Blind Needle Page 9

  ‘Give me four,’ the other answered. And then, ‘Ouch! Shite and corruption, take it easy!’

  ‘Drops aren’t easy. You’ve godder ged ‘em right or they look stupid, like onions. You don’t want a bunch of onions on yer arm, do yer?’ The fat one gasped a whinnying laugh, like someone getting the point of a dirty joke.

  The buzzing swooped to a lower pitch; I moved slowly backwards to the door.

  ‘Nearly done, squire. Two minutes,’ the voice called out, and the moon face swam up into the mirror. I ducked my head, bringing my hat brim down to cover my eyes. I fumbled for the latch, keeping my head lowered.

  ‘Jesus, Wayne, get on with it,’ the customer complained. ‘This is bloody torture.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Gaz – Hang on, squire, nearly done—’

  I slammed the door on the whining needle and walked quickly along the street towards the main road, away from the E GA FOO S ORE, heart thumping. I reached the corner and almost collided with an elderly woman in a headscarf and a coat with a moth-eaten fur collar who was dragging herself along the pavement under the burden of two overladen shopping-bags.

  I went on past the lighted shop windows with their jumble of cheap goods, past a taxi-hire board with a solitary car at the kerb, and a butcher’s with technicolor meat basking in a blue neon glow. Farther on, the main road split in two, sweeping like a forked river either side of a mock-Gothic structure of sandblasted stone the colour of biscuit, with words and Roman numerals carved above the arched entrance.

  BRICKTON TOWN HALL + + + MDCCCLXXVI

  There was a notice-board with a constellation of rusty drawing pins and some flapping scraps of paper. One was headed ‘Brickton & District Council Meetings – Sub-Committees’, and halfway down the list: ‘Recreation & Entertainments – Room E14.’

  A squeaky, high-pitched voice inquired, ‘Looking for the Job Centre?’

  A small, thin-shouldered man in a peaked cap and a dark uniform jacket shiny with age stood in the entrance, peering out at me with an inquisitive squirrel’s face.

  ‘Does the Job Centre have any jobs?’

  ‘You might be lucky. Bar staff. Caretaker. Lavatory attendant. They used to need street-cleaners but that’s all gone mechanical. There’s a haulage firm. They take people on when they’re busy.’

  ‘I’ve tried there.’

  ‘Ah well, you see’ – he wagged his narrow head – ‘it all depends on the Station. When they’re busy you can have fifty loads a day – through the night as well. You damn near fall out of bed with the rumble.’

  ‘Which station?’

  He blinked bright, watery eyes, as if I’d confessed some shameful ignorance. ‘The processing Station. A lot of folk don’t like it being so near, but if there’s work, you’ll tek it, won’t you? When you’ve got a family and a mortgage. It’s all right these conversationists making protests, waving banners and what have you …’ He tugged at my sleeve, became confiding:

  ‘If you had to mek bombs or weapons or tanks to get a wage you’d do it, wouldn’t you? You can’t afford to protest on social security. I’d like to see some of them buggers try it. They’d soon shut up. Like a shot. They’d soon stop waving their bloody silly banners if they couldn’t afford to buy their kids a decent pair of shoes.’

  ‘Does the Station employ many local people?’

  He screwed up his face. ‘Few. Manual. But it’s mainly technical – white coat, collar-and-tie jobs. They’ve all got degrees. Letters after their names.’ He spoke of them as of untrustworthy foreigners with dubious reputations. ‘B-H do all right out of it, but they’re on contract. You’ve already tried there, you said?’

  I nodded.

  He was eager to talk, to interrupt the long shapeless hours pacing the polished entrance hall. After gazing at silver-plated civic trophies in glass cases, pointing the way to the borough surveyor’s department, nipping into the gent’s for a smoke, it brought a flush to his hollow cheeks.

  ‘Try the Job Centre, that’s your best bet. Oh it’s very posh now, like a five-star hotel. They let you use the phone for nothing and give out envelopes and writing paper. There’s free coffee and you can sit round with the others and have a chat. They’ve got carpets and armchairs; it’s cosy on wet afternoons. I know two or three who go regular.’

  I glanced at the noticeboard. ‘Are these meetings open to the public – the sub-committees?’

  ‘Some are, some aren’t.’ His little face screwed up in a frown of real perplexity. ‘You know something? I can never get over how chummy they all are. Outside they slag one another off left, right and centre. In here it’s all pals together. Like a private club. Some of them even play golf together! You wouldn’t credit it, would you?’

  ‘Thanks for the information … erm …’

  ‘Joe,’ he said. ‘Chadwick. Everybody calls me Chaddie. Want to know where anything is in this mausoleum, ask Chaddie they all say. That’s me. The Job Centre’s halfway down Queen’s Street. They’ll be open now. Use the phone, have a coffee, bit of a natter.’ He gave a wave of his scrawny brown hand and turned it into a tug at the peak of his cap. Then he clasped it behind his back, straightened his spine, resumed his interminable pacing.

  I went back along the high street and stopped at a chemist’s on the corner and went in and asked for a bottle of hair dye, chestnut brown. The woman climbed onto a stool to reach it down. I took a pair of spectacle frames from a revolving rack and looked at myself in the tiny mirror. The black plastic frames emphasised my pallor. I tried on another pair, less severe, and got a shock when I took them to the counter.

  ‘Eighteen pounds.’ I gave her a note. She held out her hand. ‘Another forty pee – two pound forty for the dye. We do testing as well, you know.’

  ‘Testing?’ I said stupidly.

  ‘Eye tests. You want lenses, don’t you?’

  ‘I already have the lenses.’

  She laughed in a scathing way. ‘How do you know they’ll fit? Anyway, you can’t fit them, it’s done on a special machine.’

  ‘If they’re not right I’ll bring them back and change them. That’s all right, isn’t it?’ She stared at me. I could feel myself getting angry, which was a mistake. I wanted to stamp the frames into the floor and snatch the note out of her hand and run away. I said, ‘Wrap them up and let me worry about it. Or is the customer always in the wrong in this establishment?’

  It was satisfying to have said it but a bad mistake. She would remember me, the silly rude man who purchased spectacle frames without lenses. Anger does that to me, and I never seem to learn.

  I went out, knowing the old hag was watching with cold, brilliant eyes. What should be simple is always complicated. And then I thought, My God, the £20 note I’d given her. Newly minted, smelling of ink. The bank would have the numbers of all new notes issued. They would have the number of every note in my pocket. Every shopkeeper in town would be watching out for a stranger handing out crisp £20 notes. The hard brick of money tucked comfortingly in my inside pocket was just so much waste paper.

  I had four pounds and a few coins in real money and £4980 I might just as well have scattered in the street for all the good it would do me.

  4

  Working my way through cobbled alleys and back entries, past jerry-built extensions writhing with green plastic pipework, I approached the shop from the rear and hammered on the back door until Mr Patundi heard me and let me in. His yellow eyes rolled in the gloom of the passage. ‘Did you tell Councillor Benson for me? I am most obliging to you—’

  ‘Tell him what?’ Then I remembered Mr Patundi’s troubles with the local youth. I pushed past a wooden crate, the lid open, giving off a reek that you could grab with both hands. I said shortly, ‘I didn’t see him. He’s away at the moment on business.’

  He jerked his head. ‘Come – come. You will have some tea?’ He flapped ahead of me.

  ‘I’d like some hot water,’ I said, following him along the passage. ‘To wash with.’ He n
odded and beckoned me into a room opposite the stairs.

  The room was like a cave. A grimy striped blanket was tacked across the window so that the only light came second-hand from the passage. There were two very cheap-looking plastic chairs, a white sink with brown stains, and a gas-ring. On a metal tray commemorating the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales were two chipped mugs, a packet of tea bags, a large bag of white sugar, a tin of powdered milk. Thick curling wads of invoices were nailed to the walls with six-inch nails, as if Mr Patundi had exorcised his rage by proxy on all those who demanded payment. As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I saw in the corner, almost hidden behind a crinkled velvet drape, an antique safe, squat and black, with a gleaming brass handle and a well-worn brass keyhole.

  Mr Patundi stood in the cramped space, swaying to and fro, while I sat drinking the tea he had made me which was weak and too milky, served in a beaker with a spoon in it. My stomach shrank and recoiled as the hot liquid sloshed around in it.

  I kept wondering about the large key that must fit the brass keyhole. If I were Mr Patundi it would be tied round my neck on a double loop of string, flat and warm against my chest, under the collarless smock and vest, if Indians wore vests.

  For something to say I asked him if he had any children.

  ‘I have two children,’ Mr Patundi replied, as if this was the correct answer to an examination question.

  ‘I never hear them. Do they go to school?’

  ‘My son – Rajiv – went to school for two months, but he cried every day. He was struck every day. These blue marks – here, on his arms and legs …’ He indicated where while he fumbled for the right word

  ‘Bruises.’

  ‘Very good, yes. Bruises. Now my wife shows him books with pictures about Janet and her friend John going to the post office. He learn very quick. He can read almost.’

  ‘Your wife speaks good English?’

  Mr Patundi hooked his finger inside the frayed edge of his smock, scratching his neck. He shook his head. ‘She doesn’t speak at all – no English. Rajiv, he sees the picture, he tells the word to her. Very quick. Very good.’

  It was a different approach to education.

  ‘My other son, the younger one, Kamal – he is very sick,’ Mr Patundi said gravely.

  ‘I’m sorry. What does the doctor say?’

  I had been watching Mr Patundi’s finger scratching his neck: no sign of a chain or loops of string.

  He shrugged. ‘The doctor knows nothing. He said to me, Kamal’s blood is weak. That is all I have to tell you. He has weak blood. I ask him why he has weak blood because my other son, Rajiv, has strong blood, and he says nothing. He gives tablets for Kamal – three times in one day, after he eats – but he eats nothing so how can I give tablets when I have to give them when he eats and he eats nothing?’ He wiped both eyes with heel of his hand. ‘Now my wife will not eat because Kamal is sick. She does not sleep.’

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I said, glancing round, but there was nothing handy to hit him with. I could hit him with my fist, I supposed, though what if somebody came into the shop in the middle of it? Or his wife heard the noise of the struggle and crept up from the basement? It was better to wait for another time, late at night perhaps. I calmed down and drank my tea. I have found that anger – controlled, tight, held in check – brings with it a great lucidity, a clarity of purpose.

  I put the mug on the tray and got up. As I did so the shop bell tinkled. ‘About the hot water – can I take a kettleful upstairs?’

  He waved his hand on his way out. I filled the kettle at the stained sink and set it to boil on the gas-ring. I listened at the door for a moment and then knelt in front of the safe. There were fresh scratches round the brass keyhole. I tried the handle, which was firm. A week’s takings would see me through. I pondered how to get the key off Mr Patundi and lay the blame on the prowling yobboes in the streets. But getting the key, that was the first obstacle.

  Upstairs in my room I put the spectacle frames and bottle of hair dye on the washstand and poured hot water into the bowl. I added cold water from the plastic jug, stripped off my jacket and shirt, and read the instructions on the bottle. It seemed simple enough.

  The comic side of the situation suddenly struck me. Presumably the theft had been reported and by now the police would be looking for a man with £5000 (less £20) he couldn’t spend. That was funny. I bared my teeth at the image in the mirror. A quirky item you might come across as a space-filler in a tabloid newspaper. Hilarious.

  I combed my wet hair back. The transformation was startling. My grey temples and the streaks in my hair were gone, and even with the glasses and growth of beard I looked younger, less haggard.

  I lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket over me. The light was dying rapidly. It was nearly dark. Later, that same evening, at the town hall, I would see Benson for the first time. I fell asleep and immediately began to dream that S – and the bitch in the chemist’s were whispering together, conspiring to do away with me, for the heinous crime of wearing spectacle frames with no glass in them.

  Chapter Six

  1

  Somebody was breathing close by, hoarse and ragged. I woke up in a sweating panic, thinking it was S – closing in, only to find it was me. A streetlight’s slanting beam made a moon map of the ceiling. Had I cried out? My throat felt as if I had.

  I rolled off the bed, tangled in the blanket, stricken with fear that I had slept too long. My hair was damp and sticky. Perhaps the dye had run and I was the same chestnut shade as Mr Patundi. Now the local yobs would jeer and spit at me in the street, telling me to bugger off back to Bongo-Bongo Land.

  The same endless, circular dream as before. Dr Morduch and the narrow needle bearing down, the shrill sliding pain, piercing to the marrow. Then the dream shifted, as dreams do, to Susan standing with Dr Morduch in the corridor, his lean figure stooping over her, his large bony hands sharply outlined in the pockets of his white coat. Dr Morduch was speaking gravely to her about my ‘condition’. I could see every line of his long austere face, the pouchy eyes, the waxy pallor; and yet Susan’s face remained stubbornly blank, like a blurred splodge of white on a faultily developed photograph. I tried my hardest to remember her face, and always at that point the blankness swirled in, dense as moorland mist, obscuring my vision.

  Somewhere in that mist S – was lurking (as always) up to his usual gleeful tricks and stratagems. I knew he was there in my dream, lurking, waiting, because I could hear his hoarse breathing and his stifled giggles.

  Just as he had giggled when he told me how he had committed the Perfect Murder.

  I pulled on my overcoat and buttoned it to the neck, slipped the spectacle frames into my pocket. With my hat on Mr Patundi would never know of the miraculous youthful transformation that had taken place since we drank tea together.

  The solid block of money was still oddly comforting despite its worthlessness. Dare I risk spending it? All of a sudden it seemed ridiculous that I couldn’t or shouldn’t. I got the sudden, uncontrollable urge for fish and chips. Vinegar soaking into newsprint. The sharp tang of salt on my tongue. Batter crunching between my teeth …

  I went down the stairs, the fish sizzling in my ears. Mr Patundi showed me the time on his fat Rolex, studded with buttons. It was 7.45. I went out through the shop and walked quickly past the tattoo parlour with my collar turned up. It was in darkness. The fat boy Wayne’s night off: sticking the needle into a junkie’s arse in a public lavatory somewhere.

  It was bright and cold under the sodium-yellow glare of the streetlights now that the mist had cleared, and I walked briskly down the hill to the Town Hall.

  The entrance was lit up. Inside, behind the swing doors, small groups mingled amongst marble busts on stone pedestals. A man with white hair, cut short and square so that it stuck up like porcupine quills, passed importantly from group to group, wearing his mayor’s chain of office over his dark business suit, a large medallion dangling down
onto his sloping beer-belly like a golden dinner plate propped on a shelf.

  Before crossing the street I altered my appearance, squashed the hat in my pocket, smoothed back my hair and straightened my collar. I felt awkward in the empty spectacle frames but kept them on all the same.

  A small mob shuffled outside between the stone columns. Placards were being waved – mainly by women in woven skirts and flat shoes, not wearing make-up. There were a few young men, pale, lank-haired, eyes glittering with zealotry. Some of the women had babies strapped to them. One of these scrutinised me closely as I came up the steps.

  ‘He’s not a councillor,’ she said dismissively, turning her woolly cap away.

  ‘Come and join us,’ another woman sang. ‘Join S.O.C. and protect our future.’ She waved a placard in my face: Save Our Children.

  ‘Are you a journalist?’ A young man thrust his neck out, Adam’s apple bobbing, unsure whether to be deferential or belligerent.

  Someone started to sing ‘We shall overcome’ and a few strained voices took it up. I was jostled to one side as the crowd pushed forward into the entrance hall. Chaddie, the doorkeeper, halted the invasion, stemming it with two thin raised palms as if holding back a dam-burst. ‘You’re blocking the doorway. Please move aside. Fire regulations stipulate we must allow free access at all times. Thank you. Thank-yewww-very-much.’

  His gaze swept over me without recognition. The mob fell back and became a polite English crowd, muttering and indignant, protesting by the rules. The revolution wasn’t about to start in Brickton; or anywhere else, probably.

  The confusion helped, got me inside the entrance hall without Chaddie or anyone else noticing. A few stragglers were drifting off to committee rooms. At the bottom of a wide curved staircase with lions, coats of arms and fleur-de-lis incorporated in the wrought ironwork, varnished wooden signposts shaped to resemble pointing fingers indicated the way. Committee room E14 was down a corridor to the left. Gloomy portraits in gilt frames of elderly men in magenta robes gazing stoically into the middle distance were arranged on flock wallpaper. A motto in gold-leaf proclaimed, ‘Industry without Art is Brutality.’