Headlines, headlines.
Someone is killing the rent boys of London, the leader said in The Guardian. A fine, resonant sentence, and utterly untrue. That made it sound universal, as though renting were the only qualification, extinction the ultimate goal.
Not so. Surely, not so. Yes, three lads had died -three out of five best mates, a pack who ran together, worked together, lived and ate and for all I knew slept together. They’d died individually, died alone; but I wouldn’t light a candle for coincidence. Nothing random here, no casual series for this killer. Those lads were sighted, beaded, blown away.
Alfred Kirk was number three, was that morning’s catch, hauled out of the river at low tide by one of the lower bridges. Pale under his skin of mud he must have been, no blood left to colour him lively. A frenzied attack, the papers said. Multiple stab wounds or slashed to rags, depending on your preference. Me, I prefer a choice, I like the rounded picture.
I liked the next bit, too. All the reports came together for once, even the tabloids’ prurience turning oblique now, all quoting the same source: clear signs of repeated sexual abuse, they all said.
Abuse, they called it.
With Alfie, I’d have called it nothing more than right and proper use; but perhaps you had to know him.
Or perhaps not. Flesh is flesh, and it’s a market economy. What you’ve got, you sell. Alfie did, they all do. That’s not abuse, it’s exploiting a resource.
Alfie Kirk. Dark, stocky, willing little Alfie. Take the boy out of the valleys, and you can sure as hell kick the valleys out of the boy.
Fresh meat he’d been when I met him, newly run from the Rhondda. Alfie ‘I’m sixteen’ Kirk, at least two years ahead of himself there; but he was hungry, he learned quick. Joined the Crew, sharpened up and settled in.
Now he was sliced meat, someone had been sharpening their blade on his bones. The Crew was disbanding fast, was being dissected.
Three down, two to go.
And I knew where to find them.
Or thought I did.
At half six I left the office, heading for the tube. Passed the girl in her doorway, heard her inevitable croak, ‘Spare some change, please?’
Didn’t check, didn’t even turn to smile at her, to say no. I do that sometimes, tease them with a little humanity, remind them of just how far they’ve gone.
Today, not. Today I was buzzing, my mind was crowded, I was almost in a hurry; I couldn’t make the space for a sideshow.
There was a milling crowd at the entrance to the tube station, mobbing a man in a peaked cap, going nowhere. Over their heads I glimpsed steel grilles pulled half shut, empty passageways beyond.
The man was gesturing, trying to speak; stress lifted his voice an octave so that I could hear something above the crowd’s murmur. No words, nothing useful – just the harassed tone of it, the swearing he could barely manage to suppress.
I didn’t stay to find out what had happened, didn’t join the crush. No point. There weren’t any trains, that was all I needed to know. A bomb, a strike, a suicide – who cared?
Piccadilly was maybe twenty minutes’ walk from where I worked. Head down and moving fast, I might even have done it in fifteen that day; but only because of the chill in the wind, no other reason. I was keen, yes, but I wasn’t urgent. Two lads, they weren’t worth that much. They weren’t actually going to make me hurry.
Walking, I wondered if the police had made any connections yet, whether anyone had told them they were dealing with a single unit here. If not, they’d be lucky to work it out for themselves. The Crew had been a rare bunch, almost a phenomenon.
If the police weren’t on to that yet, it left me still one step ahead.
I could hope, at least. I wasn’t going to hurry, but I allowed a little hope.
No sign of the boys down the Dilly, but I wasn’t expecting that. They had to be pretty sussed or they wouldn’t have it this good, they wouldn’t have me out looking for them. They’d be keeping off the streets for sure, keeping their heads well down.
I’d only come this way to hear what the word was, how many understood what was happening; and I read my answer in the silence, and on the faces of frustrated punters. No one was working tonight. Universally, it seemed, heads were being kept down this hunting season.
No major surprise, with a crazy on the loose. I was a little disappointed, perhaps, some lads at least should have worked out that they weren’t in any danger – Christ, a child of six could have worked that out, counting on the fingers of one hand – but better safe than sorry, that was always the rule. Low profiles and don’t take risks. Touting for trade with a knifeman out and about definitely counted as risk, as sticking your head above the parapet. Even if you knew the Crew, seemingly. Maybe five won’t be enough for him, maybe he’s got them already and he’s hungry for more…
I could do that no trouble, I could think their thoughts for them, these lads. Transparent as glass, even in their absence.
Him, too. The crazy, the killer. He was bright like a target in my head. I could make him dance when I wanted, whenever I chose.
What I wanted now was food. I might be going on to Mickey’s but I wouldn’t pay Mickey’s prices and he wouldn’t feed me at cost, never mind the amount of trade I put his way; so I ate at Burger King, reading whatever book it was I had in my jacket pocket that day. Spent a while longer in a pub, washing the taste of what I’d eaten out of my teeth; and then up to Oxford Street and just a little further.
Mickey’s is in the basement, and where the hell else would you expect to find it? Low, low life.
Hard to find it at all, mind, if you don’t know where to look. No neon signs to light this club, no flashing arrows pointing. Just go down the area steps into purpose-built sinister shadows, knock and smile nicely at the peephole.
Or don’t bother with the smile, it won’t help. Strictly members only, at Mickey’s. If they don’t know you, you don’t get in. They won’t even open the door, they’ll just leave you standing. Knocking till your knuckles bleed.
Do them a courtesy, wipe the blood off the door before you go.
I took the steps three at a time, pounded the door with my fist, shuffle-danced impatiently on the spot until Gordy opened up. Not in a hurry, of course; only to get out of the cold.
‘Jonty. Hi, how’ve you been?’
‘Busy. The man in, is he?’
‘Sure.’
Nothing more certain, actually. If the club was open, the man was in.
Matter of fact, the man was in his corner already, though the night was too young yet for his clientele. Coming through into the complex nest that was Mickey’s – half a dozen small rooms with doorways knocked through, whole walls knocked out to link them into a single multi-cornered, many-pillared space – I glanced down to the bar at the end and saw him slumped on his stool, hands folded across his belly. The faintest movement of his head acknowledged me; if there’d been anyone else in, or anyone that counted, they might have envied me so much recognition.
The place wasn’t exactly empty, but it might as well have been. A few unfamiliar faces, sitting quietly in twos and threes, talking in whispers: I checked them off as I passed, decided none was worth even being curious about.