Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London

“I’d be quite interested in hearing your replies, Mrs Pryce,” he said. “But you understand why I haven’t taken off the sticking plaster. Because I’m scared you’ll scream the place down.”

She shook her head to say that she wouldn’t do that, but how could he believe her?

“The simple fact is,” he said, “I feel tired, Mrs Pryce. I find this city of yours pretty exhausting. It’s easy to get lost. And frankly, Mrs Pryce, I’m feeling a bit lost. I mean, when I arrived in London it all seemed very clear; six guys who needed sorting out. No problem. That’s the line of work I’m in. That’s what I do. And you know, it ought to be easy giving these blokes a pasting. I mean, some of them I’d have been happy to do anyway, that prat Jonathan Sands and his bloody boat, that bloody actor. I mean, I have my share of class hatred. I don’t mind beating up rich, posh bastards at all. I’d do that any day of the week. But lately it’s not been that simple. I have this funny feeling that something’s wrong somewhere.

“Yeah, when I first came here I hated London and I hated the people who lived here; too soft, too rich, too southern. But lately it’s not been that straightforward. For instance, I like cars, I find them interesting, and London’s full of interesting cars. You see lots of left-hand-drive cars for instance. And you can see more Rolls-Royces in London in a day than you’d see in Sheffield in a year. And you see Ferraris and old Bristols and Maseratis. And obviously it’s partly a question of money, obviously there’s more cash around in London than in Sheffield, but somehow it’s more than that. People here like things that are a bit different, a bit special. Even that twat Philip Masterson had a decent car.

“And women too. You see more beautiful women in London than you’d ever see anywhere else in England. Maybe sheer numbers has got something to do with it, the population of London’s so big there have to be a few great-looking women, but it feels like there’s a much higher percentage in London. And the way they dress. Some of the clothes they wear — they’d stop traffic if they dressed like that in Sheffield, but in London it’s just part of the show. I like it. I’m a sucker for all that.”

He picked up the speculum that Pryce had used to examine his wife and held it up to the light. He closed one eye and looked at the world through the curved, distorting plastic.

“If this thing could talk,” he muttered distractedly, then returned to what he was saying. “It’s funny but I suppose I’ve started to like this place. London. I like the money and the variety and the river and the desirable properties. I like the pubs and the architecture and the people and the restaurants. And inevitably a bit of me is envious. And you know there was a time when envy would have made me want to destroy things, but it doesn’t feel like that now. Now I want…I know it sounds stupid…I want to join in with it.

“As a matter effect, I’ve never really felt as though I belonged anywhere, Mrs Pryce, and it never bothered me. I’m not sure if I belong in London or not, but now I’m here I don’t really want to go back to Sheffield. And it’s troubling me. You know, how is a petty criminal from up north supposed to fit in to all this?

“Sex is the problem, Mrs Pryce. Sex is always at the back of everything. I slept with a woman, a Londoner, and suddenly I’m all confused. Bodies are such a problem. They say that the human body’s like a city, in all sorts of ways, and I’m sure they’re right.”

Mick went to one of the glass-fronted bookcases and pulled out a copy of Gray’s Anatomy . He turned through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

“The first cut is the deepest, eh, Mrs Pryce?” he said.

There was a thick red felt-tip pen lying on Pryce’s desk. Mick picked it up, went over to Louise Pryce and, with reference to the book he’d opened, he painstakingly drew a large, red, valentine heart on the surface of her breast and sternum. The skin resisted the pen. The flesh sank beneath the pressure of the felt-tip but Mick was scrupulous in ensuring that only the pen should touch her, that there should be no skin to skin contact.

“Yes, a city can have a heart but I don’t know where London’s heart is. Marble Arch? The square mile of the City? Knightsbridge? And where are the lungs? Where’s the liver? The kidneys?”

He drew sketchy representations of lungs, liver, kidneys and a length of colon on the skin of Louise Pryce’s thorax. She couldn’t scream and she could barely struggle but something in her eyes showed absolute terror, as if she thought he might be about to slash her open, perform some butcher’s incision in search of a heart.

—“I’m not going to hurt you, Mrs Pryce,” Mick said again. “I know that drawing on your chest with felt-tip is a pretty weird thing to do. It’s true. I feel pretty weird these days. I am weird. But I’m not a nutter. Thanks for being such a good listener, Mrs Pryce.”

He pulled up a chair, placed it close to the examination table and sat there for a long time just looking at her body. There was pleasure in it. He liked to look but he had no desire to touch. He tried to imagine that he was looking at a city, at a new-found land, but all he saw was flesh and sex.

He was still sitting and looking when he heard sounds from the hall; the front door opening, then a man’s footsteps. The return of Dr Graham Pryce. He must surely have realized at once that something was amiss since all the lights were on and the door to the consulting room was open. But even though he was forewarned, he was hardly ready for what hit him.

The moment Pryce entered the consulting room, before he had time to take in the scene, before he was even fully aware of Mick’s presence, Mick started to punch and kick him. He did it silently, without saying a word, without so much as grunting. Pryce had no chance to fight back, not even to defend himself. The blows came from some dark place deep inside Mick, a place of cold, frightening, irresistible violence.

Pryce folded under the blows, was driven down to his knees, then to the floor, where he rolled up into a ball, not struggling, merely enduring, waiting for the attack to cease or to drive him into insensibility. And as Mick’s right foot made repeated contact with his victim’s body, he looked over at Louise Pryce, still pegged out on the table, and he could see she was crying, not much, just enough to make him feel bad, just enough to make him stop kicking her husband.

Mick stood still, trying not to sway, not to fall over, sweat pumping out through the creases in his forehead, an oceanic wash in his ears, and before he made his escape he felt the compulsion to turn apologetically to Louise Pryce and say, “If it’s any consolation I don’t really know why I did that.” And even then he still wasn’t ready to go. He went over to her and said, “You know another way the body and the city resemble each other? Answer: neither of them has a soul.”

All the next day Mick felt like shit. He didn’t think he’d dealt properly or adequately with Dr Graham Pryce. He sensed he’d broken the rules. He’d started to develop a new, highly personal variation of the game, and even if it wasn’t cheating exactly, something told him it was going to end in tears.

He got up late and wasted the morning in his room doing nothing. He didn’t bother trying to phone Gabby. He didn’t much care whether she was there or not, and in either case he had nothing much to say to her, no new questions that he wanted to ask. Her encouragement and approval meant little to him. She was the prime mover but the drama by now was his alone.