. What do you need to know?”
“Well, for a start, the bloke who was getting married, was he called Philip?”
“We didn’t get formally introduced.”
Mick acknowledged the stupidity of his question, then asked, “But was he a big bloke?”
“I guess so,” she said, sounding willing to agree.
“And sort of sporty with it?”
“Sure.”
“And did he have a hairy back?”
“How the fuck would I know?”
“I thought it was the kind of thing you might have noticed.”
“I was trying hard not to notice anything at all at the time…”
“I can see that, but still…”
“And in any case, he didn’t take his shirt off. And even if he had I wouldn’t have touched his back, would I?”
“OK, I can see that.”
Mick fell silent. There were other things he’d have liked to ask but he didn’t want to make Gabby any more angry.
She said, “I don’t find this very easy, you know.”
“I realize that.”
“Or very pleasant.”
“I’m just trying to work something out, that’s all.”
Mick noticed a couple of black girls standing outside the call box waiting to use the phone. Their presence was hard to ignore. He was aware of their laughter, their long legs, the can of lager they passed back and forth. Their intrusion made him want to talk more softly to Gabby, more intimately, but with the background roar and clatter and road noise he would have made himself inaudible.
“Did this Philip guy have any distinguishing marks?” he asked as gentry as he could.
“I don’t know, Mick, all right? I had my eyes shut. Is that good enough for you? What’s the matter with you?”
“I just want to be sure I gave a pasting to the right man.”
“Gave?” She sounded puzzled, then delighted. “You already did it?”
“The first one, yeah. It wasn’t that difficult. He said he was sorry.”
“Bastard.”
“Yeah, but he did look genuinely sorry by the time I’d finished with him.”
“I bet he did. Did you tell him who you were?”
“What do you think I am?”
“Did you say anything about me?”
“Oh sure.”
“This is excellent,” she said. Her voice was giddy with excitement. She sounded grateful and exhilarated and loving. “Look, Mick, I appreciate this, I really do. When you’ve sorted all this out then I really want us to be happy.”
“Yeah?”
“Like we used to be, you know.”
“You mean sex.”
“Yeah. Like it used to be.”
He was pleased to hear her saying this, and he hoped she meant it, but he couldn’t resist adding, “But not till all this is sorted, right?”
“That’s right.”
“OK,” he said gamely. “So there’s only another five to go.”
The moment he put down the phone, one of the two girls outside opened the door and they both tried to get in before he’d left.
“Hey,” he said. “Excuse me. That’s a phrase we have in the English language.”
“Oh, fuck off,” they said in unison.
Mick stared at them. They didn’t look like such terrible girls. He considered wrecking the phone box just to annoy them, but it was just a thought. He knew he’d never do a thing like that. Meaningless violence was not his style.
RADIO
It was late and if he could have had his way Mick Wilton would have been sound asleep. Instead he was bristlingly awake in the airless room at the Dickens Hotel. He sprawled on the bed, propped himself up on one elbow, feeling the ruts and craters of the mattress; a relief map of enemy territory. There were ugly noises reverberating through the building; slamming doors, coughing, bad plumbing. What was it about London that could make a man feel so miserable, so melancholy? Mick was not as a rule given to thoughts of self-destruction but he understood how the grey murk of a room like this could seep into you and make you decide you’d had enough.