20 Sunday 6 August
I’ve come on in the night. Blood on my pants. They’re the ones I like, big old-fashioned cotton knickers which no punter has ever seen. I’m in the bathroom with a Tampax, and I hear the flat door open.
“Fuck, Jazz, you nearly gave me a cardiac. I thought you were coming back tomorrow.”
“Sorry, Holly. My God, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” She can see me, standing side-on to her, through the bathroom door. I look sideways in the opposite direction, to see my reflection, the profile of my body in the mirror. I don’t recognise the person staring at me. The bones seem to show through the skin of my face. I think: a scraggy old whore. My body looks horribly pale, and my flesh has a sheen, almost like one of those greeny glow-in-the-dark things. My boobs seem to sag, like I’m an old woman. The lumps on my spine stand out in a wiggly line: I’ve never seen that before, or noticed it, anyway. Skin stretched on a skeleton.
I put my pyjamas back on, come out of the bathroom, lie on the sofa. Jazz comes over, slides in underneath me to sit on the sofa, I lie across her lap, she cradles me, strokes my face, my hair. I tell her everything. No tears; I seem to have gone past any stage of crying. I just tell her the facts. And as I talk, I start to feel a tiny bit like a human being again. Like the person I once was. I settle my head back against her arm.
“Coffee?”
I’m suddenly awake.
“It’s midday. You’ve slept all morning, love.”
“And you – were stuck there, under me.”
“A pleasure. Have you got any punters today?”
“None.”
“Neither have I. Or rather, I had one, but I’ve cancelled him. Mr Khan, he was happy to rearrange. Because my priority today is looking after you.” And that’s what she does. I lie in bed all afternoon. Jazz bakes my some shortbread, my favourites, brings them in on a tray for me, like I’m in a hotel. Mid-evening I get up, she makes me some food, we sit, without talking. I feel time has stopped and I take each moment as it comes. Sit for a while, drink coffee, sit some more. Twilight. Jazz potters about. Then she picks something up off the sofa. “Time for bed, I think. But by the way, what’s this? It has your writing on it.”
She holds up the serviette from the Savoy, which I must have left on the sofa when I came in, after seeing Krasniqi die. I guess I was lying on it, all morning while she held me.
““Peter Gint.” Is that someone you know, Hol?”
“It’s not a punter, that’s for sure. Just someone that a woman mentioned, I wrote it down but I’m not sure of the spelling, have you ever heard of him?”
“Could she mean Peer Gynt – P-E-E-R G-Y-N-T?”
“Possibly. I didn’t ask how to spell it.”
While Jazz makes me a coffee, I get dressed, then I google Peer Gynt. I read the Wikipedia entry “a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. Written in the Bokmål dialect of Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed...” I read on, but it’s not helping me. It says that Ibsen said “The conception of poetry in our country, in Norway, shall shape itself according to this book.” None of this means anything to me. I want to know about what a real-life Pe(t)er Gynt might be like. And then I see this –
“THE LEGEND OF PEER GYNT – Librarylibrary.thinkquest.org/12924/nr3.htm?Cached
There once was a little boy named Peer Gynt. He was a bad boy. He stole things, played tricks, and never helped his mother. Everybody hated Peer Gynt.”
OK. Maybe this is what Elspeth was driving at. I call through to the kitchen.
“Jazz, do you know about that name you said? About Peer Gynt?”
“Yes, it’s an opera. By Grieg. Edward Grieg, the Norwegian composer.”
“It says here it’s a play. By someone called Ibsen?”
“Yes, Ibsen wrote the words, I think, and Grieg did the music.”
“So what was he like, this Peer Gynt? The character, I mean.”
“Well, as I recall, he doesn’t have the courage to ask this girl Solveig to marry him. So he sets off around the world and has lots of adventures, but really he is always trying to get back to her.”
“Oh. That doesn’t really make much sense.” I’m pondering now, and I don’t hear Jazz’s answer. I hear her call “Toast Hol?” and I say Yes. After a while I shout “Is Peer Gynt the same as Peter Gynt? Could there be another character called Peter Gynt?”
“There’s a Peter Quint, if that’s what you’re wondering. What is this?”
“I just want to know about that character, really. What would it mean if someone was described as a ‘real-life Peter Quint’?
“I’m not sure… But you can check for yourself, if you like. Look on my bookshelf, you’ll see a book there, The Portable Henry James. Look in it, there is a story called The Turn of the Screw.”
Jazz goes out, and I’m left alone with this book, the last thing I’d want to read, usually. All the stories look very wordy and off-putting. I wish I knew why people read this stuff... or write it. And then suddenly I stumble on this conversation. And I race through, picking up bits of the conversation. Because it breaks in on me that this is it, the key to that clinic place and what they do. And it was sitting here on Jazz’s bookshelf the whole time.
““Well,” I said, “I’ve been frightened. An extraordinary man. Looking in.”
“Have you seen him before?”
“Yes – once. On the old tower.”
“You’ve seen him nowhere but on the tower?”
“And on this spot just now.”
Mrs. Grose looked round again. “Was he a gentleman?”
I found I had no need to think. “No.”
“But if he isn’t a gentleman – ”
“What is he? He’s a horror.”
“A horror?”
“He’s – God help me if I know what he is!”
I spoke boldly. “I’m afraid of him... never – no, never! – a gentleman.”
My companion’s face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. “A gentleman?” she gasped, confounded, stupefied: “a gentleman he?”
“You know him then?”
She visibly tried to hold herself. “Quint!” she cried.
“Quint?”
“Peter Quint”.”
I hear Jazz’s voice. “Holly, there’s a police car pulling up.”
I run over to the window. I can see the police car, bright splodges of blue and yellow. But beyond it, on the other side of the street, I see another car I know.
“Jazz, have you see that other car before? The black Audi A6?”
“No. Could belong to a drug dealer” she jokes.
I can see the outline of two heads, thick-set, in the two front seats of the Audi. I hear Jazz open the door, the police coming it. That is, three people come in. Rainbow. Simmonds. And Ruby.
Rainbow speaks. “Miss Holly Harlow, I’m here to arrest you...”
I’m getting my little clutch bag and my jacket, like I’m going out to the shops. I’m listening but not taking it in. Then I start to shake. Jazz holds me, I’m shivering uncontrollably but I don’t know why. The room seems like it’s moving around me, not swirling this time but everything seems to be shaking and pushing out at me, like there are snakes wriggling behind the wallpaper, breaking out, moving towards me.
I say the one thing they need to know, now. “There – are – gangsters – outside. On this street. Look out of the front window. Black Audi. They killed Krasniqi. I think they killed Wycherley too.”
“Come into the car, Miss Harlow. We’re going to the station.”
“No, no. You must listen. They’re here. They’re parked across the street right now. They are going to kill me.”
Rainbow’s humouring me, he smiles. “They won’t kill you if you’re with us.”
“Arrest them. Just fucking arrest them!”
I pull away from Jazz, I want to point out of the window at the car, but S
immonds moves over and grabs my arm.
“Off me, you cow.” I wrestle out of her grasp and then I feel another, stronger grip grasp my wrist. I turn on Rainbow and grab his hand, pull his fingers like I want to peel them off me one by one. Simmonds has got my shoulders now, is pushing me down. I lurch against her but my thigh hits the edge of the sofa, I’m off balance, I slip and I’m on the floor. With Simmonds on top of me.
I’m picturing a girl-on-girl uniform-porn photo I once saw on GirlsDirect. ‘Resisting arrest’ it was entitled. Well, I’m acting it out for real now. I look up at a ring of faces; Rainbow, Jazz, Ruby, who’s holding my clutch bag, and in-my-face, Simmonds, who breathes on me. Smelly.
As they lead me down the stairs, onto the street, I point again, even though I know it’s idiocy to draw the attention of those two guys in the Audi. As they’re putting me in the car, I struggle again, and Ruby helps hold me so that they can stuff me into the back seat, Simmonds’ hands clamped round my head so I don’t smash it against the car door. As I’m pushed into the car I feel I’m being pushed into a black hole: absolute panic. I wrestle and writhe, I try to bite Simmonds’ fingers, I scream, I go rigid across the back seats, then I start kicking out at them. They get the door shut. Simmonds now has the job of getting in the back with me. She opens the other door, grips my calves, starts to move my legs out of her way so she can sit down. My clutch bag falls on the floor of the car and pops open. And both Simmonds and I are looking at a small, clear plastic packet hidden inside it. A packet of white powder.
I sit up. I even do my own seat belt. My fate is inevitable, and the fear of seeing Gimp Man and his mate again has made me almost glad to be with the cops.