The Salt Marsh (27 page)

Sam pulled Sonny's arm again, tugged him into a darker corner of the club.

‘Did you see her?'

He nodded.

‘I want to speak to Frannie again. She obviously knew who I was talking about and didn't want to say anything.'

They pushed through sweaty bodies, searching for Frannie, found her leaning against a wall, watching a caged man writhing. She scowled when she saw them approaching, tipped her head at the far end of a bar. They followed her to a passageway filled with swirling dry ice that clogged Sam's lungs, made her choke, but at least it was marginally quieter here.

‘Find her then, did you?' Frannie asked.

Sam nodded. ‘She's a scruffy Siouxsie Sioux.'

‘Yeah, all Goth and no glamour. I have seen her around. But seriously, Sam, you should leave well alone.'

‘I need to find out about her. A friend has gone missing and I think she might know something about his disappearance.'

‘A friend? You mean some bloke?'

Sam nodded.

‘Let me guess – you're chasing this Luke you're so moony-eyed about.'

‘He's vanished. And he is my boyfriend.'

Frannie shook her head. ‘You are stupid. You should know better. What are you doing – chasing after a bloody man? If he comes back, fine. But if he doesn't, he wasn't worth the effort in the first place.'

‘You don't understand.'

‘Sam, I don't know anything about Luke. But I do know that woman because she's been here a few times in the last couple of months, and every time she's here, she meets up with this squat, ugly geezer who Max asked me to keep an eye on. So if Luke's disappearance has anything to do with them, then you really do need to steer clear.'

Sam rubbed her eyes; the dry ice was making them sting.

‘Why has Max asked you to watch this bloke then?'

Frannie sighed with irritation. ‘All I know is he's American and he's got an expensive club membership pass, which gives him access to the VIP bar. Max thinks he's using it as his office. He's always meeting up with odd men, not clubbers, not men anybody here knows – and this woman. Max says he's pushing his luck and the cash he's splashing isn't worth the potential trouble he might be attracting.'

‘Is he here tonight?'

‘Actually, he hasn't been here for a week or so, but if that dead-eyed woman has turned up then I would guess he's quite likely to put in an appearance at some point too. Stavros. That's what I call him.'

‘Stavros? I thought you said he was American.'

‘He's got an American accent. But I bummed a fag off him once, and he gave me a packet of Assos.'

‘Assos? I've never heard of them.'

‘Aristotle Onassis's favourite brand.'

‘Oh. I see. Stavros. Dodgy man with Greek connections. So what do you think he's doing then?'

‘Come on, Sam. We are in a London nightclub. This bloke is loaded and he's got all these weird contacts. The woman looks like a ghoulish junkie. There's obviously dealing of some sort going on. Take a tip from me – don't touch him with a barge pole.'

Sam rubbed her eyes again, they were really streaming now. What was dry ice made from? Carbon dioxide. Poisonous? ‘OK, thanks for the tip, Frannie. I'll leave it.'

Frannie grabbed her arm. ‘Listen, I can see you're not going to leave it. So here's another piece of advice – why don't you let him deal with it?' She nodded at Sonny. ‘He's bigger than you and, anyway, he's not going to stand out in this crowd. Unlike you. If you go anywhere near this Stavros and his vampire friend, they're going to spot you a mile off. You're female, and you're the only person here who looks like they've just walked out of a fucking library.'

She stalked off before Sam could answer back, jabbed Sonny with her elbow as she passed him, vanished in the smoke.

‘Sorry,' Sam said.

‘For what?'

‘For Frannie. She can be...'

‘She's right, though. Why don't you leave it to me? Nobody will notice me if I hang around. I can watch this woman, see if she meets up with the American Frannie was talking about. And if she does, perhaps I could get close enough to listen.' He patted the top pocket of his jacket. ‘I've got the Dictaphone here.'

Sam folded her arms. ‘I want to find out what she knows.'

‘Ja, but the best way of finding out is to let me try. I know how to do this stuff.'

She didn't like the idea, she wanted to be the one who found out what was going on, but she could see it made sense for Sonny to trail her.

‘OK. I'll leave you to it. I'll wait for you back at the house.'

*

One a.m. The sky sulphured by light pollution. She walked down Whitehall, across Westminster Bridge, along Albert Embankment. She had trodden this path so many times she could see her own footprints in the paving slabs. She wondered whether anybody else could sense her here, whether her shadow would linger after she was dead, whether her ghost would be any different from her living self. Perhaps she was a ghost already. She stopped at her favourite bench, sat down, noticed a movement in her peripheral vision, turned – at the far end of the seat she spotted something orange flip-flopping about. She sidled over: a goldfish in a plastic bag. Somebody must have won it at Kennington funfair, ping-pong ball in the bowl, couldn't be bothered to take it home, left it on an embankment bench. She grabbed the bag, almost devoid of water, rushed to the wall, held it upside down and shook. The tide was high. The goldfish somersaulted into the river. She doubted whether it would survive long, but it had to be a better end than suffocating on dry land. She swished the last drops of water from the plastic bag, stared at the now empty goldfish container and retched, retreated to the bench, sat with her head in her hands feeling nauseous. The funfair. Jim abandoning her. The candy man. The crescent-moon scar and the steely eyes. Flint. A bent cop. Too much. She didn't want to think about it. Push it all away.

The Oval gasholder was empty, unlit windows of the house watching her as she opened the door. The answering machine flashed. She couldn't ignore it, pressed play, heard the familiar tune, the breath and then the words: ‘Time is running out.' She glanced over her shoulder, rubbed the back of her neck. Her teeth chattered. She clamped her jaw but her arms started shaking. She needed to calm down.

She walked through to the kitchen, rummaged for her coffee-brewing saucepan, cast her eye over the postcard Liz had sent her, covered with oil stains from Sonny's cooking efforts. Liz and her recipe cheered her – it was so... irrelevant. Pointless. Spanakopita.
Brush with
oil
. Bake at gas mark 4 for 30 minutes
only
.
Keep
an eye on the oven.
She laughed, dropped the postcard on the kitchen surface. In the witching hours, the bottomless dips, it was good to remind herself that she was doing quite well for somebody who came from such a dysfunctional family.

Two a.m. She sat on the back step, smoked a spliff, listened to the regular clink of a moth throwing itself against the bare kitchen bulb. She couldn't sit still, couldn't stop thinking about Sonny, his tainted past, his strange relationship with her, the swings between empathy and distrust. She needed to get a fix on him. She compared Sonny to Luke. Sonny didn't like dancing. He didn't talk about politics, didn't seem to have any burning opinions. Luke was always ready for a dance, music, but he was serious as well. He had principles. Only the other week – only last week – they'd both dressed up to go to some new club in Soho and Luke said he couldn't face the West End, it wasn't really his place. Sam had agreed, it wasn't really her place either – she just fancied a dance. And then he remembered a dive bar in Brixton he'd heard about. They thought they'd give it a go; it sounded more like their thing: a club in a squatted anarchist bookshop on Railton Road, door takings going to help the bloke next door who had been busted after the riots for no reason other than being black. He fought back when the cops kicked him in, according to the rockabilly who took their money and let them in, so the Filth flipped it, charged their victim with assault. The club was a pit – in the basement, electrical wires dangling, paint peeling off the walls, no ventilation, hardly any light; a shadow Soho Ballroom. The music was brilliant – Northern soul, reggae, rap. Afterwards, when they left, Luke was on a high. That's where it's at, he said, pleasure but with a purpose. Not lining the pockets of some get-rich-quick git of a club owner, but supporting a community, a bunch of people trying to do something positive. She had wondered then how many men she would meet in her life who were so neatly aligned with her beliefs, the things she enjoyed doing, the way she wanted to live and, on top of that, she actually fancied him. Not many, she suspected. And now he had vanished. Frannie was wrong; she wasn't moony-eyed. She was being realistic. She knew the scarcity value of what she had lost; the elusive chemistry, the elixir.

*

Three a.m. Sonny was taking his time. What was he doing? Had something happened? She needed a distraction. She dug out a newspaper, searched for the cryptic crossword, concentrated.

Four a.m. Sonny returned, sweaty, smoky, forehead wrinkled.

Sam demanded, ‘Did you lose her?'

‘No.'

‘Did she meet the American?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you manage to get close enough to hear what they were talking about?'

‘Yes.' He stuck his hand in his jacket, produced the Dictaphone. ‘I don't know how much this picked up, but I overheard quite a bit anyway. Your friend Frannie was right. This Stavros, he's really not good news. This is really deep shit.'

‘Oh?'

‘I mean it. Deep shit.'

‘OK. Well. I'm in the shit already, as far as I can see, so I need to know how much further I could sink.'

‘A lot further.'

‘I need to know.'

‘Fine. Don't say I didn't warn you.'

They retreated to the kitchen. He fumbled with the machine – it produced crackling noises, a throbbing bass line – ‘It's Raining Men'. Rewind, stop, fast forward, stop.

‘Here. This is the beginning.'

At the table, heads bowed over the Dictaphone. He pressed play. The tape hissed before a north London accent cut in.

‘Skuse me, mate, you got the time?' Sonny's voice answered. ‘One fifteen.'

Sonny pressed stop. ‘Wrong place. Sorry. I'll try again.' Forward. Stop. Play. American accent this time – New Yorker, if she had to guess.

‘Yeah, good holiday.' Rustling in the background. ‘Fucking pen pushers.' The thump, thump bass line made it difficult to make out the snatches of conversation. ‘Hey Regan, need a light?' So that was her name – Regan. American accent again. Sylvester playing now – you make me feel. Somebody who must have been standing next to Sonny was singing along, badly out of tune, his voice cutting the American's conversation into disjointed snippets. ‘... office boys... make me feel, mighty real... jerk off lawyers... make me feel... blowback.'

Sam pressed pause. ‘Lawyers – what was he talking about?'

‘He was whinging about the back office boys, worrying too much about the small print, the liabilities and blowback.'

‘Blowback – isn't that spook talk?'

‘Yes.' He pressed play.

‘These guys... real deal... Old Testament prophets... bunch of tribesmen on donkeys... risk their fucking lives...' She leaned closer to the Dictaphone, struggling to make out the words. ‘I can relate to... more than I can... fucking assholes running our fucking station...' Glasses clinked, music throbbed, somebody had a hacking cough... ‘... I'm a fucking Janis...'

Sam jammed her finger on the pause button. ‘Janis what?'

‘Janissary. The Janissaries were an elite military force, part of the Ottoman empire, used by the Turks when they conquered Greece. They took on the missions that were too dirty for everybody else.'

He knew his military history. But she wasn't sure how much it helped her pull the pieces together. American spook, Old Testament prophets. Janissaries.

‘So he's saying he's doing something off the record?'

‘Exactly. Totally off the record. I had to move in closer to pick up the next bit. I was lucky to catch it. This is where it gets really wild.'

He pressed play.

‘If we can kick... it's gonna hurt.' The American's voice was almost drowned out by the background beat now; Sylvester ramping up to his finale. ‘One time KO to the commies... dose of...' Something indecipherable.

Sonny pressed pause. ‘He was talking about giving the Soviets a taste of their own medicine.'

Play again. ‘...facilitate... make them glow... half a cup of water and they'll be radiating.' Laughter. Wild cackling. And then Regan's voice, her words slurred. ‘One more run... your guy down on the coast...' Her sentence was broken by crackling. The American's voice cut in. ‘Yeah... made it safe.'

The recording stopped abruptly.

Sonny said, ‘I didn't hear much more of that last bit. I had to switch the machine off and leave. Regan – the woman – she was beginning to act edgy.'

Sam nodded, but she wasn't listening to Sonny; snatches of conversation floated through her brain.

‘Sam, are you OK?'

‘I'm thinking.'

The moth circled the dangling bulb, unable to pull away from the light. Sonny reached for a fag, clicked the wheel of his Zippo, dragged and puffed.

She said, ‘What do you think it was all about?'

‘The American – Stavros – he was obviously talking about Afghanistan.' He grimaced and she could see that he was working out which of his own thoughts he should share with her. ‘I assume he was talking about some operation to support the Mujahedeen. He's trying to facilitate an attack on the Soviets.'