‘Something to hide, I expect.’
‘He’s embarrassed. Look at him.’
‘Old ladies, you see.’
‘Well, we all know what Highness is like.’ Eddie always called Moses ‘Highness’ when he was drunk.
‘No taste.’ Jackson adjusted the cushions on the sofa with a dispassionate hand. ‘No taste at all.’
‘Anything in a skirt,’ Eddie leered. ‘Absolutely anything.’
‘Incredible, really.’
‘Too drunk to notice, you see. Too fucking wasted.’
‘Yes,’ and Jackson became solemn, ‘a drunk.’
‘An animal. A real animal.’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Taking too much speed.’
‘Lying in skips.’
‘Picking up old ladies.’
Moses sighed.
‘Picking up old ladies,’ Eddie repeated. He leaned forwards, his pupils floating in a pink surround. ‘And watching programmes about logarithms.’
Jackson chuckled.
‘If you must know,’ Moses said, ‘she picked me up.’
More mockery, more laughter. In the end, of course, he had to tell the story, a story that concluded with the words, ‘And then she vanished into thin air.’
Eddie and Jackson exchanged looks.
‘Strange,’ Moses said, ‘don’t you think?’
Eddie stubbed out his cigarette. ‘I don’t believe it. Clairvoyants and black gangsters and cups of tea that last for ever. It’s too much. You made it up, didn’t you, Highness?’
‘I didn’t.’
Eddie grinned. ‘Come on, Highness.’
‘Every word I told you is true. I promise you,’ but Moses couldn’t help smiling at the expression on Eddie’s face.
‘Do you believe him?’ Eddie asked Jackson.
Jackson made an n-shape with his mouth.
‘Neither do I,’ Eddie said. ‘Look. He’s smiling. You can’t trust him, you know. He’s always making things up.’
Almost two weeks, Moses thought, since their little conversation about statues. Had he touched a nerve in Eddie?
‘He probably just drove past the place,’ Eddie was saying, ‘you know, completely by chance, and stopped because he thought it looked interesting.’
Jackson was staring at the ceiling. ‘It wasn’t that interesting.’
‘Exactly. So he had to make up a few stories, didn’t he. Make it sound interesting.’
‘Pretty sad, really.’
‘Very sad.’
Moses switched the TV off and stood up. ‘Jesus, you two talk a lot of shit. I’m going out.’
Eddie looked up, all drunken innocence. ‘Where are you going, Highness?’
‘Anywhere. To the pub.’
Eddie turned to Jackson. ‘What do you think, Jackson? Do you think he’s telling the truth?’
Jackson glanced at his watch. ‘The pubs are closed,’ he said, ‘aren’t they?’
Eddie gloated up at Moses. Moses shrugged and went out.
To The Bunker.
*
During the next two months, the November and December of 1979, Moses saw very little of his friends. Jackson had started working at an occult bookshop, and spent his evenings and weekends pursuing his interest in meteorology. Vince was taking a lot of heroin in his squat at the bottom of the King’s Road. Eddie flew to New York on business. Moses received a postcard. Met any more old ladies? He needed air. New air. He began to go to The Bunker once, often twice, a week. As he drove east through the city, past the power-station and the huge refrigerated warehouses, along those stark grey four-lane roads, he thought of Madame Zola sometimes, the way you might think of a key that has unlocked a door.
He quickly became a regular, a face, a name. He leaned against walls. He talked to anyone. He heard things. The nightclub hadn’t always been a nightclub. It had been a wine-bar called Florian’s, a fishing-tackle shop and a printer’s studio in its time. Nothing lasted. Very high turnover of owners. Some said it was an unlucky building. ‘Sliker fuckin’ kermelion, init,’ a drunk told him one night, brandishing an empty bottle in his face, and Moses chose not to point out that a ‘kermelion’ blended rather than clashed with its surroundings; he didn’t want any trouble.
Between frequent drinks and awkward dances he began to find out about the present set-up. Belsen had done time for armed robbery. One of the barmen, Django, beat his wife. Elliot, the guy who ran the club, was a pimp. Louise had slept with him. How much truth these rumours contained Moses couldn’t have said, but he listened all the same. When he asked why the club had closed in September, people told him there had been some kind of break-in. Nobody could give him the details. Elliot would know, they said, but Elliot, they added in the same breath, didn’t like to talk about it, know what I mean? He suddenly realised that Elliot was the guy who had told him not to take the pictures.
He began to narrow his focus, and found there was more gossip about Elliot than about everybody else put together. Take the gap between his front teeth. ‘Yer know what that means, dontcher,’ Gladys said (Gladys owned the petshop three doors down). ‘What does it mean, Gladys?’ Moses asked. Gladys showed him her own diminishing collection. ‘Wimmin,’ she leered. ‘That’s what.’ (One woman it didn’t mean, Moses soon discovered, was Louise. He had mentioned the rumour to her one evening, and she had laughed and said, ‘Nobody gets that close to Elliot.’)
No one seemed to know where Elliot had come from originally — though there were a few predictable theories about the jungle. He had a South London accent — Bermondsey, somebody said. People often mistook him for a famous West Indian cricketer, and once, so rumour had it, Elliot had signed the great man’s autograph for a group of young fans outside the Oval (Moses made a mental note: sense of humour?). Many accused Elliot of arrogance. The evidence? Flash suits, flash car, flash attitude. Elliot didn’t seem to care whether he made enemies or not. ‘The way I see it, right,’ he had been heard to say, ‘you make deals, you make enemies. That’s the way it goes.’ His pleasures? He drank brandy, preferably Remy Martin. He smoked Dunhill King Size. He listened to Manhattan Transfer in his office late at night (‘He likes that soft music,’ said Dino, a spry and ageless Greek who ran the delicatessen opposite the club, ‘but he plays it so loud”). He had his own private pool-table too, and he saw himself as a bit of a hustler. If he thought you were all right he invited you up to the office for a game. When asked what they thought of him, most people used colourful language. Wanker cropped up more than once. So did bastard. Moses realised that if he wanted to know Elliot better he would have to meet him again. In the flesh. People were beginning to repeat themselves and contradict themselves. People were beginning to ask, ‘Why all these questions?’
He had been voyeur for long enough.
*
Elliot shaking Belsen’s hand. Elliot at the wheel of his white Mercedes. Elliot dyed red by a dance-floor spotlight. Elliot in an upstairs window, a cigarette bouncing on his lower lip.
But no contact. No real opening.
Once, as Moses paid to get in, Elliot seemed to be staring straight at him, but when Moses tried a smile, Elliot gave no sign that he had recognised him. It wasn’t that Elliot stared at you as if you weren’t there. No, he stared at you as if you were there — but not for much longer. He stared at you as if you were about to be removed. Permanently. It made you feel nervous and disposable. Moses had the feeling it was meant to. In that moment the roles reversed, and Moses began to feel watched.
Then, one Friday just after New Year, Elliot wanted a light and Moses happened to be nearest. As Elliot dipped his head towards the match, he glanced up sideways through the flame.