Richard Hanover: Private Dick

This is just the first few parts of something I've been working on. It's worth saying that the main character is delusional, and at the end of a mental breakdown. He's not really a private detective although he thinks he is. He used to be a food critic. I'm not sure yet but this may even be written by him, as a kind of memoir of his imagined time as a private detective. So this is: UNRELIABLE NARRATOR ALERT. But essentially, it's just supposed to be a kind of Raymond Chandler rip-off thriller. But set in Swansea. Any feedback welcome.

I'll post the second half of this today, and the final bit tommorow. So that if anyone's interested they can read the whole thing. This is about 3,000 words.

Joe

Part one: Water Babies

I.

I could still smell the rubber. There were black quarter circles on the tarmac where they’d turned on to Hanover street. It was a front-wheel drive.

I guessed they would have gone up to the Promenade: the well-paved road, lined with semi-detached houses that tracks the view along the ridge of Townhill. It’s the go-to road for joyriders.

I walked up past the hospital. There was a hub cap on the traffic calming platform. I took the hill slowly, matching my breaths to my steps. The sky changed colour.

I turned in to the quarry – now reclaimed, used for community picnics. It was dark and I couldn’t see the puddles, only hear them then feel them as they worked their way up through my shoes. Under a street light, there was the frame of a burnt out Mazda that had been there all summer. Arts Foundation students came up here to take photos for their portfolios.

Above me, along the Promenade, I saw a car snake slowly, the steady pace of someone taking the view in – one glance to the road, one glance to the sea.

I was surprised then to hear, further off, the complaint of tyres. A car turned sharply on to the promenade, its headlights moshing as it hit a traffic hump. I expected to hear sirens but I didn’t. The car was some way back, but moving fast. If I hurried up the wooden steps I could have probably met it half-way along. I hurried up the wooden steps.

I kicked up woodchip as I ran. In the distance I heard their exhaust pipe scrape against concrete. I got to the top of the steps. Their headlights swung round the corner and floodlit the steep grass as I stumbled across it. They hit a speed hump and reared up, lights shining back at the stars. I could hear them over-rev as the front tyres span in the air. I kept running and stumbling, hoping to look like a drunk, not a private detective.

They bumped up on to the kerb, across the pavement and came at me over the grass. I suppose they didn’t think much of mowing down a drunk. They had the full beams on. I had the music from Match of the Day in my head. It was the Vetch field, 1982, and Vinnie Jones, both studs up, looking to end a career. The grass was slick and the front wheel drive couldn’t keep a decent grip on the incline. Its wheels span and sprayed out mud that got lit by the headlights and, the way I felt that night, looked like machine gun fire. The engine strained, the wheels kept going faster but the vehicle started to slow, skid-panning across the lawn, sliding downhill, its back-end first. I scrambled further up the slope. The tyres turned to try and follow me, but the car kept slipping, its wheels whipping the grass beneath it.

I watched then. The sound didn’t match the picture. The noise like a blender full of marbles, but it looked gentle, choreographed: two beams of light moving slowly, the grass reflecting white, the view of the bay behind them – Mumbles lighthouse calling them in.

They continued to drift towards the edge of the quarry and the steep slope down, which was covered with bracken and young trees. I heard a car door open – the courtesy light blinked on, a shape fell on to the grass – along with some yelling. There was still someone in the driver’s seat.

Then, the car started to flip: so slowly that it didn’t seem dangerous. The sound of four tyres trying whirring in the air. The headlights rotating, tumbling one over the other. The roof compacting with a noise like re-set bone.

It started to roll down in to the quarry.

The headlights pirouetted downwards, side over side, gathering speed. Then there was one front flip, headlights followed by break-lights, white then red. There was the sound of snapping wood as the car’s descent slowed. There was a crash and the headlights stayed on. It was at the bottom of the quarry, on the BMX track.

II.

There was something nearby, on the grass.

“Fuh, kin’‘ell,” it said. This was about right.

It was lying on the ground.

“I don’t think you passed your test, big man,” I said.

A security light flicked on in a house behind us.

He looked up at me; his eyes flashed in the light. His hair looked dipped in petrol.

I could hear the sirens coming and see the blue light disco move along Terrace road.

“You got a phone,” he said. His voice sounded young.

I gave him mine.

It lit up as he dialled a number. He was topless. And had more muscles than I knew existed.

He waited for a while. Then he dialled it again.

“Da’,” he said. “Dad.”

His voice narrowed, lost its toughness.

“Get out,” he said. “I can see them.”

We watched below as the sirens turned on to the quarry’s gravel path – a riot van and a panda.

The boy was crying now and shouting at the phone. His voice reedy and weak.

As my eyes adjusted and more lights came on behind us, I could see him properly. His face was a boy’s, maybe sixteen, the colour of chalk, going yellow at the corners of his mouth and eyes but his body was a relief map – shadows appeared and disappeared across his back.

He breathed stiffly, watching the police approach the car below.

I had a feeling he wasn’t going to give me my phone. So I leant down and gently took it out of his hand; he didn’t seem to notice.

He got in to a crouch, his hands on the grass for balance, to test if his legs were working. They were. He stood up and jogged back toward the road. He ran up the narrow steps that lead between two houses.

More sirens were coming along the promenade now. A lady in her dressing gown was stood out on her step – her hair looked electrocuted – hands on her hips. She looked excited about giving evidence. I wasn’t interested in telling my side of the story so I started off, walking with the slow heavy gait of a man who has no information. The plods turned their headlights downhill, lighting up the grass and the bracken and brambles beyond it. The boy was long gone and they wouldn’t find him.

III.

The next morning I got up early, at the first light across the bay, and walked up to the quarry. The Mitsubishi looked like an accordion, folded at the boot, the bonnet sprung open. All the windows were cracked through – opaque, snowed in. There was a trail of bent baby trees and flattened bushes illustrating the car’s descent.

The passenger door was missing – it must have got torn off after the boy jumped out. The glove compartment was open and had no gloves in it.

Leaves, twigs and small branches were dotted over the seats and dashboard. The photography students would be happy.

There were copies of Men’s Health strewn on the back seats. One of the top lines said: HOW TO: EAT ALL THE PIES: WIN EVERY ARGUMENT: MAKE HER BEG FOR MORE.

The boot, although crumpled up, was still locked.

I crawled in through the passenger side. There was dried blood on the steering wheel. I tried to unlock the boot with the switch next to the driver’s seat. It was stiff but still connected. I heard the creak of folded metal.

Inside the boot was a thick green bin bag for garden waste, tightened at the top with a yellow drawstring. It didn’t smell like a dead body. It smelt like garden waste. I pulled the bag out of the boot and onto the grass. Loosening it, I tipped the contents out. It was dense with nettles, young ones, the tips of the leaves catching the light.

I kicked through them, thinking that there are worse places to keep a secret than a bag of stingers. Nothing.

I left the bag and the nettles for the police to think over.

Normally, the Evening Post wouldn’t mention another burnt out or stolen car. They get five a week in flames up Kilvey Hill. So I was surprised to see a couple of lines on the third page. The car had been found but its drivers had not. There was blood on the steering wheel and any suspects should be reported to Crime Stoppers. The article said the car had been involved in an incident in Mayhill.

IV.

I didn’t think much more about it. I mostly stayed at home. I was eating ryvita and hummus, then rice and beans.

A week later there was a new article about Dan Porter, the owner of The Gym On The Hill, the only gym in Swansea that had banned steroids. It said that, following an interview in the Evening Post a few weeks before, Porter has been threatened and attacked for, purportedly, his views on steroids. Property had been damaged and his car stolen. They quoted from his interview: he wanted to take a stand against “these water babies, inflatable tough guys, juiced up, hobbling around.”

At the library, I went online and looked up the article.

It was a leader disguised as an interview: a polemic on steroid abuse in South Wales, but with quotes from Porter threaded in to the article and a picture of him, on a bench somewhere, his forearms exposed, with a bowl of nettle soup. It was stitch-up journalism.

“Diet’s important, but you don’t need to get prescription drugs. And we’re not just about protein shakes. We make vats of nettle soup. Nettles are ten percent protein. We keep a vat of it on the hob. It’s a natural resource. And we clear some of the weeds as we go.”

“Some people have got it in for me because I want to run the sort of gym where everyone feels comfortable. A community resource, not just a hang-out for meat heads.”

“A new survey by the University of Glamorgan has found as many as seven-out-of-10 people using gyms in the area are taking drugs to help their training.”

I went up there that night. It was on the roundabout at the top of the hill. It used to be a youth club and, before that, a boxing club. It was opposite a new-build Methodist-church: red brick and lego-y. There were some boys hanging out in the gym’s car park, kicking a football around. The gratings were down over the windows and the door wouldn’t open. I peeked in through the murky glass at a couple of benches, a stepper, two treadmills, free weights.

The only sound was the half-deflated football slapping against the wall.

Round the back of the building, I waded through thick, chest-height nettles. There was an extension built on to the back of the building with another door, wooden. It was stiff but not locked. It opened on to a toilet with a cracked seat. The smell was of wet concrete, not piss. There was a bird’s nest half-built in the raised cistern.

I got out and decided to hang around for a bit. There was a bench in front of the church.

The boys kept kicking the football, occasionally chasing it in to the street. They chucked gravel at the bus when it went past.

I was hungry. Down in the valley, I could see the industrial estate, the cars queueing up along Fforest Fach. The Tesco Extra.

At one point, one of the boys came over to ask me for some money. I told him I hadn’t got any.

It was getting on for midnight when I saw a light come on in the gym.

The boys had gone. There were no cars in the car park. A finished tray of chips and curry sauce had appeared on the bench next to me.

The man who answered the door was stocky. He had wet shaved his head a couple of days ago. Now the hair was growing back, there was a tide line that showed exactly how far he was receding. He had thin, dense eyebrows, a decent chin. He was the sort of guy that I wished I wasn’t taller than.

“Can I help?”

“My name’s Richard Hanover.”

“Okay.”

“I saw you in the newspaper.”

There was someone in the kitchen behind
him. The sound of a kettle starting up.

“Okay.”

He straightened up a little, kept his hand on the door.

I decided to play it like I knew some stuff. There was someone clinking a spoon in a mug.

“I know who took your car.”

The clinking stopped.

The sinews in his neck came in to relief.

“I’d like to tell you about it,” I said.

He still didn’t say anything but his Adam’s apple nodded, so I took a couple of steps in. He closed the door behind me.

The main room – the gym – was long and low-ceilinged. The only light was coming from the kitchen; the weight machines looked abstract in the gloom.

I got out my wallet and showed him my licence.

He took a long time reading it.

Eventually, he said: “I didn’t know you existed.”

I put the card away. It was mail-order, but top of the range mail-order: thick laminate and embossed hologram binoculars.

“Who took my car?” he said.

“I’ve got his phone number,” I said.

“I’ll find out his name.”

“I can’t pay you,” he said.

“Okay.”

“So you’d better leave.”

He didn’t open the door and I didn’t
leave.

“I have personal reasons for getting involved.”

There was the sound of cutlery, or
knives. He stared at me for a while. Then he took in my clothes; I was wearing the shirt of a detective with the stains of a drunk.

“Were you asleep on the bench outside?” he said.

“It’s late,” I said.

“I have insurance,” he said. “Why do I need you?”

“I was hoping you’d know that.”

Behind him, there was the ping of a microwave.

“What’s your phone number?” he said.

I gave him my card: also good quality, raised borders, Futura nine point.

He nodded at this. From the kitchen,
there was the sound of someone quietly swearing.

A girl came round the door carrying two plates, with jacket potatoes, cheese and beans. She was pretty, with a clear, shallow face – curly hair held back with a scrunchie. She wore jogging bottoms, a UCL jumper and was barefoot.

“Hello,” she said.

She sat down on a weights bench, putting one plate on her knee, the other beside her.

She started eating.

“You should always be able to see your food,” Daniel said, flicking a light switch.

Striplights batted on down the length of the room. There were maybe fifteen machines in total: treadmills, bikes, a rowing machine, squat racks, free weights. There were three doors along the left hand wall – changing rooms and a bathroom. In the far corners, two sleeping bags were laid out on gym mats.

“This is my daughter,” Daniel said. “Danni.”

“Hi, do you want some of this?” she said to me. I hesitated. “I won’t be able to manage it all.”

We sat next to each other on the blue leatherette, Danni in the middle.

She halved her jacket potato and said: “Help yourself”

It would have been polite to refuse. My stomach made a sound like someone buried alive.

I stacked my fork with beans and cheese and shovelled it in.

We ate in silence for a while.

Then Dan spoke.

“We’ll get some money from the insurance,” he said. “When that comes through we might be able to give you something.”

“Either way,” I said.

“When I bought this place, I wanted it to be somewhere people could come and not feel intimidated.”

I looked at him. Danni was staring straight ahead, her jaw going.

“They’re at the mirrors, watching each other. They’re worse than the fucking gays.”

“Okay Dad,” Danni said, she put a hand on his knee. Then she turned to me, a speck of fluorescent tomato sauce at the corner of her mouth. “Have you ever noticed that the fashion among Swansea tough guys – tight white T-shirts, Italian jeans, steroids, taking their tops off – is precisely the fashion in the London gay scene?”

Her Dad was watching me, his eyebrows slightly raised.

“It’s been a while since I was in London,” I said.

“Well, it’s funny, anyway,” she said.

I got a look at her teeth. Not exactly crooked, but they slouched a bit.

“When we started out we didn’t want to turn people away,” Dan said. “We just said – look, we’re not gonna tell you how to live your life but if you’re want to use steroids do it in someone else’s gym.”

He had hardly touched his food. I took a forkful of potato off Danni’s plate.

“When I caught someone selling steroids, I kicked them out, that was the rule.”

I could hear Danni chewing.

“But they kept coming in, and using. And I kept kicking them out. It escalated.” His voice thickened. “So I had to make more of a point of it. I regret it now – but I went to the press. And they used me as a whistle blower for steroid abuse in the whole of South Wales. They called it an exposé.”

“Right,” I said.

“I’d started to get normal people coming in here. People like you who might be intimidated by a room of greased up balloon men. I’ve been targeted ever since. The one thing these boys have got in buckets, its pride. Half the boys down there are bouncers and one night they come up here in a van and took the place to pieces. Night of the fucking long knives.”

His food was getting cold.

“I wasn’t insured,” he said. “So I sold the house to keep the things going.”

“Eat up, Pops,” she said.

“And then last night, this.” He pointed toward the door, and beyond it, to where his car would have been parked.

“If I find him, what would you want to happen?” I asked.

“Just tell me where he lives,” he said.

“He means we’ll tell the police,” she said.

“Have you got a phone?” I said.

“Danni has.”

And then she gave me her number.