Nirvana Bites Read online

  ‘And how are you spelling that, Mr Arsehole?’

  ‘A-R-S-E-L-L.’

  I exhaled slowly. Maybe Frank could redeem this after all.

  ‘And your first name?’

  ‘Titus.’

  Things went downhill from then on.

  By the time we stumbled out of Koi Korner and back on to dry land we were forced to confront the fact that we had achieved nothing. Maybe that’s not entirely true. We had surely set new records for bumbling incompetence and wasted effort. But as far as Koi Korner was concerned, we had learned nothing of value that could either confirm our suspicions or justify eliminating them from our enquiries. At this rate, Stan would be shifting the decimal point a couple of places westward on that £150-a-day fee he had offered. I could only hope the others had fared better.

  As for Frank, he had deflated faster than Richard Branson’s balloon. Which meant that not only could I not be seriously pissed off with him, but also that I had to work hard to make him feel OK. And I definitely, definitely couldn’t head-butt him, which was the Pavlovian response he always expected when he fucked up. That victim shit is a self-fulfilling prophecy, which might explain why Frank had been physically and emotionally damaged so many times and by so many people.

  ‘So what happened, Frank?’ I asked. ‘You were doing so well…’

  ‘Shit, Jen. I was fine until she turned all frosty on me,’ he wailed. ‘Then she somehow turned into one of those wankers at the housing association who turned me down that last time. It brought it all back.’

  When we first met Frank, he had been sleeping rough for ten years. The accumulated abuse was taking its toll and he doubted if he would survive another winter on the streets. In desperation, he had approached a housing association he’d heard had a quota of hard-to-let flats they were using to house people direct from the streets. He sat in their waiting room five days a week until they were sick of the sight of him and offered him a place. He went to see it. Just a bedsit, but warm, dry and safe. Living here he felt he might, just might, have a future. If he’d been more accustomed to dealing with bureaucracy, he probably would have known better. At the interview with whoever these people were, he blithely admitted to his smack habit. Heads shook. Papers were shuffled. Briefcases snapped shut. The offer was withdrawn on the grounds that he had shown no commitment to coming off the drugs and would therefore be a bad risk.

  Frank was devastated, but somehow dragged himself back up. He went to a GP, registered as an addict and was put on a Methadone programme. Then he approached a different housing association and tried the same in-your-face harassment technique. Again his persistence paid off. They offered him a bedsit in a huge converted Victorian house in Camberwell. This time at the interview, he was ready for them. When the subject of drugs came up he produced his Methadone prescription with a triumphant flourish. Heads shook. Papers were shuffled. Briefcases snapped shut. Apparently, there were junkies living in the same house. It would be unfair to place him with practising addicts at this vulnerable time.

  Frank lost it. Did they think he’d be less vulnerable on the streets? He cursed and cried and tore his clothes. He stumbled from the office into the carpeted lobby, where he took a long piss in the corner, under the horrified gaze of the receptionist. Then he hit the streets gasping and ran back to his bash. He turned the corner from London Bridge on to the walkway and collided into me and Ali, who were running full-tilt in the opposite direction.

  Ali and I had been flyposting the area round the Financial Times building with some cool posters that at first glance looked like the front page of the FT. When you looked closer you saw the heading was actually FINANCIAL CRIMES and the main headline screamed BURN THE BLOOD-SUCKING BANKS. Anyway, we’d been spotted and were in the process of legging it when we’d exploded into Frank. We all fell sprawling to the pavement. And that’s how we met.

  Three cups of tea from a greasy spoon later and we all had that feeling you get when you know something momentous is happening and your future is doing its chrysalis thing. The flat upstairs from Nick was empty. Its previous occupant, Mange (that’s Mange as in Mangy, not as in Mange Tout), having gone off to ‘do’ the Far East a couple of weeks earlier. Voilà. New co-op member. And though we sometimes took the piss, that was just to keep him on his toes. In reality we were fiercely protective of him. That, ultimately, was his talent.

  When Frank and I arrived home from our close encounter of the koi kind, Bob Marley was pounding out from Mags’s stereo. We knew she must be feeling either seriously up or seriously pissed off. Knowing where she’d been, the latter was more likely. Mags always gets rootsy when she’s angry. As her part of the investigation, she had gone to see a friend, whose brother had died in police custody. As the cops told it, he had choked on his own vomit. Needless to say, his family had a different version.

  Mags wasn’t in the mood to talk. But she did tell us that the families of people who’d died had been co-operating fully with the programme makers and were furious – not to mention suspicious – to be told the plug had been pulled. There was no way they would have been involved in sabotaging the series. The cops would have the most to gain, especially as another of the scheduled programmes was to have dealt with police corruption, but it was hard to link them with Stan’s personal dilemma. We left Mags to her righteous anger.

  My flat turned out to be Stanless, but I assumed he would be at Gaia’s, as her task had been to continue his cross-examination, in search of further leads. Robin had washed his hair and plaited it neatly before setting off into the Den of the Beast (i.e. Surrey) to consort with the enemy (i.e. his mum). If Catherine Highshore had been receiving any unsolicited gifts in the miscellaneous-office-stationery line, Robin’s mum would be sure to know.

  Nick’s task had seemed to me the least likely of all to get results. He’d volunteered to go to Soho to ‘get the low-down on the Mafia’, as he called it. Yeah. I had visions of him hanging out in Bar Italia drinking cappuccino with no chocolate on top in the hope the staff would think he was Italian (in spite of his appearance, which shrieked Reconstructed Home Counties Crusty). They would lead him into a darkened room where a Marlon Brando lookalike with cotton wool in his cheeks would be sitting counting money and shooting family members. He would, of course, welcome Nick with open arms and confess all.

  Anyway, Nick and Robin were still out on their missions. Ali wasn’t home either. He’d gone out ‘networking’ – whatever that meant. He had failed to expand, so he might well have been sewing fishing tackle for all we knew. Or maybe I was getting just a teensy bit fish-obsessed.

  Gaia led me and Frank into her heavily scented nest and cooed enthusiasm over Stan’s rejuvenated spiritual presence until I mentioned his physical absence. She told us he had been 100 per cent co-operative and had charmed her with what sounded to me like stomach-churning flattery. Poor Gaia had taken it at face value and had rewarded him with an aromatherapy massage accompanied by burning of Hopi candles and taped womb music.

  ‘He was totally chilled when I left,’ she wailed. ‘I assumed he was in a healing trance state. Now you tell me he’s gone walkabout. The scumbag. When he gets back send him round to me for acupuncture, will you?’

  ‘I didn’t know you had acupuncture training, Gaia,’ I frowned.

  ‘I haven’t,’ she muttered darkly.

  Frank, meanwhile, looked more relaxed than he had all day. He obviously reckoned Gaia had fucked up sufficiently to rival our own singular lack of success.

  By midnight there was still no sign of Stan. I rang his mobile. It was turned off but I left a message on his voicemail.

  ‘Stan? Where the fuck are you? Wherever you are, you’d better get your arse back here so fast that sparks fly out of it. Or at least phone!’

  You never call. You never write. Would someone mind telling me exactly how and when I metamorphosed into Stan’s mum?

  Soon after, I heard Nick arrive home next door and popped round to see how he had got on. But it
wasn’t him after all. It was Robin. He was flustered when I said we hadn’t seen Nick since he went off on his mission to Soho. While Robin was hyper-hopping from foot-to-foot, I heard a knock next door, and there he was – Stan the Man. Looking more like Stan the Naughty Schoolboy. I opened my front door – not altogether smoothly as I was busy glaring at him. We went straight into my front room and I assumed my position on the cushions while Stan stood awkwardly in the middle of the room.

  ‘Well?’ I demanded.

  ‘Um. We need to talk,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Hey, that’s my line.’

  ‘Look, Jen. I don’t know quite how to say this…’

  ‘Try,’ I interjected.

  ‘OK.’ He took a deep breath.

  ‘Jenny, I’m incredibly grateful for everything you’ve done. I don’t know what would have happened the other day if you hadn’t been there. And then putting me up. And putting up with me–’

  ‘Just get on with it, Stan,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m not Gaia. Don’t try to flannel me.’

  ‘The thing is – I want you to call off the investigation.’

  ‘You what?’ I shrieked in disbelief.

  ‘I – I’ve been thinking. It’s not fair on you to drag you into this. And whoever’s behind it, well, I reckon you will have scared them off. I’m sure it will be fine now.’

  My brain tipped inside my skull. ‘Have you gone totally mad? What on earth leads you to that conclusion? Anyway, you’re not dragging us in. We’re walking of our own free will. Not to mention the fact that you’re paying me.’

  ‘And I still will,’ Stan stuttered eagerly. ‘I really am very grateful. But please, Jen. Please, just drop it.’

  I stared at him through narrowed eyes.

  ‘You’re frightened,’ I accused. ‘What happened this evening? Where did you go?’

  Something amazing happened then. Stan changed from shiftless schoolboy to powerful executive in one fluid movement. It was amazing to witness and knocked me off balance for a moment.

  ‘Look, Jenny, I don’t want to say this, but that really is none of your business. I asked you to do a job for me and now I’m saying, “Thank you very much. You’ve done a good job and now it’s over.” Do I make myself clear?’ He tilted his chin and arched an eyebrow at me.

  For an instant it worked. I shrank before his power. But it only lasted a heartbeat. No fucking fat-cat was going to stand in my front room and tell me he’d got what he wanted from me and now I could fuck off. Stan hadn’t actually seen me in action, since he’d been staring at the inside of a roll of carpet at the time, but he must have known what I was capable of. I can’t recall my precise words, though I suspect that ‘fucking’, ‘fuck’ and ‘fucker’ featured more heavily than any astute political polemic. I wanted to hurt him and it was only the knowledge that he might quite like it that stopped me. Instead I grabbed my keys and jacket and ran out of the front door.

  It was chilly and a thin drizzle was floating down from a moonless sky. A train clattered over the bridge, light spilling fleetingly on to the dark street. Someone had knocked out the only streetlight. I pulled the denim jacket tighter and strode off down the road.

  I was wrapped in a cocoon of anger and didn’t notice the two men standing in the shadows under the bridge until it was too late. As I came alongside, one of them grabbed me by the shoulder and flung me back against the wall. He pressed his body tight against mine. He twisted one hand into my hair and with the other he held something cold and sharp against my exposed neck. He was dressed in black with a balaclava over his face. He was so close I could feel the rough wool tickling my cheek. I could smell beer on his breath.

  So this is how it ends, I thought. I could feel the damp bricks bruising my spine. I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight him off with some spectacular martial-arts move. I wanted to beg. I wanted to swallow. I did none of these things on the grounds that any of them would bring my neck even closer to the blade.

  ‘Listen, bitch,’ he growled. ‘You and your friends keep your noses out of our fucking business, right? This is the only warning you get. Understand?’

  I couldn’t nod, but he wasn’t moving, so I assumed he was waiting for a response.

  ‘Erm,’ I croaked carefully. ‘Sure. Only – what is your fucking business?’

  The hand holding my hair jerked viciously forward and back, slamming my head against the bricks.

  ‘It seems we’re going to have to teach you a lesson, bitch.’

  It’s weird what goes through your head at such a moment. There I was, about to die or at least be seriously damaged, and all I could think about was when had I had my last crap. If I had to die, there wasn’t much I could do about it. But I really didn’t want to be found lying in a pool of my own shit. It matters. Don’t ask me why.

  What happened next was far more terrifying for my assailants than it was for me. There was a dreadful screeching, followed by what sounded like a hundred hell-hounds escaping from Hades. My attackers shot off so fast I almost fell forward in their wake. They ran to the other end of the bridge, jumped into a parked car and were gone in a blink. Milliseconds later, they were followed by Tyson, dragging Derek Vance behind him at full pelt. Tyson continued with his Hound of the Baskervilles impersonation until he reached the patch of wasteland on the far side of the bridge, where he crouched and relieved himself of the desperately needed dump.

  I was still leaning against the brickwork. I didn’t quite trust my legs yet. Tyson stood and sniffed his trophy with pride before allowing Derek to lead him back under the bridge. Ignoring me completely, Derek leaned against the wall next to me and took a pack of cigarettes and a box of matches from his pocket. He lit one and exhaled slowly. Tyson, contented now, snuffled rabbit-like in the gutter.

  ‘Could I have a cigarette please, Derek?’ I asked in a strange squeaky voice.

  ‘You’ll have to pay,’ he replied, not looking at me.

  ‘I’ve got no money on me. I’ll pay you tomorrow,’ I pleaded.

  Derek shook his head stubbornly. ‘Nope.’

  ‘I’ll tell your mother you smoke,’ I threatened. Mean, but I was desperate. Mrs V was a chain-smoker, but for some inexplicable reason she would never allow her fifty-year-old son to touch a cigarette.

  Derek shot me a resentful look, but handed over his own cigarette and lit another for himself. Beggars can’t be choosers. We smoked in silence for a while until my body felt more like my own again. I chucked my butt on to the ground and tested a limb by stamping it out. It seemed I was functioning again.

  ‘Good-night, Derek,’ I breathed and moved off. Derek didn’t move but Tyson rewarded me with a low growl.

  As I walked under the bridge there was a low cooing from the ironwork above me, followed by a heavy splat on my shoulder. First Stan. Then mystery assailants. Now a fucking pigeon. Tonight was certainly the night for being royally shat on from a great height.

  I stumbled back upstairs to the flat. I had only been gone about a quarter of an hour, but I felt like I had aged three hundred years. Stan was slumped on my cushions, watching a late night chat show. He turned to speak as I walked in, but then his jaw dropped and welded to his upper chest.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Jen. What happened to you?’ he faltered.

  I looked in the mirror on the opposite wall. My hair looked like a bird’s nest that had played host to a particularly riotous party. I was pale and sweating. My face was streaked with dirt. A tiny trickle of blood crawled down the left side of my neck. And on my right shoulder, there was a pigeon shit the size of an omelette.

  ‘I was attacked, Stan,’ I said in a tiny voice.

  His response took me by surprise. I don’t know what I’d expected, but this wasn’t it. He leapt to his feet and began pacing the room, his fists clenched to the sides of his head.

  ‘What?’ he ranted. ‘But it’s impossible. You can’t have been. Why would…?’ He tailed off and stood twitching in the middle of the room.

  Can you see it
? At that instant in time, I could have had an advantage. In a power struggle between the likes of Stan and the likes of me, such an opportunity would come but rarely. If I could just have been a little less freaked and self-obsessed, I would have seen how odd his reaction was. I could have seized the moral high ground dictated by my appearance. I could have demanded answers he would never give under different circumstances.

  So did I do that? Did I fuck. And I have to live with the fact that, if I had, everything could have been so different. Nirvana would still have consisted of six members and one hanger-on. And maybe all the blood, sweat and tears would have stayed in their rightful places. Hindsight can be a savage bastard.

  Anyway, I didn’t ask the questions. Instead (and I blush) I said (oh, I can hardly bear to repeat it), ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  I don’t want to talk about it.

  (No, no, no. I can’t believe I said that. What kind of a spineless jellyfish am I?)

  Stan came towards me. He went to put his arms around me, but glanced at my shoulder with distaste and gave my elbows an awkward squeeze instead.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Jenny?’ he asked in a quiet un-Stan voice. There it is again. Go on. Go for it. So you’ve been beaten up. So what? It’s not like it’s the first time…

  ‘I want you to go to bed,’ I replied. (Groan.) ‘I want you to go to bed so I can have a bath and some space.’

  Stan was gone so fast, I barely registered movement. The bedroom door whooshed shut behind him. I bet he couldn’t believe his luck.

  That was a long and horrible night alone with my fears and my memories. I spent all of it sweating and shaking. The scene in Stan’s flat had been a tea party – even with the shooters, whereas the episode under the bridge had been up close and nasty. It was as if that guy had swung me round by the hair and flung me back a quarter of a century.

  Fucking bastard. Fucking bastards. All of them.

  It probably would have helped if I’d been able to cry, but that’s something else I haven’t done for twenty-five years. So instead of sobbing and snivelling, I sweated and shook. I’m a survivor though. I must be, or I wouldn’t be here. So while my body did its sweaty shaky thing, the cogs of my brain continued to turn.