Paul Theroux - The Family Arsenal

She was still pleading, but her mouth was against his neck and he heard nothing.

‘We can’t stay here,’ he said at last. ‘Murf’s coming back.’

Murf arrived an hour later with Arfa Muncie. Seeing Lorna’s bruises, Murf said, ‘Hey, who done you?’ Then he changed the subject, perhaps suspecting that Hood might have beaten her. Muncie looked alarmed; he was silent and eyed Hood carefully as if waiting for a signal to run. But Hood saw how rattled Muncie was (he was picking up Lorna’s china dolls and examining their seals, and testing the firmness of chairs: the junk-dealer’s nervous reflex), and he deliberately put him at his ease, slapped him on the back — Muncie jumped — and said casually, ‘Now where does our friend live?’

‘I can show you,’ said Muncie. ‘I mean, out the window.’

‘So he’s that close?’

‘No, Millwall. But you can see it from here,’ said Muncie, and he explained to Lorna, ‘See, I know these here houses. I do a lot of clearing. I never cleared this one as such, but blimey, some of the old boys around here got some great stuff for me shop. Victoriana like. Frames and that. Mirrors. Leaded windows. I flog them in the West End. That fireplace,’ he went on, hurrying across the room and rapping his knuckles on it in approval. ‘Don’t look like much but you could dismantle it easy. I’d give you a good price and hump it up to the King’s Road. Up there this thing’s a antique. They pay a tenner for a quid’s worth of grotty glassware.’

Lorna shrugged and said, ‘You’re welcome to it. Take the whole fucking lot.’

‘I could give you a estimate,’ said Muncie uneasily. He spoke to Hood. ‘I do valuations.’

‘The great Arfa. He’s a thief,’ said Murf, pronouncing it feef , ‘but he knows his way around. Eh, Arfa?’

‘Yeah. Can we go upstairs? I’ll show you the place.’

Hood said to Lorna, ‘Do you know where Rutter lives now?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘All I have is the fucker’s phone number.’

‘Stay here, honey. We’ll be right down.’

She said, ‘It’s time to pick up Jason. Maybe I’ll see you.’

They climbed the stairs and trooped down the hall to the back room. The broken door sagged on its hinges. Murf said, ‘Someone give that bugger a good kick and all. Think you can flog it, Arfa? It’s a antique. Heh-heh.’

Muncie ignored him. He shuffled to the north window and pointed, saying, ‘He’s over there.’

Through the river haze that hung beyond the funnels of the power station and the cranes, and gave the distant buildings the look of thunderclouds in an old etching, receding into browner air and finally a grey emptiness — any London view was like a view from an island: it might have been the sea way out there, it was so flat and featureless — were more cranes, the towers of a housing estate, slate rooftops and one squat black church steeple. The heavy layer of air pressed the low skyline and made it look as if it had just collapsed and was smouldering. Hood followed Muncie’s finger, from island to island, but that was a ruined island, dead under its own stifling dust, and all the visible brickwork was dark, reddened by dampness and age. Apart from the church steeple there was nothing that held the eye, nothing to seize; and watching, Hood had the illusion of it slipping from focus, sailing away, becoming mists.

‘Millwall,’ said Muncie, tapping the glass.

‘It looks like an island,’ said Hood.

‘It is an island,’ said Murf. ‘Isle of Dogs. I wouldn’t live there for anything.’

‘That’s where Rutter lives,’ said Muncie. ‘I could tell you where his boozer is, but you don’t want to go there. The Swan, up Lime-house.’

‘Diabolical,’ said Murf.

‘It looks like an island,’ said Hood.

Muncie pulled his sleeve across his nose. ‘No,’ he said. He blinked. ‘He might have heard of me.’

‘The great Arfa,’ said Murf, grinning.

‘But he knows Murf,’ said Hood.

‘So he was telling me,’ said Muncie. ‘He was going to slip him a blade. That’s what he said.’

‘I should have stuck him and all,’ said Murf, with a show of bravado. ‘I could have. A real spill. Right in the chops.’ He danced across the room pretending to hold a knife against an invisible throat. ‘ Widdy-widdy boom! ’ he said, thrusting with his hand. ‘So long, Willy-baby.’

‘Sure,’ said Hood. ‘Look, Muncie, I want you to be our advance man.’

Muncie glanced nervously at Murf. ‘I don’t want to get involved.’

Murf made a face.

‘Anyway, I’m tied up.’

‘The great Arfa,’ said Murf.

‘How would you like him to lean on you?’ Muncie whined.

‘Widdy boom !’ said Murf, flailing his arms, making the stabbing gesture again. He laughed in Muncie’s face.

‘You don’t have to get involved,’ said Hood quietly.

‘What do I do then?’

‘Just find out if he’s at home,’ said Hood. ‘Show us the house. That’s all. We’ll do the rest.’

‘It’s simple — suss it out,’ said Murf. ‘After we take care of the geezer you can go clear out his house. Don’t have to do no estimates. Get some nice stuff. Chairs and shit. Eh, Arfa?’ Murf elbowed him companionably, rocking him sideways, but Muncie’s expression remained solemn. He came to rest, upright again, and frowned with worry.

‘He’s tough is Rutter,’ said Arfa, pronouncing it Ruh-uh . ‘He’s killed blokes and all.’

‘Like who?’ said Murf, mocking. ‘Huh, Arfa?’

Hood said, ‘Anyone we know?’

Muncie’s eyes widened and he pointed to the floor. ‘Yeah,’ he said in a whisper. ‘Downstairs. Her old man!’

Shadow and mist mingled to make night in the late afternoon. Hood had said they should wait until it was dark, but darkness was not long in coming that November day. They took a bus to Greenwich, and out of the side window Hood saw the haze thicken by the minute, the dense air brimming in the streets and rising up the flat-fronted houses. Walking to the tunnel entrance — a Victorian brick dome propped at the edge of the embankment — Hood looked across the river. There were not even shadows in Millwall, only a few twinkling lights and one feeble beacon. Here, some trees were fretting by the riverside, but over there — offshore — it was as if the island he had seen earlier had sunk and now, where it had been, stray boats were making distress signals. No church, no cranes, no buildings, not even mist; and though the river shimmered with snakes of light it too was empty.

‘In here,’ said Muncie, and led them past the clanking elevator cage and down the circular stairwell to the tunnel. It was the sort of glazed endless corridor Hood had seen when he was high, a tube of echoing tiles, without doors or windows, stretching away, and ringing with the footsteps of people he could not see. Voices chimed from the walls and his own footsteps gulped. Murf stopped once to write MILLWALL WANK — ARSENAL RULE.

On the far side of the river they emerged from the stairwell and its stink of urine and chalk to a dark muddy garden and a maze of earthworks. Muncie hurried into the road, to Rutter’s; Hood and Murf sat on a bench in the little park. Greenwich, banked with lights, lay across the water, the Royal Naval College rising from the walkway to trees and the turrets of the Observatory, a symmetry of floodlit stone with its lovely proportions reflected intact in the water, crusted with a blaze of lights. To the right were the masts and spars of the Cutty Sark , simulating dead trees, and further over the blacker precincts of Deptford — more islands.

Hood pointed to the Naval College, which the odd light and the falling mist gilded. He said, ‘That’s a beautiful building.’