Desmond Barry - London Noir

What I couldn’t believe most of all was how wonderfully bright it was. THE PALAIS in red and yellow strung-up lights. When I went in, the band were already in the middle of their set, performing their dance steps in front of their music stands, with all their silver instruments gleaming. They were wearing little white jackets and neatly pressed graystripe trousers. The Ink Spots, in black, was printed on a drum.

When I heard her call out to me, initially I couldn’t make out who it was. Then, to my astonishment, I heard my mother say: “Emmet, will you do something for me? Will you make sure the Infant of Prague is in his proper place on the fanlight and has his little face turned toward the church? We’re getting married tomorrow morning at 10, son, you see.”

I wasn’t sure quite what to say — her taffeta dress looked so nice — and had to think for a minute to decide on an answer. But before I got the chance, the band had started up again, and as he placed his arm around her waist I saw her lean in toward him and smile.

But that was the last I saw of them because in the one or two seconds I’d turned to give my attention to the band, as effortlessly as though they’d grown wings, they’d sailed like moths out far beyond the stars, in search of the heaven they’d been dreaming of for so long.

Canary Wharf

It starts with an accelerating whine that becomes a roaring through darkness and space. You’ll find yourself hurtling into emptiness. Lights travel past your eyes at ever increasing speed. The flooring moves beneath your feet. You’ll feel the rush, pulling you forward. The roaring continues. Everything lies straight ahead. The expressions around you seem dazed, eyes unfocused and distant.

The sound slows to a stop. A woman’s voice speaks to you from out of nowhere. This station is Canary Wharf. Change here for the Docklands Light Railway.

Then another woman’s voice: This train terminates at Stratford .

Everyone around you looks stunned. Lost.

A gun is a dream that fits into your hand.

“So I get out here?”

They used to sleep below ground in places like this. While bombs fell from up above. The steel and glass barrier will slide apart, separating you from nothing. A vast space of columns and moving stairways, designed for handling thousands of people in transit, opens up around you, but it will be almost empty at this hour of the day. On the platform, a young skateboarder drums with his bare hands on a metal guardrail. A little Muslim girl in a glistening pink dress crouches at the edge of the concourse, sniffing at an open pack of Juicy Fruit chewing gum. She holds it up to her face, avidly inhaling the smell. Her father wears black combat boots, the toecaps carefully polished. Behind them, the empty silent track.

You watch the barrier as it closes again, a yellow and black stripe running the length of it at waist height. Two sets of three isosceles triangles pointing away from each other move slowly together until they are almost touching once more.

Standing on the escalator, coming up toward the third level on the concourse, just beneath the surface of the world, you get your first glimpse of towers and tall buildings. Shining high-rise blocks of steel and reflective glass, housing a working population of over 65,000. You only have to kill one of them. But anything over that will also be acceptable.

A scratchy subtitle flickers before your eyes: It is the acts of men who survive the centuries that gradually and logically destroy them.

Buildings are machines: electrical systems that listen and see and respond. People are just a planet’s biomass redistributing itself in time and space.

“You have a room reserved for me? Under the name Betamax?”

The girl at the reception desk will look up at you and smile brightly. “Yes, we do. Thanks for asking.”

You’ll be vaguely aware of the color scheme in the hotel lobby: a deep rose pink with polished wood surfaces. Beyond them an empty concrete plaza and a fountain swept by the wind.

You’re just product, denied a place in this world. Something played out on an old system, dated and worn. Set aside.

Step out of the elevator when it reaches the twenty-third floor.

“Room 2307?” you’ll say. “It’s along here?”

The maid will turn from her cleaning cart and smile brightly. “Fifth door to your right, thanks for asking.”

Anything over that will also be acceptable.

Your name will appear on the TV screen in your room, incorporated into a message of greeting. You ignore it. You remember a blind operative you once knew who stayed at Holiday Inns all the time because the rooms were always laid out in exactly the same way. It made finding his way around a lot easier.

You will incapacitate your first attacker by crushing his windpipe. The second you will see reflected in the white tiles of the bathroom. That will give you enough time to turn and shoot him in the chest. Twice.

He will fall toward you, fingers trailing blood across the walls and floor.

You will call down to room service to have someone come and clean out the human grease.

“This better not show up on my bill,” you’ll say on your way out.

“I’ll be sure to note that,” the girl at the reception desk will reply and smile brightly. “Thanks for asking.”

Things dazzle here, but they don’t shine. Everything has a hard reflective surface to it. The dominant color is a stormy green. You walk to the end of the block. There must be people in these buildings, but the interiors seem empty and devoid of life, despite the glass and the open structures. The sight of clouds in a vast blue sky moving across the straight edge of a building will give you a slow sense of falling.

You pause for a moment. Motorway. Distant sirens beyond the towers, the strange silence of cars passing, cold ragged wind generated by the close proximity of tall structures to each other, planes passing overhead.

Some of the buildings have names. HSBC, Citigroup, Bank of America .

Have your pass ready for inspection.

You feel like you’re in transit.

A woman appears around the windswept corner of an office building. Long black hair, a swing to her hips. She must be an office worker: trim black skirt, black sweater, black patent-leather high heels. You wonder how she can walk in shoes like those. She carries a file of documents. The stiff breeze disturbs the hem of her skirt as she walks.

She will stop and nod toward the ambulance pulled up at the back entrance to your hotel. Two bodies strapped to gurneys are being wheeled out, their faces covered.

“What happened over there?” she will ask.

“Got in the way,” you’ll reply.

She watches the paramedics load up the ambulance, her file of documents held up to shade the side of her face.

“Wrong place at the wrong time?” she will ask.

“Not really,” you will reply, then after a long pause: “Some people don’t know it’s over till they see the inside of a mortuary drawer.”

“You sound like a trailer for a movie no one wants to see,” she will say.

“I’m told I have that effect.”

“And would it kill you to smile?”

“Why don’t we find out?”

The faintest of smiles will appear on her face instead. “Okay,” she’ll say.

Once you get outside the neat arrangement of precincts around Canada Square, things come apart very quickly. You can see how thin, how artificial and transparent, this shining cluster of buildings really is. You sit at a café table and think about ordering something. Someone has written Public Enemy No One on a nearby wall in spray paint. Beyond that is the river: rusting cranes, empty sheds, and disused landings. Worn concrete, green with age.