Verismo Bliss Chapter 3

3.

When Harry woke up and checked his smart he had four messages.
The first told him that, unfortunately, he hadn’t won the GB Lottery. Well, fuck me, Harry thought. Bollocks, he hated having to do the lottery; hated the deduction they took from his earnings like a friggin’ tax. But the only way to get out of the lottery tax was to get locked up in prison or a mental institute. They even took a deduction out of welfare cheques now. The whole thing was criminally insane. And most people still believed that it was going to be them, and that you had to be in it to win it, completely ignoring the statistical improbability of them winning. But somebody has to win. Yeah, not you. Harry saw it as proof that everybody’s life revolved around them; that everybody saw themselves as the one that something special was going to happen to. They were destined for big things. The only big destiny that awaited them was the one that awaited everybody: DEATH. People needed a Copernicus type revelation. The universe doesn’t revolve around you, old chap. Sorry.
The second message was from Adam Cannon, asking for an update. Already? He hit delete.
The third message was from Bristol University. Gwendolyn Falsham had been allocated a room in Hiatt Baker Hall on the campus. She was going to share with a fellow student called Alison Graham, from Leeds. The girls had been randomly assigned and, as far as the warden was concerned, they had had no communication with each other.
And the final message was from his local medical centre advising him that he still hadn’t called to make an appointment for his fertility check-up. As one of the 1 in a 100 he should remember that he could contribute greatly to finding the causes, and hopefully the cure, for the other 99. He deleted the message.
On the way to his office Harry bought The Independent and read it on the Tube. France and Germany had formed a common alliance and were making overtures to Britain. There was an optimistic comment from some leading economist judging that the European Parliament could be resurrected within ten years. Harry was no economist, but he thought that was bollocks. Not in his lifetime. After the financial meltdown of a decade ago everybody had shut up shop. When money was tight, charity began and stayed at home.
He got off at Charing Cross, deciding to take a morning stroll around before getting down to the business of the day. He walked up the Strand, which in the morning light, looked clear, fresh and vibrant. Everybody was on their way to catch buses or trains, except those who were huddled in doorways, hands outstretched for offerings. He cut up Southampton Street and entered the piazza. It was hard to recall that this place used to be full of chichi shops and the great and the beautiful. The market building with its glass roof resembled a train station, with the huddled masses – looking like nothing more than bundles of rags – waiting for somebody to take them to a better place. The shops were now boarded up or taken over by charities. St Martin in the Fields Church Trust had opened a food distribution centre in the old Fred Perry shop, which was open from 6am until 2pm. It was busy throughout. Harry passed the queue, enjoying the smell of fresh bread and vegetable soup. He walked up James Street and then cut back on himself into Long Acre, passing the taped off crime scene on the corner of Langley Court, with the sole policeman standing next to a flashing sign that read: Stop! Crime. Did you see anything? When he got to Mercer Street he paused for a moment then, looking like he had come to a decision, he carried on down Long Acre and turned left into St Martin’s Lane. He almost missed the entrance, but there it was, Goodwins Court.
Goodwins court was an alleyway; it’s width about 7 feet. The buildings were all made with red and purple Victorian bricks that were crumbling away, and bowed glassed fronts divided up by wooden or lead dividers. It was even lit by old style glass lamps, though most of them had their glass broken. It would have been a Dickensian scene, if not for the litter, the space to let signs on most of the buildings, the boarded up windows and doors, and the graffiti adorning the walls with such poetry as: Lisa’s cunt is as wide as the Blackwell Tunnel. Somebody had written under this, in a different hand: And just as busy!!
Harry sighed. What had happened to all the political stuff? The agitprop ruminations of disaffected youth?
Besides Court Antiques there appeared to be only one other occupied building and that, ironically, was for an estate agents, Blinker and Simpson. Court Antiques had its shutters down and a flashing sign affixed to the door, providing a number for people to call if they had any information about the murder of Luz Noche.
The way things were going, Harry thought, Covent Garden was going to be aglow with these little signs.
The door was sturdy, but the lock old fashioned and looked like it might succumb to physical force. But that would attract attention. Harry pulled out his collection of skeleton keys and began jiggling them around in the lock. And then he heard a rustling behind him, as though a tree had suddenly been struck by autumn.
Harry turned slowly. Leaning against the opposite wall, unnoticed before because he had been covered in newspapers and a fading, ripped mac, was a young man. His skin was the colour of cocoa, his hair black as soot and his eyes were a lime green. He wore a ragged t-shirt with a baseball logo, dirty blue jeans and monkey boots that had seen a lot of use. He completed the Dickensian look of the alleyway perfectly.
‘Nobody home, dude. You gotta fag?’
Harry shook his head and watched as the guy rummaged in his pockets for what tobacco he could find, and began to roll, with immaculate care, the slimmest cigarette Harry had ever seen. Harry took out a Chaucer and passed it over. ‘Here, get yourself some coffin nails with that.’
‘Cheers, man.’
‘Let me guess, you’re John Khan, right?’
The smile that had lit up the guy’s face at the sight of the money now twisted into a grimace. ‘Ah, man, you cop. Look I ain’t doing no harm.’
‘You done any dopamine today, John?’
‘Hey, that ain’t illegal, you know. Our body and mind belongs to us now, not the state.’
Harry crouched down by the young man. Khan flinched away a little, but Harry held out his hands, palm downwards. ‘I don’t mean you any harm, John. But in my opinion you should lay off the drugs. They give the illusion of freedom whilst taking it away. But I’m sure you don’t wanna listen to my shit first thing in the morning. I’m not police – not official police anyway. You were here the night of the murder,’ Harry said, nodding at Court Antiques.
‘That was a shame, dude. The old guy was ok with me. If it was cold he’d bring me out a drink and sometimes he’d drop me some cash. And I don’t think he was rich or anything; I mean, I hardly ever saw anybody buy anything from the shop. Shit, nobody hardly even went in, except for the girls.’
‘Girls?’
‘Oh yeah, that was something I didn’t tell the cops, but they didn’t give me dosh like you. The old geezer liked his women. He’d bring ‘em back here. Maybe once or twice a week.’
‘Skin sellers?’
‘Gotta be, I reckon.’
‘And you told the police you saw a woman leaving the shop after heated words. You seen her before?’
‘I didn’t get a good look see. I was out of it, man. I think she was young though – even for Mr Luz.’
‘You remember anything else or see anything funny going on here, you give me a call,’ Harry said, handing the boy his card. Then he thought of something and took out his smart, pulling up the photo of Gwendolyn Falsham. ‘You ever see this girl around?’
John shook his head. ‘Nah, but I’d like to.’
Harry grinned. ‘Where do runaways go to in London?’
‘Here, dude, the Garden.’
‘Why here?’
‘Because that’s where we are, that’s why we come. Its birds of a feather, innit? You feel safer with your own.’
Harry printed a copy of the photo from his smart and gave it to Khan, telling him to show it around the Garden, see if anybody had seen her. Then he returned to the door. A few twists, fumbles and a shove, and he was in.
There was a musty smell and dust moved on the air as he stepped into the darkened room. It was astonishing how quickly rooms, without human care, began to decay. Harry closed the door and flicked on the overhead light.
The shop floor was small, being only about 18 by 12 foot and, besides a desk that held an antiquated till and card reader, and a narrow staircase opposite the entrance door, the space was overloaded with packing crates. Harry took a penknife out of his pocket and prised one of them open. He rummaged through the packing straw and scrunched up newspapers and pulled out an art deco statue of a nymph holding a clock in her hand. Nice body, Harry thought. He rummaged a bit more and pulled out a vase of indeterminate period. Harry put the crate back together and looked to see if there was an address on the outside. There wasn’t.
He went up the stairs. The first floor was similarly piled with packing crates and, in a corner, there was a portable cooker and a fridge. In the fridge was a lonely half empty bottle of milk, standing tall like some soldier who hadn’t been informed the war was over. Harry touched the top of the cooker. It was cold.
He continued up to the top floor. There was a bed (stripped of linen), a wardrobe and a chest of drawers. It smelt like a hospital in there, in contrast to the musty odour below. Harry knew the smell came from the chemicals used by the forensic unit and from the cleaning squad who specialised in getting that damn pesky blood off the walls. There was still a damp stain in the mattress though.
Harry knew there wasn’t much chance of him learning anything the police hadn’t, but he liked to see the crime scene in person. Photographs, no matter how good, were only images seen through another’s eye, and he wanted to see first hand.
The chest of drawers had a collection of various sized frames with family photos in them: Noche and his wife on their wedding day; Noche with his wife and a baby; a toddler, presumably the daughter, laughing; an older Noche, with a teenage daughter. Harry remembered his own wife and wondered if her passing would have been easier if they had had a child. But there’s no point in playing cards you haven’t been dealt.
From the police report he knew that an address book had been found next to the photographs – that had obviously been taken away as evidence. It had been scanned into evidence but Harry hadn’t checked it, but now that Khan had told him about the skin sellers he figured he might go through the names.
He opened the drawers. There were three of them. The top one had male underwear and some literature about auction houses. The middle one had a couple of new, unopened shirts and half a dozen flesh mags – all pretty straight stuff, except one called Bump Bangers which featured heavily pregnant women in various stages of undress and sexual liaisons with other heavily pregnant women. It seemed the rarer something was the more chance it had of attaining fetish status. Harry glanced up at the family group shots and wondered if the women reminded Noche of his own wife when she was pregnant. The bottom drawer was full of estate agent reports for properties across London. Maybe Noche was looking to move the business. The estate agent was Blinker and Simpson.
The wardrobe held three suits – black, grey and tweed – and a collection of shoes. Harry rummaged through the pockets and found a packet of boiled sweets, a ticket stub for the movie Zapata - El Tigre del Sur, showing at the Prince Charles in Leicester Place last month, a price guide for Meissen ware, and a small pill the colour of golden sand which had fallen through a hole in the tweed jacket so that it nestled in the lining. Harry had felt the slight bump by accident as he had put the price guide back in the pocket. He held it between his thumb and finger. So the cops had missed something. He’d seen a pill like this recently. But if it was what he thought it was, what was Noche doing with it?
Harry put the pill in his pocket and turned to leave. A woman he recognised was standing at the top of the stairs; she was pointing a gun at his head.