Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London

“Anyone in particular?”

“Yes. You.”

Mick laughed scornfully. “No,” he said. “Whoever you were looking for, it wasn’t me.”

Stuart shrugged, perhaps a little sadly. For him it wasn’t a matter of argument or debate, but of instinctive knowledge.

“Is this some sort of sexual pick — up?” Mick asked. “I do hope not. I’ve already done that number.”

“No, not sex,” Stuart said.

“Thank God.”

Stuart’s driving was now very relaxed and very bad. Mick wasn’t particularly afraid they were going to crash into another car, but he did think they might hit something solid and stationary, like a phone box or a street lamp or a parked police car.

“Tell me,” he said, “was that a real gun you were waving around back there?”

“Was I waving it? I was trying to keep my hand very steady.”

“But was it real?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’ve never seen a real gun before.”

“You haven’t missed anything.”

“Why do you carry a gun?”

“It’s an old habit,” Mick said dismissively. “But I think I’ve kicked it.”

“You were in a fight. You said you won. Did you shoot somebody?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“You’re right. I probably don’t. Can I look at the gun?”

Mick laughed. He couldn’t believe this guy. Still, if he would go around rescuing mugging victims and accepting lifts from them, what could he expect?

“Not while you’re driving,” Mick said.

Immediately Stuart turned the car into a side street and stopped. Mick thought it was kind of pathetic, but he saw no reason not to let him have a look at the gun. He took it out of his pocket and placed it on top of the dashboard.

“Can I touch it?” Stuart asked with childlike politeness.

“If you have to. But don’t wave it around. And don’t touch the safety catch.”

“Which is that?”

Mick pointed it out to him and Stuart picked up the gun as though lifting something as fragile as a bird’s egg.

The street they were in was short and narrow and seemed to lead only to a row of railway arches. Cars were parked on both sides of the road and some were half on the pavement to leave room for other cars to pass. There was a short row of houses with front gardens behind high makeshift fences, and opposite them was a huge, dismal industrial building, some sort of factory for the rag trade. The lights were on inside and through a ground floor window Mick saw an Asian man, desperately thin and exhausted-looking, who was examining a short-sleeved shirt printed with parrots and bamboo designs.

“London is a glorious city,” Stuart said. “It brings you what you need.”

“It brings you a lot of stuff you could do without, too,” Mick said.

“Do you believe in fate?” Stuart asked.

It was a weird question but Mick replied, “What do you mean by fate?”

“Your wife, for instance, or girlfriend, or whatever you have, do you think you were destined to meet her? Did fate bring you together?”

“Something brought us together, sure.”

“Did fate bring you to London?”

“That’s one word for it.”

“And when I got up this morning was I destined to go out, get mugged, get rescued by a man with a gun? Was that preordained? Did fate arrange things so that you and I would be sitting here like this and I’d have this gun in my hand and…?”

For a grim moment Mick thought he was going to be shot. Stuart grasped the gun firmly in his hand and looked as though he planned to use it. He fiddled with the safety catch, released it, but instead of pointing it at Mick he opened his mouth wide, as though being helpful to some invisible dentist. Then he laid the snout of the gtfn along his tongue, and without hesitation he started pulling on the trigger. He was inexpert but folly determined.

He was also badly disappointed. The trigger clicked repeatedly, the firing mechanism slid in and out of place, but no bullet found its way into the gun, into Stuart’s mouth and then into the complex configuration of bone and brain. The gun’s cargo had been discharged into the fabric of the tube train carriage and then into the tyres of the Mercedes.

A second later Mick belted Stuart on the side of the head. The gun fell out of his mouth, out of his hand, and Mick caught it.

“What is wrong with you, man?” Mick yelled.

“It’s all over,” Stuart said. “I want it to be all over. I’m tired. I’ve had enough of London, of life, of the whole damn thing. I want to end it all.”

“With my gun?” Mick protested. “Get your own gun.”

He knew it sounded stupid, yet there was something profoundly objectionable about this man, this complete stranger, wanting to use the gun for his own shabby purposes.

“I should have ditched it ages ago,” he said.

“But you didn’t, did you?” Stuart insisted. “That’s fate too. It was meant to happen. London has always brought me what I needed: a career, a wife, a mistress. Why not a means of death? The day I walked my last London street was the day I knew London would bring me a means of ending it all. And it did. It brought me you. A man with a gun. It has to be. Don’t you have any more bullets?”

“No, I don’t,” Mick said. “That’s a bit of a miscalculation on fate’s part wouldn’t you say? But then maybe fate’s been pissing you about all along.”

Mick was angry now. He’d always known that London was full of nutters but why did he have to meet such a prize one at a time like this?

“I’ve thought of a way you can thank me,” Mick said. “Give me your wallet.”

Timidly, obediently, Stuart handed it over. Mick opened it, took out a few twenty pound notes, and was about to hand it back when he saw the name on the credit cards and then on the driving licence. He looked closely at Stuart’s face. It seemed weak, fleshy, boyish. He slapped him on the cheek, just soft enough to appear playful, just hard enough to sting.

“Stuart London, that’s a funny name,” he said.

“I know, all my life…”

He was about to explain but it suddenly seemed like far too much effort. He was aware that Mick was staring at him with an unwarranted curiosity, as though he were a zoological specimen.

“It’s strange,” Mick said. “You don’t look like much of a heartbreaker to me.”

“What?” Stuart asked.

Mick didn’t reply. He got out of the car and walked away. As he left Stuart and the car behind he heard a grinding of gears and a wild revving of the engine. It occurred to him that Stuart might be drunk enough to kill himself on the way home. If that was what fate wanted it was fine by him. He walked for a few minutes before admitting to himself what he’d known all along, that he was as lost as ever. He would have asked for directions but there was nobody on the street. Then, as he looked round, a black cab appeared out of nowhere. Mick heard himself shouting, “Taxi” and he ran after the cab as it stopped twenty yards up ahead of him. He heaved the door open and threw himself into the back.

“I want Park Lane,” he said, and he was about to launch into an explanation about which of the many Park Lanes of London he wanted. But the driver said, “Is that Park Lane, Hackney?” and Mick gratefully said it was.

“Yeah,” the driver said as they moved off. “I didn’t think you looked the type for the Park Lane.”

Stuart drove home, no longer feeling either drunk or celebratory or, for that matter, suicidal. The day’s expedition had been lurid, almost hallucinatory, and already some of the events were starting to slip away from him, their texture becoming more muted and mundane. If pressed he could not, have proved that any of it had really happened. It was all behind him. The mugging, the stranger, the gun, the botched suicide attempt; they were all gone and had left no trace.