It took him a moment to realize that the room wasn’t quite empty. Something else was over everything. His fingerprints – on the body, the chair-back, the floor, the walls, the knife.
And even as his confusion lifted to be replaced with mounting fury, he wanted to know not why but how, how had they come to choose him, of all people? Because even now he could not see the blindness in himself.
And then what hurt most of all, what really cut into his heart and burrowed into the little soul he had, to lie there stinging and burning in a wormcast of purest agony, was the disappearance of the audience who had witnessed his greatest performance, and the knowledge that his moment had not been captured.
It was a pain he had only just begun to nurse when the police broke in the door.
CHRISTMAS (BABY PLEASE COME HOME) by MARK TIMLIN
Soho – the capital’s centre of vice. Only minutes from the glittering lights of Piccadilly that shine like the jewels in the crown of Great Britain’s major city, lies this blot on our nation’s conscience.
Blimey, I thought. Where do Channel 4 dig up these funny old short movies to fill the time between the commercial break and The Oprah Winfrey Show? And as the pedantic tones of the narrator droned on, the grainy old black and white film switched from a view of Eros, to Compton Street, where half a dozen elegant-looking women in high heels, pencil skirts and short fur coats patrolled the deserted pavements. Then to the front of the old Windmill Theatre, and inside, where half a hundred geezers in long macs and trilby hats were watching a tableau of naked girls standing so still on stage that you could almost count the goose bumps on their upper arms.
Back here in the real world it was five p.m. four days before Christmas, and rods of almost solid, freezing, black rain beat down onto the window of my office from the dark mass of cloud that seemed to sit only inches above the roof of the boozer opposite, where the warm, golden light that seeped from the front door and the gaps in the curtains seemed to beckon me over.
So that was the deal. An hour of Oprah interviewing a woman who’d hired a killer to shoot her husband, and after the contract had gone sour, had spent four years in prison, and then returned, reconciled, to hubby’s loving arms. After that, an hour in the pub, then off home with a bag of fish and chips for another evening in front of the TV watching the rest of the world get ready for the annual festivities. Me, I wanted none of it. And intended to spend Christmas Day in bed with a good book, a micro-waveable spaghetti bolognaise and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. No cards. No presents. No funny hats.
The narrator’s voice on the soundtrack of the film continued with the story of the Windmill, and just as I was sure he was going on to tell us how the place never closed, the door to my office opened to admit a man and a woman, water dripping from their umbrella, and I’d never know. I switched off the TV and looked up from the chair I was sitting in at my visitors.
‘Is your name Sharman?’ asked the man. He had a northern accent. He was well built with thick, short dark hair.
I nodded.
‘Thank goodness. We thought we’d never find you,’ said the woman. She was blonde and quite nice-looking, though her eyes looked tired. Her accent was northern too. And slightly stronger than the man’s.
‘I’m usually here,’ I said.
‘But this is such a big city and we didn’t have your proper address,’ she went on. She was wearing a red cloth coat, the skirts of which were dark with moisture. The man was dressed in a rich-looking leather jacket and jeans, with a scarf knotted at his throat and leather gloves. They both looked to be about forty.
‘What can I do for you?’ I asked.
‘Find our son,’ said the woman. ‘He’s disappeared.’
‘You’d better sit down,’ I said, and got up, pulled my two clients’ chairs in front of my desk and took her coat. It felt expensive and I noticed that the label was from Lewis’s in Manchester, as I hung it up to dry close to one of the two central heating radiators. Underneath she wore a simple dark blue dress and a cardigan.
‘My name’s Himes,’ said the man as I did it. ‘Douglas Himes. This is my wife, Mona.’
‘Pleased to meet you. Do you want some tea? Coffee?’ I said as they sat.
They both asked for coffee and I went out back and put the kettle on. Whilst it was boiling I spooned coffee powder into three mugs and took the sugar bowl and put it on the edge of my desk. ‘Milk?’ I asked. They both nodded, and I went out back again, splashed milk into the mugs and when the kettle boiled, filled them.
I passed round the drinks and sat back in my own seat and said, ‘Tell me about it.’
Douglas Himes started the story.
‘Jimmy, that’s our son’s name, left school last year. He was sixteen, and he’d been wasting his time there for years. He was never very academic. Not that I cared. Neither was I, and I did all right. I offered him a job in my business. I own a firm that wholesales motor spares around Manchester. Business isn’t bad. It wasn’t what it was a couple of years ago, but what business is? But at least we’re keeping our heads above water. There aren’t many other jobs to be had up there right now. None in fact. This damned recession. But Jimmy didn’t want to know.’
‘He just lay around the house all day. He couldn’t get the dole because he wouldn’t take a training scheme. So we gave him money,’ interrupted Mona Himes.
‘Then one day just after last Christmas, he told us he was going to London,’ Douglas Himes went on. ‘Just like that. We tried to stop him, but what could we do? You know what kids are like these days.’
I do as it happens, if only from a distance, and I nodded and took out my cigarettes. ‘Do you mind?’ I said to Mona. She shook her head and I offered the packet to the pair of them, and Douglas Himes took one. I pushed the ashtray in his direction and flicked my ash into the waste paper basket next to my chair.
When Himes’ cigarette was fired up to his satisfaction with a gold lighter he took from the pocket of his jacket, he continued his story.
‘We begged and pleaded with him not to go. He knew no one down here, but he wouldn’t listen. Eventually I gave him a couple of hundred pounds so that at least he could get somewhere decent to stay, and he left. I told him if he was short to let me know. I couldn’t see him down here with no funds. You read such terrible things.’
I nodded. ‘And you haven’t seen him since?’ I asked. You weren’t exactly in a rush to find him, I thought.
‘Oh yes,’ said Mona Himes. ‘He kept in touch. Regularly. He’d phone at least once a week. He even came home in the summer for a couple of weeks. He had money to burn then. But…’
‘But what.’ I asked.
‘He’d changed. He was always a very private boy, but when he came home he was worse. He wouldn’t let me into his room, and even though it was hot, he always wore a long-sleeved shirt. Then one day I walked in on him whilst he was having a wash in the bathroom. I was looking for dirty towels. He went mad. And his arms…’
She hesitated. ‘What about them?’ I asked, although I thought I could guess.
‘They were bruised. Badly. And worse than that they were covered in little bloody holes. It was horrible.’
Track marks. Just as I had thought.
‘Did he take drugs before he left home?’ I asked.
‘Not that we knew of,’ said Himes. ‘Though he might have.’