Mick said nothing. He tried to keep his face as still and inert as a waxwork, but inside his head all kinds of pornographic loops flickered into life; six nameless men in a dark dining room, hunting prints on the walls, masked waiters. Gabby is naked except for a few erotic accessories, suspenders, fishnets, elbow-length gloves, and she’s in tears, pursued by half a dozen savage, thick-necked, in-bred toffs, evening dress in tatters on their bullish frames, trousers down, cocks up.
“All of them?” he asked. “All six?”
“Yeah,” she said. “In turn. While the others held me down. It was pretty much your standard gang-rape.”
He put his hand out to stroke her face. It was meant to be reassuring, unthreatening and unsexual, but she pulled away and shuddered.
“Which act did you do?” he asked.
“Cleopatra.”
“Did you get paid after all this?”
“Yes.”
“That’s something.”
“Not much.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Big guys?”
“A couple of them.”
“Not very bright boys obviously. Any-idea who they are? Got any names?”
“Yeah, actually I have.”
She reached into the side pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out a flimsy piece of paper with handwriting on it.
“One of the waitresses saw what happened,” Gabby explained. “She took pity on me. She knew them. They’re regulars.”
Mick looked at the handwriting and saw it was a list of six men’s names.
“Only names,” he said. “No addresses?”
“Won’t that be enough?”
“I hope so,” Mick said.
“I hope so too. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to deal with it, right?”
“Good,” she said, and her whole being softened with relief. “I knew you would.”
♦
He got off the train at St Pancras, a lone man without luggage, the same suit, a new white T — shirt beneath. Pale winter sun leaked in through the grey glass vault overhead and made him feel both depressed and determined. He moved swiftly through the crowd and went out of the station to the open air where the black cabs waited. He got into the first one and said, “Dickens Hotel, Park Lane.”
The couple of days he’d spent in Sheffield getting ready to leave had been bad. There was no living with Gabby. She wouldn’t let him touch her, wouldn’t let him near. He took it for granted that she’d want him to stay with her but she’d sent him back to his own flat, wouldn’t even let him sleep on her couch. He’d tried not to be angry. He wanted to-be sympathetic. He knew that she’d been through a lot and was hurting. But he had feelings too and he was thrown by the way she kept her distance. She said she didn’t want to talk about it, and the sooner he got to London the better.
The driver started the meter and the cab chugged into life. The driver was not a talker and Mick was glad of that. He looked at the adverts lining the inside of the cab, one for a laptop computer, one for a plastic surgery clinic. Then he looked out of the cab window at the thick traffic, the motorbikes weaving in and out, at the blurred air, the people hurrying along the pavements, late for something. He hated everything he saw, and he allowed an expression of condescending disgust to settle on his face. London.
It felt strange to be here but it also felt inevitable, as though he’d had no choice in the matter. If somebody you cared about got hurt, then you did something about it. You came to their assistance. You protected them if you could, but if it was too late for that then you took your revenge. You handed out punishment. You made sure it would never happen again. It wasn’t some complex code. There was no sense of chivalry or honour involved. It was just cause and effect. You did what needed doing. And when you got right down to it, maybe it didn’t even have all that much to do with Gabby being ‘his’, with affection or attachment Probably he’d have done the same for someone he cared for much less than he cared for Gabby. He might even have done it for a bloke.
He wanted to keep it simple and efficient. He didn’t want to involve innocent people. He didn’t want to prolong the agony. He just wanted to get the job done. There were six men out there who had it coming to them, and it was coming express delivery. The only thing that threatened to delay him, to make his life unnecessarily difficult, was the nature and complex unfamiliarity of London itself. If those six bastards had been Sheffield lads he’d already have finished the job by now.
At last the cab driver spoke. He said, “What hotel did you say, mate?”
“The Dickens,” Mick replied.
The driver scratched the rolls of flesh at the back of his neck. “I don’t know that one.”
“I thought you London taxi drivers knew everything.”
The driver seemed undecided whether or not to take offence, but simply said, “I know Park Lane but I don’t know any Dickens Hotel.”
“Is that right?” Mick said, unhelpfully.
“OK,” the driver said, “we’ll find it when we get there.”
They got there and Mick was quietly impressed. This looked much better. This was a more pleasant version of London. There was still too much traffic but at least there was a park and the hotels looked moneyed and comfortable. He looked at their names, and they all seemed vaguely familiar, places heard about on television or read about in the papers: the Dorchester, the Inn on the Park, the Hilton, but there was no Dickens. The driver stopped the cab before the road dragged him into the currents of traffic swirling round Hyde Park Corner.
“I didn’t like to say anything,” he said, “but I didn’t think there was a Dickens Hotel here.”
Mick sat impassively.
“I don’t suppose you know what number Park Lane?” the driver asked.
As a matter of fact Mick did. He had a business card from the hotel. He took it out of his breast pocket and without saying a word handed it to the driver who looked at it for less than a second and then shook his head in mocking, disbelieving sympathy.
“You from out of town?” he asked.
“So?”
“You want bloody Park Lane, Hackney.”
“Do I?” said Mick. “Take me there then.”
“I’m not going to bloody Hackney.”
“What’s wrong with Hackney?”
“When you find someone to take you there, you’ll find out. That’s a tenner you owe me. Now on your way.”
“You’re taking me there,” Mick said.
“No, I’m not, pal.”
Mick sat still and imperious. He wasn’t going to lose his first argument in the big city.
“Out,” said the driver and he stepped from his cab. He opened the rear door and Mick could see he was carrying a baseball bat. That amused him.
“I said out. Or else.”
Mick, unruffled, said, “You’ll need more than a baseball bat,” and he exploded into violence. He grabbed the bat from the driver’s hands, swirled it round and hit him across the nose twice. He leapt out of the cab, knocked the driver aside and went to the front where he kicked in both headlights. He was thinking of smashing the windows with the bat, puncturing the radiator, thinking of giving the driver a proper going over, when a sudden change came over him, as though a fatherly restraining hand had been put on his shoulder, sanity returning. He threw the bat aside and began to walk slowly away. “I hate this town,” he said, and he broke into a run, dashing into the streets behind the big hotels before the driver could find any allies.
♦
He soon stopped running. Running was no more his style than waiting, but he continued to cover ground, walking fast, determinedly, foolishly, lost. He had no idea where he was or where he was going. He felt furious and humiliated, and for a while at least the simple performance of looking as though he knew where he was heading was enough to help disperse the anger. The streets of Mayfair confused him. He had imagined that every street in London seethed with activity and population, yet these streets were more or less empty. The buildings were big and imposing but they had sucked in all the crowds from the pavement.