The Rhythm Section

1

She’s a chemical blonde.

The carder was a stout skinhead in a Reebok track-suit who carried a canvas satchel stuffed with prostitutes’ advertising cards. Along Baker Street, he moved from phone-box to phone-box, sticking the cards to the glass with Blu-Tack. Keith Proctor watched him from a distance before approaching him. He showed him the scrap of card he’d been given by one of her friends and asked the man if he knew who she was. It cost fifty pounds to persuade the carder to talk. Yes, he knew who she was. No, she wasn’t one of his. He’d heard a rumour she was working in Soho.

On the fragment of dirty yellow card there was a photograph of a woman offering her breasts, plumping them between her hands. The bottom half of the card – the half with the phone number – was missing.

An hour later, Proctor hurried along Shaftesbury Avenue. The falling drizzle was so fine it hung in the air like mist but its wetness penetrated everything. Those who were heading across Cambridge Circus towards the Palace Theatre for the evening’s performance of Les Misérables looked suitably miserable, shoulders curved and heads bowed against the damp chill. The traffic on the Charing Cross Road was solid. Red tail lights shivered in puddles.

There was a cluster of four old-fashioned phone-boxes on Cambridge Circus. Proctor waited for five minutes for one of them to become free. As the heavy door swung behind him, muting the sound outside, he realized someone had been smoking in the phone-box. The smell of stale cigarettes was unpleasant but Proctor found himself grudgingly grateful for it since it mostly masked the underlying stench of urine.

Three sides of the phone-box were covered by prostitutes’ advertising cards. Proctor let his eyes roam over the selection. Some were photos, in colour or black and white, others were drawings. Some merely contained text, usually printed although, in a few cases, they had been scrawled by hand. They offered straight sex, oral sex, anal sex. They were redheads, blondes and brunettes. They were older women and they were teenagers. To the top of the phone-box, they were stacked like goods on a supermarket shelf. Black, Asian, Oriental, Scandinavian, Proctor saw specific nationalities singled out; ‘busty Dutch girl – only 21’, ‘Brazilian transsexual – new in town’, ‘Aussie babe for fun and games’, ‘German nymphomaniac, 19 – nothing refused’. One card proclaimed: ‘Mature woman – and proud of it! Forty-four’s not just my chest size – it’s my age!’

Proctor took the torn yellow card out of his pocket and scanned those in the phone-box. He made a match high to his left. The one on the wall was complete, the phone number running along the bottom half. He forced a twenty-pence piece into the slot and dialled.

A woman answered, her voice more weary than seductive.

‘I … I’m in a phone-box,’ Proctor stammered. ‘On … on Cambridge Circus.’

‘We’re in Brewer Street. Do you know it?’

‘Yes.’

‘The girl we’ve got on today is a real stunner. She’s called Lisa and she’s a blonde with a gorgeous figure and lovely long legs. She’s a genuine eighteen-year-old and her measurements are …’

Proctor felt deadened by the pitch.

‘It’s thirty pounds for a massage with hand-relief and her prices go up to eighty pounds for the full personal service. What was it you were looking for, darling?’

He had no answer at the ready. ‘I … I’m not sure …’

‘Well, why don’t you discuss it with the young lady in person?’

‘What?’

‘You can decide when you get here. When were you thinking of coming round?’

‘I don’t know. When would be …?’

‘She’s free now.’ Like a door-to-door salesman, she gave Proctor no time to think. ‘It’ll only take you five minutes to get here. Do you want the address?’

There were Christmas decorations draped across the roads and hanging from street lamps. They filled the windows of pubs and restaurants. Their crass brightness matched the gaudy lights of the sex shops. Proctor passed a young homeless couple, who were huddling in a shallow doorway, trying to keep dry, if not warm. They were sharing a can of Special Brew.

The address was opposite the Raymond Revuebar, between an Asian mini-market and a store peddling pornographic videos. The woman answered the intercom. ‘Top of the stairs.’

The hall was cramped and poorly lit. Broken bicycles and discarded furniture had been stored beneath the fragile staircase. Proctor felt a tightness in his stomach as he started to climb the stairs. On each landing there were either two or three front doors. None of them matched. Most were dilapidated, their hinges barely clinging to their rotting frames, rendering their locks redundant. On the third floor, though, he passed a new door. It was painted black and it was clear that a whole section of wall had been removed and rebuilt to accommodate it. It had three, gleaming, heavy-duty steel locks.

The door at the top of the staircase was held open by an obese woman in her fifties with tinted glasses. She wore Nike trainers, a pair of stretched grey leggings and a violet jersey, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. The flat was a converted attic. In a small sitting room, a large television dominated. On a broken beige sofa there was an open pizza carton; half the pizza was still in it. The woman steered Proctor into the room at the end.

‘You want something to drink, darling?’

‘No.’

‘All right, then. You wait here. She’ll be with you in a minute.’

She closed the door and Proctor was alone. There was a king-sized mattress on a low wooden frame. The bed-cover was dark green. On the mantelpiece, on the table in the far corner and on the two boxes that passed for bedside tables, there were old bottles of wine with candles protruding from their necks. On top of a chest of drawers there was a blue glass bowl with several dozen condoms in it. The room was hot and reeked of baby oil and cigarettes. Proctor walked over to the window, the naked floorboards creaking beneath his feet. Pulsing lights from the street tinted curtains so flimsy that he could almost see through them. He parted them and looked down upon the congested road below.

‘Looking for someone?’

He hadn’t heard her open the door. He turned round. She wore a crimson satin gown and when she turned to close the door, Proctor noticed a large dragon running down the back of it. The gown was open and beneath it, she wore black underwear, a suspender-belt and a pair of high-heeled shoes. Her hair was blonde – chemically blonde – but her dark roots were showing. It was shoulder-length and, even in the relative gloom, looked as though it could have been cleaner.

No trick of the light, however, could disguise her paleness, her thinness or her weariness. She had a frame for a fuller figure but she didn’t have the flesh for it. When she moved, her open gown parted further and, from across the room, Proctor could see her ribs corrugating her skin. Her face was made-up – peach cheeks, bloody lips and heavy eye-liner – but the rest of her body was utterly white, and when she smiled she only succeeded in looking tired. ‘My name’s Lisa. What’s yours?’

He ignored the question. ‘You don’t look like you do on the card.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t want to be walking down the street seeing myself in every phone-box I pass. And I don’t want people pointing at me because they’ve recognized me from my picture, do I?’

‘I guess not.’

She kept her distance and put a hand on her hip, revealing a little more of herself. ‘So, what do you want?’

Proctor’s hand was in his coat pocket. He felt the torn yellow card. ‘I just want to talk.’

Her cheap smile faded. ‘I don’t charge less than thirty for anything. And for that, you get a massage and hand-relief.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘I told you. Lisa.’

‘Is that your real name?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Is that a yes or a no?’

‘What’s it to you?’

‘I’d just like to know, that’s all.’

She paused for a moment. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you tell me? Who do you think I am? Lisa, or someone else?’

‘I think you’re someone else.’

‘Really?’ She smiled again but it failed to soften the hardness in her gaze. ‘Who?’

‘I think your real name might be … Stephanie.’ Not even a flinch. Proctor was disappointed. ‘Are you Stephanie?’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On your money. If I don’t see some, I’m nobody. If you just want to talk, that’s fine but it’ll still cost you thirty. I don’t do anything for free.’

Proctor reached for his wallet. ‘Thirty?’

She nodded. ‘Thirty. And for thirty, I’ll be Stephanie, or Lisa, or whoever you want.’

Proctor held three tens just out of her grasp. ‘Will you be yourself?’

She said nothing until he handed her the notes. And then, as she was folding them in half, she asked, ‘What are you doing here? What do you really want?’

‘The truth.’

‘I’m a prostitute, not a priest. There’s no truth here. Not from me, not from you.’ When Proctor frowned at this, she added: ‘When you get home this evening, are you going to tell your wife you went to see a hooker? That you paid her money?’

‘I’m not married.’

‘Your girlfriend, then. Anyone …’ Proctor didn’t need to say anything. ‘I thought not. So don’t come here and talk to me about the truth.’

Not only was her tone changing, so was her accent; south London was being displaced by something less readily identifiable. Just as her opening remarks had been laced with a dose of sleazy tease, now she was cold and direct.

Proctor was equally blunt. ‘I think your real name is Stephanie Patrick.’

This time, he knew he was right. The surname betrayed her and she froze, if only for a fraction of a second. He saw her try to shrug it off but he also saw that she knew he’d seen it.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

For the first time, she looked openly hostile. ‘Who are you?’

‘Your name is Stephanie Patrick, isn’t it?’

She looked down at the money in her fist and said, ‘Let me give this to the maid and then we’ll talk. Okay?’

It took Proctor a couple of seconds to realize that the ‘maid’ was the fat woman who had admitted him to the flat. ‘Okay.’

Lisa – for that was who she still seemed to be – turned away and left him alone in the room. When she returned, a couple of minutes later, she had transformed into a man who was six-foot-four and built like a weight-lifter. He had no neck, his huge shaven head merging with the grotesque bulges of his shoulder muscles. His white T-shirt was so tight it could have been body-paint.

He didn’t need to raise his voice when he pointed at Proctor and murmured, ‘You. Outside. Now.’

Proctor rolled over, vaguely aware of the soggy rubbish that was squashed beneath his body. The drizzle fell softly on to his stinging face. One eye was closing. Through the other, he saw two walls of blackened brick converging as they rose. He was in an alley of some sort and it stank.

The beating had been short, brutal and depressingly efficient; the administrator was clearly no novice. After a final kick to the ribs, he’d hissed a blunt warning: ‘If I ever see you here again, I’ll tear your fucking balls off. And that’s just for starters. Now piss off out of here.’

With that, a door had slammed shut and Proctor had been by himself, lying on a bed of rotting rubbish. For a while, he made no attempt to move. He lay on his back, his arms wrapped around his burning ribs. He tasted blood in his mouth.

He looked up and saw smudges of buttery light seeping from cracks in drawn curtains. And from a partially-opened window, he heard Bing Crosby crooning on a radio.

I’m dreaming of a White Christmas …

2

Proctor saw her before she saw him. He was standing in a restaurant doorway, trying to keep dry. The drizzle of the previous night had matured into real rain. When he glimpsed her, she was heading his way, so he retreated from view. Inside the restaurant, staff were preparing for lunch, placing tall wine glasses and small dishes of chilled butter on tables draped in starched white cloth.

He waited until she was close. ‘Lisa?’

She stopped but it took a moment for her to recognize him beneath his mask of bruises. Proctor raised his hands in surrender. ‘I don’t want any trouble. I just want to talk.’

She looked as though she would run. ‘Leave me alone,’ she hissed.

‘Please. It’s important.’

He saw the hardness in her gaze again. ‘Which part don’t you understand? Or maybe you just enjoy getting your head kicked in.’

‘No, I don’t. That’s why I waited for you here and not in Brewer Street.’

‘How’d you know I’d come this way?’

He shrugged. ‘I didn’t. But I guessed you didn’t live there so you’d be coming from somewhere else. And then I guessed you’d come on the Underground, not a bus. And since this is on the shortest route between the nearest station and Brewer Street …’

‘Smart,’ she said, flatly. ‘But I could’ve come another way. I often do.’

‘You could’ve. But you didn’t.’

According to Proctor’s information, Stephanie Patrick was twenty-two. The woman in front of him looked at least ten years older than that. Her dyed blonde hair was dishevelled and with her make-up removed, her face was as colourless as the rest of her. Except for the dark smudges around both eyes. But now, in the morning, they were natural, not cosmetic.

She wore a tatty, black, leather bomber-jacket over a grey sweatshirt. Her jeans were frayed at the knees and down the thighs; given the weather, this seemed more like a financial statement than one of fashion. Her blue canvas trainers were soaked.

‘How long have you been here?’ she asked him.

‘Since nine-thirty.’

She glanced at her plastic watch. It was after eleven. ‘You must be cold.’

‘And wet. And in pain.’

He saw a hint of a smile.

‘I can imagine. He’s not known for his subtlety. Just for his thoroughness.’ She examined Proctor’s face. ‘You look like shit.’

Proctor hadn’t slept. When the paracetamol had failed, he’d resorted to alcoholic painkiller, which had also failed. And not being a seasoned drinker, the experience had left him with a hangover to compound his misery. His body was peppered with bruises, his left eye was badly swollen, his ribs ached with every breath and his right ankle, which had been twisted on the stairs, was aflame.

‘Look, if you’re not going to talk to me, fine. But let me ask you one question. Are you or are you not Stephanie Patrick, daughter of Dr Andrew Patrick and Monica Patrick?’

He needed to hear the answer that he already knew. She took her time.

‘First, who are you?’

‘My name is Keith Proctor.’

‘Why are you asking me these things?’

‘It’s part of my job.’

‘Which is what?’

‘I’m a journalist.’ Predictably, she grew yet more defensive, her posture betraying her silence. Proctor said, ‘Your parents were on the North Eastern Airlines flight that crashed into the Atlantic two years ago. So were your sister and your younger brother.’

He watched her run through the phrases in her mind before she chose one. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you. Leave me alone. Leave it alone.’

‘Believe me, I’d like to. But I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because it wasn’t an accident.’

The bait was cast and she considered it for a moment. Before ignoring it. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I don’t expect you to. Not yet. Not until you’ve given me a chance.’ She shook her head but Proctor persisted. ‘I need a cup of coffee, Miss Patrick. Will you let me buy you one, too? I’ll pay for your time.’

‘People pay me for my body, not my time.’

‘They pay for both. Come on. Just one cup of coffee.’

Bar Bruno, on the corner of Wardour Street and Peter Street, was half-full. It offered fried breakfasts all day. There was a large Coke vending machine just inside the door. Behind a long glass counter, sandwich fillings were displayed in dishes. The table-tops looked like wood but weren’t. The banquettes were covered in shiny green plastic.

They ordered coffee and sat at the back where there were fewer people. Stephanie wriggled out of her leather jacket and dumped it beside her. Proctor’s eyes were immediately drawn to her wrists. Both were seriously bruised. She looked as if she was wearing purple handcuffs. They hadn’t been there the previous night; he was sure he would have noticed. She saw him looking at them.

‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she snapped.

‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk. Have you looked in a mirror this morning?’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’

Momentarily angry, she thrust both wrists in front of Proctor’s face for closer inspection. ‘You want to know what this is? It’s an occasional occupational hazard, that’s what it is.’ Then she was calm and stirring sugar into her milky coffee, before changing the subject. ‘Have you got any cigarettes on you?’

‘I don’t smoke.’

‘I didn’t think so, but you never know until you ask.’ Proctor watched her produce a packet of her own from her jacket pocket. She lit one and dropped the dead match on her saucer. ‘So, you’re a journalist.’

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t look like one.’

‘I didn’t realize there was a look.’

‘I’m not saying there is. I’m talking about the way you look. Good haircut, nice suit, expensive shoes and clear skin – apart from the bruises, of course. You look like you take care of yourself.’

‘I try to.’

‘Who do you work for?’

‘I’m freelance. But I used to work for The Independent and then the Financial Times.’

‘Impressive.’

‘Not to you, I shouldn’t think.’

Stephanie took a sip of coffee. ‘You haven’t a clue what I think.’

More than anything, she looked nervous, despite the aggression in her small talk. She fidgeted incessantly and her eyes never settled on anything. Proctor took a sip of his own coffee and grimaced.

‘Your parents were murdered,’ he said for effect. She seemed oblivious, as though she hadn’t even heard him. ‘Along with everyone else on that flight.’

‘That’s not true. There was an investigation –’

‘Faulty electrics in the belly of the aircraft which produced a spark igniting aviation fuel fumes, causing the first of two catastrophic explosions? I read the FAA and CAA findings like everyone else. And until recently, I believed them. Everyone believed them. And, as a consequence of that, some of the electrical systems on some of the older 747s were changed. Problem addressed, problem solved. Except it wasn’t. The problem’s still out there, walking around with a pulse, a brain and a name.’

Her look said it all. You’re either crazy or you’re stupid. Proctor leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘It was a bomb that destroyed that aircraft. It wasn’t an accident.’

He waited for the reaction; a gasp of shock, or a denial, or something else. Instead, he got nothing. Stephanie picked at her fingernails and he noticed how dirty they were. And cracked. Her fingertips looked raw.

‘How much money have you got on you?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘Cash. How much have you got on you?’

‘I don’t know.’

She looked up to meet his eyes. ‘I need money and you said you’d pay me.’

Proctor was at sea. ‘Look, I’m trying to explain to you –’

‘I know. But I need this money now.’

‘Aren’t you interested?’

‘Are you going to give it to me or not? Because if you’re not, I’m leaving.’

‘I paid you thirty last night and look what it bought me.’

She stood up and picked up her jacket.

To buy himself time, Proctor reached for his wallet again. ‘There was a bomb on that flight. The authorities know this but they’re keeping it secret.’

Stephanie sounded bored. ‘You reckon?’

‘They even know who planted it.’

‘Right.’ Her eyes were on the wallet.

‘He’s alive and he’s here, in London. But they’re making no attempt to apprehend him.’

She held out her hand. ‘Whatever you say.’

Proctor gave her two twenties. ‘I don’t get it. This is your family we’re talking about, not mine.’

‘Forty? I need a hundred. Seventy-five, at least.’

Proctor gave a cough of bitter laughter. ‘For what? Your time? Do me a favour …’

‘Bastard.’

He reached across the table and grabbed a purple wrist. She winced but he didn’t loosen his grip. With his other hand, he pressed a business card on to the two twenties and then closed her cold fingers over it. ‘Why don’t you go home and think about it, and then give me a call?’

She stared him down with a face as full of hatred as any he had ever seen. ‘Let go of me.’

I am difficult. I always have been and I always will be. I’m not proud of it but I’m not ashamed of it, either. It’s just the way I am, it’s my nature. In the past, I was aggressively difficult – sometimes out of pure malice – but these days, I would say that I am difficult in a more defensive way. It’s a form of protection.

Proctor was wrong when he accused me of not listening. I listen to everything. I just don’t absorb much. I am like a stone; a product of molten heat turned cold and hard. Yes, we were talking about my family. But the four that are dead cannot be retrieved – nor, for that matter, can the one that still lives – and that is all there is to it.

So as I walk along Wardour Street leaving Bar Bruno behind me, I don’t think about Keith Proctor. I am not interested in his conspiracy theories. I think about the hours ahead and those who will come to see me. The regulars and the strangers. And the one who left these bands of bruising around both my wrists last night. I doubt a man like Proctor could understand how I accept that and then return the following day to run the risk of receiving the same treatment. Or something even worse. The truth is, it’s not so hard. Not any more. I live alone inside a fortress of my own construction. Physical pain means nothing to me.