Ten thousand pounds, in loose notes, lay on a bedside table, with a brief letter thanking the staff.
By this time, Janus Fontaine was pushing through the crowds on Tottenham Court Road. London town, the seething city. A palpable expectancy that was easy to get lost in. The people were too busy buying cameras, camcorders and dictaphones to recognize him. Janus was captured on a thousand lenses as he walked along, but only as just another face on that momentous day.
He wandered along aimlessly, allowing the crowd to carry him into the maelstrom of Oxford Street. He visited five or six stores during this period, spending some time in each one. He didn't buy anything. The longest time was spent in one of the larger record shops. Only two of his seven albums were represented, and those only in the 'Rock Bottom' bargain section. Eventually he reached Marble Arch and Speakers' Corner; he listened, for a while. Then he took a light lunch at one of the better hotels on Park Lane, using a tiny sliver of the large roll of cash he had folded in his pocket. His last resources. The waiter couldn't stop looking at the lone diner, and eventually got up the courage to ask if he really were 'Janus Fontaine, the pop star?'
Janus smiled.
'Oh, my mother will be thrilled when I tell her.'
A time to take stock.
The Encyclopaedia of Popular Music has little to say about Janus Fontaine, unable even to give his real name. He was born in Manchester. His first single, 'Plastic Flowers', was a number-one hit around the world. As was the follow-up. Even the third single did well. Following a marketing scandal, his fourth single, 'Pixelkids Come Out Tonight', reached only number ninety-five in the charts. His fifth, 'Sooner Than Summertime', along with the album (his second) of the same title, disappeared without trace. Nothing was heard from him for ten years, when he started a long, arduous come-back campaign, this time as a serious, adult-orientated artist. He made a series of critically acclaimed albums for a small, obscure record label. None of them sold very well. Current whereabouts unknown.
Whereabouts unknown? Alive or dead?
Hyde Park, where Janus was enjoying the dead trees and the skipping children and the dogs and the scent of love in the air. He watched a group of young women walk past, but not with any feelings of lust; just the smiles on their faces brought him joy, of a kind. A kind of joy that quickly palled. Also, it had started to rain.
He retreated into the Serpentine Gallery.
They were showing an exhibition by a young artist he had never heard of; all melted plastic and broken glass. This charmed him a little, and he spent an hour studying the work. Most visitors left in a minute or two, especially when it stopped raining. Janus Fontaine was still alive enough to appreciate the finer points of contemporary art. Living off his small royalties, his shrewd investments, his careful savings.
A life saved up, by degrees. What was the use of it?
Four o'clock found him lightly sleeping on a bench in the park, like a down-at-heart tramp, working off the alcohol. Upon waking, he noticed a small dog sniffing at his leg. Shaking the creature off, he set out once more on his journey.
He wandered along Constitution Hill, towards the Mall, in a slow daze. When was it going to happen? Darkness was slowly covering the world. The trees of St James's Park, to his right… all covered with darkness; the children still running… covered with darkness; the dogs, the tramps in the park, the posh folk to his left, in Marlborough and Pall Mall, the people gathering… all covered with darkness…
His short nap had left him feeling more than tired, and the day seemed to stretch out for ever in front of him. He needed to get drunk again, and not in public, so he booked into the next hotel he came to, a grand place. Paying cash in advance for a single night's stay, he spent an hour raiding the minibar in his room. That brought on the jitters. He lay down on the opulent bedspread, only to calm the monsters in his head. Instead, he fell sound asleep.
He awoke to the sound of the telephone. Confused, he let it ring, in and out of his half-grasped dreams. Finally, he realized what it was, answered it. 'Your alarm call, Mr Fontaine,' said the voice.
'What?'
'It's eight o'clock, sir.'
'Oh. Right.' Janus looked out of the window, trying to gauge the light. 'In the evening?'
'Yes, sir. As you requested.'
'Thank you.'
Strange, that he couldn't remember placing the alarm call with the reception desk. Groggy, he washed his face, got together his few things, left an overgenerous amount of money on top of the minibar. Stumbling out of the hotel, for a few minutes he couldn't place himself on the streets. Where was he? A surge of people carried him along, into Trafalgar Square. The place was packed already, alive with manic expectation. Janus realized he was still carrying a large amount of cash and, fearing pickpockets, he clutched his coat tightly around him.
Eventually he found an offshoot crowd, a tangential flow that carried him northwards, towards Cambridge Circus. Dragged along and pressed in, as he was, it made him calmer; now at last he felt a victim of fate. The city was moving to its own internal rhythms. Where would it lead him? A sudden hunger, a drunken loneliness, gnawed at his guts. Sensing a sudden sway in the crowd, he took advantage of the slight give to move towards Chinatown. Here the crowds were less manic, moving in blocks rather than streams. And the smells, and the look of the foodstuffs on display, all made him ravenous.
Of course, every restaurant was fully booked, but the ridiculous amount he was willing to pay, even for the plainest meal, soon got him a table to himself. He ate long, and heartily, in the banquet style, savouring every mouthful. He abstained from more alcohol, thinking it wise to keep his wits about him, now the end was in sight. But so very lovely was this, his last ever dinner, he would like to eat a thousand more. It was not to be. It could not be. The decision was made.
It was approaching eleven when he let himself be pushed into Soho. Crushed by a river, a river of flesh. The celebrating flesh, filled with photo-flash and camcorder-whirr. Flinching from the cameras, as though still world famous, Janus moved from the fashionable area to the seedy. Here, beneath the lurid displays, and surrounded by cries and entreaties, he knew for sure it would happen. It felt right, that it should take place amid such desperate, cheap pleasures. Loud, brazen music was pulsing from the beaded doorways; raucous voices promised specialist delights; realms of squeezed flesh offered themselves to him, demanding his attention. The narrow, dirty streets were blurred with the rain that dripped off bare neon, and coloured like a downmarket rainbow. Most of the clubs, the strip joints, the exotic cinemas and the live bedshow emporiums, were doing good business, as people threw aside their usual fears. Men and women were taking advantage of the sudden loosening as the end of the year approached, and the stench of pheromones was languid on the air. Queues were forming outside the more palatable establishments. The atmosphere was heavy, overwhelming, caustic.
A tramp, seemingly blind, was holding out a battered tin cup. Janus took some money out of his pocket, a random amount, and stuffed it into the cup.
Then, ducking down a dingy back alley, he found himself entering a strangely peaceful world. The alleyway was tiny, barely wide enough for one person to squeeze down. A series of locked steel doorways studded the walls, the locked fire escapes of the various strip joints. Rubbish bins overflowed with mounds of pulpy detritus. Halfway down the passage, a beaded curtain clacked sullenly below a sputtering neon sign that had once spelled PARLOUR OF FETISH, but now spelled LOUR OF FETI.