And not far from the factory gates pub landlords polished glasses, checked the levels in their optics and made certain that floors were swept, tables wiped, the cash register drawer running smooth on its rollers. Then they looked at the clock, unlocked the door and waited, for men who had toiled through the watch hours with the vision of a pint shining golden before their eyes.
I made my way from the police station with Johnny’s money warm in my pocket. Drink had got me into this trouble and it seemed that only drink could release me. I hardly saw a soul, just a lone dog-walker, who crossed the road at the sound of my footsteps. The armies of men that once filled whole streets at shift’s end are long disbanded. But the early morning pubs are still there, if you know where to look.
There’s a licensing law demands these bars serve breakfasts to mop up the drink. And so they’re always steeped in the smell of discount bacon, black pudding the colour of blood-soaked shit and gangrenous battery-farmed eggs. Everything fried in ancient lard, set grey since yesterday and melted each morning until it is hot enough to fry any cockroaches that might have burrowed in for a midnight feast.
I pushed open the door and stepped back into the night, though I knew it was a little past 7 a.m. The bar was busy. A couple of student types sat in a corner using the beer to ease the come down from whatever had kept them up. A businessman sank a predawn brandy. A guy in a brown leather jacket that went out of fashion sometime around 1983
studied the racing form, putting little crosses next to the horses he fancied, taking quick sips of a beer I’d seen him top up with vodka. No one looked like a shift worker. No one was eating the breakfast. No one talked because no one was here to be sociable. The jukebox pounded out some ancient hit even though no one was here for the music.
Everyone was here to drink.
I stepped up and ordered a pint. I was filthy, unshaven and there were still traces of the old man’s blood spattered across my trousers. The barmaid sat my beer on the counter without looking at me. I waited for her to put her hand out for the money and when she didn’t, set one of Johnny’s notes on the counter. She peeled it from the dirty bar without a word and slapped my change back into the beer spills and fag ash crumblings. I was too tired to care. I gave my pint a full second to settle then raised it to my lips.
The beer tasted stale enough to be the contents of the slop tray. But I sank a third of it in one deep swallow then used my change in the cigarette machine. I lit up, finished my drink then ordered another, looking at the men around me and realising I fitted in fine.
I was into my third when the old man’s battered face flashed into my mind’s eye and with it the memory of another face exploding in a spray of blood and brain. I took my glasses off and rubbed my eyes. A voice behind me said, 'That’s your last for the morning.'
I turned and saw Inspector Blunt, still wearing the same suit he’d had on during my interrogation.
'You arresting me?'
'Naw I’m telling you.'
'What are you now, the bloody beer police? Lager patrol?' I took out a cigarette and lit it. 'You’re not in your station with your wee fat pal now, so fuck off and annoy someone else.'
'Is one sight of the cells not enough for the day?' Inspector Blunt turned to the woman behind the counter. 'Mary, no more for him, understand?' The barmaid glanced up from the pint she was pouring and nodded. He turned back to me, his ginger moustache looking dry and alcohol hungry. 'You’re going to be needed if this thing comes to court, until then I don’t want to see or hear anything from you.'
'That makes it mutual then.'
The barmaid set a nice smooth pint of best beside him.
'On the house, Mr Blunt.'
'Cheers Mary.' Blunt took a cigarette from my pack and lit it with my lighter. 'If we got a productivity bonus I wouldn’t be bothered, but we’re a bit pressed right now so I’d like to avoid any unnecessary paperwork.' He picked a bit of tobacco from his tongue. 'Bloody cheap fags. Get over whatever it is that’s bothering you, because right now you’re going in one of two directions, the jail or the morgue. Now piss off. And remember, this is my local.'
I looked around at the tired décor, the deflated men, the uneasy chairs, then back at the police inspector supping his first pint of the day at eight in the morning and said the worst thing I could think of.
'Aye, it suits you.'
I got back to my room, stripped, double-bagged the clothes I’d been wearing in black bin bags and put them in the lobby. I stood in the shower until the water ran cold, and then I stood there until the cold seemed to burn. After that I lay on the bed, looking at the ceiling, thinking. I’d not been doing enough thinking lately.
Blunt was right. I was headed down whatever I did. There was no point in hiding a skin that wasn’t worth saving. It was time to set some things to rights, and then maybe I should make sure I had some company on the low road I was set to take.
The Mitchell Library is a wedding cake of a building overlooking the motorway that cuts a swathe through the city. I stood on the bridge and looked down into the ravine of speeding cars. I’d heard that some people claim their loved ones were mesmerised into throwing themselves from bridges like these by the moving lines of traffic. But I found it hard to believe. No one can be hypnotised into doing anything they don’t want to do.
The Mitchell’s computer hall was busy. I got a ticket, then found an empty berth and sat there amongst the students and school kids, the pensioners and unemployed, the asylum seekers and researchers. The room was quiet save for the clicking of fingers against keyboards, but I could almost feel the electric buzz of thoughts firing around the room.
Everyone beyond their bodies, absorbed in their own project, back in the depths of ancient Rome, their family tree, legal precedent or who knows what? There was a mix of ethnicity I’d not met elsewhere in the city and suddenly I missed London.
I logged onto the system, then scrolled through the internet, chasing Bill Senior until I thought I might have an idea of where else to look, then I got a librarian to direct me to where the microfiches of old newspapers were stored and struggled with the small plastic slides until I worked out how to use them. After a while I realised that I might be getting somewhere.
It was past three when I left the library and caught a bus over to the West End to pay back one of my debts.
The work address that Johnny had given me was on University Gardens, a short Victorian terrace that had once housed lecturers but was now converted into university offices and seminar spaces. I worked my way down the doors until I came to the number Johnny had given me. The outside of the building was covered in scaffolding that looked like it had been there for a while. I made my way up the entrance steps, past the neglected scrub of front garden and into the hallway.
Inside there was a fusion of damp, floor polish and books that hit me a smack of nostalgia for a time I’d almost forgotten. The foyer was as dark as I remembered, a notice-board on the wall covered in a confusion of posters and notices for classes, assignments, student theatre shows, political meetings and books for sale. I had a sudden memory of saturating campus with starry homemade advertisements for my new brand of magic. The scent of nostalgia was overlaid by the smell of turps and paint, the stairway swathed in spattered dustsheets, and suddenly it made sense why Johnny had given me this address.
A man in white overalls was balanced near the top of a long ladder in the stairwell reaching up towards a barely accessible slant of the underside of the stairs. I walked up towards him, the steps creaking under my weight; I could feel a corresponding creak in my chest that hadn’t been there when I’d used these buildings fifteen years ago. The painter peered down and I said, 'Can you tell me where Johnny is, mate?'