Anne Billson - Suckers

I should have known something was wrong as soon as I heard Patricia laugh. She usually swore, or hung up, or both things at once, but she never laughed, not ever. 'Yes,' she said. 'I got it this morning. And you know what?' She laughed again. 'This time you really screwed up.'

The sensible thing at this point would have been to hang up. But my brain was still feeling like something battered against a rock by a Greek fisherman, so I didn't. I kept on babbling, my accent veering from California to Brooklyn and back again, taking in the Deep South en route . I had never been terribly good at accents. I gave her some poetry: 'Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak-and weary, de dum de dum de dum de dum de dum forgotten lore…' I stopped. Something she had said finally sank in. 'What do you mean, I screwed up ?'

Patricia's voice quavered with righteous triumph. 'I don't know why you've been doing this, and I don't care, but at last I can put a stop to it. You've finally given yourself away. '

I racked my brains, but I didn't know what she was talking about. 'Hey, what did I do? Use headed notepaper?'

'Not quite.' I could see her smiling in that mean, thin-lipped way she had. 'But almost. You sent me something you didn't mean to send.'

I was impatient, but uneasy. 'And what's that?'

'Oh yes, it must be nice, living in Notting Hill ,' she said. 'Shame about all the rubbish on the streets, though. And the noisy neighbours . And the Alsatians . I know you're not really Gunter Krankzeit , are you, it's just another of your poison pen-names, but this time I've got your address and I'm giving it to the police. You're sick. You should be locked up, and I'm going to make sure you — '

I slammed the receiver down on her. Or she slammed it down on me, I'm not sure which.

What had I done to deserve this shit? My stomach lurched as I realized what had happened. I wondered how Kensington and Chelsea's Environmental Health Department was coping with the threatening letter from the weird hippy subcult.

I sat completely still, trying to control my breathing by slowly counting to ten. It was all the Krankzeits' fault. If they hadn't kept me awake, I would never have written that letter, and I certainly would never have been dozy enough to put it in the wrong envelope. I blamed Duncan, as well. I couldn't think why, exactly, but I did.

My first instinct was to march straight round to Patricia's and threaten her with GBH until she returned the evidence. Then I decided this wasn't such a sensible course of action. She might have known, approximately, where I lived, but she still didn't know who I was, and there was no point in showing my face. Besides, she was bigger than me. But I couldn't let it rest. There were fingerprints, handwriting, and, for all I knew, traces of saliva on the gummed flap of the envelope.

I smoked three cigarettes, thinking hard all the while, then plumped for emergency action. Somewhere in the top drawer of my desk, amongst all the spare boxes of staples, hotel stationery, novelty erasers and rubber stamps, there were various old keys I had never had the heart to discard.

I rooted around and found what I was looking for — the Yale to Patricia Rice's flat. I hadn't kept it on purpose; I just hadn't got round to returning it. And the estate agents, embarrassed by the gazumping, had never asked for it back.

It was raining hard. I wrapped myself in a large mackintosh and set out for the offices of Flirt . It was far too early for the Notting Hill flotsam to be up and crawling, but there were plenty of reminders of the previous night's rumba session: rubbish all over the streets, dog shit and broken bottles and ripped-up garments with revolting stains all over them, a paddy field of old newspapers and sodden cigarette packets. The usual stuff, only it seemed to be getting worse each day. In my head, I composed yet another why-oh-why letter to the local council. I thought grimly that while I was at it I could send a copy to Patricia Rice as well.

Two out of the three down escalators at Notting Hill station were out of order, the platform was covered with litter, and the train was running late due to a signal failure at Edgware Road. It arrived a couple of centuries later, and another couple of centuries after that, after I'd read my newspaper (including the financial, sports, and small-ad pages) and completed all but two of the cryptic crossword clues, we rolled into Embankment station. I headed up Villiers Street, past the entrance to the Foxhole, and plunged into Covent Garden. Since it was not yet ten thirty, the Flirt office was deserted except for a lone receptionist. I deposited my fun package on the appropriate desk and took the opportunity to dial Patricia Rice's number, just in case she'd stayed home sick. No answer, just as I'd expected. She was a creature of dreary routine.

The coast was clear, but the sky wasn't. The rain was pelting down as I crossed Hungerford Bridge. The drainage was so bad it was like walking on the beach when the tide wasn't fully out; water darkened the leather of my shoes until they made squelching noises at every step. Before I'd got halfway across I was so wet it didn't matter any more. I paused and leant against the railing, facing east to where the sky was darkest. Squinting against the rain, I could just make out some brightly lit buildings in the City. I couldn't see as far as Molasses Wharf, but in my mind's eye was a picture of Multiglom Tower, even darker than the sky, a long way beyond Lloyd's, but big and very sinister, surrounded by black flapping things which might have been seagulls but were probably not.

I shook myself out of this reverie and moved on, past the Festival Hall, feeling wetter and colder all the time. There weren't many people around, only a few figures scurrying towards the nearest shelter, huddled beneath umbrellas or shielding their heads with newspapers. The streets around Waterloo were busier, though not by much. I stopped off at the station to warm my bones with a cup of coffee before striking out through the downpour for Lambeth North.

Patricia's flat was a conversion job, but one of the things I had liked was its position on the end of a terrace, which meant it had its own separate entrance on the side street around the corner. Lucky Patricia; no awkward neighbourly encounters in the hallway, no having to sift through other people's fishy-looking mail, no Krankzeits to thunder up and down.

I pressed her doorbell. Of course there was no reply. I hadn't expected one. I looked around; the building site across the road, like the Flirt office, was deserted. I went on to check out Patricia's back yard, which backed on to a tiny corner of scrubby public land. There was a bench right under her back wall. I clambered up to peer through the tangle of barbed wire. Before the gazumping, I'd planned to fill the yard with shrubs and creepers; Patricia had filled it with dirty milk bottles and an old kitchen cabinet. It was clear she had failed to exploit the property's full potential on the outside; now, letter or no letter, I wanted to see what she'd done to the inside. I climbed down and strolled back to the front door. There was no one around, but even if there had been they wouldn't have noticed me. I was an old hand at looking casual. I inserted my key, turned it, and stepped inside.

What little light there was came through the small panel of amber glass in the front door. I didn't much care for the way Patty had decorated the hall. The wallpaper was turquoise, and reminded me of the decor in a Tandoori restaurant. There was a framed reproduction of Rousseau's Sleeping Gypsy on the wall.

I stood for a while, ears straining, but apart from my own breathing the only sound was that of water dripping slowly off the bottom of my raincoat. I took it off and left it draped over the Rousseau. The first door led to the kitchen, where there were little jars of dried herbs and some recipe books on a shelf above the fridge. Hanging from some red plastic hooks were an apron with Supercook emblazoned across the front, an oven-glove shaped like a penguin, and a tea-towel decorated with characters from Mabel Lucie Atwell. It was all preternaturally tidy, except for a single unwashed mug — not at all like my kitchen, which was rarely without a sinkful of dirty crockery.