Daily Routine Orders 7
It’s like parachuting. Get the first jump over and it becomes routine, but you mustn’t get complacent. Check your equipment every time. Run through procedures. Know what’s what. Don’t fall into any traps.
There’s a trap serial killers fall into, namely, the trap of pattern. There’s something the same about each of their killings, and this tells the law that it’s the same person doing them. It also helps the police by saying something about the killer. For example, if all his victims are Mexican they know they’re probably looking for a bloke who hates Mexicans. If all the bodies are found in underground stations, they’re after someone who hangs around underground stations. It’s a trap, see? A trap of the killer’s own making, because it narrows the field.
I’ve got to be particularly careful about this. I can’t help making a pattern, because all of my clients are dossers. Bound to be. Of course, they’re not going to find bodies, in underground stations or anywhere else. I’m not that daft. But there is this unavoidable pattern, so what I have to do is create as much variety as possible without straying beyond the borders of my appointed task.
Last night’s piece of business differed from its predecessor in several respects. For one thing, my client was a female. I didn’t select her because I like women, or because I hate them. I can take them or leave them, as a matter of fact. I chose her because the last one was a male, that’s all. And I didn’t pick her up by Camden tube, because that’s another pattern. I rode down to Piccadilly Circus and strolled round Soho, and I spotted her coming out of the Regent Palace. Manky, she was – you could see the grime on her neck from across the road – and there she was, stepping out of the hotel like a bleeding duchess or something. She’d sneaked in to use the toilet of course, but how she’d got past security I don’t know. Anyway, I let her get a little way down the road before tapping her on the shoulder.
‘Excuse me.’ She spun round.
‘Y-yes?’
‘Hotel Security,’ I snapped. ‘Regent Palace.’ Well. I looked the part in my suit and trenchcoat. ‘You were in the hotel just now, weren’t you?’
She nodded. There was a look in her eyes like a hunted animal. ‘Yes. I went to the toilet. Why?’
‘There’s been a series of thefts. I’m afraid I must ask you to return with me to the hotel.’
‘Thefts?’ She looked desperate. ‘I don’t know anything about thefts. I told you – I needed the toilet. I was only there for a minute.’ Poor cow. Looking as she did, she must have stuck out like a sore thumb in there. She wouldn’t have lasted long enough to commit theft.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but you must come with me and answer some questions. It won’t take long.’
‘Oh, God!’ She bit her lip. ‘Look – I’m in enough trouble as it is. I’m homeless, I have no job and no money. I’ve nothing on me. Can’t you just search me or something and let me go?’
She was close to tears, as they say in the bodice-rippers. I judged it was time to pull my master stroke. I eyed her up and down, speculatively. ‘Hmm. Wouldn’t mind searching you, at that,’ I purred. ‘Homeless, you say?’
She nodded. I could see the dawn of hope in her eyes.
‘Nasty night too. How’d you fancy spending it in a cosy flat?’ I was brilliant. ‘Nice warm bed?’
‘What d’you mean?’ She knew what I meant. I smiled and she said, ‘You mean you want me to – ?’
I shrugged. ‘It was just a thought, petal. You get off the hook as a suspect and I get –’ I smiled again.
She hesitated, but it didn’t take her long to see how poor her alternatives were. She probably believed I’d fit her up on a theft charge if she opted to come the puritan. She nodded, looking down, and mumbled ‘Okay.’
The rest was simple. Taxi back to my place. Sappho. Dry clothing. Tomato soup. Eternal oblivion.
They look so sweet, the two of them side by side, that I keep going down for another look. I must be getting soft.
I trudged along Pentonville Road, peering into doorways and the entrances to office blocks. My left wrist felt naked without the watch and I added the Scouser to my hit list. Rat-face and the Scouser. I was going to turn into a serial killer if I went on at this rate.
After a bit I came to a doorway which was both deep and unoccupied. I dodged into it and stood there, wondering whether I dare doss down. What if this was somebody’s bedroom too? Somebody big, like the Scouser? Suppose he showed up and took a fancy to my pack, my bedroll, and demanded them? Or he might just knife me and take them. On the other hand it was now pretty late, though of course I didn’t know what time exactly. Surely, I told myself, if somebody dossed here regularly he’d be here by now? Anyway, I was dead tired. I had to get my head down somewhere, and wherever I went there was going to be this same doubt. So.
I’d just wriggled into my sleeping bag and dropped my head on my pack when he arrived. I heard these footsteps and thought, keep going. Go past. Please go past, but he didn’t. The footsteps stopped and I knew he was looking down at me. I opened my eyes. He was just a shadow framed in the doorway. ‘This your place?’ I croaked. Stupid question. He was going to say yes even if it wasn’t, right? What I should have said was piss off. I wondered how big he was.
‘No, you’re right, mate.’ He sounded laid back, amiable. ‘Just shove up a bit so I can spread my roll.’ I obliged and he settled himself beside me, so close we were almost touching. It felt good to be with someone. Now, if anybody else turned up it wouldn’t matter. There were two of us. I felt I ought to say something so I said, ‘Been doing this long?’ hoping he wouldn’t be offended.
‘Six, seven months,’ he said. ‘You?’
‘First night.’
He chuckled. ‘I can tell. Where you from?’
‘Up north.’
‘Brum, me.’
‘I can tell.’ It was a risk, this crack about his accent, but he only chuckled again. ‘Name’s Ginger,’ he said, and waited.
I didn’t want to give my name. Not to anybody. Clean break, right? Fresh start. And anyway, he hadn’t told me his. Ginger’s only a nickname.
‘Link,’ I said. I’d seen this signpost earlier. Thameslink. It’s a railway.
‘Oh, aye?’ he said, meaning I don’t believe you but it’s not heavy. ‘Got a fag on you, Link?’
‘Don’t smoke.’ For once I wished I did.
He laughed again. ‘You will.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Been hungry, have you? I mean, really hungry?’
‘No.’
‘No. Well, when you are, smoking helps. Dulls the pain a bit.’
‘Ah. You hungry now, Ginger?’
‘Bit. Why – you got grub?’
‘Got a Snicker in my pack. D’you want it?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No. Not hungry.’ This wasn’t completely true, but I thought perhaps I’d found a friend and I wanted to hang on to him. I opened my pack and groped about till I found the bar. ‘Here.’
‘Ta, mate. Sure you don’t want it?’
‘No.’
‘Half?’
‘No – you eat it.’ I buckled my pack and lay with my eyes closed, listening to him eat. He was pretty hungry at that. You could tell. When he’d finished he said, ‘’S better. G’night, Link.’
‘Night, Ginger.’
And that’s how I met Ginger.
I must have slept, because the next thing I knew somebody was nudging me none too gently in the back, saying ‘Come on, sunshine – let’s have you.’ I opened my eyes and instantly screwed them shut as torchlight lanced into them. My first thought was that Ginger had changed his mind and wanted me out of his bedroom, but then my mind cleared and I knew it was the police. I sat up. It was still dark, and bitterly cold as I began to peel off my sleeping bag.
There were two officers – a man and a woman. Once they’d got us awake they stood back and watched while we rolled our bags and strapped them to our packs. ‘Don’t forget that,’ grunted the guy, shining his torch on the screwed-up wrapper from my Snicker. Ginger picked it up and shoved it in his pocket. I thought they were going to arrest us or something, but as soon as we were packed and on our feet they moved off, shining their torches into doorways as they went.
‘What time is it?’ I asked as we stood, dazed with cold and sleep in the orange light of a street lamp.
Ginger shook his head. ‘Dunno. About six, probably.’
‘Why’d they do that? Get us up, I mean.’
‘Why?’ He grimaced. ‘We were in somebody’s doorway. Wouldn’t do for the owner or tenant or whatever to find us here when he came to open up, would it?’
I couldn’t think of any answer to that, so I said, ‘What now?’
He looked at me. ‘You got any money?’
I nodded. ‘Nine quid and some change.’
‘Fancy a coffee – bite to eat?’
‘Not half.’ I was starving. ‘You?’
He smiled. ‘You don’t have to feed me, y’know, just ’cause we shared a doorway. Folks like us, we’ve got to look after number one. And don’t tell anybody else you’ve got nine quid or you won’t have it long.’
We went to an all-night kebab house he knew about. It was warm and glaringly bright inside and smelled so good I practically drooled. The clock on the wall said 06.20. We were the only customers.
We bolted doner and slurped coffee and talked. Ginger asked me what I planned to do. I told him I was looking for work while waiting for the DSS to come to a decision about my case. When I told him what I’d told them about my circumstances he shook his head. ‘Waste of time, mate. Foregone conclusion. They’ll say you made yourself homeless ’cause you left your mum’s place voluntarily.’
‘You mean I’ll get no benefit – nothing?’
‘Not a sausage, mate, you can take it from me. I’ve seen it too many times.’
‘But – if I don’t find work – if it takes a while – how’m I supposed to live?’
He laughed. ‘Any way you can, Link old son. Nobody cares, see? Nobody gives a toss. That’s the first thing you’ve gotta learn.’ He smiled. ‘Why d’you think so many kids beg the punters for change? ’Cause they like it?’
I shook my head. ‘Is that what you do – beg?’
‘Yep. All day, every day. And sometimes I don’t make the price of a sandwich.’
‘Do – do most people refuse, then?’
‘Oh, aye.’ He smiled again. ‘Do you know what a solcredulist is?’
‘No.’
‘A solcredulist is someone who believes what he reads in the Sun. And do you know what the Sun says – the Sun and three or four other tabloids?’
I shook my head.
‘Well, I’ll tell you. They say us kids aren’t homeless at all. They say we trick the punters out of their change all day and go home to our mums at night with forty, fifty quid in our pockets, and it all goes on drink and drugs.’
‘They don’t?’
‘They bloody do, you know. And the solcredulists believe ’em, and all. That’s why they refuse.’
‘But it’s a lie,’ I cried. ‘There ought to be a law against it.’
‘True.’ He laughed. ‘There won’t be, though. It’s what they call the freedom of the press.’
I looked at him. ‘So when my dosh runs out, I’ll be begging too, huh?’
‘I wouldn’t wait till it runs out, mate. Like I said, some days you’ll make sod-all. I’d start today if I was you.’
We lingered in the warmth till breakfast-time customers began drifting in and the proprietor started giving us dirty looks.
‘Come on,’ said Ginger. ‘We don’t want to outstay our welcome or he’ll bar us.’ He got up and shouldered his pack. ‘There’s a nice washroom through the back here. I’ll show you.’
We used the washroom and left the kebab house just as it was starting to get light. I tagged along with Ginger through the early rush, hoping he’d let me stick with him today. I’d a feeling he knew a lot of stuff I’d need to learn if I was to survive in this great, cold jungle.
It was a raw morning with a sneaky wind which came out of side streets and went right through you. I thought Ginger was looking for a good spot to sit – somewhere out of the wind with plenty of passers-by, but we just kept walking. We were going south and I thought, I wish England wasn’t an island, then we could just keep going till we came to Spain or North Africa – somewhere warm and sunny. After a while I said, ‘Where we off?’ and he said, ‘Don’t matter. This weather, gotta keep moving.’
It was daylight now and there were plenty of people about. I started noticing how a lot of them would alter course so they wouldn’t pass too close to us. Now and then Ginger would change course too and intercept some guy. ‘Got any spare change, mate?’ he’d ask, and nearly always the guy would go on by without giving anything.
For something to do, I began studying their various responses. Some would simply walk on glassy-eyed and expressionless, as though Ginger wasn’t there. Some assumed angry expressions, compressing their lips and sweeping by as though grossly insulted. There were head-shakers, pocket-patters and shruggers, who demonstrated through mime the absence of coins in their pockets; and there were those who’d mutter unintelligibly, so that you couldn’t tell whether they’d said sorry no change or bugger off. Once Ginger accosted a stiff, military-looking guy who stopped, looked him up and down as if he was something the cat sicked up and said ‘Change? I’d change you, my lad, if I had you in khaki for six weeks.’ There were lots of solcredulists about.
Now and then though, somebody would fork out a few coppers. The givers came in two types – the disdainful and the apologetic. The disdainful type would look down his nose at you, fish in his pocket, drop some coppers in your hand saying ‘There’, and move on with his head in the air. The apologetic type would look embarrassed and fumble out a fistful of coins, saying something like, ‘I’m sorry – this is all I have,’ or ‘Sorry, but you see I gave earlier – young man in a doorway.’ He’d dump the dosh in Ginger’s hand without looking to see how much there was and smile apologetically as he moved off. One such giver glanced at me with a worried expression, as though wondering whether he should have given to me too.
We covered some miles that morning, trudging half frozen down Tottenham Court Road and on to Shaftesbury Avenue. We crossed Piccadilly Circus and set off along Piccadilly till Ginger stopped and nodded at some fancy iron gates and said, ‘Here we are, mate.’
‘Looks like a church,’ I said.
He chuckled. ‘It is. St James’s. We can take the weight off our feet, get out of this wind.’
‘Will they let us?’
‘Yeah. You can get your head down in a pew if you want, in the daytime. Locked at night, though.’
We went in. It was lovely inside – white and gold and clean-looking, with vases of flowers and polished woodwork. The only person in there was a battered wino who sat hunched in a pew near the back, muttering to himself. He took no notice of us as we walked down the aisle, slipped into a pew and shrugged off our packs. It was a relief to sit down, and great to be out of the icy wind. I was amazed we’d been able to just walk in like that. I felt like I was there under false pretences and wondered if I should pray or something, but Ginger winked and grinned and started counting the change he’d collected.
‘One pound seventy-four pence,’ he announced. ‘And a peso. We can have cheese rolls for lunch, Link old son. They do an outstanding cheese roll here.’
‘Here?’ I thought he was putting me on.
‘Oh, yes. There’s a caff tagged on the side.’
‘Never.’
‘There is. Go look if you don’t believe me.’
I shook my head. ‘You’re the expert. I believe you, only that’s your dosh, not mine. I didn’t do a thing.’
He looked at me. ‘Who paid for breakfast?’
‘Well I did, but –’
‘No buts. I pay, you fetch.’ He smiled. ‘You look more respectable than me. They’ll take you for a tourist.’
There was a café, and they did an outstanding cheese roll. We ate in church, which felt disrespectful, but I eased my conscience by telling myself that Jesus ate in people’s houses so he wouldn’t mind if someone ate in His. I was happy, I guess, right then. I had a friend, a full belly and a roof over my head. Who could ask for more?