unshackle mortality like that, drag it out in the open, steaming and red? How could you yourself face up to that unless you were as far away from being human as it was possible to get without being a different kind of animal?
I also didn’t like it because it reminded me of the day I’d walked in on my battered, gutted, emptied wife.
I clutched hard to that wall and quelled the nausea, fought back the hot tears, and watched my hands carefully until they stopped shaking. Resorting to the mouth, I knew, was bad sometimes, but it was my way of dealing with it. Mawker had his treadmill, a routine of steadfast plodding after clues, which reminded me of a machine part performing the same, monotonous act day in, day out. Some people relied on drink or drugs. Some people drove it out of themselves with sport. I had my mouth. My mouth got me into trouble sometimes, too many times, but every time I opened it, it saved my life just a little bit.
Feeling better, I set off walking, and I discovered two things by the time I reached Finsbury Park. One was that Mawker had dispatched a tail, and two was that the guy was as raw as they come. The thing about following people is that it’s tough to do it well. The best pursuits are all about anticipation. They can even follow you from the front and second-guess your moves. They sense you’re going to hang a left into the shopping precinct, or a right into the car park, probably before you do. But this clown…
I stopped at a coffee shop across from the park entrance and took the only space that was left by the window. Finsbury Park is one of those parts of London that nobody goes to during the day. It’s an in transit place, so nobody hangs around on the streets, unless it’s a tramp with a can of electric soup and the need to shout a lot at his invisible friends. There were no other free tables in the coffee shop, but he gamely followed me in, knowing at least that to hang around outside was to expose himself even further. He stood at the counter with his coffee while people craned around him, to give their ‘to go’ orders to the flustered staff.
I took my time. After I finished my cup, I borrowed a newspaper from an off-duty garbage-disposal guy and flicked through it in a leisurely fashion. By now my shadow had been sipping from the same coffee cup for the last thirty minutes. A small cup, so what? Hot coffee? Yeah, right. He was starting to look around into the corners of the ceiling now, as if he was some amateur room designer with new ideas for the place. He asked an Italian girl, who was filling a tray of mugs with stewed tea from an urn, what colour the walls were – ‘Is that sunset pink?’ – and was given a look that said ‘No, it’s fuck-you red.’ When he tried to borrow a paper, the builder slid it away from him, saying he hadn’t finished it yet, before going back to a conversation with his companion.
After that we went on a long walk south through the crumbling roadside houses of Holloway. I had a long chat about Liptrott’s death with an off-duty forensics guy I knew called Fentiss, who was trying to flag a cab on a street corner while my tail spent so much time looking into the window of a dry cleaner’s that Fentiss eventually noticed him too. We both turned to watch Mr Green as he rubbed his chin in front of the 3 suits cleaned for the price of 2 deals. Fentiss informed me, on the q.t., that everybody down at Scotland Yard was wetting his pants over Liptrott because Merseyside police had an unexplained death on their files, from five years ago that bore the same MO. Great, I thought, fucking Liverpool again. Of all the cities in all the world, it had to be that one that dunked its chips in my gravy.
I ended up losing the tail by hopping on a bus as it was about to depart from the bus stop. I blew him a kiss from the rear window as he stood at the same stop, before he checked his watch and then glanced back along the road. There was another bus coming
I also didn’t like it because it reminded me of the day I’d walked in on my battered, gutted, emptied wife.
I clutched hard to that wall and quelled the nausea, fought back the hot tears, and watched my hands carefully until they stopped shaking. Resorting to the mouth, I knew, was bad sometimes, but it was my way of dealing with it. Mawker had his treadmill, a routine of steadfast plodding after clues, which reminded me of a machine part performing the same, monotonous act day in, day out. Some people relied on drink or drugs. Some people drove it out of themselves with sport. I had my mouth. My mouth got me into trouble sometimes, too many times, but every time I opened it, it saved my life just a little bit.
Feeling better, I set off walking, and I discovered two things by the time I reached Finsbury Park. One was that Mawker had dispatched a tail, and two was that the guy was as raw as they come. The thing about following people is that it’s tough to do it well. The best pursuits are all about anticipation. They can even follow you from the front and second-guess your moves. They sense you’re going to hang a left into the shopping precinct, or a right into the car park, probably before you do. But this clown…
I stopped at a coffee shop across from the park entrance and took the only space that was left by the window. Finsbury Park is one of those parts of London that nobody goes to during the day. It’s an in transit place, so nobody hangs around on the streets, unless it’s a tramp with a can of electric soup and the need to shout a lot at his invisible friends. There were no other free tables in the coffee shop, but he gamely followed me in, knowing at least that to hang around outside was to expose himself even further. He stood at the counter with his coffee while people craned around him, to give their ‘to go’ orders to the flustered staff.
I took my time. After I finished my cup, I borrowed a newspaper from an off-duty garbage-disposal guy and flicked through it in a leisurely fashion. By now my shadow had been sipping from the same coffee cup for the last thirty minutes. A small cup, so what? Hot coffee? Yeah, right. He was starting to look around into the corners of the ceiling now, as if he was some amateur room designer with new ideas for the place. He asked an Italian girl, who was filling a tray of mugs with stewed tea from an urn, what colour the walls were – ‘Is that sunset pink?’ – and was given a look that said ‘No, it’s fuck-you red.’ When he tried to borrow a paper, the builder slid it away from him, saying he hadn’t finished it yet, before going back to a conversation with his companion.
After that we went on a long walk south through the crumbling roadside houses of Holloway. I had a long chat about Liptrott’s death with an off-duty forensics guy I knew called Fentiss, who was trying to flag a cab on a street corner while my tail spent so much time looking into the window of a dry cleaner’s that Fentiss eventually noticed him too. We both turned to watch Mr Green as he rubbed his chin in front of the 3 suits cleaned for the price of 2 deals. Fentiss informed me, on the q.t., that everybody down at Scotland Yard was wetting his pants over Liptrott because Merseyside police had an unexplained death on their files, from five years ago that bore the same MO. Great, I thought, fucking Liverpool again. Of all the cities in all the world, it had to be that one that dunked its chips in my gravy.
I ended up losing the tail by hopping on a bus as it was about to depart from the bus stop. I blew him a kiss from the rear window as he stood at the same stop, before he checked his watch and then glanced back along the road. There was another bus coming
Similar Books
