I sat back and watched him, trying to read lips at this distance and failing but feeling lucky regardless, guessing who the call was from as David scribbled frantically on a message-pad.
Guessing right, because he came back to me wide-eyed, almost trembling with excitement.
‘That was, that was this Tony you were just telling me about,’ he said, stammering over it. ‘Alfie’s friend Tony, he said he was. And they’ve been hiding out, see, him and the other boy Dex, because they know someone’s after them. They wouldn’t go to the police, well, obvious reasons, really; but he says he’ll talk to me. He says he’d like to meet me, he’s given me an address, meet him there this evening, he says…’
That was Tony, all right. That was more or less what I’d expected, why I was here. Tony was a TV freak, and you couldn’t tell him, he wouldn’t listen. Anything he saw on TV had to be right. If he’d seen the news last night, I knew, he’d have to be in touch.
‘Do you know where this is, then, do you?’ David asked, thrusting the address at me, already assuming a partnership signed and sealed. ‘I’ve got an A-Z, I could find it, but I don’t know London, see, I don’t know how to get about…’
‘Sure,’ I said easily, one glance at the street name and a big smile for David. ‘I can get you there, no trouble.’
‘Oh, that’s good. That’s wonderful. Only, he did say I was to come alone, see, I don’t know what’s best to do about that, he might think you were police, and not come out…’
Well, no. That much I could guarantee: Tony wouldn’t think I was the police.
He might not come out if he saw me, that much was true, but he’d have very different reasons.
‘No problem,’ I said, still easy, still utterly laid back. ‘I’ll wait outside, you can go in alone. Don’t want to scare the boy. What is it, anyway, what sort of place, did he say? Not a house, I guess, not down there.’
‘No, it’s a car-park,’ David said. ‘A multi-storey car-park.’
Of course, a car-park. What else? And he’d be waiting at the very top, no doubt, and only wishing he had a car to wait in. If he hadn’t pinched one, just for the occasion. Too, too television…
So I collected David that evening, and we caught a bus. He wasn’t happy on the tube, he said, so far underground, so tight and dark in the tunnels. A farming family, he said, not mining.
Rural Wales, where sheep are sheep and men are careful.
Alfie hadn’t been like that. Alfie didn’t know careful from common sense, and had no truck with either. He’d learned to love the night and the crowds and the rush of London – but then, he’d had good teachers. Mickey and me and the Crew – between us, we’d made Alfie what he was.
What he was now, of course, was dead. Tony might know who or he might know why, might even have answers to both; and Tony was coming out of hiding, to talk to David.
I was curious, I was very curious to know what he wanted to say.
Eight o’clock and long since dark, the car-park long since emptied. This was dead ground any time after six, the gates locked and the workers gone, only the guard dogs restless behind wire.
David went in alone, as instructed. He walked slowly up and out of my sight, preferring the broad ramps and the open decks to the stinking and constricted stairway. He’d brought a torch, cautious man that he was: ‘It’ll be lit, I know that, but it’ll not be lit well, now, will it?’
And he was right, it wasn’t lit well. He shone the beam into every shadowed corner before he walked inside, sent it ahead of him up the ramp like a herald of his coming, almost like a weapon. Staying obediently on the pavement, pacing to keep myself warm this savage night, I saw sudden flashes and occasional fingers of light thrust out above me to mark how far he’d climbed.
After he’d reached the top deck, the light died; or else David was simply looking the other way now, his back turned to the street. Had found what he was looking for, perhaps was looking at Tony.
I waited, patient as the night to see what the night would bring. A train rattled on its tracks, somewhere between me and the invisible river; a fox barked, high and sharp and sudden, setting off the dogs. No one passed me, on foot or in a car.
And then there was David running down, the torch not shining now: uncareful David, careering down the ramp, running almost full-tilt into a concrete pillar, caroming off with a gasp and stumbling towards me.
‘Easy, man,’ I said, catching him. Holding him still, feeling how he trembled. ‘What, then, what is it, what’s up?’
He shook his head, far past talking; for a minute there he could only breathe, and shake. But then he straightened slowly, slowly took control. At last he pulled away, lifted his head to meet me eye to eye, and said, ‘Come. You come and see…
He didn’t take me very far, only into the carpark and straight past the ramp, over to the other side. A low wall ran between the massive pillars supporting the decks above; beyond was rough ground, crumbled tarmac and weeds.
And a body, a boy, face down and too obviously broken.
David played his torch up and down the lad’s length, held the beam still on bleached-blond hair and the glint of gold in his ear.
‘Will that be Tony, then, will it?’
Unquestionably, that would be Tony; and so I told him.
‘No mistake, you don’t need to see his face?’
‘No.’ Didn’t need to, certainly didn’t want to. I looked up instead, counted six separate decks. From the top, it would have been a long way to fall. Time enough to know that you were falling; maybe even time enough to think about it, briefly.
‘There’s no one here,’ David said needlessly, ‘no one else. He’s gone, that did this. What should we do, should we call the police, would you think?’
‘No,’ I said again. ‘We should get you back to your hotel, is what we should do. Forget about Tony, he’s gone too; no harm if he has to lie there till morning. We just get the hell out of here, nice and quiet and don’t get involved.’ I saw him back to the Prince Consort. Saw him settled with the aid of a couple of large brandies and an hour’s soft talking; and finally went home by tube and train, thinking that a farmer should be tougher than this, a farmer should be old friends with death.
Perhaps it’s different when people die, perhaps it cuts more deeply.
I wouldn’t know.
Friday morning: and the girl not in her doorway, only the glaze of ice on the pavement to remember her by, where Carl’s water had flowed and frozen before it even reached the gutters.
He’d be satisfied, he’d be pleased with that. I saw no need to tell him where she was, that I could find her from my window. She hadn’t moved far at all, only twenty yards into an alley; but she was out of sight of the street there, hidden behind piled bags of rubbish.
Huddled in her bag, not even her head showing now, she moved as little as she had to; but sometimes she did, she had to. Sometimes her whole body jerked and spasmed under cover, sometimes for minutes on end. And sometimes afterwards her face would appear, and she’d spit a mouthful of phlegm as far as she had strength to send it.
Not far, not far at all.
The weekend I spent at home, watching telly mostly, only filling in time: sure that the phone would ring soon, that someone would have something to tell me. I didn’t try to second-guess what that would be, it was only the call I was sure of. Someone and something, useful information.
It came at last on the Sunday evening, almost too late to count, I’d almost been wrong there.
Almost.
‘Jonty, this is Alan Tadman…’
Alan. Good to hear from you.’ My neighbour on the water, he had the mooring next to mine; and already I was way ahead of him, I knew what he was going to say, I could have written his script.