Will Self - The Book of Dave

— Initiation rite?

— More of a chop than a rite, really, so far as these folk are concerned. Böm settled down on his pallet and yawned insouciantly. The Plateists view all dads as raging burgerkine, all mummies as complacent, lustful milchers, so, if you wish to join their order you must be gelded.

A cormorant came flying downriver between the two central piers of the Thames Flood Barrier. Dave Rudman watched its black felt-tip body as it drew a line through the piles of containers and metal-jacketed warehouses on the far bank. Rust-grey, pearl-orange, sky-pink — the jumbled-up squares and oblongs of a shredded colour chart. The bird zigged and zagged to avoid a jetty, then merged with the brown velvet of the Thames where it was cinched by the Woolwich Ferry before draping into Gallions Reach. A poxy little plane full of poxy little getters lifted off from the City Airport. Banking, it caught the full force of the afternoon sun and blared white-gold in the sky. Dave sucked on the piebald nipple of a filter tip. His throat grated, and painful sludge oozed over his tongue, then down his gullet. His face felt swollen, his fingers when he plucked the bung from his hole were half-cooked sausages splitting at the knuckle and oozing grease.

It was an oppressive day, the sky so low it threatened to crawl beneath the ground. Gulls were fucking about, their 'cooee chew-chew-chew' cries evoking seduction followed by consumption. Towards the visitor centre for the Flood Barrier — a glass rotunda capped with grey concrete — the landscaped lappet of lawn held a picnic party, a spew of kids, all shapes and sizes but mostly piccaninnies in T-shirts, jeans and useless cagoules. Rishawn, Shinequa and Shemar, dragged down here from Peckham for a sugar rush … They were being fed ice lollies and cans of Coke by a couple of young women. As Dave watched, one of them stooped to snag a sweet wrapper from the grass and he saw a tattoo of the sun rise out of her fucking arse. Disgusted — not aroused, merely disgusted — Dave turned away. Down on the walkway beside the safety railings stood his fare, scrawny thighs lost in his baggy khaki shorts. He was chatting with a dude who was festooned with techno bling: a digital camera, a brace of mobile phones, a light meter — it was a necklace of shiny circuitry like the Barrier itself, shrunk then wrapped.

Dave had picked the fare up on Wardour Street. 'I'm a runner,' the lad explained as they scooted along the Embankment to the City. 'We've got two units shooting today.' Bully for you. 'One down at the Thames Barrier and one all the way up at Shepperton. I gotta get the rushes from the one down east and take them up west 'coz that's where the director is …' He went on gabbling, enthused by his mission, as Dave fed the cab through the ancient jaws of the City, past Billingsgate, up and over Tower Hill, down through Shadwell and Wapping, the old English syllables as solid and clunky as the Fairway's suspension.

'It's sortuva awfurred film about the Thames. This guy, see, he thinks the river's gonna flood and all the like' — the fare's downy lips twisted in the rearview — 'well, like shit an' that, is gonna come y'know … bubbling up to the surface.' He didn't seem to notice that Dave never said anything, only grunted in the appropriate patter gaps. Nor did he notice the state of the cab: the oblong eye of the windscreen lidded with road dirt and squashed flies, the cobwebs festooned on the wing mirrors, the dashboard strewn with the clear plastic triangles of discarded sandwich containers, the floor of the front compartment knee high with rubbish. And Dave — Dave stank.

Mornings now he pulled on whatever soiled rag came to hand from the tangled ball in the corner of the bedroom. He drank thick, sweet dietary supplements while doing wratery shits. He couldn't tell any more what was making him feel this dread foreboding, see jagged neon at the periphery of his vision, experience the hand tremor and knock-knee, feel the locked jaw and sore throat, suffer the swollen face and wiener fingers. Was it the Seroxat, the Carbamazepine or the Zopiclone?

Before the final bludgeon of the day hammered Dave into teary unconsciousness, he would uncrumple the patient information leaflets that lay balled on the carpet and read them over. As his tired eyes limped along the parlous print Dave found it impossible to divine whether his dry mouth, upset stomach, diarrhoea, constipation, vomiting, sweating, drowsiness, weakness, insomnia, loss of appetite, rash, itching, swelling, dizziness, faintness, muscle spasms and sudden mood changes were the symptoms of his depression, the effects of the medication or its side-effects. The drugs had become collaborators with the disease, and together they had carved up the cabbie's mind into zones of delusory influence.

It was all coming to a head — Dave knew that. The annual vehicle inspection was pending, the cab needed servicing, his own badge would have to be renewed, and the meter had to be recalibrated in line with the new tariff bands. It all meant paper work, officialdom, meeting with those lairy, racial gits … his fellow drivers. The PCO would have his badge, they'd fuck him over, they'd break him on the wheel and tear his fucking tongue out.

A muthafucking giant speed-knitting a chain mail scarf… changed into the whirr of a passing motorbike, as Dave Rudman surfaced from his reverie long enough to clock the wavering mirage of Canary Wharf, before the black rat scuttled down into the Lime-house Tunnel. Where's Carl? Where are you, mate? Who're you with? Dave pictured him at the mercy of devilish nonces, shooting up smack with scuzzy junkies, getting the shit beaten out of him by a bunch of faceless fucking bruvvers, their hoodies pulled down over their mad yellow eyes … Or maybe Carl had left London altogether and was heading north up the M1 like a tramp or a pikey, all his worldlies tied up in a … inna … changing bag … What if Dave had found his son, seen his glistening face jump from the pedestrian millrace of London's streets — what would he do then? I'd give him a fucking clump — that's what I'd do, the grief he's put me through …the grief. .

In his distress the cabbie found it difficult to hang on to mobile phones. He threw them out the Fairway's window if he was driving and a conversation with a lawyer, mediator or assessor became too contentious. If he was standing, he dropped them to the pavement and ground out the butt-ends of talk. Three or four had ended up like this: pay-as-you-throw. But now he was the Skip Tracer's client Dave hung on to his mobile — because the detective, while refusing a meet, called often, as if he and Dave were gossipy teenagers.

On the mobile, which Dave crammed to his ear as the cab shuddered at the lights in Chiswick, Cheam or Chorleywood, the Skip Tracer's queer rap sounded still stranger: 'Could be nosebag.'

'What?'

'Your man — I say he could be doing nosebag. He's done it before ain't 'e, he's got form. Could explain the dosh sloshing round his accounts.'

'I thought you were gonna do some traces, find out if it was him who ramped up the share price before his company was bought out — '

'Tricky, son, tricky. Don't get me wrong — I'm on the case. But he's sold the bizzo now, so it's aynchun wotsit.'

'History.'

'Whassat?'

'Ancient history.'

'Yeah, yeah, knowwhatyoumean. His-tory. Hor-sey. Horse. Stable. bolted. I'll spin his bins, though — see what we come up with. But nosebag — that's another matter. He can't be messing with your kiddie if he's wearing a nosebag. Get me?'