‘How come you look so dapper?’
‘Got to, guv. We’re the establishment, got to make an impression.’
Roberts should have known better than to expect coherence but he persisted:
‘And what? You keep a change of clothes here?’
‘Like the song goes, “wherever I lay my hat”.’
Roberts found his clothes and they were fucked: traces of vomit and ash on them. He looked at Brant, asked:
‘Any chance you’d have something I could wear?’
“Course.’
Brant disappeared and a few seconds later returned with a white tracksuit, its gold logo reading:
‘I’m the business.’
Roberts said:
‘Tell me you’re kidding?’
‘It’s that or the ruined suit, guv.’
Roberts headed for the bathroom, got in the shower, turned it to scalding and steamed for five minutes. What it did was wake up his hangover, which had been in a semiholding phase.
Not any more.
It was up on its hind legs and howling. He checked his reflection in the mirror, bad idea. Red eyes, white stubble and he thought:
How’d I get to be a wino?
Searching around, he found a lady-razor and hacked at the bristles… which hurt like a son of a bitch. There was a pounding on the door and he shouted:
‘Jesus, give me a goddamn minute.’
You hung with Irish people, you ended up swearing like them. Brant, sounding highly amused, said:
‘A minute you don’t get… Porter is down.’
Roberts pulled on the lurid tracksuit and grabbed at a perfume bottle, splashed a sample of the contents on to his face. Big mistake, it burned like the fires of hell and he had to bite his lip to keep from crying out.
He checked the name: POISON
Roberts opened the door and Brant handed him a mug of steaming tea, said:
‘Get that in you.’
He gulped it and the heat lit the roof of his mouth.
He asked:
‘Is Porter shot?’
‘No, heart attack. Seemingly there was another bomb and the guy called in. Porter lost it and gave himself the big one.’
Roberts was getting too much information and the Poison fumes were enveloping him. He tried to focus, said:
‘Slow down, Brant, give it to me as it went down.’
Brant lit a cig, wrinkled his nose from the perfume or the smoke, or both, answered:
‘There was a bomb, last night or this morning. I’m hazy there — the same MO so it’s our boys all right. Then they phoned and Porter got het up, you know how fags get, and wallop, his ticker took him down. He’s at St Thomas’ and the shit has really hit the fan as the Super’s on the warpath. He wants to know where the hell we are.’
Roberts ran the events of the night in his head, then asked:
‘They’re still watching the left luggage place, tell me they haven’t fucked that up?’
‘As far as I know, guv.’
Roberts drank more of the tea. The strangest thing was happening: he was beginning to feel better. How could that be?’
He stared at Brant who had an enigmatic smile and asked:
‘I feel a whole lot better, how could that be?’
Brant shrugged his shoulders and the hooker gave a knowing wink. Roberts smelled the tea — it was different, almost minty. The penny dropped and he snarled:
‘You shithead, you spiked it, didn’t you?’
‘Yo, guv, time to wake up, join the revolution. You couldn’t show up hung-over, could you?’
Roberts slung the tea across the room and the hooker said:
‘Hey, the carpet.’
Roberts grabbed Brant’s shoulder, always a dodgy move as Brant was not one to handle, said:
‘I need help, I’ll ask for it, you got that, Sergeant?’
‘We better get a move on. The Super’11 be at the station.’
As they took their leave, the hooker handed Roberts a plastic bag and he looked the question at her. She raised her eyebrows, said:
‘So I gave your gear a spin in the machine, just dry them and you’re in biz.’
He was strangely touched and for a moment nearly put out his hand, but shaking hands with a hooker is not in God’s scheme of things. He said:
‘Thank you.’
She beamed; men showing gratitude was not a common event and said:
‘My cellphone number is in there. You get frisky, you give me a call, ask for Shirl.’
They were at the door now and Brant said:
‘That’s it?’
‘What?’
‘You say thanks!’
Roberts, as per usual, was lost in the myriad turns of Brant’s mind. Near shouted:
‘What, you want me to send her flowers?’
Brant, who almost never showed his impatience with his boss, threw his hands up, said:
‘You think they live on goodwill, on fucking food stamps? She needs paying.’
Roberts was flustered, fumbled for the right words, then:
‘But didn’t you do that? I mean, I thought you were their guest, the party was for you, as a return for some shady favour you did.’
Brant was hailing a taxi and said:
‘Of all people, you know there’s no such thing as a free lunch. How’s it gonna be when you call her? She’ll think, Oh, here’s that cheapskate again.’
They got in the cab and Brant said to the driver:
‘Waterloo station and before Friday.’
The driver, not long out of Bosnia, knew cops by smell and didn’t argue. He also didn’t turn on the meter. An ikon of the Black Madonna and worry beads hung from his mirror with a large sign thanking customers for not smoking. Brant lit up and Roberts had to know, asked:
‘How much should I have given?’
‘How good a time did you have?’
‘I dunno.’
‘You should have given large, like you obviously did last night. Double up when you see her.’
Roberts waved away the cig smoke and said with indignation, a difficult move to pull off when you’re wearing a tracksuit that P-Daddy would shun:
‘I won’t be calling her. Jesus, are you crazy?’
Brant smiled, said:
“Course you will, you just don’t know it yet.’
18
Waterloo Station was chaotic. Most of the end platforms were sealed off; the bomb damage, though minor, looked dramatic. Superintendent Brown, surrounded by cops, was giving it large.
His face turned purple as Roberts and Brant approached. Roberts’ tracksuit seemed to glow against the dark police uniforms.
Brown shouted:
‘What the hell are you wearing?’
Brant said:
‘We had a lead, sir, and the Chief Inspector felt a disguise was called for.’
The Super glared, snapped:
‘Did I ask you, Sergeant?’
Roberts, going with the flow, said:
‘We thought we had them but it turned out to be a drug thing.’
Brown, not believing a word, said:
‘And… the disguise? You couldn’t bear to part with it… is that it?’
‘No time, sir. As soon as we heard about the explosion, we rushed over.’
Brant enjoying the nonsense, asked:
‘How is Porter Nash?’
It seemed to take Brown a physical act of will to dredge up who that was, then:
‘How the bloody hell would I know? Nobody tells me anything.’
PC McDonald, on the outs for a long time, tried to gain some brownies, said:
‘WPC Falls is with him.’
The Super rounded on him.
‘That’s supposed to be some sort of reassurance, is it? A nigger visiting a pooftah. Christ, the Force is gone down the shitter.’
The Tabloid’s chief crime guy was called Dunphy. He’d recently shone in a serial cop-killing saga. He was home sick with a strep throat. His sidekick, named Malone, was filling in. When Roberts and Brant had arrived, he’d switched on his DAT-recorder. He knew those guys were always gold, he couldn’t believe his luck. Moving back slowly, he slipped away, got out his cellphone. Thought: Dunphy, you prick, you are history. This story would make his career, he could already envisage the headline: