Iain Sinclair - Dining on Stones

‘Stop the car,’ Livia said. ‘Now.’

She put her hand on Reo’s bony shoulder, denim. The tunnel had been superb, an experience. And now this: power station, tall chimney, oil tanks, marshes, the elegant span of the bridge at night. ‘I want my camera.’

Her voice brought him back, brought him out of it. They had made it to the north shore, home turf, the A13. He was a free man. He could swing into London, a club, or out to Southend, fish supper. He could take her home to Mum and be out at the quarry with his rods within an hour. He could stick with the M25, chase Alby, Epping Country Club, the chaps. A reunion. Kiss and make up. Kiss and tell.

How he’d blown it with the dagos, the snatch. The two Albanians were down on the coast, potless, waiting for a motor. Max Bygraves would be taking his curtain call, bringing the house down, right about now. Stage buried in daffs and M&S knickers.

There’s a spot, the filth love it, where you pull off the road, park up at a vantage point, view of everything — Essex, Kent, bridge. Space for two cars, nose to tail. Right by the section of motorway, up on stilts, where pill-runners get a tug: nowhere to go, jump sixty foot or hold your hands up. Smiley tabs down your Y-fronts, stuck in the thatch. Pills in your pubics.

Reo and Livia sat, the lovers, side by side, taking in the flow, the lit road, the mean windows of the hotel that looked straight out, a few yards from the cabs of huge lorries. They smoked, they shared a cigarette. Then Reo, reflex courtesy, opened the door for Livia, walked her to the back of the car. His hand on her elbow, the cool texture of her leather jacket. He fumbled with his keys. He reached into that big dark space for a torch.

Rubber matting, rope, spade. Spare trainers. Fishing box, rods, stool, maggots. Livia’s yellow camera bag.

The beam of the torch flashes on metal, a blade. Reo’s martial arts kit, Livia thinks. Samurai sword. He bends forward, gropes.

Ebiz.

Across six lanes of perpetual traffic, backdraughts that push them against the crash barrier, the hotel. Its name: ibis . Ebiz, ibis. So that’s what the man in the pasta place was going on about. His hand, five-finger spread. Thick gold watch nestling in black hair. The ibis hotel. Thurrock, Lakeside. Ebiz.

Kaporal sat in the car pretending to be Bob Mitchum, but it didn’t take. ‘Baby, I don’t care.’ His slack features had undergone the same substance-abuse landslide, everything flowing downhill, flycatcher’s pursed mouth, autopsy eyes. Dimpled chin like builder’s bum. But the weight wasn’t there, the bulk. The psycho stare (unblinking) of a man who enjoys his work (getting drunk, causing trouble). The timing. Kaporal’s yawn was a couple of beats too eager, a yawn of panic not boredom.

The hair.

The hair was the real story of Mitchum’s heroic anti-career. It out-acted him. He could do absolutely nothing , sharkmeat on a slab, better than any other leading man (Dean Martin, William Holden). Wrecked or sober, Bob could do the voices, the yarns, play it forensically cool, cervical nerves twitching in a lordly corpse. Great gift, sleepwalking through our collective memory. But the hair gave the game away, contradicted the pose. The hair was hot (Elvis loved that pompadour). Sculpted. An art work. A national monument. Somebody was employed, paid cash, to work on the hair, plough and water it, arrange for a single greased strand to fall in a fuck-you droop. Wayne and Sinatra, with their dinky rugs, couldn’t compete.

Kaporal patted his male-pattern (Prince Edward) bald patch. Forget Mitchum. This kidnap caper was crazier than any of those quickies shot in Durango for Howard Hughes: spook script-doctors rewriting on set, juvenile lead in hock to the Mafia, bagmen paying off local cops, whores, pinkos who named names, faggots, junkies, astrologers, blind cameramen, rodeo riders, grips who worked once with Bill Wellman — and all of them, night after night, expected to drink until dawn. Drink and bull. Tequila and horseshit. Unstruccured monologues of global conspiracy, Illuminati, Jews, bankers, vampires, alien invasion of body parts.

Who snags the worm?

The Bygraves snatch should have been aborted as soon as Reo Sleeman lost it and took off for London. The girl was trouble. That was the thing that caught Kaporal’s eye, her penchant for romance. The way she sat at the back of the café like Jane Greer in Mexico. Willing him to make his move. But Achmed wouldn’t give up, he sent Drin to find a man with a lock-up, off the Bexhill Road. And now, in place of their lovely, roomy Detroit motor, the silent Albanian arrives with a two-door Verve (100,000 miles on the clock). He has to stick his head out of the window to drive. It’s like trying to pack a slaughtered steer in a tumble-dryer.

Poor Kaporal was trapped in a Mike Leigh script — dysfunctional lowlife, bad food, wretched weather — directed by Michael Winner. The only part of it that played was the location. The theatre itself, Hollywood Chinese without Rin-Tin-Tin’s paw prints, was a relic of the Thirties: freshly painted red lacquerware, wavy orange roof tiles and pointy bits (like German helmets).

The sea.

The cliff with the tropical gardens.

The hump of hill on which they were parked.

A long straight road with views right back to St Leonards and down to the theatre, fire exit and stage door.

Plenty of good directors had worked with less. If it was a question of waiting, watching — fine. Kaporal was up for that (if someone brought him coffee and burgers at regular intervals). But, sitting alongside Achmed, he couldn’t breathe without synchronising his intake of air (window wide open) with the Albanian’s openmouthed gasps.

‘Ebiz otel. You drive. Meet mens. Count money.’

Simple. Kaporal stays in the car, alert, engine running. Achmed approaches Bygraves at the stage door, says he’s the driver. And, meanwhile, the real driver, official driver, another economic migrant, has been paid off. Away.

‘Where to? Who do we contact? Where’s the drop?’

‘Ebiz. I say you. Ebiz otel.’

Drin, from the backseat, passes over a leaflet. A promo for Dagenham Gateway, a new riverside city on the ruins of the Ford motorplant.

FUTURE PROSPERITY FROM PAST GLORIES

England soccer stars, including 1966 World Cup winner Martin Peters and legendary Chelsea star Jimmy Greaves, were bom here. Punk band the Stranglers named one of their songs after a fan they called ‘Dagenham Dave’. Dagenham was the birthplace of comedians Max Bygraves and Dudley Moore.

No photo of Max. They went with Sandie Shaw, long-legged, minimally skirted, on the bonnet of a production-line Ford with winking headlights.

‘Dig-en-arm.’

Grab Bygraves — if anyone can recognise him — and on for a meet at the ibis hotel, West Thurrock, with Mocatta’s men. Kaporal (English-speaker) will make the calls. Return Max, drugged, to his birthplace, Dagenham: an industrial unit. Hold him until cash is forthcoming, counted and bagged.

‘You like?’

Pick up the dosh at the ibis and then to Mocatta’s house, on the coast. Idiot proof.

And they were proven idiots, all of them.

Drin was nodding. Kaporal liked Drin. He never spoke. Achmed said something to him. Drin was nervous. He fiddled under his shirt, an amulet. Good-luck charm. Like a man unscrewing a prosthetic nipple.

‘What’s he got?’ Kaporal asked.

‘Air,’ Achmed said. He gestured. Drin reluctantly fished out the private talisman: a circlet of golden hair .

His wife.

His luck on speedboats, trucks, trains, containers. His luck in England. His memory, stroked and savoured. Tasted.

Kaporal liked Drin. Loss, hurt, he knew about those things. Exile. The researcher had never lived in a place he owned for longer than six weeks. Wives were messy, they got involved with other men. They never learnt how to sit still, to wait. Drin knew. He twisted the hair ring around his little finger.