Richard Hanover: Private Dick. Part Two

So this is the second bit, of three, from this weird thrillery thing I've been working on. I supposed it's worth saying that this character is playing at being a private detective, he's not really one. He's deluded. He used to be a food critic. But then his marriage broke down and he had a mental breakdown/mid-life crisis. Which all sounds insanely far-fetched. But anyway... part two.

V.

The next morning I got my last twenty quid out of my bank. I spent half of it on a top up card. Then I spent two quid on a ‘one-of-each’ from Mister D’s. One egg, one rasher, one sausage, one dollop of beans, one slice of fried bread, one tomato, one strong tea which I sipped while I decided what to do.

I went down to John Burn’s Gym, the big lifting gym down by the station. It’s the longest running in Swansea – and where all the proper bodybuilders go.

I spent a fiver on membership.

They asked me if I needed an introductory session and I said no.

I went in to the changing room and sat on the slatted wooden benches. On my phone, I found the number that the boy had rung the night before. I added 141 to the number to withhold caller ID. I let it ring twice and then hung up.

I hadn’t washed since the hot water went at home, so I had a shower. I found some Lynx shampoo and washed my hair for the first time in a while. It took three washes to lather.

I stayed in the shower for as long as I could bare it, listening for lockers opening and closing in the changing room. I took my time and washed some parts that wouldn’t normally get washed.

When I came out there was a bloke changing. He was taller than me, wider than me, with muscles I’ve yet to find a use for. We were different species.

He caught me looking at him but didn’t seem to mind. He glanced over my body but found nothing to hold his attention.

I sat down on the bench and let myself drip dry.

I tried the phone number again, this time it went straight to answer machine:

“A’ight, this is Lorry. If you’re phoning about the van then leave me your number, name and weight.” The voice sounded taught, raised, like it was being squeezed through a neck brace.

It was beginning to seem like a bad way to spend five pounds.

Another huge guy came in and got changed. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. His aftershave wafted off him as he took his shirt off. The smell was leathery and old.

I waited for the changing room to empty then I rang the number again: two rings before hanging up.

Eventually, I decided that I might as well make use of the facilities.

I found a pair of white shorts, discarded on top of one of the lockers. I washed them with shampoo in the shower and put them on.

I turned my T-shirt inside out.

I went to the anaerobic room first. It was empty except for two women, one on the stepper, and another, at the thigh adductor, opening and closing her legs.

I went on the treadmill first, for ten minutes, until my feet hurt. In the mirrors, I watched the flesh at my cheeks shudder.

The free weights room was separated, upstairs. I pushed through the blue double doors and the stench of sweat was almost physical – more like mist than a smell. Various stale deodorants and aftershaves mixed with breath, sweat and chalk.

As I walked in, I half expected the room to stop, saloon-style, at my narrow frame. But no-one looked up.

Two sides of the room were fully mirrored, floor to ceiling, facing each other. At certain angles, I could see their bodies tensing into infinity. Watching themselves watching themselves watching themselves.

Most of the machines were taken. The occasional sound of restricted exhalation, like a sperm whale coming up for air. The clank of weights. The atmosphere was somewhere between an exam room and a bell tower. I sat at a machine and looked at my own body in the mirror. My upper arms like dish cloths. The bones showing through my T-shirt at least gave me some shading. One of the men had stopped working out and was just enjoying himself, rolling his shoulders in the mirror, watching the different bits pop up like Wack-A-Rat at the arcade.

I put the weight as low as it would go and tried out a few pulls. It was easy. I practiced grimacing. I practiced exhaling noisily.

It was relaxing, listening to their piston-like breathing, the creak of leatherette, watching them pad themselves with towels.

I tried not to tire myself out too much. I stayed for a while. Some of the men left, some new ones came in.

Eventually, I went back to the changing room, waited for it empty, then rang the number again. This time a phone rang in one of the lockers. The ring tone was Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I cancelled the call and the sound stopped.

I went and sat next to the lockers and rang it again. It rang out – DUM de-dum dum, DUM de dum dum – I shifted along the bench until I had my back to the sound. It was number sixteen.

I had another shower, choosing a cubicle that let me see the locker. I washed my hair again. Finally, once the skin on my fingertips had shrivelled and turned translucent, two men came in the changing rooms.

They were out of sight. But I listened to them talk.

“Fucking beach weights,” one of them said.

“I know.”

There was a long silence.

“Fucking posers.”

“I know.”

“It’s for my thunder and lightning,” one of them said, in a camp voice.

I heard the sound of two kisses.

They both laughed at this.

“See you later, Lorry,” the one said.

“Later butt,” Lorry said.

The other guy left.

I watched Lorry open locker sixteen.

From behind, he looked like a hunch back, the way his shoulder muscles rode up. He towelled dry: patting his armpits, see-sawing the cloth between his legs. I expected him to have a shower, but he didn’t. He just started to get dressed.

I got out of the shower. Having no towel, I just put my clothes on wet. My trousers clinging to my legs. My shirt was already drenched in sweat.

I looked for cuts on his nose or forehead but couldn’t find anything. No neck brace either. He was the colour of onion skin. His hips seemed tiny, like they were a belt from which the rest of his body was trying to burst out.

I left the changing room before him, thanked the receptionist and went out to the car park. I pretended to be getting a ticket from the machine.

It was raining, which suited me.

He spoke to the receptionist, made her laugh and then came outside. He didn’t seem bothered by the rain either. I saw him check his phone and listen to his messages, one of which was of me hanging up, then he got in to a white Renault Megane.

I had three quid to my name and the taxis start charging at two pound twenty.

I ran across the road to the train station and got one from the rank.

“Alright mate, I’m headed up Townhill way,” I said, speaking in my taxi voice. I got in to the front passenger seat. “If you could just follow my good friend, he knows where I’m supposed to be going.”

I waited for him to ask why I wasn’t in the car with Lorry. He didn’t.

“Okay,” he said, “Townhill then.”

He had glossy hair on his forearms, shirt sleeves rolled up. His face was a delicate pink, like good Beef Wellington.

We followed Lorry – two cars behind – along Kingsway and St Helen’s Road. Then it was just the two of us going up Rosehill.

The meter read 2.80 by the time we got to the quarry and then along Terrace Road. I could feel the wetness in my trousers starting to seep through in to the seat.

Lorry was driving slowly. And the taxi driver was happy to follow close behind, thinking that we were friends.

It was four quid by the time we got up to Townhill.

Lorry pulled in and parked on Pant-y-celyn road. I didn’t want the taxi to stop outside Lorry’s house.

“If you could keep going, down behind that white van, thanks.”

He parked up. The meter read 4.20.

I was in trouble.

“I only have three pounds. I’m sorry.”

“That’s not enough,” he said, as if this was news. He turned to look at me. His nostrils shrugged.

“I know. I’m really sorry. It’s all I have.”

“It’s not enough,” he said. “Ask your friend.”

“No, I can’t.”

“If you can’t I will.”

He started blinking wildly.

“Please,” I said.

“You owe me pound twenty. Ask your mate.” He raised his voice and gripped the steering wheel.

I wasn’t above trying something.

I opened up my coat to reveal my trousers, which were soaking wet, right up to the crotch.

“I had an accident,” I said.

“Oh fuckin’.”

“I have to take my daughter to school.”

He leant across me, his face screwed up from some imagined stink to shove the door open. I could see the clogged pores at the corners of his nostrils.

“Now fuck off.”

I stared down at my own crotch. He unclicked my seatbelt and pushed me out. I slid on to the pavement and stayed there, balled up, in an approximation of a mental.

He slammed the passenger door and drove off.

I stood up, checked the road, checked the windows of the houses behind me. No-one was watching me.

I walked on the far side of the road, back past Lorry’s house. His was a semi-detached house on a quiet, wide road. He had a two-car garage.

There was a covered bus stop on the opposite side of the road, a bit further down. So I sat at it and waited. Lights came on in the upstairs rooms.

I could tell the TV was on by the light changing – blue, yellow, red – on the ceiling of their lounge.

I was a detective.

The front of the house was an off-cream colour, a textured surface, pocked, like the top of an asparagus heart. The windows were of an older generation of double glazing: aluminium framed and starting to get condensation between the sheets of glass.

At one point, I saw the torso of a man in the front window. He looked briefly out at the bay. It took me a moment to recognise him as the son, the boy who’s used my phone.

Then a light came on in the top left bedroom. I could just make out some guitar music – I didn’t know the band.

At six, the front door opened. Lorry and his son emerged in black suit trousers and jackets with black tees that said: TIME. They both looked incredibly wide: the ill-fitting shoulders of their jackets and the way they walked with their hands away from their sides, like models.

“Can I drive?” his son asked.

“No,” Lorry said.

“Can I do the gears?”

“Okay.”

They got in to the Megane and drove off, accelerating in waves.

I tried their garden gate, it wasn’t locked, so I walked round the back of the house. They had a high dividing fence between their garden and their neighbours – I stayed close to it. The garden was heaped with rusted car parts, some fractured sheets of glass leant against the bin, a selection of empty wine bottles on the back step. It was paved but the stones were beginning to crack with the force of weeds beneath: in the gaps between stones the weeds shot up, in perfect squares, graph paper.

I peaked in through the utility room window. On top of the fridge, there was a white vat of Deca-Durabolin. A basket of wet clothes sat on the floor beneath the washer. I tried the kitchen door but it was locked.

I looked up at the windows above. One of them was open. The bathroom probably. It was reachable, in theory, if I could wedge my body between the high garden fence and the wall of the house, shimmy up – using my femurs – then lift myself, using only my triceps, from the window ledge up.

VI.

Danni was manning the reception – a school desk that she’d put out in the car park. She was reading a book. On the desk, there was a red lockable money tin and a tube of 40+ Aloe Vera sun cream. A handwritten sign said:

COME.
SWEAT.
MAKE FRIENDS.
– IT’S THE GYM.

She was wearing tight jeans and tiny white shoes. She had a bow in her half tied back hair.

It was sunny and she was reading a book. I felt old.

“I know where he lives,” I said.

She looked up.

There was a moment – her mind changing focus. She nodded.

“His name is Brian Calder, or Lorry, he lives in Mayhill, not far from here. He works at a club in town, with his son.”

“Great work, detective,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Sit down,” she said. “You can wait for Dad.”

I sat next to her at the desk, looking out on to the big roundabout and the sky above it. A Renault did a couple of slow loops before picking an exit.

“Calder sells anabolic steroids on the black market.”

“You work fast.”

She rattled her nails on the desk.

The door to the gym was open and I could hear someone grunting.

“How long have you been a private detective?”

“On and off, two years now.”

“How’s it going?”

“Very good.”

“How did you get involved with the case.”

She said case with a little flourish. She enjoyed it.

I could feel I was still damp, but drying off.

“Sometimes the work doesn’t come to you. I make my own work.”

“Right.”

“If I see a stolen car being thrown around, then I want to know why.”

“Should you become a police officer?”

“I don’t think so.”

A woman walked out of the gym with a towel over her shoulder. She was wearing tennis shorts and a vest.

“Bye love,” she said.

We both waved her off.

“I like books,” I said. “What’re you reading?”

She held up the book. It was Branding Yourself Online.

“I’m starting my own company.”

“Wow.”

“Accessories.”

“That’s great,” I said. “Hats and things”

“Yes. The theme is the gothic.”

“The gothic,” I said, looking upwards. “That’s different to gothic.”

“Correct.”

“A niche?”

“I don’t know yet.”

She turned the book over in her hands, knocked the spine against the table. She didn’t look at me.

“The company is called,” she said. Then she turned toward me and, in a deliberately normal voice, said: “Accessories to murder.”

I frowned and blinked a bit.

She was squinting.

“Is that a how startling-frown or a frown-frown?”

“That was a there-is-a-world-beyond-my-understanding frown.”

“Okay, so say you want a private detective’s suede fedora, you’d come to my website.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Or a skeletal brooch. All sorts of things. Necklaces from windscreen glass.”

“That’s down my street,” I said.

“That’s down your street.”

An articulated lorry came up the hill behind us. It didn’t go round the roundabout but went straight across it, slowly, six tyres up on the embankment, six on the road.

“How many cases have you solved?”

“Quite a few,” I said.

“What was the best one?”

“You know the Murco garage in Killay?”

“Yes.”

“The owner had heard that the night porter was selling drugs. That if you asked for a king-size Bounty, he’d push ten pills across the counter.”

“What happened?”

“I went up to the counter and said I want a king-size Bounty. He said, we don’t do king-size Bounty. Just dark or milk chocolate. I said it again. I winked. I want a king-size Bounty. He said we don’t do them. I said, okay, I’d like ten pills then. He said, that’s a tenner.”

She was smiling.

“Wow,” she said.

“The owner didn’t want the police involved – he sacked the guy. The guy was his son.”

We sat in silence for a while. Someone clanged their weights back on to the bench.

“I’m going back to London tomorrow,” she said.

“I thought you lived here.”

“In the gym?” she said.

I nodded.

“You should apply for housing benefit,” she said. “They pay my rent.”

A large man came up to the desk. The sun was behind him and he cast a block of shadow across us – light splintered from behind his head.

“Does it cost to join?”

“Free membership today,” she said.

“How much to go in?”

“Three quid” she said.

He had both ears cauliflowered.

He paid three quid and went in. I looked in to the money box as she put the coins away – there were two bags of pounds, unopened, and a selection of the lower denomination coins. No notes.

“You can stay here, after I go, if you like. Dad won’t mind. Since you’re working on the case.”

“I think he’s lonely,” she said. “He could do with your support, anyway.”

I didn’t look like a private detective.