Lullaby (27 page)

In the cab Robbie called me again, and this time I listened to what he was suggesting. I’d think about it, I said. The cabbie dropped me in nearby Soho and at
the first café I came to, I chose a pavement-table and ordered coffee, strong black coffee, and a croissant. I needed to sober up; and I was more shaken by my encounter with Agnes than I wanted to admit. The faceless woman had become flesh—and too-flipping-perfect flesh at that.

I felt like I’d just put my head in the washing machine, on the extra-fast spin-cycle. Perhaps I was being too hard on Robbie. After all, he was my little brother. Perhaps he really did care. Leigh was always bound to say that he was out of order. They’d never been close, and he’d really burnt his bridges with her when he’d vanished the last time. Leigh hadn’t forgiven him for nicking Mum’s engagement ring and Nana’s gold chains and her own bankbook; for disappearing from our lives without a trace. Leigh saw how much he hurt Mum, how once again we’d been left to pick up the pieces, and her anger had festered over the years he’d not been around.

And I just couldn’t sit around and wait much longer. I felt like I was bouncing off the walls, and Silver’s team was losing my trust by the minute. It was days since that video arrived, and Louis seemed no nearer. I was running out of time; Louis was running out of time. If I didn’t find him soon he might forget me. Or worse. What if his captors got bored with him? What if he cried once too often? Or laughed once too often? What if they could never bear to part with him?

Dusk was falling. The theatre crowd thronged the streets, the out-of-towners conspicuous in their best gear. Tight T-shirted sons and smiling, floral-clad
mothers queued behind Australian tourists for the Abba musical opposite, while young girls glued to mobiles sashayed down the road, brown bellies swelling gently over low-slung skirts. I smothered the croissant with blackcurrant jam and forced it down, trying not to feel jealous of two handsome boys beside me, ordering Martinis, smiling into each other’s eyes.

With a thump, I realised how lonely I was, and it forced me into a decision. I made a phone call and then ordered more coffee. My eye was twitching, up and down like a jumping bean. Despite my exhaustion, I felt all rushy and hyper from the caffeine. I dug out my compact, checked my tired face. Behind me, a shadow crossed the little mirror, then my brother slunk into the seat beside me.

‘God, you made me jump! Don’t do that, Rob.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’m already enough on edge.’

‘I said sorry.’ He re-lit his roll-up, spooned sugar into the espresso I’d ordered him. ‘He needs a grand.’ He was really twitchy, much less upbeat than this morning.

‘Nice to see you too. A thousand pounds? For what, exactly?’

‘That’s just what it costs.’

‘What, just for a bit of information?’

He shrugged. His hand shook as he stirred his coffee. ‘I don’t set the price, Jess.’

I stared at him, but he was looking at something over my shoulder. Then he slugged his coffee back in one.

‘Don’t you? Are you sure about that?’ A nasty thought inched slug-like through my head. ‘Robbie, were you at the hospital last night?’

‘What hospital?’ His stupid roll-up had gone out again.

‘Were you trying to see Mickey?’

Robbie struck a match just as I grabbed his hand, burning my fingers. ‘Robbie, bloody look at me! This isn’t just some kind of blackmail, is it? Some money-making scheme? Do you know where Louis is?’

His face was coated nastily with cold sweat again. Under the twinkling little lights of the bar-canopy, his normal pallor had a greenish tinge. His dark curls were greasy, the clothes he’d been in for days were quite filthy, the row of tiny silver hoops up his left ear tarnished and dull. When he finally looked me in the eye, his were filmy and glazed. He didn’t answer.

‘Robbie!’ Hope fluttered in my chest like a fledgling attempting its first flight. ‘Answer me, for God’s sake! Do you know where my baby is? Look,’ I grabbed his wrist again desperately, ‘I won’t be angry, I promise. Just tell me the truth.’

He shook me off. ‘Of course I don’t know where the bloody baby is, Jess. Christ!’ Then he saw my face, and guilt crossed his. ‘Sorry, sorry. But you know what I mean. Of course I haven’t seen Louis.’ He was still peering nervously over my shoulder. ‘I thought we’d been through all this. I’m your brother, Jess. Even I draw the line at some things.’ He attempted a joke, but he was so distracted he was making me feel even more anxious. I turned around, scanned the street behind me.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Well, what do you keep looking at then?’

‘Nothing, all right! I thought I saw someone I knew, that’s all. Just leave it, will you?’

I sighed heavily. The bird in my chest crashed and burned.

‘I think we should get on with this.’ Robbie was on his feet already, dragging his heavy leather back over the skanky old T-shirt.

‘D’you know, I’m not sure any more,’ I said listlessly. I was exhausted, dirty and sweaty. I just wanted to go home and wash and think of a new way of finding my son. Robbie’s appearance hardly filled me with confidence for his scheme. I didn’t trust him any more; I was struggling again with the thought that I should ring Silver and shop my own brother right now.

‘Jess,’ his face was livid in the dusk light, his thin skin high with colour now. ‘Don’t mess me around, all right? I’ve set this up now, we’ve got to go and meet this bloke.’

I stared at him. He must have sensed my discomfort, because he softened a bit. ‘Look, he might solve all your problems, Jessie. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?’ He was pleading now. I sighed. His downfall had always been his knack of persuasion.

‘I suppose I’ve got nothing left to lose.’ I fished out my last tenner. ‘I expect the coffee’s on me, is it?’

Robbie’s sense of relief was unmistakable as he shepherded me through the crowds outside the café. All the time we walked, he kept glancing back. Then I caught
his face, lit up by a streetlight, and I realised he actually looked scared. More than scared. He looked like he’d seen the dead.

The shop, closed for the night, was on the corner of Berwick Street and a murky little alley, the kind that men piss down when they’ve had one too many—or when they’re just that type of man. A smell of putrid fish and fruit hung heavy in the air as I picked my way behind Robbie through squashed strawberries and mouldering cabbage leaves that squelched between my flip-flopped toes. Someone had dumped a tray of blackening avocados on the shop’s front step; in the humid night air they swarmed with tiny flies.

The bloke that let us in looked like he would never care where he peed. A supercilious smile played round his bloodless mouth when he saw my brother, and he slicked his scrawny little rat’s-tail back with a flick of a skinny wrist. Then he saw the rotting avocados and, scowling, kicked them into the street. The frog-green flesh splattered the tarmac; smeared his heavy boot.

Robbie was pitifully quiet, deferential even, to this man who led the way through racks of male clothes that screamed Millwall-on-a-Saturday. Heavy dub throbbed through the ceiling above, and I shivered involuntarily on the stairs, wishing fervently I were anywhere but here.

The room above was utterly dark apart from the television and the neighbouring strip-shows’ neon signs that flickered eerily through the blinds; like heavenly traffic-lights, they illuminated the squalor of excess
scattered all around. It smelt dirty, decadent; the kind of place watched by a thousand hidden eyes. Mine were still adjusting to the gloom when a shadow on the long leather sofa reached lazily behind him. A blinding light flooded our faces, and my brother clamped my hand between his sweaty palms. ‘All right, General?’ he coughed nervously. Rat’s-tail had disappeared.

Very slowly, the man on the sofa lowered the lamp, his gaze skimming me unnervingly His thick brown hair was like crimplene, the light behind casting an odd halo round his head. He had the sneering face of an ugly angel; almost carved, he looked, so waxen and defined was his curling top lip. His feet were thrust on a table strewn with overflowing ashtrays and empty bottles. A dusky girl with
Charlie’s Angels’
hair and a sinner’s body curled into him possessively, smoking weed, her ashtray balanced on a stack of glossy porn. She looked over, bored, and then away again. Expectantly, I waited, but Robbie just hung there in the doorway and something in his manner made me cringe.

‘Get our guests a drink, will you, Tan?’ the man called General said, smirking with what he apparently mistook for benevolence. Tan was going to argue until he slid his hand inside her skimpy vest and squeezed her nipple, hard. Embarrassed, I looked away, but she seemed undaunted; took a long toke on her spliff and ambled off towards the door, freeing tiny shorts from her voluptuous bottom as she went.

General turned back to the football on the TV, and Robbie still hovered like a fly unable to decide which
bit of crap to land on, until suddenly he pushed me forward, catching me off-guard. I snagged my flip-flop on a jagged board, almost landing in General’s lap.
An offering from the Gods
flashed ridiculously through my head.

‘You’re rather forward, dear!’ His voice was rasping, as ugly as him. He indicated that I should sit beside him on the sweaty sofa. I looked imploringly at Robbie, but he just leant there, shivering in the sub-tropical heat, struggling with his roll-up. Oblivious. Slowly, I sat. I waited.

‘This is my big sister, Gen,’ my brother eventually mumbled. ‘Jessica.’

General looked me up and down. Under the gaze of his pale eyes, the kind that could freeze your very soul, I suddenly felt naked. I clutched my bag in front of me, like it was a small child to hide behind. Like it was my Louis.

‘Hardly big, darling,’ General deadpanned. I tried really hard to smile, but the atmosphere was thickening with every second. Soon I’d be able to pick it up in both hands and smash it on the wall. I was about to speak when Tanya sauntered in with dripping beers. She’d almost reached the table when General drove a sudden booted foot into her stomach.

‘I’ve changed my mind actually, Tan. Get the bubbly out, yeah? Special guests and all that.’

‘For Christ’s sake, Gen,’ she pouted. He dropped his foot so she fell against him hard; pulled her forward by one plump arm, grabbing her chin between spider-haired fingers.

‘You what, darling?’

She winced as she pulled free. ‘I’ll get the Bolly,’ she muttered.

General took a long, hard slug of beer. He was still smiling, twisting a thick gold ring round his little finger, round and round it went. I decided he was mad.

‘So,’ he said in that sandpaper voice, eyes glued to the football on the telly, ‘Robert tells me you’re missing a baby. Oh, you fucking twat! What the fuck was that?’ He gobbed a mouthful of beer at the screen. ‘Fucking Ferdinand.’

Missing a baby.

I nodded miserably. Sweat trickled down the front of my vest, trekked slowly down my back.

‘And you fancy a little help, yeah?’

‘Do you think you
can
help?’ My voice came out all funny.

‘Do I think I can help? I’d say so, darling. I could help most people if I felt like it.’

‘Really?’ I said politely. My skin prickled.

‘Yeah, really.’ He leant over me, too close, to relight Tanya’s joint. I could smell his acrid sweat beneath the cloying scent. He was the kind of white man who thought he was cool, street and black. All my instincts screamed bully; louder, they screamed ‘leave’.

‘But only if they’ve got the money, yeah?’ He blew a clumsy smoke-ring in my face. ‘A grand up front, that’s what we’re looking at. That’s right, ain’t it, Robert?’

Robbie nodded. He wouldn’t meet my eye as Tanya returned with a pretty black boy shambling behind her,
a cracked ice-bucket in his hand. For the first time since we’d arrived, Robbie became alert. I caught the wanton smile the boy flashed at my brother as he passed, and I realised it was the same boy from the other day, from the estate in Elephant and Castle. Perhaps it was my poor vision in that dark room, but I swore his fingers brushed my brother’s balls. Tanya shoved the bucket on the table, dislodging rubbish that fell with a bang.

‘Thought you’d be pleased to see your friend,’ General leered at Robbie. With utter indolence, he popped the bottle. Robbie slunk out behind the boy.

‘Robbie,’ I began, and then gagged as General stuck a thick, champagne-sodden finger into my unsuspecting mouth.

‘Nice, yeah?’ He moved nearer me. ‘Don’t tell me you don’t like champagne now, hey, Jane?’

‘Jessica, actually,’ I mumbled. I wanted desperately to wipe my mouth, but I really didn’t dare.

‘Jessica. That’s a nice name, ain’t it, Tan? Very pretty.’

‘S’pose,’ she shrugged sulkily.

‘Oh, come on now, Tan. You forgot the glasses, you naughty girl.’

Oh don’t go, Tan, I silently intoned, but with a scowl she slouched back out. We were on our own. General contemplated me for a slow moment, swigging from the champagne bottle, then thrust it between my bare legs. The freezing glass made me gasp.

‘You know something, Jessica, you’re a very good-looking girl,’ he leered. ‘Bit of make-up, few nice garms, some rocking T-rex, yeah? Soon sort you out. Know what I mean?’

I took a massive swig to avoid answering, and promptly choked on all the fizz. Champagne cascaded down my front. ‘Sorry,’ I stammered. Oh God, don’t touch me. ‘Bit clumsy.’

His cold eyes swivelled.

‘The thing is, General—can I call you that?’ I rushed on. He moved his stinking pit-bull body closer again. ‘The thing is, I don’t have much time. Everything’s a bit—it’s all a bit frantic right now. You know. I’m sure you understand. It’s been over a week since—’

‘Well,
my
thing is, Jessica,’ he pulverised the joint into the ashtray. ‘My thing is, I need as much time as it takes me. And I’ve been waiting for a long time now, yeah?’

Tanya banged the glasses down on the table, then plonked herself on the other side of her boyfriend and started to dig round in his pocket. I was finding it increasingly hard to concentrate. The heat was unbearable; the booze made my tired head swim again. ‘Sorry, what do you mean, “time”? To find Louis?’