Nirvana Bites Page 9

  ‘Anything else?’ I enquired.

  ‘Yeah.’ Frank nodded eagerly. ‘He called me scum. And he said…’ Frank’s brows knitted in concentration as he tried to recall the details. ‘He said – the day would come when the world would be rid of people like me.’

  Frank looked at me with his beaten puppy’s eyes.

  ‘That’s brill, Frank. Really good,’ I managed. I got to my feet again. I couldn’t bear to see the childlike look of pride I knew would be on his face. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  As I walked through the door, he threw a last snippet at my departing back.

  ‘Yeah. It made me feel like I was in a movie or something.’

  I turned back.

  ‘It was the American accent, y’know?’ he said.

  I grinned.

  ‘Frank? You really are a star,’ I said and planted a kiss on the top of his head. If he had been a puppy, he would have rolled onto his back and kicked his legs in the air. As it was, he settled for a slice of melon grin, as he rubbed at the spot my lips had landed.

  As for me, I had a feeling this information might have some real significance. Mental alarm bells were ringing. Koi Korner had connections with thugs, was fronted by a woman with one of the poshest voices I had ever heard, and visitors who were right-wing bigots with American accents – hardly your average fish shop.

  Call it instinct.

  Call it desperation.

  Call it a woman afloat in a raging sea grasping at a twiglet.

  11

  I NEEDED SOLITUDE. Somewhere to think. Somewhere with no phones that could ring, no doors that could be knocked on and no living soul that could fuck things up. That included Stan, even though his current state bore scant resemblance to ‘living’, and I had serious reservations about the existence of his soul. Without that thinking space, I knew I would start to panic. I had to try to make sense of the many things that were happening.

  It was like trying to find the source of a fart in a jacuzzi.

  I walked up the road and across Nunhead Green into the estates opposite. I passed identical sand-coloured houses with little squares of gardens, which the tenants had used as living symbols of their individuality. Here some topiary, there a gnome troop or a water feature. Downtown Alan Titchmarshes vying with wannabe Charlie Dimmocks. Strange to think this area, with its suburban chic pretensions, was only a few short streets away from the estates of north Peckham.

  In front of me and to the left loomed a wooded incline, several hundred acres in which trees reached upwards to a sky filled with rural clarity and birdsong. Nunhead Cemetery. I didn’t know if it was open. In fact, to this day I have no idea of the opening times. Of the many times I have been there, I’ve never gone in through the front gates.

  I walked up the steep slope of the rubbish-strewn alley that bordered one side. On my left was the cemetery; on my right was the open land of the reservoir, backing on to allotments. Almost rural – yet yards from suburbia that was itself yards from urban heartland. The city in microcosm.

  Just before the brow of the hill, I stopped and reached down behind the cemetery wall to where the chain-link fence met the ground. A deft flick at a specific point, a little unwinding and bending, and the fence pulled back just enough for me to wriggle through. Inside the cemetery, I replaced the fence so that it no longer shrieked ‘Side Entrance’ in neon lights. To a casual observer, it simply didn’t exist.

  I picked my way through the thick undergrowth, unconcerned about stepping on the dilapidated graves with their crumbling stones and subsiding earth. I passed under the blind gaze of concrete angels, their features blunted by time and the elements. Weatherbeaten obelisks and crosses and mouldering mossy crypts towered over me. I arrived at my destination: a massive concrete mausoleum housing the mortal remains of the Turnbull dynasty. Mags had once told me they had made their fortune in the slave trade. Which meant I didn’t have to feel bad about invading the death space bought by their bloodstained, tear-drenched wealth. Not that I would have done anyway. I’m not superstitious. Gaia reckons I have a strong spirit. All I know is, it’s the living that scare me, not the dead. Either way, the cemetery is my favourite haunt.

  After a quick glance around, I knelt at the stone side of the tomb entrance. I scrabbled with my fingers at the base of the stone until I could get a purchase under the slab. Ignoring the damage I knew I was doing to my knuckles, I heaved upwards. I had to use every ounce of my strength. The muscles in my arms were trembling as a chunk about three feet square shifted. As it moved, the previously invisible join to the adjacent slab appeared. I used my foot to shove a flat stone into the gap at the bottom. Changing position, I pushed my skinned fingers into the side join and again pushed with all my might. The slab shifted sideways, releasing a shower of dirt and dust. I carried on pushing, using my shoulder once the gap was big enough, until it was large enough for me to wriggle through.

  Whoever coined the phrase ‘cold as the grave’ knew what they were on about. Inside was freezing. There was a smell too, though not of rotting flesh. The meat on the bones of the Turnbull clan had disintegrated decades before. This smell was of dank undisturbed air, with just a hint of incense. I used the shaft of light coming through the entry hole to find my way inside the tomb.

  I reached into one of the wall niches, shivering at the touch of the cold stone on my skin. In a gap between the coffin and the wall, my fingers closed on a battered square tin, which I pulled out in a fog of dust and cobwebs. Inside I found my survival kit: candles, matches, pen and paper, a ready-rolled spliff, joss sticks and a packet of Polo mints. What more could a gal need?

  A couple of hours later, the spliff was smoked, the candles were almost burnt down and several pages of the notebook were covered in my scrawl. I crunched the last Polo as I pushed the tin filled with my depleted provisions back into the wall niche. I shifted the stone back into place, left the lengthening shadows of the cemetery to the already dead and headed back home.

  My head was sorted. The order was comforting. It gave me an illusion of control.

  Problem:

  Stan – not to be trusted. It was obvious Stan knew more than he was letting on. But it was also obvious that he was shit-scared. Had he started something that had been escalated beyond his control?

  Solution:

  We needed to watch him. Meanwhile, I could check out the phone numbers I had taken from his mobile. I also intended to pay a visit to the Triple X, the club in Brixton Cathy had told me about. Someone on the Scene might well be able to fill in some of the blanks.

  Problem:

  Random acts of violence.

  This one was not nice. It had taken me an awful lot of breathing that dead tomb air before I could begin to get a handle on this. When I smoothed down the panic attacks and checked out the reality, it wasn’t actually as terrifying as it first appeared. Apart from a lot of posturing, yelling and throwing their weight around, what had ‘they’ actually done? Bugger-all, really. It was clear they were trying to scare us. And I can’t deny they had succeeded very well so far. But if I stopped being scared, maybe that would take away their power. Well, it’s a theory. An opposing theory was that the violence would escalate if they felt it wasn’t achieving the desired effect. But I wouldn’t worry about that right now.

  Solution:

  We needed to do more to check out Koi Korner. I still wasn’t quite sure what the significance of those dodgy characters with American accents was, but I felt like it should mean something. It might just be a hunch. It also just might be the only fucking lead we had. What the hell. I was feeling positive. Let’s call it a hunch. We also might get something from the analysis of the blood on the transit. Plus vigilance. Serious vigilance.

  Problem:

  My father – he’s dead.

  Solution:

  Fuck him. Life goes on. My life goes on.

  When I arrived home, the panic threatened a rerun. My front room was as I had last seen it – but without Stan. There
was a wad of crisp new £20 notes on the telly, weighted down by the aerial. A pink Post-it note with my name on was stuck on top.

  I staggered with relief when I found him in the bedroom. Somehow he’d managed to transfer his studded self and was curled up on my futon. Different venue. Same foetal position. Which left me the space to check out my fellow Nirvanans to organise roles and tasks. We met at Ali’s. Robin said his contact at the lab had promised to phone the next day with the results of the transit’s blood test. He was anxious about Nick, who hadn’t been in touch since his last phone call from Soho. We were all upbeat and reassuring – except Frank, bless his dismal socks.

  ‘He wouldn’t be the first bloke to melt into Soho and never be seen again,’ he uttered in doom-laden tones.

  ‘Bloody hell, Frank,’ I said. ‘I can’t see Nick melting in anywhere outside a road protesters’ camp.’

  Nick was six foot two and skinny as a broom. His head was shaved except for the crown, which sprouted three-foot-long dreadlocks which hung down his back like ropes. His scraggy beard, which he tended to scratch in a way many people found unnerving, was also knotted at the ends. Anyway, whether he was melting in, mixing up or just mooning about, we didn’t seem to have much choice but to wait for him to either come back or contact us.

  We cooked up a huge pot of vegetable curry under Ali’s supervision. I watched him measure out the spices to the grain. Frank and Robin chopped vegetables. Mags was rolling the inevitable spliff just a fraction smaller than Nelson’s Column, while Gaia entered Housing Benefit payments into our rent books. I wondered if we’d all still be doing this in ten years’ time. I couldn’t see any of us emerging from the sub-culture and blending into the mainstream. Only time would tell.

  By the time I crawled into my sleeping bag that night, I reckoned I had my waking life pretty damn sorted under the circumstances. Unfortunately, I had no such control over my sleeping life.

  I was in the tomb. It was colder, darker and smellier than usual. Who says you have no sense of smell in your dreams? I felt a nameless fear I had never experienced in the real world. A sudden putrid gust of wind blew out all but one flickering candle. I lost balance and fell against the stone wall. I reached out in panic to steady myself and grabbed something soft and fleshy.

  I pulled back in horror, but was unable to release my grasp. My fingers were locked in a rigor mortis grip. By the guttering light, I saw the wall niche next to me had no coffin. A naked male corpse lay directly on the stone. My fingers were clenched around his erect penis. Round my father’s erect penis. I tried to scream, but no sound came. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Under my horrified gaze, the flesh on his body began to crawl and peel away.

  I woke wrapped in a drenched sleeping bag tighter than any shroud. I fought my way out, gasping and retching. I switched on the main light, the two lamps, the telly and the stereo. I sat rocking on the cushions, knees drawn up, arms clasped tightly around them, and repeated over and over my mantra: ‘Fucking bastard. Fucking bastard. Fucking bastard.’

  12

  STAN SURFACED ABOUT midday, looking only marginally better than my father had in my dream. His jaw was covered in stubble and his eyes looked like piss-holes in pools of blood. He gave monosyllabic grunts in response to anything I had to say. Mind you, what I had to say was mainly along the lines of ‘Ooooh look, here comes the walking dead,’ and ‘Fuck me. You look like seven flavours of shit on legs.’ He retreated to the garden with a rug, a cup of black coffee, a packet of Gauloises and a pile of my vintage X-Men comics.

  I spent the best part of the day working through the list of names and numbers I’d taken off Stan’s mobile. I wrote each one in my notebook, one to a page. Then I eliminated the obvious ones – Catherine, James, Dad. Ditto the ones I reckoned were work-related or businesses of some kind – these included Koi Korner, I noticed. That left me with a list of twenty-three names – fifteen male and eight female.

  I started dialling, being careful to first tap in 141 each time so my own number couldn’t be traced. If an answering machine cut in, I left no message but made a note of what was said, the style, tone of voice etc. Every half-hour or so, I checked on Stan from my bedroom window. For a large chunk of time he was fast asleep on the rug, with one of Gaia’s cats curled up on his crotch. I noticed, not without some satisfaction, that the cat was Artemis, the one with the nasty skin condition.

  When I got a human response on the phone, I went into a routine designed to get maximum feedback from minimum input.

  ‘Hi! Alex,’ for example.

  ‘Yes. Who’s this?’

  ‘It’s Sue,’ or Meg or Jan or…

  At this point the respondents tended to fall into one of two camps. There were the doubters: ‘I’m sorry? Sue? Sue who?’

  To which my response would be ‘That is Alex, isn’t it?’

  ‘Er, yes…’

  And your number is 020 8703…?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you live in…’ This last piece of information gleaned from a careful study of the phone directory until I came across the same prefix and matched it to an area.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do. But…’

  ‘Alex Haydon?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. I’m Alex Prescott.’

  Most times, I wouldn’t extract more than a surname, but every detail would be noted in the book.

  And then there were the wingers. Lots more fun. Stringing it along until they could work out who I was and how they knew me, but not wanting to get stroppy in case I was someone important. ‘Oh. Er – hi, Sue. How are you?’

  ‘Fine thanks. How are you?’

  Then I’d flick through some general questions – ‘How’s work/ the family/things?’ – gleaning as much information as I could and relishing the vague note of confusion in their voices. The longer it went on, the more embarrassing it would be for them to admit they didn’t know who the fuck I was.

  Good fun. I enjoyed myself. The pages in my notebook filled with details of the lives of absolute strangers. Not one single line gave me any clues as to the identity of those threatening us, but it just might be useful at some point.

  Della’s number was in there. Hers was the only machine I left a message on. As myself. I still didn’t leave my number though: I didn’t want to risk her phoning when Stan was around. I’d just dialled the last number and made the last note when the phone rang. No stranger this time, worse luck.

  ‘Jenny?’ shrilled Straight Kate. ‘How are you? What are the chances of us having a civilised conversation, would you say?’

  ‘Hello, Kate,’ I sighed. ‘I’m fine. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, OK. Well, as well as can be expected under the circumstances.’ I checked the martyred tone and swallowed hard. ‘Listen, Jenny. I’m phoning because it’s only correct you should be kept informed. No matter how you react, we believe in doing the right thing.’

  Kate had clearly overdosed on sanctimonious pomposity and was therefore deserving of my sympathy.

  ‘So of what are you about to inform me?’ I asked.

  ‘That your father’s funeral won’t be taking place for some time. There’s to be a post-mortem. And an inquest too, in all probability.’

  ‘What?’ I floundered. ‘Why, for Christ’s sake? I didn’t kill him. I haven’t seen him in years.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Jenny,’ Kate snapped. ‘No one’s suggesting that.’ A pause. ‘Oh. Was that an attempt at humour? Because it really isn’t funny. In fact it’s deeply insensitive and offensive. However, I have resolved not to argue with you. Dennis believes that the staff at the nursing home may have deliberately administered your father an overdose of morphine the night before he died.’

  My heroes. I love them. I began to compose a letter of gratitude. Kate cut into my reverie.

  ‘No doubt they did it from what they considered to be good motives. A peaceful end to suffering and so on…’

  I bit my lip to stop myself asking whose suffering she was referring to.
<
br />   ‘…and I’m sure the staff were very fond of him…’

  Huh! What planet was she from?

  ‘…but euthanasia is illegal in this country. It’s the thin end of the wedge. If we allow humans to decide how and when someone should die, it could open the floodgates.’

  I could think of a few lives I wouldn’t mind ending. My father’s was top of the list. And I think I’m human. But then Kate and I would never agree on anything meaningful.

  ‘Well. Thanks for telling me,’ I managed.

  ‘I’ll let you know when we hear anything more. Dennis has just got back from the police station. He’s been there all afternoon, giving evidence.’

  Oh, for fuck’s sake.

  ‘So we’re very tired. And the children are very upset, of course.’

  Christ. My nephews, teetering as they were on the brink of puberty, had all the endearing charm of a pair of lager louts coupled with the appearance of Freddy Kruger’s younger brothers. I couldn’t imagine them blubbing into their mummy’s bosom over the death of an evil old git who probably never sent them so much as a birthday card.

  ‘So I’ll go now. But I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Bye then.’

  ‘Goodbye, Jennifer.’

  Ooh, ‘Jennifer’. Now I was really in trouble. Good job I was being threatened and assaulted by masked maniacs. Otherwise I’d have been in a right tizz.

  Not long after my little tête-à-tête with Kate, Stan came up from the garden and said Gaia had invited him over for a Shiatsu massage. Like I didn’t know. Like I hadn’t arranged it. I asked if he’d mind spending the night there. I didn’t say, but I sort of hinted I was expecting company and didn’t want to have to explain Stan’s presence on my futon.

  No one was coming round. I had other plans. I reached into the murky depths of the top shelf of my built-in cupboard and pulled out a small dusty suitcase. I snapped open the catches with a solemnity that had more than a hint of ritual about it, and pulled out the contents.