“He doesn’t need to know any more.”
Sean turned to see the barrel-chested man from the funeral standing in the doorway. He had so much neck it resembled a collar for his head to nestle in.
Rapler said, “This is Ronnie Salt. You’ll answer to him on the softstrip. He runs a good team, does Ronnie.”
Ronnie nodded at him. Up close, his eyes were unpleasant splashes of cement-grey either side of a nose that might have once been used as a blacksmith’s anvil. The two men walked across the sunken, blasted forecourt to the condemned building as another man turned up. He nodded at them and Rapler clapped his hand on the new man’s shoulder. “Marshall?” Rapler asked, “Jamie Marshall?” They disappeared back inside his Portakabin.
“Why is it being knocked down?” Sean asked, as they approached the de Fleche building.
Salt regarded him with what looked like a wince, as if he had expected Sean to be mute and was now resigned to having to converse with him. “Well, it’s completely shagged out. I mean, look at it. Nobody has lived there or worked in it for years. Sick building. Air conditioning system never right. Couple of people died. Airborne disease.”
“Great. Must be a pleasure to spend your days in there.”
Salt sneered at him. “It’s a job.”
The front of the de Fleche building soared away from them like the prow of a ship. The entrance was a fly-blown revolving door ten feet high with so many cracks it looked like a feature. Behind the fogged barrier of glass, a bank of shattered TV screens hung from the ceiling over a horseshoe desk. Sean tried to imagine what the lobby must have looked like.
“Let’s have a closer look,” he said.
The doors gritted and squealed as they pushed through. The air in here was a urinous melange; a deep scar in the far wall showed how vagrants might have gained access. Squatter evidence lay around them: empty tins, shit-streaked toilet tissue in a bin sack, newspapers bearing dates from half a decade previously.
Salt stood by the door, his hands in his pockets, toeing something small and shrivelled that owned claws and a tail.
“Has work started on this place yet?” Sean asked.
“Yeah. We’re going top to bottom. Just a couple of floors done so far. Slow job.”
“Where’s your team?”
A blunt thumb jutted upwards. “Wordy bastard aren’t you? Do you ask so many questions all the time?”
Sean spread his hands. “Just being friendly.”
“Keep friendly for your knitting circle, or whatever it is you do when you leave us. Work is here. Hard fucking work. And I will come down on you like the knives at a knacker’s yard if you step out of line. Hear me? Don’t like it? Hard-hat off, fuck off. Simple as that.”
“I understand,” Sean said.
Salt regarded him for a few seconds longer, then jutted his thumb north again. “Let’s go.”
HE FELT LIKE a zoo animal in a new kind of viewing experience, one in which the attractions are led around a static public. Smoke and the smell of over-brewed tea hung sourly in the room. On one wall, a calendar depicted a topless woman sitting on the bonnet of a Ferrari eating melting ice cream.
Salt said, without any attempt at pointing out the owners of the names: “Robbie Deakin, Tim Enever, Lutz Singkofer, Nicky Preece, Jez Cartledge. This is… tits… forgotten your name. Steve?”
“Sean. Sean Redman.”
“Right then, I’ll let you get on. Show him what’s what. Maybe start him off on the loose wall in the bathroom.” Salt left, grabbing a fish paste sandwich from a wrap of foil on one of the men’s knees. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he called, as his boots began their descent.
An embarrassed silence fell. Sean broke it: “Have you worked together as a team long?”
“’Bout six month,” replied the man with the fish paste sandwiches. He offered one to Sean. Sean accepted. “I’m Robbie. Salty’s a miserable old bastard. Ignore him. We hardly ever see him anyway. He normally fucks off to the pub when Vernon’s not around.”
“Who’s Vernon?” Sean bit into the sandwich. It reminded him of childhood. Salty, cheap paste. Margarine on bland white bread.
Robbie said, “Vernon Lord. He’s the chief. He’s the sub-contractor. Gets us quite a bit of work. We had a guy, what was his name? Anyway, he was shite. Smackhead. So we need another. Six men is more or less right for this job.”
“Five and a half, Rob, if you’re counting Tim.” The guy who had spoken raised a hand to Sean. “All right mate? I’m Nicky. This is Jez and that’s Lutz.”
Sean said, “Lutz? You German?”
“Fuck off,” said Lutz, in a loose, Mancunian whine. “I’m from Chorley, me.”
Nicky nodded at another figure, hunched over a paperback novel. “That’s Tim. AKA Shivery Eyes.”
Tim looked up as Robbie leant over to ask Sean if he wanted some tea.
“Yeah sure,” Sean said, studying the candyfloss hair and the too-big eyes. More quietly, he asked: “What’s up with him?”
Robbie checked Tim and grinned. “What isn’t? He’s all right, Tim. Aren’t you, Timmy? All right?”
Tim said, “Sound.” His voice was low and whispery. He looked like a tuberculosis “after” picture. His eyes slow-blinked gummily, crusted with goo. A pane of spit sealed his open mouth. The breath he drew in through his nose turned to liquid in his lungs. Sean could clearly see his ribs under the fabric of an ancient Duran Duran T-shirt.
“Is he fit to do this kind of work?” Sean murmured.
“What? Making the tea and bringing us stuff from the shop? He manages that all right, mate.”
Lutz said, “Don’t worry your pretty little head about our Tim. We look after him, hey, Tim? Don’t we look after you?”
Tim shrugged. He said, “Do you like dick? More cock?”
Sean screwed up his face. “You what?”
Lutz laughed. “It’s his little joke. He asks everyone that. They’re writers. Science fiction writers. You know. Philip Dick, isn’t it, Tim? Do Androids Dream of Electric Blankets?”
“Sheep.”
“Sheep blankets then. Whatever. And Michael Moorcock. I never read anything by them, but Tim here has always got his face in a book.”
“What you into there?” Sean asked. He was frustrated. He wanted to ram Tim into the wall and ask him what he had been doing at Naomi’s funeral. None of the others had been there, as far as he could tell. Tim shifted, obviously uncomfortable with the sustained interest in his business. Sean saw now how, behind those gritty lids, Tim’s eyes vibrated and jerked like the numbered balls in the National Lottery.
“Harrison. M John, not Harry. The Committed Men.” His voice soughed out of him. He seemed to diminish under the effort.
“Good?”
Tim shrugged. “Yeah.” His bovine scrutiny of Sean over, he went back to his paperback.
“We’ll give you something simple to start you off with,” Robbie said, drawing on a pair of thick gloves. “Grab a pair of these. Over there by the door.”
Robbie took him through to what must once have been the kitchen in this particular flat. Sawn-off drains thrust through the floor like severed limbs. “Lump hammer,” Robbie continued. “Highly technical this bit… take the hammer and twat the Christ out of that dividing wall till there’s nothing left.”
“That’s it?” said Sean, shedding his jacket.
“How hard do you want the job to be, mate?” said Nicky, who had followed them through. “Listen, me and Lutz are going to make a start on the flat across the landing. Robbie’ll give you any advice you need. Want tea? Tabs? A fiver putting on Wet Dream in the three-thirty at Ascot? Tim’s yer man.”