‘Don’t be familiar,’ I said.
‘Just a closer walk with thee,’ said Elijah. ‘Put on your red dress, baby, cause we’re goin’ out tonight.’ He’s acquired an odd repertoire of gospel and blues from Charles and he was starting the next verse when the doorbell rang.
‘Who is it?’ I said.
‘Detective Inspector Hunter,’ said the intercom. ‘May I come up?’
‘Come ahead,’ I said, and buzzed him in. When I opened the door there were DI Hunter and a sharp-looking black woman. I’d seen her in the Underground but hadn’t realised she was following me.
‘This is Detective Patterson,’ said Hunter.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Why not?’
‘Where’s Justine Trimble?’ said Hunter.
‘No idea,’ I said.
‘There is a balm in Gilead,’ said Elijah.
‘That’s a hymn,’ said Hunter.
‘That’s a her too,’ said Elijah.
‘Where?’ said Hunter.
‘Rice and beans, flour and potatoes,’ said Elijah.
‘In the storeroom?’ said Hunter.
‘Heal a sin-sick soul,’ said Elijah.
‘Where does this parrot get his material?’ said Hunter.
‘He hangs out with Charles,’ I said.
‘Who’s Charles?’
‘Black man who works here.’
‘In the storeroom?’
‘Wherever he’s needed,’ I said.
‘Like Mars bars,’ said Elijah.
‘What’s he talking about?’ said Hunter to me.
‘No idea,’ I lied.
Hunter fixed me with a very beady eye. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Let’s visit the storeroom.’
We had to go through the restaurant and there we encountered Rosalie Chun. ‘So,’ she said, looking at Hunter and Detective Patterson, ‘who are you and what do you want?’
Hunter and Patterson identified themselves and showed their warrant cards. ‘We’re just having a look around,’ said Hunter.
‘What are you looking for?’ said Rosalie.
‘We’ll know it when we find it,’ said Hunter. ‘We’ll try the storeroom first.’
‘No violations here,’ said Rosalie. ‘I run a clean restaurant.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ said Hunter. ‘Would you like to lead the way?’
We all went down to the storeroom and there was Justine with blood all around her mouth and a headless rat in her right hand like a Mars bar. Before you could say Jackie Chan she threw the rat straight at DI Hunter. He ducked and it hit Detective Patterson in the face. While Patterson screamed and flailed about Justine scooped up a double handful of rice from a sack and flung it in our eyes. In the moment this gave her she went through us as if she’d been shot from a cannon and was up the stairs and gone.
‘Gevalt!’ said Rosalie. ‘After all the wonderful meals I’ve made for her!’
‘You can’t expect gratitude from her kind,’ said Hunter.
‘Is that a racist remark?’ I said. I couldn’t help it.
‘Don’t you cheek me, sunshine,’ said Hunter. ‘You’re nicked for perverting the course of justice and hindering a police investigation. Read him his rights, Detective Patterson.’
Still wiping blood from her face, Patterson said to me, ‘You have the rat to remain silent, right. But anything you do say will be bitten off in evidence and taken down against you.’ With that we all left Elijah’s Lucky Dragon and that was it for Monday.
37 Irving Goodman
2 February 2004. During the night it blew a gale and the seas were running very high. In the morning wind and sea abated and I was going to give each man a teaspoonful of rum and a quarter breadfruit and a coconut but it was difficult to see anyone. A voice spoke up and said, ‘You are not Captain Bligh, Sir. You are not even Sir.’
I hate it when dreams become difficult. ‘Give me a break,’ I said. ‘I’m doing the best I can and I intend to sail this boat all the way to the Thames Estuary and Knock John.’ As the fog cleared the old fort came into view and I heard Charlotte saying, ‘Here on Britain’s Better Music Station the time is coming up to what it used to be and Jo Stafford has a song for all you haunted hearts out there.’
In the night, though we’re apart,
There’s a ghost of you within my haunted heart –
Ghost of you, my lost romance,
Lips that laugh, eyes that dance …
‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘is that you?’
‘Of course it is,’ she said, ‘always.’
38 Justine Trimble
3 February 2004. That son of a bitch Chauncey, he couldn’t leave well enough alone, he had to stick the police on me. What the hell was his beef? I was giving him as much white pussy as he could handle. So I was doing rats, big deal. Did he think I could live on that Jew-Chinese cooking and nothing else? I didn’t ask to be brought back from the dead and I’m sick and tired of being hounded by everybody and his brother. They made me a vampire and I do what vampires do. If they wanted Shirley Temple they should have used a different recipe.
I never meant to kill Rose Harland, she was the only sweet thing that’s happened to me since I became undead. I remember the softness of her lips and how she clung to me while I held her to keep her from falling.
There’s no sweetness for me any more. That fucking Chauncey.
39 Ralph Darling
4 February 2004. The emptiness left by Rachael’s death was bigger than whatever else there was around it. All those years of her gone! After I saw Detective Inspector Hunter I went home and arranged for my foreman to run the farm for me, then I booked a room for two weeks at the Regent Palace Hotel near Piccadilly Circus. Every morning I woke up and looked out of my window at a row of orange wheelie bins with a row of scooters and motorbikes in front of them in Glasshouse Street. Eros was not part of my view. Every day I walked up Brewer Street to Lexington near the corner of Beak, the spot where Hunter thought Rachael had been killed. I had a feeling that the person or thing that had killed her might return to it. I knew that Rachael was with me and I sensed that I could tune into her killer through her.
People came and went. Day after day and night after night nothing happened until yesterday evening. The dark came early and the street lamps didn’t so much illuminate as just give everything a yellowish cast. I could feel a lurking presence — I could almost see a dim shape as if I were wearing night-vision goggles. Whatever it was was coming closer. I had no weapon but there was a skip full of rubbish and I saw the legs of a wooden chair sticking out of it. I broke off a chair leg and waited. Somebody got between me and the dim shape and I said, ‘Get out of the way!’ but he didn’t, and it was on him. Everything went into slow motion then, I couldn’t see very well and it took me a long time to get to where it was happening. I saw it clearly then, a young woman bending over the man on the ground. She had her teeth in his neck and she looked up at me with blood running down her chin. It was like a Hammer horror film. I knocked her away from the man with the chair leg, then I grabbed her by the hair and jammed the chair leg into what I hoped was her heart. She let out a terrible scream and a geyser of blood shot up out of her. Then she became black-and-white, then flat, then nothing but dust blowing in the wind. There was no blood on the pavement. The chair leg was lying there but she was gone and the man was dead. He was Chinese.
‘Was that the one that killed you?’ I said to Rachael, and I felt a heaviness go away from me so I knew I’d got it right. I walked back through the noise and dirt of London to the Regent Palace Hotel and in the morning I checked out and went home.