Director's cut

  Director's cut

  I K Watson

  Director's Cut

  I K Watson

  Scene One

  Action

  An explosion rattled the windows. It was followed immediately by the sound of glass smashing and a car leaving tread on tarmac.

  Rick Cole said, “What the…?” then he heard a voice from the past. He pressed the phone closer to his ear. “I need a favour. I seem to remember you owe me one.”

  Cole answered, “Now ’ s not a good time. Did you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Sounded like a bomb, in the High Road.”

  Cole's door was open. In the main office every phone was ringing. In the corridor coppers were on the move, perked up like sniffer-dogs on heat. Even for old-timers alarm bells and distant sirens were shots of adrenalin.

  “How the fuck would I hear it? They could nuke your part of town and I wouldn't hear it from here. Too many council estates between us. Anyway, good times are things of the past. So give me a time?” Cole paused, then, “Midnight.”

  “Right. Same place. You remember the place?”

  Cole nodded into the phone and hung up. He remembered the place.

  Sooner or later it was always going to pull him back. There was nothing more certain, except booze on a copper's breath. He moved into the main office to join the confusion.

  Chapter 1

  The first guest to arrive for the party left the train at King's Cross and picked up a minicab at the back of the station. The black cabs at the front were for people who didn't know the difference. He hadn't been to London for over a year but some things never changed. Getting ripped off was one of them.

  “Falcon Street. It's off Sheerham High Road.”

  “Got it, Boss, but there might be a delay. There’s been a bomb. It was on the news.”

  The passenger grunted indifference and climbed in.

  The driver was black, packing designer gear and gold trinkets. His patch was Shaftsbury, his punters the tourists. But most of them were tucked up in restaurant or theatre seats by now; between eight and ten were the dead hours. That's when he hit the stations.

  King's Cross was favourite because it carried the northerners, from Newcastle and beyond. And northerners were easy pickings. They carried a heavy reputation for being tight so they felt obliged to make amends. The Scots were different. They enjoyed the stigma so much it made them even tighter. “What do you want, Boss? Give me the word. You want to enjoy the night, right?”

  London, like the rest of the country, was floating in dope.

  The passenger spoke. “And I was going to find a hot dog stand. Silly me.”

  The cabbie recognized an accent. Not London, but not far off.

  Reading, maybe. There were a lot of dodgy bastards there. His surprise registered in the mirror. The passenger saw it and smiled. It was a tricky, dangerous smile, the sort of smile you saw just before something nasty and sharp and reflecting your image in silver, flashed toward you. A little less certain the cabbie said, “It's the gear, Boss, and the price is right. If you want your shit mashed then you go down to Brixton or up to Stevenage.”

  They motored north and hit the Great Cambridge. In the old days highwaymen had loved this road. They still did but now they called themselves something different and in front their lights were flashing. Traffic police were throwing their weight about. They were always making their random checks on cabbies, easy targets to enhance their arrest statistics. The weapon of mass destruction, Islam, had given them fresh impetus and although the traffic police were not necessarily armed it didn’t stop them enjoying the increased sense of potency.

  “Charlie…”

  The cabbie licked thick lips. They came all the way from St Lucia.

  “Hey, I'm your man. We call the top gear Kate. Best price. I can drop it off.”

  “Yeah, course you can.”

  Another frightening look poured out of the mirror. The driver hesitated. “Your call, Boss. Here's my card, my number. Just ask for Wes, or Father Christmas for short.”

  The passenger read the card out loud. “Benny's Mini Cabs.”

  “Twenty-four hour service at your disposal. Deliveries free of charge. Anything else you want, company, just give us the nod. You name it, you got it. Any denomination, any age. Our aim's to please.” “I get my own company.”

  “Figured you would, Boss. That much is crystal.”

  “I'll bell you.”

  “Right on.”

  They turned into the High Road. The Carrington theatre loomed before them. Yellow light creamed the Victorian building, made the red brick glow like an electric fire. A line of punters waited at the box office while a bunch of East-European beggars and the odd blown-out Jesus freak annoyed them and the traffic roared past. The passenger turned in his seat. A massive cut-out of a scantily clad Anthea Palmer had caught his eye. She wore black underwear, fishnet stockings and lethal high heels. It was an image almost guaranteed to cause a traffic pile-up.

  The driver noticed his interest. “You want tickets, Boss? I can get you tickets. Best seats in the house. If you want to meet with Anthea, I'll have to work on that one.” He chuckled.

  The passenger flashed his straight teeth, sharing the joke.

  The driver glanced again in his rear-view. His passenger was in his early thirties and blond hair in a unisex spiky style scrubbed him clean, smoothed out his face, but it was his smile that did the trick. A wolfish smile with a cheeky glint, lighting up the soulless pale-grey eyes.

  It sent a shiver of night down the driver's spine.

  The passenger left the cab and waited until it had disappeared before carrying his bag to a blue cast-iron gate that swung silently open to a four-storey terraced house that had been built in the grey fifties. In the nineties it had been converted by Pakistani property developers into four self-contained flats. Six flights of stairs took him to the third floor.

  There was no lift. It belonged to a friend of a friend who used it only sparingly and let it out for an outrageous fee. It was close enough to the centre to be convenient yet far enough away to remain discreet. For those who used it discretion was the thing.

  He’d seen the invitation on a website. You a creature of the night?

  Wanna twin?

  Wanna come?

  We’re skippering over at Sheerham Dec 10/23.

  And you’re all invited.

  Wanna play?

  Andrew Grant’s new musical, Bikini Line, featuring former weather girl, Anthea Palmer, is to get an extended run at the revamped Carrington Theatre before moving to the West End…

  He smiled at the memory. So there it was. A theatrical production. But the audience sounded right up his street. And what about Anthea?

  Since leaving the weather show she was making a name for herself. Barely a day went by without her photograph appearing in one of the tabloids. And on the front cover of Loaded her black plastic micro-dress had only half concealed her nipples and in the interview inside she’d confided to the reporter and the thousands of readers, that during the shoot she’d worn no underwear. His kind of girl. He unpacked leisurely, as though enjoying the routine of placing his gear neatly into the various drawers and cupboards. It was all about anticipation, working the fantasy, letting that fluttering sensation spread until it became – almost – unbearable. He took a photograph from his case, the final item. It was in a silver frame, in colour, a photograph of a woman in her early twenties. Her clothes and hairstyle were out of the seventies. He placed it carefully on the bedside table.

  In the shower he used a pumice-stone then shaved his legs and underarms. He used Givenchy's Amarige behind his ears, inside his elbows, behind his knees and on his wrists. The perfume of indulgence. Back
in the bedroom he stood before a full-length mirror.

  He'd worked hard to keep the youthful unblemished shape. He moved to the dresser and another mirror. The unfamiliar shag on the stool felt better than good. With an experienced hand he applied his make-up and slowly his face changed. Beneath the blond hair it became soft and oddly beautiful. Blond became blonde.

  Before dressing he cut twin lines of dust on the dresser's polished top and used a custom-built straw. He was charlied in seconds, getting off on his own dangerous eyes as the euphoria took hold. The city was waiting and he was the celeb, up there with Anthea Palmer, on stage, a catwalk queen. A high-heeled bitch.

  He watched himself move to the bed, swinging his hips like a tom with fifties in her eye. He'd pass go, no problem. Better than Anthea Palmer. He pulled on the knickers. The lace stretched, eighty-six percent nylon, the colour of his lipstick. It felt like a slight caress against his dick, a touch of butterfly wings. He put on the matching lace bra, ninety-eight percent nylon, padded, A cup, 34, and changed the plain gold studs in his ears for a couple of danglers with glittering blue stones.

  He checked the full-length again. His legs were slim and as smooth as a woman’s after waxing. He turned for his dress, a short shift in shantung fabric, dry-clean only, burgundy, any year’s colour. His penis bulged slightly, but no more than a skinny girl's muff.

  He slipped into black satin sandals, size 7, and in the three-inch heels he looked better still. His painted toenails, the colour of his dress and lipstick, poked through.

  The first guest had arrived and was ready for the party. He slid into a black Paul Smith jacket that was almost as old as him but looked like new for he kept it for special occasions, and picked up his Elle handbag, reached the door and paused. In his feel-good mode he'd forgotten his accessories. He went back to the drawer of the dresser and selected a blade that was as sharp as a Gillette razor. But it wasn't a safety.

  Chapter 2

  Mr Lawrence had about him the peace of the passing of unhurried years, a contentment in the knowledge that today would be like yesterday and yesterday had been survived.

  He had always been a quiet man. He didn’t need long stretches of solitude to direct his attention inward. That ability came quite naturally. He didn’t need the absence of other people either, for he was adept at mental absenteeism. He was in need of absolutely nothing save for the odd customer in his shop.

  Mr Lawrence owned the Gallery, a shop in the High Road. The explosion that rattled the police station windows was distant but unmistakable and was followed by the sounds of sirens and raised voices coming in from the road outside. He thought of terrorists, the Arabs and the Irish, but barely paused in his work, just poured a little more white spirit and rubbed a picture-frame a little harder. He did like anarchists, no matter where they came from, particularly the majority who showed their mental health problems up front. In a way, he wished he were a part of the revolution. But revolutions were for young men without sense and women without bras and he had spent his younger days in another place where ordinary folk, anarchists included, would not dare to follow.

  The Gallery with its strange side-wall finished quickly with shades of grey pebble-dash and with its small flat above hadn't always been an end of terrace. Before the shadowy town planners had decided a new road was necessary to link the High Road to the growing Richmond Park council estate, Mrs Meacham's small shop that sold wool and lace and dress-making patterns had been on the end of the row. It all seemed so long ago that now he could barely summon the old days or the old girl. Even so, he might have been her last customer, he thought, remembering the lace antimacassars he’d purchased from her closing down sale.

  During the afternoon he would watch gangs of youths walk past his shop swinging their high-strength bottles, followed a few moments later by tottering slappers as they tracked the trail of testosterone. As the day wore on the gangs became louder and more abusive and shoppers moved out of their way, shop-keepers took in their pavement displays and a few more cowardly or wise, pulled down their steel shutters. And while the trouble brewed – and there was always trouble – the police were not about. They were too busy form-filling and using their speed-guns on speeding motorists and their CS spray on pensioners; easy targets to enhance the crime figures for the government to manipulate. And in the road the brewing went on until, at one end or the other, a small argument would start and that would do it. Nothing much. It was, after all, only an excuse.

  And then the darkness fell.

  And a cosy routine fell with it.

  And with his shop bolted and as secure as it could be in this part of town, he made his slow way to The British.

  Out of the inky night the illuminations threw a jaundiced glow of Christmas message. Along the High Road the bare trees crackled beneath the rushing clouds and the last withering leaves scampered, a mad palette of neon stained the wet surfaces and the early evening pavements thronged. Oh, how he hated Christmas with its false friendships and packed pavements and its queues and its once-a-year drinkers blocking the bars. He sighed heavily and under the weight of the festive season he shuffled on his way.

  The British were about old things. Old wood in particular. In The British the only brick was about two huge fireplaces that, winter or summer, were piled with smouldering logs that spat at you as you passed. The seating was in narrow alcoves opposite the long bar, some said the longest bar in Britain. It reminded him of an old British Rail platform where the trains smoked and doors slammed and a blue-uniformed guard blew his whistle.

  The British was staffed by Roger, the owner, who had once rowed in a boat race, perhaps the boat race, a no-nonsense stocky owner in his late thirties who was always losing weight but never seemed to lose it, and half a dozen young serving staff wearing tight black pub skirts.

  Roger kept the older women in the back, nuking the pies and cutting the sandwiches.

  Roger's wife was upstairs looking after their baby.

  Mr. Lawrence had been surprised to find that Roger had a wife, never mind that she had been pregnant all these months.

  They had called her Erin.

  An Irish name.

  And she was beautiful. He had seen her moving pictures on Roger’s mobile. Technology was quite wonderful. In looks she took after his wife which was a good thing.

  Roger was the man that Japan and Germany dreamt about. He had to have the latest in TVs and DVDs and sound systems. And he could think of nothing finer than trawling the HMV shops for the 3-for-?20 DVDs. And sooner or later he was going to hang a giant half-inch thick plasma on to The British wall. It would show Sky Sports and Sky News and a Sky slant on the world. e short-lived. Reality was only a short pause for the pub's heavy doors shut it out. That's why they came, the same familiar booze-smacked faces, day after day, to live in pickled suspension, utterly free from interference.

  Albert was there, a tall man, his body hidden by a navy-blue coat. The jeweller, incognito, except that everyone knew him and what he was. He was fifty and probably dangerous. He wasn't interested in the girls. The only thing that interested Albert was measured in carats.

  “Good evening, Albert.”

  “Good evening to you, Mr Lawrence,” he said and his black eyes sparkled like two of his precious stones. “Did you hear the bang?

  Quite a bang, it was.”

  The colonel was there. Most of him was always there. The bits of him that were not were in the sands of El Alamein. A short, squat man with stiff shoulders, at attention even while at ease “Good evening, Colonel.”

  “Good evening,” he muttered absently over his gin and tonic with a slice of lemon. No lime for the juniper in Roger’s boozer. The colonel’s mind was on other things. “The EU could be a problem. The krauts and the frogs could be a problem.” He shook his preoccupied head. His thin rheumatoid fingers gripped the glass and carried it to his thin lips. The old eyes that had once looked out over the wavering desert and had seen the sun glint on Rommel’s halftracks a
nd Panzers, shifted from Mr Lawrence to Roger. At length he said, “They blew up the allotments, you know?”

  “The allotments? The French? The Germans?”

  “No, not the frogs or the krauts. A shed on the allotments. Probably the Greens. Somebody doesn't like their greens.”

  Rasher was there. A fly-by-night sort, Rasher, granted the handle because his father was from Denmark. He was thick-bodied and blue-eyed and covered in gold: earrings, chains, medallions, rings, watch, name-plate. He looked like a wealthy gypsy. His mother had been a fortune-teller from Hackney who somehow, only God knows how, got mixed up with a cold wood-cutting Scandinavian. His clothes were beautifully cut and his shoes were hand-stitched. He wore waistcoats and red braces. He gripped the bar, hands either side of a glass of strong ale. He spent his day in the same position, until closing when his minders helped him out. Only his grip tightened as the day wore on. He had been there for nine months, ever since his pregnant wife had left him. There were photographs of her to remind him, in the bus shelters and in shop windows. Missing, they said. Have you seen this woman, they asked. People who knew Rasher wondered whether his mother had predicted his bad fortune.

  “Good evening, Rasher.”

  Rasher nodded thoughtfully. Perhaps it was a good evening, perhaps it was.

  There was a safety in The British reminiscent of the bomb shelters during the war and in there were the same weary expressions, pale in the gloom, in the manufactured wattage. Yellow faces in the yellow light bouncing off the nicotine yellow ceiling. And not a Chinese in sight. Chinese didn’t use the boozers; too many old soldiers in the boozers who would mistake them for Japanese.

  Albert frowned as a younger, much shorter man – more of a boy, really – told him, “Got out Wednesday, didn't I?”

  “On Wednesday you got out. Strange. That you expect me to know.