Linger Awhile

  ‘Unsimply,’ I said.

  ‘Can I have some of whatever you’re drinking?’

  ‘No vodka,’ I said, and gave her the Bowmore’s, a glass, and some water from the tap. ‘Cask strength,’ I said. ‘Be careful.’

  She mixed herself a drink, sampled it, and choked for a while. ‘What happens now?’ she said when she could speak.

  ‘With what?’ I said. ‘With whom?’

  ‘With you and your OAP totty. Does she make you feel young again?’

  ‘That’s not quite how I’d put it, Grace.’

  ‘That’s where you’d put it, though.’

  ‘Grace, where is all this anger coming from? It’s not as if you and I are an old married couple.’

  ‘That’s right, we’re nothing really, are we.’ She finished her drink, choked some more, and went out, slamming the door.

  11

  Chauncey Lim

  9 January 2004. I saw Justine Trimble commit murder last night. I’d been keeping an eye on Fallok’s place when I saw her come out. In full colour, which was startling. After reaching the street she leaned against a building for a few minutes, and then a woman who was passing spoke to her. Suddenly, before you could say ‘Chow Yun Fat’, Justine had the other woman in a close embrace. They stayed like that for perhaps ten minutes; then the other woman slumped to the street and Justine picked her up, slung her over her shoulder, carried her about half-way down the block, went down some area steps with her, came back up without her and walked away.

  I hurried to where she’d left her victim. The woman was young and pretty, white as a sheet and stone-cold dead. Very sad but there was nothing I could do for her so I hurried after Justine. I followed her up Marshall to Great Marlborough Street where she took off her anorak and stuffed it into a dustbin. I retrieved it because you never know. I followed Justine as far as Oxford Street but there I lost her in the crowd. I took no further action because Rightnow is a good dog but Notyet is a safer bet.

  10 January 2004. Next day I still hadn’t worked out my next move so I went up to Golders Green hoping for inspiration from Rosalie Chun at Elijah’s Lucky Dragon. ‘My goodness, Chaunce,’ she said, ‘you look as if you’ve seen the Malach ha-Mavet.’

  ‘Who’s that when he’s at home?’ I said.

  ‘The Angel of Death.’

  ‘That’s pretty close to the mark. I think I need something strong, Rosalie.’

  ‘You got it, bro. I’m giving you cheese blintzes Jackie Chan with special kick-ass cottage cheese. If I tell you the secret ingredient I’ll have to kill you, so don’t ask.’

  ‘Who’s asking?’ I said. ‘Just lay them on me.’

  Rosalie does not make exaggerated claims for her food. The blintzes put new heart into me but I still wasn’t sure what my next move should be. I’d seen what I’d seen, and Justine had definitely offed someone. Should I turn her in? I’m ashamed to say that if Justine had been ugly I’d probably have acted as a good citizen should. But she wasn’t ugly, she was adorable-looking, and I didn’t want to think of her behind bars. ‘Rosalie,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a moral question,’ I said, ‘involving someone I know.’

  ‘This is something big, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Talk to Elijah,’ said Rosalie. ‘Moral, financial, whatever, Elijah’s your man.’

  ‘You mean the prophet Elijah?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  ‘He took off for heaven in a chariot of fire,’ I said. ‘Surely he’s retired now?’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ said Rosalie. ‘You know why this restaurant is called Elijah’s Lucky Dragon?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘It was The Lucky Dragon before I owned it but it wasn’t lucky. Back in 1982 the owner wanted to sell it for 150,000 pounds. I had 4,000 in savings but I couldn’t get a mortgage for the rest. This was before I was married. Elijah appeared to me in a dream, he looked like a tramp. “Is that you?” I said. “You were looking for someone else?” he said. “No,” I said, “you’re the one I want.” “Good,” he said, “call it Elijah’s and it’ll be lucky.”“Call what?” I said.“The restaurant you’re buying,” he said. “Who’s buying?” I said. “I haven’t got the money.”“You’ll have,” he said,“you’ll buy, and you’ll put my name on the sign so it’ll be Elijah’s Lucky Dragon, OK?” “OK,” I said. “Now what?” “Who knows?” he said, “But you can bet your arse on Elijah, I was always a fast runner.” I woke up and looked in the paper and it was the Grand National that day. There was no horse called Elijah but I found First Kings at a hundred to one so I got my 4,000 out of the bank and went to Ladbrokes and put it on First Kings to win.

  ‘There was a man standing behind me at the window, shorter than me and Chinese. I could tell that he liked my looks. “Who’d you bet on?” he said. “First Kings,” I said. “First Kings is a hundred to one,” he said, “you’re a plunger.” “The name excites me,” I said. He nodded as if he understood that. “Same odds as Foinavon when he won it in sixty-seven,’ he said. ‘How much did you bet?” “Four thousand,” I said. “I think you’re lucky,” he said, “so I’ll do the same, and if we win let’s go somewhere for drinks and dinner.” First Kings finished first and we won 800,000 pounds between us, Lester Chun and I. We had dinner at Mr Chow and Lester said, “What shall we do with all this money?”’

  Rosalie looked around at the dining room. ‘This is what we did with some of it,’ she said. ‘Elijah done good for us.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘but does he take on non-Jewish clients?’

  ‘Elijah is a stranger himself,’ said Rosalie, ‘so he’s always ready to help a stranger. What’ve you got to lose?’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I’ll try for an Elijah dream.’ I wasn’t expecting anything to happen very soon but on the way home I fell asleep on the train and dreamt that it was raining and I was standing under a bridge. Another man came in out of the rain, he looked like a homeless person. ‘I wasn’t expecting rain this week,’ he said.

  ‘Are you Elijah?’ I said.

  ‘Who wants to know?’ he said.

  ‘I’m Chauncey Lim,’ I said. ‘Rosalie Chun’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘You don’t look Jewish,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not,’ I said, ‘but I’m a stranger and I’ve got a question.’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What’s your question?’

  When I told him, he said, ‘Nobody likes a snitch, Chaunce.’

  ‘So I shouldn’t tell the police?’

  ‘I’ll have to think about this, OK? Leave it with me.’

  Well, I thought as I woke up, that’s one less decision to make.

  12

  Detective Inspector Hunter

  9 January 2004. When I arrive at the scene of a homicide the usual Scene of Crime crowd are standing around waiting for me to say something and it gets harder and harder to say anything original. Almost everything has been said before, a lot of it in films. By now I could mime the words while a soundtrack says them. Right, so I got called to this Euston crime scene at 02:25 because the medical examiner, Harrison Burke, was all excited about the case. When I got there it was all flashing lights and yellow tape and I stood looking down at the body and thinking how sad it was that her young life had been taken from her. ‘Any witnesses?’ I said, knowing there wouldn’t be. There weren’t. Then Burke said one of those Hammer Horror film lines: ‘There is absolutely no blood in this body, and look at those bite marks on the neck.’

  ‘Burke,’ I said in my best DI voice, ‘are you saying what I think you’re saying?’

  ‘What do you think I’m saying?’ he said.

  ‘That all the blood in this body has been sucked out through the holes in the neck?’

  ‘That’s pretty much it, John. You got it in one.’

  ‘I don’t want this part of it to be leaked to the press,’ I said.

  ‘There’s
nothing left to leak,’ he said, having his little joke. ‘They’ve already done the photos, and if you’re all through here I’ll get back to the lab and make my report tomorrow.’

  ‘Any ID?’ I said to the sergeant who’d been first on the scene.

  ‘Only this,’ he said, and gave me an electricity bill, ‘and keys in her pocket. No wallet, no handbag.’ The bill was to Rose Harland at an address in Beak Street. A couple of detectives had already been round there and they reported that she lived alone and had moved in about two months ago. The neighbours didn’t know anything about her except that she was very quiet, always had a smile, and seemed to have no fixed hours for her comings and goings.

  The sadness of Rose Harland’s death was depressing me. ‘I hope this is a one-off and not the beginning of something really ugly,’ I said, half to myself.

  Burke stopped packing up his gear and gave me a long look. ‘Come on, John,’ he said, ‘you’ve seen enough movies to know better than that. We’re talking garlic-on-windows time here.’

  ‘Maybe you are,’ I said, ‘but I’m not getting ready to sharpen any stakes yet. There are all kinds of cultists and wannabes running around and they get up to all kinds of things.’

  ‘Indeed they do, and I’m betting that we’ll have another case like this before too long.’

  ‘You always expect the worst, Harry.’

  ‘And that’s what I generally get. I’m off. See you around.’

  I looked at Rose Harland’s face again just before they covered it and took her away. Her lips were slightly parted, as if for a kiss. Where did I remember that name from? ‘Rose Harland on her Sundays out … te-tum te-tum te-tum. Walked with the better man.’ Housman. She’ll never walk with anyone again, poor thing. What sort of a person could do this to her?

  I went on TV with an appeal for anyone who had seen her last night to come forward and tell us what they could. There were the usual useless calls but there was one from a woman who’d seen a young woman take off her anorak and drop it in a dustbin in Great Marlborough Street. ‘I thought it odd,’ she said, ‘because it was a cold night and she was left with only a shirt.’ You never know when a connection will pluck at your sleeve so I sent Sergeant Locke to Great Marlborough Street with two men. The dustbins hadn’t yet been emptied and they looked into all of them but found no anorak. There was a set of keys, however, on a keyring with a little torch bearing the name of Hermes Soundways in Dufour’s Place. I thought I might look in there later.

  While I was waiting for Locke’s report I went to Rose Harland’s flat in Beak Street above the red neon sign of the Soho Pizzeria. The sparsity of her possessions was unusual: very few clothes in the cupboard, one pair of shoes with medium heels, one pair of Adidas trainers; no letters, no diary; a Letts monthly tablet calendar on the wall with the days crossed off up to the day of her death, nothing written in the daily spaces; a copy of The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder and The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman. In the Housman there was a Post-it on page fifty-two and the last stanza of A Shropshire Lad XLVIII was bracketed:

  Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;

  All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all in vain:

  Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation –Oh why did I awake? When shall I sleep again?

  In The Bridge of San Luis Rey page 130 was flagged, ‘… in which Brother Juniper called upon St Francis and gave himself up to the flames.’ I stood there for a while with the two books in my hand. There was a slight fragrance in the room, not so much of perfume, I thought, as of Rose Harland herself.

  13

  Istvan Fallok

  9 January 2004. When I finally climbed into bed beside Justine after that eventful night I was tired but not sleepy. I lay there for a long time looking at her lying on her back and snoring. She was wearing my pyjamas and looked touchingly vulnerable. Her colour was wonderful although her breath stank. I don’t think she moved all night although I tossed and turned a lot. There wasn’t that much of the night left to get through and eventually a new day arrived although it felt more used than new.

  I went out for bagels and I made coffee when I got back. When I went upstairs Justine was sitting up in bed and rocking back and forth with her head in her hands. She looked up all wild-eyed when I came in. ‘Oh, please,’ she moaned, ‘let it all be a horrible dream! But it wasn’t a dream and I can taste the blood in my mouth. Why couldn’t you let me stay dead! What have you done? I’m a Frankenstein monster in cowboy boots.’

  ‘We have to get you some clothes,’ I said. ‘You can’t wear the same ones day after day and you’re kind of conspicuous in that outfit unless a rodeo comes to town.’

  ‘How could I do what I did!’ she went on. ‘She clung to me while I sucked the life out of her. Ugh! I’m a monster now and all I have to look forward to is more of the same, hunting night after night and coming home with blood in my mouth. Maybe I won’t do any more hunting and I’ll just die quietly. This is no kind of a life.’ She began to sob.

  ‘You were feeling pretty good about it last night,’ I said.

  She shook herself as if she could get it off her back. ‘That was some kind of vampire binge,’ she said. ‘It was all that blood that I drank so fast, it was the blood talking, not me.’ She managed to eat a toasted bagel and drink some black coffee without throwing up, and then she calmed down and settled into a quiet depression.

  I didn’t know how long she could go without a fresh supply of blood and I was dreading the next time she’d need some. Maybe I’d have to go with her to make sure she didn’t completely drain the victim. In the meantime I wasn’t returning phone calls and nothing was happening at Hermes Soundways except vampire work. Oh, to be back in my regular life where I’d get up in the morning looking forward to the day’s technical problems!

  14

  Chauncey Lim

  10 January 2004. When I turned up at Fallok’s place he said, ‘What?’

  ‘What indeed,’ I said. ‘That’s a very warm greeting for the guy who showed you how to reconstitute Justine Trimble.’

  ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it. What the hell kind of recipe did you use for Justine? I was there when she committed murder.’

  He looked as if he might pick up something heavy and beat me to death with it. ‘What are you going to do about it?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know. I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in.’

  ‘And what condition is it in?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’ve got this bloodstained anorak she left in a dustbin in Great Marlborough Street. The police are probably looking for it. Here, take it.’

  He took it, felt in all the pockets, shook his head and said, ‘Shit. No keys.’

  ‘The anorak is just as I found it,’ I said. ‘I didn’t take anything out of the pockets.’

  ‘Never mind. What do you want, Chauncey?’

  ‘First of all, I want to know what’s happening. After that it’s negotiable.’

  ‘You said you saw her commit murder. Did you see how she did it?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t close enough. I saw the other woman slump down but I didn’t know she was dead until I had a closer look.’

  ‘She was dead,’ said Istvan, ‘because Justine sucked all the blood out of her.’

  ‘Oh my God! You mean … ?’

  ‘That’s what I mean, Chaunce.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. From the seed of trouble grows the trouble tree. What now?’

  ‘You tell me. Are you in or out?’

  ‘In or out of what?’

  ‘Still fancy Justine?’

  ‘Crikey, I don’t know. This puts her in a whole new light. Or darkness, rather.’

  ‘Doesn’t it just! Do you want a piece of the action or not?’

  ‘You’ll have to be more explicit – I’m not up to speed on this.’

  ‘It’s like this, Chaunce: s
he’s already got a pint of my blood in her plus what she got on her own but she’ll need topping up from time to time and I’m going to have to subcontract some of the work. If you want to join the Justine club you’ll have to give her some of what it takes. Like the fellow said, “the blood is the life”.’

  ‘And in return?’

  ‘You get what you’ve been craving for. Justine is a treat to look at when she’s been haematologically refreshed and she’ll be very affectionate, I promise you.’

  ‘My God, you’re pimping for her.’

  ‘Needs must when the Devil drives, Chaunce. You can take the high moral ground or you can follow your heart.’

  ‘My heart, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Or whatever part is leading you. We’re talking pragmatism here.’

  ‘We certainly are, and I’m a little breathless from it.’

  ‘Perfectly understandable. Take your time, think about it: five, ten minutes, whatever. She’s young, she’s beautiful in full colour, she’s longing for what you’ve got.’

  ‘Is she here now? Could I see her?’

  ‘Absolutely. She’s just having a kip. She needs lots of rest.’

  He led the way to the bedroom and there she was, nude, only partly covered by the duvet. I looked at her shoulder, her beautiful bottom and the leg she stretched out. She rolled over, exposing her breasts, and opened her eyes. ‘Who’s this?’ she said.

  ‘This is Chauncey,’ said Istvan. ‘He’s going to be your new uncle if you treat him right.’

  ‘Hi, Chauncey,’ she said. ‘You look some livelier than Ish. Are you ready for a little uncle work?’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ I said.

  15

  Irving Goodman

  10 January 2004. Why do I so often have that left-out feeling? Because I’m so often left out, that’s why. The grown-up is only a thin coat of chocolate over the hard nut of the child. Whatever you were as a kid, you still are when the chocolate gets licked off or scraped off. When they used to choose up sides for baseball or any other game I was always left till the last.