Will Self - The Book of Dave

By the time Blair had completed his speech, Dave was already on the stairs. He hadn't bothered with Michelle's letter. The phrase that stayed with him — albeit edited — was take … your … blood, for his very blood had been taken from him. Or had it? Checking himself in every reflective surface he passed — brass plates, plate glass, wing mirrors — Dave was forced to concede that this hereditary cap didn't fit at all well. You suspected all along … The dates never made sense. . never added up … She got funnier about it the older he got. . And Carl, well, he . .he just doesn't LOOK ANYTHING LIKE YOU.

The fare, chunk of silicone chips soldered to his ear, was going to check out David Blaine. The American illusionist was sealed into a perspex box, which had been dangled from the arm of a crane on the south side of Tower Bridge. The new London Assembly had appeared near by — beamed down from the future so suddenly that its concrete and glass walls bellied with the impact — and all that was left of the park that used to occupy the site was a patch of exposed dirt. Every day a crowd gathered here to bay, catcall, take photos, catapult hamburgers, hold up babies, flash their tits and bums, frolic, gass, guffaw — and generally confirm the truth that, as Blaine's beard grew and his fat evaporated, nothing ever changed in this city: the most grotesque of street theatre always had — and always would — take place within the very shadow of governance.

The Fairway was snarled up in Tooley Street. In front was a white Securicor van with plexiglas windows. Sweatboxes, that's what they call 'em. Some crim who used to drink in the Old Globe told Dave all about them — the tiny, individual cells in the bouncing vehicle, no room for the prisoners to stretch their legs, no handholds, everything made of plastic. In winter they were like … fucking fridges. . but in summer the cons slopped in their own sweat. Still, wasn't the whole of London an endless bloody sweatbox? nuffing to hold on to, everyone going somewhere to do nuffing. The cab limped past the London Dungeon, where a dummy felon hung from a fucking toyist gibbet. The fare had run out of friends to call … no wonder … and was scratching his balls.

Tiring of this tax on disorientation, Dave saw a parking place and plonked the cab in it. 'Wossup, mate?' said the fare, who was young with a vulnerable dimple in his chin. 'I'll stroll down there with you,' Dave explained. 'I fancy a gander at this chancer.' They clambered out, and Dave locked up. He asked for a fiver, even though there was twice that on the meter. As they walked along past Hay's Galleria towards HMS Belfast Dave wanted to put an arm around the lad's shoulders, because he was another one young enough to be my son. But not.

It was a weekday, and the crowd wasn't that big. There were dossers struck by White Lightning … language-school Lolitas … and because it was lunchtime the Pret-a-fucking-Manger mob were ranged along the parapet of Tower Bridge, swigging mineral water and chomping baguettes. In an enclosure immediately beneath Blaine's box snappers and camera crews oscillated to find the best angle. All eyes were raised towards the modern Diogenes, who slumped in a starved torpor, a silvery space blanket serving him for a robe. Everyone bayed for his attention, while he looked deep inside himself, focusing with steely resolve on major fucking sponsorship deals.

Dave had lost the ex-fare and was sitting on a bench when he became aware of a wholesale perturbation in the crowd. Eyes were swivelling away from the hunger artist towards the top of the northern tower of the bridge, where an oddly attired group was clambering out on to the parapet. Dave was up on his feet — even at this distance, and outlined against deceptive bends and furbelows of cloud, he could see that the three men were wearing historical costumes: cockade hats, cloaks and doublets. One of them was a dumpy fellow struggling with the end of a long, sausage-shaped bundle. 'Bluddy el!' exclaimed a dosser who was beside Dave. 'Iss isstree cum ter lyf!' The crowd, grasping that something — or somebody — was going to be pitched over the edge, 'ooed' and 'aahed' with sadistic glee. The London Show — in its two thousandth year at the same venue — was hotting up.

The camera crews were wrenching their tripods round to capture the action. From Wapping came the demented whippoorwill of a police siren. A couple of white-hatted Port of London Authority beadles could be seen trying to break into the bottom door of the tower, a police helicopter came chattering upriver, and it occurred to Dave that this could be the big one, code black. . the bundle might be a fucking missile launcher. For Tower Bridge was a prime position for an attack by suicidal terrorists on the computerized dealing rooms and electronic vaults of the City.

There was a man close to Dave in the crowd who had a pair of binoculars. 'Please, mate?' Dave requested, then he crammed them to his eyes just as the three players on the roof of the tower heaved their bundle over. A long banner unrolled with a loud 'Thwack!' Dave Rudman absorbed the legend on it at the same time as he recognized the clownish lips and curly hair of the tubby man sporting the red cloak. It was Gary Finch, and he was giving the finger to the circling helicopter. The banner read: WE AREN'T HISTORICAL FIGURES — WE'RE FIGHTING FATHERS, FIGHTING TO SEE THE KIDS WE LOVE. There was the clenched-fist logo, which Dave had last seen in the Trophy Room at the Swiss Cottage Sports Centre.

The Fighting Fathers managed to stay up on Tower Bridge for a long time. When the police stormed the tower, Fucker and one of the others got out along the top cantilever and chained themselves to it. Their companion was arrested immediately — but this was probably intentional, for Barry Higginbottom had taken it upon himself to be the spokesman for Fighting Fathers, and it was he who appeared on the rolling news bulletins for the rest of the day.

Watching him on TV that evening at Agincourt Road, Dave had to concede that the Skip Tracer did a good job. He was interviewed in a well-appointed playroom, against a background of Disney film posters, with colouring books and cuddly toys strewn beneath the rockers of his chair. The Skip Tracer spoke lucidly concerning the inequalities of family law: the presumption that separated and divorced mothers should have care and control of children; the financial burdens placed on separated fathers; the difficulties these fathers had in getting their former partners to comply with court access orders. The Skip Tracer's usual machine-gun delivery was slowed to an emphatic beat, his vowels flew up to buttress his rediscovered consonants. There were no obscenities, no talk of nosebag and the sweat-lash was little more than an earnest sheen.

However, the Skip Tracer's front was then demolished as his schoolboyish fringe and exposed nostrils were supplanted by exterior shots of his detached villa in Redbridge. This — the viewers were told — was equipped with a state-of-the-art security system, comprising CCTV cameras, razor wire and motion-triggered alarms. Quite why such a sensitive, loving man should be so paranoid was then explained by an appropriately nervy reporter on the scene: 'His considerable fortune was amassed during the property crash of the early 1990s, when his agency — employing scores of operatives — tracked down desperate mortgage defaulters. .'

The irony of such a large house being paid for by the loss of so many other smaller ones was not dwelled on — for there were still more queries, dangling like his own, blond forelock over the Skip Tracer's head. His ex-wife was interviewed and her testimony was damning as to the Skip Tracer's shady financial dealings and his flirtation with the extreme right wing. The former Mrs Higginbottom stopped short of the nosebag, although she did suggest that 'Barry has … issues he'd rather not look at. Issues of dependency.' Nevertheless, despite his fickleness when it came to the practicalities of childcare, she supported his right to see their daughter, while maintaining that 'his … behaviour in the past means I don't have a lot of confidence … in his motives'.