Transition (3 page)

Do I look like a Christian terrorist? I reach into my chest bag – I wear the salwar kameez, like most other men and women here, effectively pocketless – and bring out what would have been my iPod a few seconds/five minutes ago. Here it is a cigarette case of stainless steel. I try to look as though I am contemplating having a cigarette; in fact I am studying my reflection on the polished back of the case. More relief; I do not look like a Christian terrorist. I look like I usually do when I’m this colour and broadly like I always do no matter what colour, race or type I may be, which is to say unobjectionable, unremarkable, not bad-looking (not good-looking either, but that’s acceptable). I look bland. But bland is good, bland is safe, bland blends: perfect cover.

Check the watch. Always check the watch. I check the watch. The watch is fine; no problem with the watch. I do not take a cigarette. I feel no need. Obviously I have not incorporated the craving into this new personification. I put the cigarette case back in the bag slung over my chest from shoulder to hip, checking that the little ormolu pill case is in its own internal pocket, zipped. Still more relief! (The pill case has never not travelled, but you always worry. Well, I always worry. I think I always worry.)

My identity card tells me that I am Aiman Q’ands, which sounds about right. Aiman, hey man; hi, pleased to meet me. Language check. I have French, Arabic, English, Hindic, Portuguese and Latin. A smattering of German and also Latter Mongolian. No Mandarin at all; that’s unusual.

I sit back again, adjusting my legs in the voluminous salwars so that they are precisely in line with the X of legs supporting the little table. It would appear that while I have no tobacco habit I obviously do have – once again – some sort of mild Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is arguably just as annoying and distracting, if less health-threatening (though I should care!).

I hope it’s mild OCD. Do I think it’s mild? Maybe it’s not mild after all. (My hands do feel a little clammy, like they might need to be washed.) Maybe it’s severe. (There’s a lot about this café that could do with being tidied, aligned, straightened.) That’s something to worry about. So, I’m a worrier, too, obviously. That’s annoying, that’s worrying in itself.

Well, can’t sit here all day. I’m here for a reason; I’ve been summoned. By Herself, no less. I feel quite recovered from any passing dizziness associated with the transition; no excuse for hesitating. I need to get up and go, so I do.

Adrian

I’ve told people I’m an ex-East End barrow boy, haven’t I? Dad ran an eel stall and mum was a barmaid. But that’s bollocks, a total lie. I only tell them that because that’s what they like to hear, what they want to hear. That’s one of the lessons I’ve learned, isn’t it? You can go a long way just telling people what they want to hear. Of course, you got to be careful, and you got to choose the right people, but still, know what I mean?

Course, any fuckwit can just tell somebody else what they already know they want to hear. The creative bit, the real added-value bit is knowing what they want to hear before they know it themselves. They really appreciate that. That pays dividends. It’s kind of a service industry thing. Anyway I’m really good at the accent. Highly convincing. You should hear me. The East End thing, I mean. Doing the barrow-boy routine. I’m fucking good at the geezah accent, that’s all I’m saying, isn’t it? Keep up.

Truth is I’m from Up North. One of those grim northern cities with all the grime and all. You don’t need to know which grim northern city on account of the fact I’m sure you’ll agree they’re all the same, so it won’t make any difference me telling you exactly which one, will it? So if you do want to know exactly which one, tough. Do what I do. Use your imagination.

Nah, my dad was a miner before they joined the list of endangered species thanks to Saint Margaret (with a little or a lot of help from King Arthur, depending on your outlook). Mum worked in a hairdressing salon. I’m serious about La Thatch being a saint, too, though you still have to be careful who you say that to back where I grew up, which is one of the many reasons I don’t go back there hardly at all, isn’t it? I mean, who the fuck wants to work all their life down a fucking hole in the ground anyway? Nobody in their right mind. La Thatch did them all a favour. They should have statues to her where the pit wheels were.

Anyway, by the time I came along that stuff was all ancient history. Well, it was as far as I was concerned. It might as well have happened yesterday from the way everybody around me kept banging on about it constantly. We lived in a semi so there was a family right next door, obviously, right? Well, we weren’t allowed to acknowledge they even existed because the guy, who’d been one of dad’s best mates apparently, had joined the Democratic Union of Miners of Britain or whatever and so he was a blackleg as far as my old dad was concerned and seemingly that was worse than being a paedo or a murderer. Only time my dad looked like he might hit me was when he caught me talking to the twins next door.

Anyway, it wasn’t anywhere that I wanted to be. I was off down the motorway soon as I could escape from school, heading for the big bad city, and the bigger and badder the better. I sort of hesitated around Manchester for a month when it was just getting interesting but I didn’t bother staying. I went on south. M6 to London. Always liked the bright lights, I have. London was the only place for me. Only place this side of the Pond at any rate. Suppose New York would have been all right, but then thanks to people like yours truly London eventually became better and cooler than NYC anyway.

Thing is, I sort of understand people wanting to stay where they were brought up, if they were raised in a big city anyway, I mean why would you want to stay in the country? You might want to stay where you grew up for sentimental reasons and your mates being around and so on but unless it’s a really, really great place that’s really, seriously going to add something to your life, you’re kind of being a mug, know what I mean? If you stay in a place like that when you know you could have a go somewhere bigger and brighter with more opportunities you’re giving more to it than it’s giving to you, aren’t you? You’re in a net loss situation, know what I mean? I mean, if you like feeling like an asset to your local community or something then fucking yahoo for you but don’t pretend you aren’t being exploited. People talk a lot about loyalty and being true to your roots and suchlike but that’s just bollocks, isn’t it? That’s one of the ways they make you do things that aren’t in your own best interest. Loyalty’s a mug’s game.

So I moved to sunny London. Was sunny, too, compared to Manchester or where I come from. Bought my first pair of Oakleys day I arrived. I say bought. Anyway, London was sunny and warm and balmy even and full of totty and opportunities. Moved in with a mate from back home, got a job behind a bar in Soho, got a girlfriend or two, met some characters, started making myself useful to the sort of people who appreciate someone with a bit of sharpness about them and the gift of the gab. Thinking on your feet, like they say. Landing on your feet. That’s useful, too. Better still, landing on somebody else’s feet.

Long and short, started providing the high-flyers with the means to get them high, didn’t I? Full of creative types, Soho, and a lot of people in the creative industries like to powder their nose, indulge in a bit of nasal turbocharging, don’t they? Very big thing with the Creatives, certainly back then. And amongst said Creatives I would most certainly include the financial wizards and their highly exotic Instruments and Products. Plus, of course, they have the funds to really get stuck into it.

So I worked my way up, in a sense. And along, sort of. Along in the sense of east, where the dosh is. East of Soho, to the City, to be precise, and Canary Wharf, where a lot of them highest of high-flyers perched. Follow the money, they say – well, I did.

See, I had a plan, right from the start. A way to make up for my lack of what you might term a formal education and letters after my name. (Numbers after my name, that might have been a different story, but I managed to avoid that.) Anyway, what do people do when they’ve had a toot or two? Talk, that’s what they do. Talk like fuck. And boast, of course, if they’re especially impressed with themselves. Which would cover just about everybody I provided for.

And of course if you spend all your time working, concentrating, making money, taking risks, being financially daring and so on, you’ll talk about that, won’t you? Stands to reason. Fizzing with testosterone and their own genius, these guys, so of course they talk about what they’ve been up to, the deals they’ve done, the money they’ve made, the angles they’ve got coming up, the stuff they know.

So a person who happened to be around them when they were talking about this sort of stuff, especially somebody who they knew wasn’t one of their own and so not a threat, not a competitor, but somebody they thought of as a mate as well as an always available deliverer of their chosen leisure-enhancing substance, well, that person could hear a lot of interesting things, know what I mean? If that person acted a bit thicker and even less educated than they actually were and kept their eyes and ears open and their mind sharp they could hear some potentially very useful things. Potentially very lucrative things, if you know the right people and can get the right bit of information to them at the right time.

Just being useful, really. Like I say, I’m part of the service industry. And once you know a few secrets it’s amazing how you get to know others too. People trade in secrets, and don’t realise they’re giving themselves away, especially if they trust you, or underestimate you, or both. So I found myself in a position where I could call in a few favours, use what our financial friends would call leverage to pick up some training, some recommendations, some patronage you might say, not to mention some working capital.

Long and short again, I went from being a dealer to being a trader. Swapped the powder for the folding, replaced the stuff that goes up the middle of the rolled note for the note itself. This was a deeply smart move, if I say so myself.

Don’t get me wrong. Drugs are great, obviously they are. Great business to be in in a lot of ways, and definitely enduringly popular in good times and bad otherwise why would people spend so much of their disposable and risk prison taking them? But it’s all a bit of a mug’s game dealing them, when you really think about it, certainly for any length of time. You have to watch your back constantly and even the profits get eaten into keeping the boys in blue happy. I mean, serious fucking profits, there’s still a lot left, but still, that’s exactly what attracts some very heavy and uncivilised people to the business and you can’t spend fuck all when you’re dead, can you? Get in, make some of the filthy and get out while you still got a set of balls and an unslit throat to call your own, that’s how you fucking do it if you’ve any sense. Use it as a leg-up to get into something just as lucrative but a lot less risky. That’s the smart way. That’s what I did.

Amazing what you can accomplish by applying yourself and making yourself useful.

Madame d’Ortolan

Madame d’Ortolan sat in her orangery, discomfited. She had been accused of being a racist! And by someone she couldn’t take any immediate retributive action against, too. Of course she was not a racist. She not infrequently had black and Jewish people here in her town house, though naturally she was always careful to keep an accurate note of where they sat and what they touched and might have used, subsequently having everything so contacted thoroughly cleaned and disinfected. One could not be too careful.

But of course she was not a racist. To the contrary, as she could point out, in appropriate company (that would be to say, highly limited and avowedly discreet company), had she not tasted of what she thought of as the Dark Pleasures, with blacks, on more than one occasion? The epitome of such enjoyment was, for her, to be taken anally by such a Nubian brute. Privately, she thought of this act as “going to Sèvres-Babylone,” as this was the deepest, darkest and most excitingly, enticingly dangerous Métro station that she knew of.

Racist! The cheek of it. She had taken the call here in the orangery. The conversation had gone like this:

“Oui?”

“Madame, I’m glad I managed to catch you.”

“Ah. Mrs M. I trust we can return the compliment.”

Mrs Mulverhill had chosen to open by speaking English, always a sure sign that she wished to talk business and this was not a social call. It had been some long time since either had called the other for purely social reasons. “May I ask where you are?”

“I suppose you might, though not to any instructive consequence.”

Madame d’Ortolan felt herself bristling. “A simple No would have sufficed.”

“Yes, but would have been inaccurate. Are you well?”

“I am, as if you care one way or the other. And you?”

“Tolerably. And I do care, one way. Let me tell you why I’m calling.”

“Do. It’s been so long. I can’t wait.”

“Rumour has it you intend to divide the Council.”

“Beyond my powers, dear. And, anyway, I think you’ll find it already is.”

“If it is divided—”

“Oh, it is.”

“If it is, then it is largely due to you.”

“As I say, you both flatter and overestimate.”

“That is not what the people I’ve talked to say.”

“People on the Council? Who?”

Mrs Mulverhill remained silent. There was a pause while Madame d’Ortolan – who had taken the call on the house phone, on an extension with a long lead – twirled the extension cord round her longest finger. After a few moments, a sigh sounded down the phone line and Mrs Mulverhill said, “So, what is the thinking on this matter?”

“The thinking?” Madame d’Ortolan asked innocently.

“What do you intend to do?” Mrs Mulverhill said, voice suddenly sharp.

“I think that matters need to be resolved.”

There was a silence, then: “I hope that is not settled. It would be the incorrect decision.”

“Is that what you think?”