Attack and Decay, page 2
My best find of the afternoon proved to be a bunch of Joni Mitchell albums, Japanese pressings, from the period when that certified genius had been working with some of the finest jazz musicians on the West Coast. They were in immaculate shape and I had no doubt that I could find a buyer for them at a healthy mark-up: the sort of mark-up that Nevada would approve of.
“You aren’t tempted to keep them for yourself?” said Tinkler. “The vinyl is high purity and the pressings themselves…”
“Got to love that precision manufacturing.”
“Right.”
“But how can it ever be as faithful to the original sound as an original pressing?” I held up the Joni Mitchell albums. They made an agreeably weighty stack. “In this case, probably originating at some record plant in Santa Monica.”
Tinkler chuckled. “I was the one who told you that. I was the first one to promulgate the thesis of the original pressing.”
“You may well be telling the truth, my friend,” I said. “Don’t let it become a habit.”
“No chance of that.”
We shook hands and went our separate ways off into this late grey afternoon on Putney Hill. I caught the bus back home. Our estate is also on a hill, and there are a number of routes back there from a variety of bus stops. I tend to choose the one that takes me home through maximum greenery, including a patch of what you might almost call urban woodland.
This is where I found myself with the sun starting to set and the smoky grey afternoon transforming under the rich coppery light of evening. There was a strange quality to this copper glow spreading all around me—it added to an odd sense of stillness, as though the weather was about to change.
And, weirdly for this time of day, I found I was quite alone. I couldn’t see another human being.
I did, however, see a cat. Turk came sneaking out of the foliage and began to accompany me on the walk home. Well, accompany is an exaggeration. She would dart ahead of me, wait for me to catch up, then dart ahead again.
And then she disappeared completely.
So I found myself walking alone once more—indeed, now even more emphatically alone, having been abandoned by my trusty cat.
I had left the patch of woodland behind and was now moving through our estate. A remote section that Nevada liked to describe as: “A location from A Clockwork Orange now covered with moss.” Or, for purposes of brevity, “moss-covered Clockwork Orange”.
It was a kind of modernist courtyard with a large oak tree at the centre. The sun was setting. In that last smouldering late light, the oak towered over the square. An inky shadow detached itself from the upper branches and flapped down towards me, swooping low over the strange statues.
A crow.
It landed in a thick, shiny green hedge just ahead of me and turned its head to observe me. Its eyes were quite unusual. But what really set this crow apart was its beak.
Through an accident, whether genetic or physical, the two halves of the beak met and overlapped. They made me think of the blades on an open pair of scissors.
I looked on the crow with a surge of sympathy. It must be hard getting on in life with a beak like that. The crow looked back at me calmly, seemingly aware of my sympathy but indifferent to it. Then he rose up, a shadow come to life, and flapped vigorously away.
I turned to watch this strange and somehow noble creature fly off, to lose its tiny blackness in the vast blackness of the night sky.
That was when I saw him.
He was dark as the crow, dressed all in black. His face was dead white but with bold black patches around his eyes, suggestive of the hollow sockets of a corpse. The alternative comparison, with a panda, did not occur at the time; even if it had, I doubt that it would have proved helpful or amusing.
I wasn’t in any mood to be amused. Frankly, I was a little alarmed.
And that alarm was in no way diminished by the top hat.
Although it was tempered by an annoyed reflection that my beloved and my best friend had both neglected to warn me about that little detail. You’d think they could have at least mentioned the hat.
It was a black silk top hat, worn slightly askew, like a precarious stove pipe that might spew smoke at any moment.
We were staring at each other, myself and this apparition. It was a taut and progressively tightening moment. We stared at each other for what seemed like a long time.
In fact, time seemed to be slowing down. My heartbeat was thunderous in my ears, but steady and measured. The corpse-faced clown in the top hat stared at me and stared at me and didn’t move. The moment stretched on and on, to the point that it began to seem quite possible, indeed quite likely, that it would never actually end.
Then a deeply affronted animal cry resounded off the mossy stone walls.
It was the unique sound of Turk voicing her displeasure.
I turned towards her cry, but she was nowhere to be seen. I looked back at the—
But he was gone.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, I very much kept my eyes open and maintained a vigilant watch on the remainder of my journey home. But I didn’t see him again.
Turk, however, rejoined me a split second before I opened the garden gate. She waited while I held it open for her—despite the fact that, when she chose to, she could and did slither under it with ease—and then she ran inside. As soon as the door was securely locked behind us, I phoned Nevada. “I saw the corpse-faced motherfucker,” I said.
“When? Just now?”
“Yes. You should have warned me about the top hat.”
“What? He was wearing a top hat?”
“And you didn’t say anything about a crow…”
“A crow? What crow? You mean a bird?”
“Yes.”
“Are you feeling all right, dear?”
“No, actually. You know what, I don’t feel that great.” The room swum gently around me. “I think Tinkler has drugged me.”
“The bastard. Again.”
“I think so. Let me call you back later.”
“Okay. I am coming home. Right home, right away.” “Okay.” I hung up and dialled Tinkler’s number. To his credit, he answered without delay and didn’t dissemble. “It’s a really mellow hit, isn’t it?”
“Tinkler, that honey you used on the parsnips…”
“I was wondering when you’d notice!”
“It was the jar that Nevada’s mother gave you.”
“Well, not the exact jar. As you might imagine, I’ve gone through quite a number of jars since then.”
“But it’s the Hashish Honey.”
“You do understand that hashish is a misnomer, inserted for meretricious reasons of alluring alliteration? It’s actually cannabis honey. But what’s in a name. Isn’t it a zany high?”
“You should have warned me.”
“I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t realise. I just used that honey for the recipe, not realising it was the doped honey. But I guess I should have surmised as much, given that it’s the only kind of honey I ever have in my kitchen. Really mellow high, isn’t it?”
“Not when you run into the corpse-faced—”
“Good old Corpse Face. Hang on, just a minute, I’m getting a text from Nevada. What is this? Something about a top hat? You’re kidding! He was sporting a top hat this time?”
“I’ll talk to you later, Tinkler.”
“Later.”
Even as I hung up, a key turned in the front door and Nevada stepped inside. “I’ve done a sweep of the estate,” she said. “There’s no sign of Corpse Face.”
“Well, good,” I said. Nevada was taking off her coat.
“Are you still high?” she said.
“Oh, yeah.”
She took off her shoes and then continued taking off her clothes. “Would you like to come along to the bedroom?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I would.”
3: OFFICIALLY NIGHT
Tinkler was over at our place for supper a few nights later when we saw our corpse-faced friend again.
His presence—Corpse Face’s—was announced by Turk crashing through the cat flap, closely followed by our other cat Fanny, both fleeing into the safety of the house, clearly spooked by something. Nevada glanced out the kitchen window and then came through to the sitting room, abundant thunder brewing in those big blue eyes.
“I am a tolerant woman.”
“Yes, you are, you certainly are,” said Tinkler hastily.
“I am willing to put up with a certain amount of creepy corpse-faced motherfuckery.”
“Of course you are. Very commendable. We’re all tolerant people. We encourage tolerance. We frown on intolerance.”
“But when they start scaring our cats, that’s where I draw the line.” Nevada looked at me. “Do you want to help me nail this bastard?”
“Of course,” I said.
Nevada went into our bedroom and came back with an elegant green rucksack slung over her shoulder.
“What’s that?” said Tinkler.
“My go-bag,” said Nevada.
“And what, pray tell, constitutes a go-bag?”
“Well, in this case it’s a highly fashionable Made Galli rucksack in forest green. I’ve also got the black one, but oddly enough the green is better for remaining unseen in low light conditions.”
“Keep those fashion nuggets coming,” said Tinkler. “I take it dinner won’t be happening any time soon.”
“I think it’s chiefly because the bronze fittings are less reflective than the copper ones.”
“So far, so snoozeworthy.”
“Is this snoozeworthy?” Nevada unzipped the bag and drew out a Taser.
“I’m disappointed it isn’t pink like your last one,” said Tinkler. “Shocking pink. Get it? Shocking.”
“We bought it for the same knockdown price as the shocking pink one,” said Nevada, who liked her bargains. She turned to me, holding up the Taser. “So, are we going to nail this bastard? This cat-scaring bastard!”
“We are,” I said.
“Can I stay here in safety and hide?” said Tinkler.
“Hard to imagine you doing anything else, old buddy.”
“Well, hide and also listen to your admittedly fairly good hi-fi,” said Tinkler to me. “I could entertain your cats, too.”
“Okay,” I said. “But don’t touch supper. Those baked mushrooms will keep just fine for hours.”
“Hours,” said Tinkler with sudden concern. “Are you likely to be gone for hours?”
“No, all I’m saying is that the mushrooms will keep just fine. They will only need a little warming up when we get back from—”
“Seeking to perpetrate an act of vigilante violence on a corpse-faced interloper.”
“We are not perpetrating anything,” said Nevada, tucking the Taser back into her natty green rucksack and zipping it shut. “This is just for eventualities.”
“Eventualities, I see. Is it all right if I at least eat some bread while you’re gone?”
“Just don’t eat the whole loaf. Don’t spoil your appetite.”
“Have vigilante fun.”
* * *
“He was standing over here,” said Nevada, “when he scared our cats.” She pointed left, and we went out of our front gate and turned that way. We went past Ginnie and Sue’s house, past the dense patch of vegetation on the corner where Fanny liked to lurk and periodically spring out at us, past the ramp down to the lower level of the estate where the central boiler room had once existed, and out into the street that looped around between our estate and the walled perimeter of the Abbey.
“You said you saw him hanging around moss-covered Clockwork Orange?”
“Yes,” I said. And that was in the opposite direction to the way we were heading now.
Then we saw him. “There he is,” whispered Nevada, gripping my arm.
And, as if he’d heard her whisper, Corpse Face turned to look at us.
I was glad to see that he was still wearing his top hat, to confirm that I hadn’t imagined it.
But he’d added a dapper black ribbon to the hat, a long silk ribbon that trailed down at the back. When he turned to the light, I saw that the ribbon also served to fasten a flower to the hat. Some kind of all-black flower, that is. It looked like a rose.
A black rose. But of course.
Since his clothing was also all black and clung close to his body, it was difficult to make out any detail. Perhaps a close-fitting business suit…?
Corpse-faced motherfucker in a business suit?
Well, why not?
He turned away from us in a prompt but calm and orderly fashion, and strode off down the street, across the pavement and up a walkway into the estate.
We hurried after him.
As we followed him into the enclosed walkway, we couldn’t see him, but we could hear the echo of his boots. He was wearing pointy-toed black boots with high Cuban heels. Of course he was.
And he was making pretty good time in them.
We pursued him, his heels tapping, down a white stone staircase with a blue steel handrail which led out into an open area, where it converged with a retrofitted wheelchair ramp that curved down from the right.
To our left was another enclosed walkway, this one made of chocolate-brown brick set in concrete. It was into this that Corpse Face was walking briskly, but still quite calmly. Certainly with no sense of panic.
We followed him through the walkway, closing in on him inexorably.
His boot heels echoed clearly all around us, the sound staying briskly ahead of us, as steady and as stable as a metronome.
At the far end of the walkway was daylight—well, evening light—and we saw Corpse Face impose his dark silhouette on this fading glow as he reached the end and turned left.
We turned left a second later, following him.
We found ourselves in a part of the estate I couldn’t recall venturing into before, a sort of rectangular canyon of brown brick. It was abruptly cooler in this artificial canyon—chilly, in fact—and I found myself suddenly shivering.
On three sides of us were dwellings with cheery lights coming on in their kitchens as families began to serve dinner. The lights swelled out into generously sized gardens in front of these flats.
I call them flats, but they were more like compact town houses, with another level on top of them. Like at my place, the ones on the ground level all had big front gardens, in which a commendable amount of greenery thrived, giving this concrete canyon something of the feel of a natural, wild place rather than somewhere boringly tamed and urban.
But I would have appreciated the boringly tamed and urban just now.
Because when we emerged from the enclosed walkway, close on the heels—the Cuban heels—of Corpse Face, he was abruptly nowhere to be seen.
He was, however, still to be heard.
Specifically the sharp clip of his boot heels, marching away from us at the same efficient, measured pace. Ghostly footsteps marched past a wall of cypress trees on our left. Light spilled out of the kitchen windows, turning the trees into lime-green beacons in the dim evening light.
We heard his boots walking past the pale green trees.
But we couldn’t see him.
I looked at Nevada. “Can you see him?”
“No. But I can hear him. Can you hear him too?”
“Yes, he’s walking along there.”
“Past those cedars…?”
“Yes.”
Nevada and I looked at each other. The footsteps continued, drawing away from us, maintaining their brisk, forthright pace.
But we couldn’t see him.
I told myself there had to be a rational explanation, but nonetheless I felt a cold thrill go through me.
The disembodied footsteps stopped. They had reached the end of the row of cedars and now there was silence. Several moments passed.
And then Corpse Face appeared.
Standing at the end of the row of trees. He waved to us, grinning.
I felt as if the ground had suddenly dropped out from under me. “How the hell did he do that?” I said. He had vanished and then reappeared again, as if rendered temporarily invisible.
Corpse Face lifted his top hat and tipped it at us in salute. Revealed by the removal of the hat, his hair was long and—wait for it—dead black.
“I don’t know,” said Nevada. “But he’s not getting away with scaring our cats.”
We moved forwards, towards him.
Instantly, he was gone again.
There was a pause. And then his footsteps resumed, the emphatic tapping of those boot heels moving along now in a new direction, some distance ahead of us, but equally invisible.
We could hear him clearly moving past another row of gardens. We could see those gardens, but we couldn’t see him. Then the footsteps changed direction. Now they were to our right but coming towards us, getting louder, echoing clearly in this concrete canyon as they inexorably approached.
Nevada and I were looking at each other. It was the eeriest of sensations. We could hear the motherfucker, but we couldn’t see him.
Then, suddenly, we could see him.
He was moving up the curving white concrete of the wheelchair ramp. His already impressive pace seemed to be, if anything, increasing. Before he disappeared entirely, we set off after him.
The curvature of the ramp was such that we didn’t glimpse him again until he was emerging from it, back up onto street level.
And then we saw the direction he was heading.
Beside me, I heard Nevada suck in her breath. We had both come to the realisation at the same time. “He’s doubling back,” said Nevada.
“He’s heading for our house,” I said.
* * *
The streetlights came on around us as we broke into a run. It was suddenly, officially night.
To our right was the dark bulk of the Abbey with its comfortingly high wall shielding it. To our left, concealed by its own modest wall, was our back garden.
And, as we drew nearer, we could hear someone moving around inside.
