Suckers

After a while, he asked, 'So did you get to see her?' as though the subject didn't really interest him any more.

'No.'

'A wasted journey.'

'Not quite. I met up with an old acquaintance. Grauman.'

'That bastard. And how is Andreas?'

I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. I finished wiping my face, and turned round. 'Slimy as ever. But have I got a surprise for you?'

He shifted his weight uneasily. 'I don't know. Have you?'

I opened my bag and pulled out the package. 'Look.'

'What's this?' He took the envelope and whistled as he saw what was inside. 'Tickets? Money? Hey, where'd you get this?'

'Tickets to Paris,' I announced triumphantly. 'To-morrow night. You and me.'

I waited for him to punch the air with delight. But instead of being pleased, he was wearing a gutted expression, as though somebody had punched him hard in the stomach. 'I… Dora, we… can't go. Not tomorrow.'

I couldn't see what the problem was. 'Why on earth not?'

'Work,' he said. 'I've got a whole load of work to finish.'

'This is more important than work. This is life or death.'

He shook his head. 'Well, I can't do it. Sorry.'

'I don't believe this.' I followed him as he went back into the living room and lit a cigarette. 'I don't believe it,' I repeated. 'You like Paris, don't you? Why don't you want to go there? Especially now, with all this shit happening. What the hell's the matter with you?'

He didn't reply. 'Or is it me?' I yelled. 'You just don't want to go there with me? You don't mind going with Lulu, or Alicia, or Francine. But I'm not stupid enough for you, is that it?'

I picked up the warning signs too late. He didn't raise his voice, but it took on a vicious edge. 'Well, maybe I'd have appreciated it if you'd consulted me first. Maybe I just don't want to go to fucking Paris. I'm fed up with you telling me what to do, Dora. I'm sick to death of you hanging around, and demanding explanations all the time, and sticking your nose into what doesn't concern you. Years and years of it. For God's sake give me some space. Let me get on with my life.'

There were some empty wine glasses on the coffee table in front of him. On the word life he snatched one up and hurled it across the room. It missed my head by a couple of feet and shattered against the wall behind me. I jumped back, stunned. There was glass all over the place. Everywhere I went these days, there was broken glass.

'Fine,' I said weakly. 'If that's what you want…' I snatched up my bag and jacket, and marched to the door.

As I opened it, he faltered, 'Dora, I'm sorry.' Without turning to look at him, I paused. 'My back's killing me,' he said. 'Look, give me a ring in the morning, OK?'

'Anything you say,' I snapped, stepping outside and slamming the door behind me. I stormed home, and if there were sinister figures lurking in the shadows they sensed my fury and kept their distance. Steam was coming out of my ears. Too late, I wished I hadn't stormed out. I wished I'd had the nerve to stay and yell back at him, but Duncan, when he lost his temper, was scary; I knew that better than anyone, and I didn't want to push my luck.

I wished I'd had the nerve to ask about his mother.

Back in my own flat, I took a long, hot bath, rinsed half a gallon of gel out of my hair, and swabbed my hands with antiseptic. I lay awake in bed, in a nest of garlic and crucifixes. I lay awake and stared at the ceiling, because I could hear the Krankzeits partying with a couple of guests upstairs. I watched the light-fitting sway from side to side, and presently I rounded up all the angry feelings in my head and put them on a shelf out of the way, and then I started to pick away at the edges of the evening, unravelling everything and trying to work out exactly what was bugging me about it. There was something not quite right, and it wasn't easy working out what it was, because the entire evening had been surreal from the very beginning. Surreal — that had been Lulu's word. But I ran through it all again, detail by detail, even though there were some things I already wanted to forget. I made myself sit through the Bar Nouveau again, and I relived the meeting with Patricia Rice, and the encounter with the man who had once been fat, and the feeling of his breath against my wrist, and the faces, and Grauman, and Violet, and Grauman, and the journey home, and Duncan. And Duncan. I replayed that last bit again and again.

I had started off drunk, but now I was lying there stone-cold sober. In my excitement over the tickets, I had missed it, but now his words came back to me in their entirety.

'And how is Andreas?'

It took a while for the truth to penetrate my thick skull. The truth was this: I had never before mentioned Andreas Grauman in Duncan's presence, not in the entire thirteen years I'd known him. I knew that for certain, because Grauman was a dark secret I'd been keeping to myself. As far as I'd been aware, Duncan had never even heard of Andreas Grauman.

My heart did a slow dive into an empty swimming-pool. All of a sudden, I knew why I had been plied with champagne at the top of the Multiglom Tower. Not waiting to be given a lift, but kept there for a preordained amount of time. Not a celebratory toast, but delaying tactics. And I remembered what the Double Image van had been doing in W11. Not just taking me home, but picking someone up. Now I knew why Duncan had taken such a long time to answer the door. He had been busy scattering garlic all over the flat, all over the dressing-table and the bed, replacing what had been removed so I wouldn't suspect anything — he wasn't going to make that mistake again — but overdoing it in the process. In my mind's eye, I replayed the scene of him picking up the empty glass and hurling it across the room. But there had been more than one glass on the table, and the rim of the other one had been stained. With lipstick.

I stared dry-eyed at the ceiling and listened to the Krankzeits until I heard a lot of screaming, and a great deal of thrashing around, and what sounded like heels drumming against the floor over my head. A little later on, I heard footsteps on the stairs outside, and then a voice I recognized shouting, 'Fuck you, Gunter Krankzeit!' Then a door slammed and I heard Patricia Rice go downstairs, and another door slammed as she went out into the street.

Sleep was beyond me. I got up, fitted a new blade into my Stanley knife, and stared out of the window until the darkness lifted.

Chapter 5

All those nights staring sightlessly at the ceiling, staring mindlessly at the light-fitting as it swayed from side to side, staring into my own soul and not liking what I found there. The slamming doors, the clumping feet, the sour nothings shrieked from one end of their flat to the other, any old hour of the day or night, and never mind who might be trying to get some shut-eye down below.

The Krankzeits were the first to go.

They kept their key exactly where a burglar might expect to find it — on a small ledge over the door. Just because Gunter and Christine had kicked the bucket didn't mean they'd all of a sudden turned Brain of Britain, and the Krankzeits were evidently somewhere near the lower end of the Chinese Whisper chain. They'd made an effort to reach a safe resting place before the sun came up, but it wasn't nearly enough. It was dark, but I found them couched in a pile of shoes and scarves and bags, at the back of the large cupboard they used as a walk-in wardrobe. Gunter was lying on his back with his mouth open, snoring. His teeth, apart from their unusually high metal content, were unremarkable. His girlfriend was snuggled up to him like a dormouse, fresh puncture wounds seeping on the side of her neck.