Ник Харкуэй - Angelmaker

And now, as Joe emerges from the Tosher’s Beat and turns sharp left through a narrow gateway and into a maze of little streets, he is biting his lip and trying not to run. The logic of his worry is very simple and very clear. There are three ways in which Mr. Rodney Titwhistle and Mr. Arvin Cummerbund, not of the Loganfield Museum because it is entirely defunct, could have knowledge of the object Mr. Titwhistle so absently sketched in the air. They might know of it already. They might know of it from a third party. Or they might know of it from Billy.

That putative third party, of course, might be the irritated former owner of the Book, who paid a visit to the saleroom and whose merest mention gave Fisher the screaming heebie-jeebies. By inference, Brother Sheamus, or his successor.

There is, however, a limited number of ways in which any of them could know of Joe Spork’s own connection with the item, and top of that list is Billy Friend.

Carefor Mews is a curious mix of old and new which the developer has in defiance of reason painted white, and which is now predictably grey-yellow with grime. Billy loves Soho. The ready availability of smut, late-night drinking, and intoxicated female tourists is part of the appeal, of course, but Billy confessed to Joe long ago that the place is his heart. Visiting Soho when it’s thronging and celebrating is one thing, but if you live there you see the morning after, the grimy, mournful streets and plastered revellers staggering home after five, the irritable shop-owners starting work and the exhausted tarts knocking off. Soho is a perpetual carnival celebrating how beautiful it is even as the wrinkles set in and the make-up runs. It’s always a last gasp, a last drink, one more fling before you die.

Billy Friend, the hardened realist, sees Soho as one long, sad poem or dirge, and he lives in the middle of it. Joe is unsure whether that makes him deeper than he appears, or just a little bit pathetic.

The street smells of urine and beer. The last of someone’s chicken dinner sits in an open box. How it has survived the night, Joe cannot imagine. Carefor Mews has rats and urban foxes and human denizens who’d be more than glad to take a bite of such an obvious gift. Well. Perhaps it’s recent.

The front door of the building has a combination lock, a new, electronic one. Joe knows the code—Billy gives it out quite freely, because anything which is stolen from him he can almost certainly steal back again, and he has no enemies. His neighbours find this habit infuriating, but Billy has a way of smoothing things over with people. It’s hard to stay angry with him.

First flight of stairs—no carpet. That strange, silver-specked blue linoleum, with a sandpaper texture so you don’t slip. His shoes make a noise like someone stepping on grit. Scritch . Why is that sound so familiar? Well, he’s been here before. But that’s not why. Hm.

Second flight—wood boards, the edges painted white, still no carpet. Mr. Bradley the building manager intends to put some down, but never quite has. There are drizzles of white paint across the boards, and dents and scratches in the bare wood from stiletto heels and heavy boots. Once, when Joe came here, the whole staircase was one enormous party, a weird stew of low-end toughs, party girls and party boys, and not a few film types with mournful faces complaining about tax equity over pisco sours in plastic cups. Each step goes donk , and some of them creak, too.

Third flight—hard plastic. The whole third floor is owned by one person, a cheerful Romanian named Basil who made some kind of once-in-a-lifetime deal and retired at the age of thirty-two. He bought this place to live in, installed some friends and family, then realised they were exploiting him and threw them all out. Now he lives alone, and paints very, very bad landscapes from his balcony. Basil is under no illusions about the quality of his work, but he likes to paint. Billy finds him infuriating. Joe can talk to Basil for hours about not very much, because Basil feels no need to control, prove, or even examine anything. He just floats, and paints, and occasionally gets very drunk and dances in clogs on the ultramodern floor of his enormous home. His bit of the staircase is a curious translucent block which looks as if it comes from an aquarium.

Fourth flight—rich, luxuriant carpet. “Deep shag,” Billy always says knowingly. The top floor of the building is quite small, because much of Basil’s place is double-height. Still, there’s that strong feeling of James Bond about a Soho penthouse, and Billy plays it all the way to the hilt. The door has another combination lock, this one more serious and more closely guarded.

“Billy!” Joe says, banging on the door. “What the fuck is going on? Are you okay?”

Billy Friend doesn’t answer. Not unusual. He’s a heavy sleeper, and not often alone up here. He’s probably putting on his silk dressing gown.

“Hoy! William Friend! This is Joshua Joseph Spork here, and before you bugger off to warmer climes I need a word in your earhole! Billy! Open up!” Joe bangs again on the door, and his heart gives a single, sickening lurch as the latch clicks, and the door opens just a crack.

Oh, shit.

On the one hand, Joe has never been in this situation before. On the other, he has been to the movies, and he knows that doors which swing open when you touch them are a bad sign. And somewhere in the back of his mind, Night Market voices are speaking in his head: old second-hand instincts are telling him to run.

Melodrama. Most likely is that Billy is downstairs trying to persuade Basil to lend him a Mercedes for his escape from his annoyed clients. And anyway, Joe Spork is a paragon of lawful behaviour, made his old dad an unlikely promise and stuck to it evermore. The world he lives in does not include gunfire or dirty deeds done dirt cheap. And this is London, after all.

He opens the door.

Billy Friend is a fastidious person. He likes to appear louche, but for all that the knot of his tie is forever resting against the second or even third button of his shirt, he is a very tidy man. Joe suspects this very tidiness is partly responsible for his decision to shave his head. The asymmetry, the unpredictability, the messiness of his half-covered head offended him at least as much as it decreased his chances with the ladies. Billy’s only real girlfriend of the last ten years—a bubbly forty-something called Joyce, whose considerable cleavage was matched by a splendidly unpredictable wit—was eventually rejected not because she wanted to marry him or because nature’s depredations on her body became too marked, but because she genuinely did not care where she left her socks. Joyce would roll in from a night at the Lab or Fioridita and throw underwear, overwear, and shoes into separate corners of the room. She’d drag Billy to bed and hurl his cherished Italian brogues into the sink, or blindfold herself with his best silk tie.

“I love that woman, Joe,” Billy moaned shortly before the separation, “but she’s death to a man’s wardrobe and hell on his sense of place.” For Billy, above the hubbub of Soho, his penthouse is a chapel of calm.

Which is why Joe’s sense of alarm is growing. The penthouse is a mess. Is this a sign of Billy’s urgent need to be elsewhere? Did he pack, unpack, discard and start again, leaving a trail of silk boxers and lycra briefs? (And oh, my God, the image that evokes!) Or has he been burgled? And if so, was it done, perhaps, by person or persons in the employ of a fat man with kidneyed sweat and a thin one with a surgeon’s placid face? Or by shadowmen draped in black?