Reeve hadn’t considered his brother’s car. He’d imagined it would be sitting in some long-term car lot out near Heathrow-and as far as he was concerned they could keep it.
Cavendish put him right. “Those places cost a fortune. No, he reckoned this was a better bet.”
They were walking from 5 Harrington Lane, a terraced house, to the garage Pete Cavendish owned. They’d come out through his back door, crossed what might have been the garden, been shown through a gate at the back which Cavendish then repadlocked shut, and were in an alley backing onto two rows of houses whose backyards faced each other. The lane had become a dumping ground for everything from potato chip bags to mattresses and sofas. One sofa had been set alight and was charred to a crisp, showing springs and clumps of wadding. It was nearly dark, but the alley was blessed with a single working streetlight. Cavendish had brought a flashlight with him.
“I think the reason he did that,” Cavendish said, meaning Jim’s letter to himself, “was he was drunk, and he hadn’t been to my new place before. He probably reckoned he’d forget the bloody address and never find me again, or his old car. See, Jim had a kind of dinosaur brain-there was a little bit of it working even when he’d had a drink. It was his ancient consciousness.”
Pete Cavendish spoke with a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth. He had a ponytail and gray wizened cheeks. The holes in his jeans weren’t there by design, and the heel was loose on one of his sneakers. Reeve had noticed some cans of Super Lager on the kitchen counter. He’d seen Cavendish swig from one before they set off. Ecology and dinosaurs. If Cavendish kept drinking, he’d be seeing green dinosaurs in his dreams.
They passed seven garages before coming to a stop. Caven-dish kicked away some empty cans and a bag of bottles from the front of his own private garage, then took the key from Reeve that Jim had mailed to his own home. He turned it in the lock, pulled the handle, and the garage door groaned open. It stuck halfway up, but halfway was enough. The streetlight barely penetrated the interior gloom.
Cavendish switched on the flashlight. “Doesn’t look as though any of the kids have been in here,” he said, checking the floor and walls. Reeve didn’t ask what he’d thought he might find-glue, spray paint, used vials of crack?
There was only the car.
It was a battered Saab 900 of indeterminate color-charcoal came closest-with a chip out of the windshield, the fixings for side mirrors but no actual mirrors, and one door (replaced after a collision) a different color from the rest of the body. Reeve had never let his brother drive him anywhere in the Saab, and had never seen Jim drive it. It used to sit outside the flat with a tarpaulin over it.
“He spent a grand getting it done up,” Cavendish said.
“Money well spent,” Reeve muttered.
“Not on the outside, on the inside: new engine, transmission, clutch. He could’ve bought another car cheaper, but he loved this old tank.” Cavendish patted it fondly.
“Keys?” Reeve asked. Cavendish handed them over. Reeve unlocked the car and looked inside, checking under the seats and in the glove compartment. He came up with chewing gum, parking tickets, and a book of matches from the same Indian restaurant where he’d eaten lunch.
“The boot?” Fliss suggested. Reeve was unwilling; this would be it, the very last option, their last chance to move any further forward. He turned the key and felt the trunk spring open. Cavendish shone the flashlight in. There was something nestling there, covered with a tartan traveling rug. Reeve pulled off the rug, revealing a large cardboard box advertising its contents to be twelve one-liter bottles of dishwashing liquid. It was the kind of box you picked up from supermarkets and corner shops. He opened its flaps. There were papers inside, maybe half a boxful. He pulled out the top sheet and angled it into the failing flashlight.
“Bingo,” he said.
He lifted the box out, and Fliss locked the trunk. The box was awkward rather than heavy.
“Can we call for a cab from your phone?” Reeve asked Cavendish.
“Yeah, sure.” They left the garage, and Cavendish locked it tight. “Just one thing,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“What’s going to happen to the car?”
Reeve thought about it for all of two seconds. “It’s yours,” he told Cavendish. “Jim would have wanted it that way.”
NINE
January 13
I suppose if this turns into a story, I’ll have to credit Marco with the genesis-though he’d probably stress he’s more of a Pink Floyd fan. He wears a T-shirt which must date back to Dark Side of the Moon. It’s black with the prism logo on it-only he says it’s a pyramid. Sure, but light doesn’t enter a pyramid white and come out the seven colors of the rainbow. It only does that with prisms, so it must be a prism. He says I’m missing the point, maaann. The point is, the album’s a concept album and the concept is everyday madness. Pure white light into a myriad of colors. The everyday gone mad.
But then why is it a damned pyramid? Why not a teacup or a toaster or even a typewriter? Marco laughs, remembering that party of his and how I looked at a poster on his wall and thought it was sailing boats on a rippling blue sea, pictured near sunset with some heavy filtering.
And it wasn’t. It was pyramids. It was the poster that came with Dark Side of the Moon and I was sober when I mistook it. Sober as a judge. Later, I was drunk as a lord and trying to get my hand up Marco’s girlfriend’s kilt until she reminded me, her mouth shiveringly close to my ear, that Marco had done a bit of judo in his time and part of his left ear was missing. So, fair enough, I retracted my hand. You do, don’t you?
Where the fuck was I? The story. The story.
It’s about madness, too: that’s why I used the Pink Floyd reference. I could use it as a lead into the story proper. “Tales of Everyday Madness.” Was that a book or a film? Did someone give me that at charades one time? Absolutely impossible. Yes, charades, at Marco’s party. And Marco’s team was making half its titles up. The bastard even dumped in some that were in Italian.
Marco is Italian, and that is also relevant to the story. This is a story he told me last night in the Stoat and Whistle. I said to him, why haven’t you told me this before? Know what he said? He said, this is the first serious (not to mention intelligible) conversation we’ve ever had. And when I thought about it, he was probably right. What’s more, he only got round to telling his story because we’d run out of Tottenham jokes. Here’s the last one we told. What’s the difference between a man with no knob and a Spurs player? A man with no knob’s got more chance of scoring.
See, we were desperate.
“Anything?” Fliss asked. She had her own sheaf of paper in front of her, as well as a second mug of coffee.
“I think he was drunk when he typed this.”
“Full of spelling mistakes?”
“No, just full of shit.”
They were back in the Crouch End flat. They’d brought a carry-out back with them-Chinese this time, with some lagers and Cokes bought from the corner shop. The tin trays of food sat half-uneaten on the living room’s coffee table.
“What about you?” Reeve asked.
“Photocopies mostly. Articles from medical and scientific journals. Looks like he was calling up anything he could find on mad cow disease. Plus on genetic patents. There’s an interesting article about the company that owns the patent on all genetically engineered cotton. Might not be relevant.” She gnawed on a plastic chopstick. The chopsticks had been fifty pence a pair extra. Reeve rubbed his jaw, feeling the need for a shave. And a bath. And some sleep. He tried not to think about what time his body made it; tried to dismiss the eight hours he’d wound his watch forward, and the sleep he hadn’t taken on the plane.