The gray coat had belonged to his father.
“There’s all sorts out there,” Maxwell said. His accent was heavy and the disgust was audible beneath the arch, jokey tone. “There isn’t really a look, you know? You could be wearing a three-piece suit and spats, but if you’ve got a can of Tennent’s Extra or a needle in your arm, you’ll fit right in.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
There was a scarred, metal rubbish bin mounted to the wall. Maxwell moved across and took out the stuffed, white bin liner. Began tying a knot in the top of it. “This is very bizarre…”
“What?”
“First thing I do, with a lot of the younger ones anyway, is give them a reality check. You know? They’re straight off the coach or they’ve hitched here from wherever and some of these kids really do think the place is paved with gold. I swear to God. It’s my job, very gently you understand, to point out to them how very wrong, how completely fucking stupid they are. It’s usually a waste of time, but even if they tell me to piss off, they find out themselves quickly enough.” He pointed toward a high, dirty window behind a mesh of black metal. “It’s dogshit and fucking despair holding the pavements together out there. A reality check?” He looked across at Thorne. “Not much point with you, is there?”
“Not really.”
Maxwell dropped the bin bag onto the floor. He reached into his back pocket for a new roll, tore one off. “Phil thinks you’re mental, by the way.”
“I know.”
“I can’t say I disagree with him. Why all this De Niro shite?”
“All this what?”
“You know what I mean…”
“What are you on about?” Thorne said. “I’ve got a mobile phone in my pocket and I’m wearing thermal underwear.”
Maxwell smiled. “Fair play. You could still go a bit easier, though, spend the first couple of nights in a hostel.”
“The men who were killed were all sleeping rough. They died outdoors.” Thorne caught the smell of hot food drifting down from the cafe. “Besides, if I’m going to do this, I might as well bloody do it.”
Maxwell picked up the full bin bag and walked to the door. “Listen, I’m not having a go, Tom, and I’ll be around if you need any help, but don’t make any mistake about it. However much you think you’re doing this, you can always walk away.” He opened the door, then turned back into the room. “You can dirty yourself up and spend a bit of time kipping on cardboard, but you’ve got the option to cut and run any bloody time you feel like it. Anytime you like. Jump in a taxi back to your flat and your cowboy music.”
Thorne was getting irritated, but had to smile. Cowboy music. That was one of Hendricks’s. “I’ll see you upstairs,” he said. “I’d better grab some food before I make a move.”
Maxwell nodded and stepped out into the corridor. “Stew’s good.. .”
It had seemed like as good a spot as any.
Three steps up from pavement level and fairly sheltered. Odd as it was to sleep surrounded by giant black-and-white photographs of actors and extravagant quotes testifying to their skill and comic timing, Thorne figured that a theater doorway was a safe bet. As long as he waited until the show had finished and the place had shut its doors for the night, he probably wouldn’t be bothered. Plus, of course, theaters-unlike shops-tended not to open first thing in the morning.
Two days shy of September, it was a relatively mild night, but within half an hour of lying down, his arse was dead and it felt as though a corpse’s feet had been pressed against his neck.
Thorne hitched up the sleeping bag and leaned back against the doors. He’d felt ready to drop only an hour before. Having walked around since the day center had closed its doors at four o’clock, he’d been stone-cold dead on his feet by the time he’d staked his claim to the theater doorway. Now, suddenly, he was horribly awake. He thought about getting his gear together again and walking some more, but he didn’t want to run the risk of losing his pitch. He’d seen one or two characters earlier in the surrounding streets, mooching around, looking like they were searching for a good spot to spend the night. For a second he decided that reading a book might help him sleep, and then he remembered where he was and what he was doing. It struck him that the first few days would be about similar moments of desire and realization. About feeling spoiled and stupid every few minutes.
Remembering, and perhaps forgetting, the thousand everyday things that he would be going without.
Music, TV, decent food. But it wasn’t even so much about these obvious things themselves. He would eat. There was a television in the day center if he had a desperate desire to watch Richard and Judy. It was getting used to such things not being available whenever he felt like them. It was a question of choice, and space. Somewhere to lie down, to feel comfortable, to have a piss…
He started to make a list in his head of all these things and it didn’t take him long to work out exactly what it was that he needed. He couldn’t believe that he’d been so stupid as not to get it organized. Christ, he’d have had a beer at home, wouldn’t he? He decided that tomorrow night he’d make sure he stashed a couple of cans in his rucksack. Maybe something even stronger.
He sat, bored and scared, letting his head drop back against the polished wooden doors and staring at the photographs all around him. Listening to people shouting and to cars accelerating away. Smelling the aftershave on his father’s coat.
It was, he guessed, not even one o’clock yet. People still walked past his doorway every few minutes or so. Thorne wondered how long it would be before he no longer bothered looking up at them.
In retrospect, his one regret about killing the driver was that he hadn’t given the pathetic twat time to get a proper look at him. He’d have liked to have seen the shock register, just for a second, before the first kick had…
Mind you, there was no point dwelling on it. Most of them had been so out of it, so away with the fairies, that they hadn’t registered much of anything. The driver was in such a state, he wouldn’t have recognized him anyway, likely as not. He could smell the beer on the poor sod, alongside that stink they all had. That tangy, tramp stink. Sharp and musty at the same time, like cats had been pissing in a charity shop.
He turned off the bathroom light and moved into the darkness of the bedroom. He thought about checking to see if there was any metal on MTV, maybe working out for twenty minutes. He decided against it and began to undress; it was easy enough to do a bit more in the morning. He’d eaten late and the food hadn’t had a chance to go down.
Things in London had been fairly straightforward up to now, so it annoyed him that this last one, Hayes, had survived. It sounded, from what they’d said on the news and in the paper, that he wouldn’t survive for very long, but still, it rankled with him. It made him swear at the mirror and kick out at stuff. You did a good job and you took pride in it. That mattered. It was important that you did what was required.
He flicked on the TV. The light from the small screen danced across his clothes as he folded them carefully onto the chair at the foot of his bed.
He’d already made up his mind to do another one. This one would be just for him, would go some way toward making up for botching the last one. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it couldn’t do much harm. It would cost him another note, of course, but twenty quid a pop wasn’t a lot for reinforcement that bloody good.
He climbed beneath the blanket in his vest and pants and began jabbing at the remote. As he had looked at what was showing on all the stations a few times, it was obvious that there was nothing he fancied, but he carried on regardless. Moving methodically through the channels with the sound down.