Porter suppressed a smile.
The clue is the nom de plume. As the current idiom has it… ‘Wanna play?’ I think a recent novel by P.J. Taylor used that as a title.
I digress.
Good will hunting.
Yours predatorily, FORD.
Brown removed the pince-nez, literally flung the letter at Porter, and said:
‘Get on it.’
‘Am… sir.’
The brusqueness was deliberate. Porter, not touching the letter, asked:
‘Is it right, no fingerprints?’
Brown was close to a coronary, roared:
‘Course there’re bloody prints; the postman, my secretary, mine, and probably a hundred others, but usable ones?’
He banged his desk, asked: ‘What type of moron do you take me for?’ There wasn’t a civil answer to this.
Porter had gone to the pub and met Trevor, ending the day on a high note.
… but now I just listened-not liking it… but accepting the confessions as an unwelcome part of the deal I had made with myself.
4
Hello again.
‘Uptown Ranking,’ remember that tune? Gets you juicing, gets that energy cranked. Yeah?
Had me a good one, sleep I mean. Took two Zanex with a double scotch, I was gone. Twelve hours straight.
You ever have to fly long distance, there’s your solution. I once flew to Thailand, hadn’t any pills, watched four movies cold. Yup, one after another. That’ll put you in the zone, give you the old red eye. I think Jack Nicholson was in one or all of them. I flew Thai Airways, they keep you subdued with food. I went to Thailand to get laid.
Doesn’t everyone?
Oh sorry, you probably love the culture.
Bollocks.
Try Paris, shit-head.
Whoops, I lost it there and I do apologize. But it does actually elucidate my crusade.
Which is:
To restore politeness. In Thailand, man, they have that shit down.
Even the flunkeys at the supermarket wear gloves and bow when you approach.
I shit thee not.
First few times, you’re a Londoner, think he’s taking the piss, might have to bang him up side the head. No, straight up, it’s the real deal. What happens is, you get used to it. I mean, even the bar-girls, before they suck you off, ask permission. Like you’re going to say no?
Then you get back to Blighty, the cricket’s gone to shit, Beckham has yet another ridiculous hairstyle, and the first person you meet goes:
‘Fuck you.’
Got me thinking.
Then my old man died and you know what? He was a gent. For real. Treated people with dignity and respect.
What’d it get him?
Rotten lungs and a fucking tin-plated pocket-watch, they really broke the bank on that one. My inheritance. Course, with his insides all messed up, he didn’t get out. Once, two years ago, he’d managed to get to the local shop. Took him a time on the way back, with his Racing Post and Cadbury’s Flake, he got mugged. Feisty old bugger, he fought back, that old English spirit of Dunkirk and ‘Having a go.’ Four teenagers, two of them girls, gave him a serious kicking.
Broke a bone in his face.
Bone.
When I’m on the streets, I watch the teens, watch for a group of four.
On my list, a cluster fuck.
Have a special adapted spray in a metal container. It’s got acid in there, and a hint of ammonia plus a sprinkle of patchouli to add freshness to the carnage. Old hippies never die, they just molt.
I’ll term it… delousing.
Newton Thornberg, Cutter and Bone.
Do yourself a favour, get down to Murder One on Charing Cross Road, buy it. You’ll get a trace of who I am, where I’m coming from.
See all that Jonathan Franzen, Salman Rushdie stuff on your shelf, all those wanna-be Booker Prize contenders gathering dust, all that earnest shit: BIN IT.
Get real, buddy.
You wanna know how the world works, get Andrew Vachss.
Not intellectual enough?
Get James Sallis, he’ll fry your cells. Or for downright metaphysical, Paul Auster.
Crime writing, bro, it’s the new rock ‘n’ roll.
Oh, I kept my word.
Offed a broad on Fri.
I was coming along the Kennington Park Road and a black cab pulled up, a woman got out, and the language of her. She was calling the cabbie every obscenity in the book. Then she flung the fare at him, brushed past me, nearly toppling me, so I thought, ‘uh-oh.’ Followed her, and she was on her cell, roaring at some underling. She turned into a large office building, and I was right behind. Up in the elevator, her giving large to some poor bastard all the time.
Off at the tenth floor and storms into an open-plan area, employees keeping their heads down, not wanting to meet her eyes, which was just fine with me. Slammed into an office and before she could bang the door, I was there. She glared at me, spat:
Who the hell are you? The tradesmen’s entrance is at the rear.
I slapped her in the mouth, got a fistful of her hair, and dragged her to the window, opened it, and threw her out. I said:
‘Learn some manners, you bitch.’
And then I just strolled on out of there. No one noticed me, no one called:
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ I mean this shit is so easy, talk about shooting fish in a barrel.
You ever hear a quote and you’re not sure who said it, answer ‘Mark Twain,’ and 90 percent of the time, you’ll be right. He seems to have said everything at least once. The rest was uttered by Oscar Wilde. Straight up, Twain did say:
‘If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?’
The first one, the guy, came about almost by accident. I was in Waterloo station, sitting in the cafe having a latte, and at the next table were a man and woman. He was berating her in a fashion that was astonishing. Like this:
‘You stupid cow, how could you forget the messages? I told you a hundred times, get the bloody things.’
And it got worse. I won’t trouble you with the vile stuff he said, it was in the vein of the above, only cruder. The woman finally got up, tears in her eyes, and fled. The other people in the place did what we all do, pretended not to notice, and so the likes of that prick flourish. I followed him out and he went to wait on the platform; the Brighton train was late and he was leaning over, muttering about British Rail. I came up behind him, pushed. Seemed kind of poetic.
There you have it, the first two, the grand beginning. Oops, there’s the doorbell, probably my girl. More on her later.
It depends on a complete assurance that a punch on the nose will not be the reply.
5
Falls was dressed for school, pressed her uniform, gave her sensible shoes a serious buff, examined herself in the mirror, grimaced as she discovered some new lines round her eyes. Tried opening them wide, worse, it seemed to deepen the ridges. Got in her makeup bag, covered them fast.
She was on her second coffee, no sugar.
Recently, her weight had begun to climb, and for one mad moment, she’d thought:
Ah, the hell with it, I’ll score some snow, solve the whole deal.
The madness passed. Sure, she’d lose weight and:
Her job
Her home
Her mind.
Had been round that block more than once. A slice of Danish was perched beside the coffee-pot. Moving fast, she grabbed it, slung it in the bin, shouted:
‘See if I care.’
A pile of notes, outlining the talk she should give at the school, was on the floor. She’d read them once, the very first paragraph proposed: