‘Suspects? Motives?’ Craig asked, grinning.
‘Stop enjoying this, you bastard.’
‘No, I’m being serious. Can you think of any suspects and what their motives might be?’
‘Oh, Jesus, do you want them alphabetically or in order of appearance? The world is basically composed of people who want me dead, and my close friends.’
‘I’m not sure those are mutually exclusive categories.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘That’s a tad paranoid, even for you.’
‘Craig, I’ve lost count of the death threats I’ve had over the years. We have to report each one to the local nick. They have a photocopied report form with my details already filled in. The people who open my mail get danger money. I’m not joking.’
‘You told me it was dirty money.’
‘Okay, it’s mostly shit, not bombs, but still. The point is lots of people have claimed to want me dead, and that’s just the ones who feel a burning desire to tell me. This could be fundamentalists of any persuasion, a corporate hit-job-’
Craig sniggered. ‘Oh, come on.’
‘Excuse me? I have affected the share price of large corporations. That’s a capital offence.’
‘Yeah, ha ha. Colour me chortle. But no, you haven’t. Not alone,’ Craig said. ‘You’re not an investigative reporter or anything, Ken. You’re a commentator. You comment on what others have dug up. If you didn’t, somebody else would, people who do dig stuff up. Private Eye, Mark Thomas… I don’t know; Rory Bremner, I mean… Shit, people have been trying to close down the Eye for decades. If Maxwell couldn’t and Jimmy Goldsmith couldn’t… I mean, why would anyone bother trying to kill you?’
‘Did any of that make sense even to you?’ I asked him.
‘I’m tired,’ Craig flapped one hand. ‘Mr Penfold and I have been in deep discussion most of the evening.’
‘Have you heard some of the things I’ve said about people? About fundamentalists in par-fucking-ticular?’
‘Fundamentalists don’t listen to your show.’
‘Khomeini didn’t read The Satanic Verses. So fucking what?’
‘Well, they don’t sound like fundamentalists, do they? White, man and woman, somebody called Danny.’
‘That I’ll give you.’ I put the dead joint into the ashtray. ‘They don’t sound like fundamentalist Muslims, anyway. Could be fundamentalist Christians; Aryan Nation militia types or something. They can’t all be wanking over pictures of Ayn Rand and polishing their Desert Eagles in South Dakota.’ My hand was still shaking. ‘Man, I really need a drink.’
‘I’ve got a box of red. Banrock okay?’
‘If it’s red and it has lots of alcohol in it, that’s all that matters.’
Craig rose. ‘Sounds like your blood, pal.’
‘You ruddy sod. My jacket stank of whisky.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t see it lying there,’ I lied. ‘D’you still have it? I mean, you haven’t washed it or anything, have you?’
‘Exhibit A is in a bin-bag in my kitchen,’ Phil said. He paused. He shook his head. ‘I still can’t believe you punched a woman.’
‘For the last time! I didn’t have a fucking choice!’
‘Well,’ Craig said. ‘As long as you didn’t enjoy it.’
‘About as much as I’m enjoying this,’ I muttered.
Phil had picked Craig and me up on Saturday morning and taken us to the Temple Belle. I’d been worried what I might find there; I’d wanted reinforcements. Phil and Craig knew each other so well they frequently had great sport with my insecurities, telling me they were actually better friends with each other than they were with me. This time they didn’t do that but they ganged up and made me swear that if they helped me here, I’d report what had happened to the police on the Monday morning.
The houseboat was fine. Nothing had been disturbed, no horses’ heads in the bed, nothing. There was a tool box in the cupboard under the stairs; I’d rummaged around in it until I found a hammer, which I suggested we took with us in case we were attacked, but the guys just stood there and shook their heads in unison, like they’d been rehearsing. I put the hammer back.
We went for a pint and a light lunch, then set off for the East End in search of the site of the previous evening’s fun.
I found the place eventually. Haggersley Street, off Bow Road, which was where the chip shop and the cab firm were. It all looked very different in the fresh, pale light of an October afternoon. Just past the rail bridge, by the traffic lights, there was still window glass on the road. I took a handful.
We mooched warily around the cul-de-sac on the far side of the lights, where Haggersley Street ended in a dead end off Devons Road.
‘I think your birds have flown, chum,’ Phil said, kicking at an old lager can. ‘If they were ever here.’
‘Yeah, thanks, Phil; cheers,’ I said. Phil was, compared to Craig, rather more sceptical about my account of what had happened the night before. Probably because he had seen how drunk I was. And maybe because of the jacket.
We were in a place of old, crooked kerb stones, peeling tarmac laid over ancient cobbles, windscreen glass that crunched under foot like gravel, burnt-out and abandoned cars with rusted panels and sagging plastic trim, and – framing it all on three sides – tilted lengths of desultorily graffitied corrugated iron topped by rusting angle iron strung with thin strands of barbed wire, jagged strands of sharp, spaced knots decorated by the greyed-out tatters of ruined black bin-liners, fluttering in a damp wind like the prayer flags of a half-hearted monochrome hell.
Some of the corrugated iron sections were crude gates, all strung with ancient padlocks and grimy chains.
I took a stirrup-step up – Craig made me take my shoe off, which would have made running away interesting – and looked over the corrugated iron walls. Concrete aprons in front of abandoned-looking light industrial units. Freight containers. Sheds. Puddles. Piles of wooden pallets. Waste ground. Weeds. More puddles. There was nobody about; not even any guard dogs came bounding out to greet me. The rain was coming on again.
‘I hate this place utterly,’ said Phil.
‘Seen enough?’ Craig asked me.
‘I can feel my life-force draining out through my soles,’ Phil muttered.
‘Nobody wears grey socks any more, Ken.’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said, tutting and detaching one sleeve from a snag in the barbed wire. ‘Let us to fuck get.’
‘That’s you off the German beer until your grammar gets back to normal, pal.’
I tried calling Ceel at least twice a day from a variety of phone boxes throughout central London.
I now knew her number by heart.
She never answered.
Instead, on the Thursday, just after I’d finished my show, a package arrived, by courier. The package was slim and light, like Celia herself, but I didn’t dare hope. I signed for it, opened it, and there, glory be, was a key card.
My mobile rang. Something inside me melted and went south for the winter.
From the mobile’s tiny speaker, Ceel’s voice said, ‘One Aldwych. Dome suite.’
‘Are you-?’ I started to ask, but the line had clicked off. I let my head drop.
My phone burred again.
‘What?’ Ceel said.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked, almost choking.
‘Yes,’ she said, sounding puzzled. ‘Of course.’
I smiled into the middle distance. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
I couldn’t fuck. I just wanted to cuddle. Fully clothed. Ceel seemed more confused than annoyed, but also more confused than sympathetic.
‘No, I didn’t get the taxi’s number,’ I said. ‘Who ever does?’
‘I do.’
‘Oh yeah? What was the number of the last taxi you-?’
‘Four four one seven.’
‘Oh, Ceel, you’re kidding.’