Human Pages Read online

  ‘The media rushed to praise Alakhin for the result. Within the week, he was assigned other duties and his team disbanded. The remaining two deaths stayed on file. Several years later, after his retirement from the force, he failed to make any reference to them in his bestseller memoir, Fallen Among Thieves.

  ‘A local primitive-religion nut claimed in a letter to the Veldar Argosy that the spirit of the River Luscan had been desecrated and that seven years of abnormal flooding would result, but instead water levels were low.

  ‘I remember all these strange events so clearly, as if they had occurred yesterday, because, on the night of eleventh November, my mother ran away with Cammy Sinclair and was never seen by us again. My eldest sister, June, took responsibility for me, and my life entered a new and troubled phase.’

  Corinne had come to the end of her tale. She eased her hand slowly from Emmet’s pocket. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’re a very good listener.’

  ‘What’s that? What’s he good at?’ Walter stood at their side.

  ‘I must go. Perhaps I’ll see you,’ Corinne said to Emmet.

  ‘Come and lunch with us today,’ Walter said, checking his watch. ‘Let me give you the details. Emmet will be there and his good wife. Have you met our confrère, Antoine? He’s the one with an eye for the ladies.’

  Corinne said nothing. She took the card Walter handed her and walked away.

  ‘Start on the top four on the easy list,’ Walter said when she had gone. ‘There’s no time like the present. The first two are playing poker at,’ he passed Emmet an address. ‘The others will be at home. Prosecute, brother, prosecute! I’ll be okay here. It’s the hour to prosecute.’

  ‘Do you need me?’ Antoine moved towards them from the doorway.

  ‘No, my boy, no. For you, pleasure is the order of the moment. Indulge yourself fully while you’ve got the chance. I’m sure Emmet’s friend will oblige. Emmet, I’ll see you at the restaurant.’

  Outside in the car, after he had turned on the ignition, Emmet saw the image of Minty Wallace’s henchmen wading chest deep in Corinne’s river. Why hadn’t they weighted Little Sammy’s body down? Had they really intended it to be fished out and used in some obscure collusion? The truth was he didn’t know. Little Sammy had been an unfortunate burglar, who on the wrong night had wandered onto forbidden turf. Perfunctory questioning had shown him to be without allegiance and far from home. As Wallace was technically host to Manoko and May, his fate was sealed. The whole pas de deux had taken place with no one waiting around for the morning reviews. Mouths at the time had been zipped tighter than a teddy bear’s arse. Silence and indifference had shrouded the incident ever since.

  He drove into Argonne Boulevard and accelerated towards the climb to the bridge and the loop of the northern bypass. A couple of phone calls at this hour would suffice to disturb the sleepers and let them know a well-wisher had them firmly in mind. The poker game was different. It would depend on who was there and what they had with them. He looked over the rim of the flyover to the lighted office blocks beneath. Hallie would be well into her second shift by now, dressed in her god-awful grey overalls, lugging a vacuum cleaner from floor to floor. Money drifted. Money drifted away from him. It was always out of reach. As for the nice things, the good things, the stylish clothes he had bought her, the fancy perfumes, the not-so-good jewels she had pawned in the end, he might as well have opened the car window and watched his banknotes glide off in the slipstream before they spiralled down to rest with those below who already had, who always would have.

  ‘Go back home and live like a lord,’ Minty Wallace had said, after the doctors had explained his condition to him, as though the crumbs he carelessly swept from his table would sustain lesser mortals for life. Emmet adjusted the mirror for a better rear view. Go back home. That dream had died a long time ago, and now Sembele dangled the same bait. No. Greenlea was his home and he had the tools of his trade at hand. Keep on hammering. That was his motto. Keep on hammering, yet somewhere in the unsmiling, creased visage he had inadvertently glimpsed a second ago, when tilting the mirror, lurked a remnant of the boy he had once been, the child he himself had buried. The cold, deep waters of Corinne’s River Luscan and the body of Little Sammy Tyrell receded from his mind to be replaced by the vista of a very different river, where the languorous, enervating heat of a summer mid-morning bloomed against his cheek. He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel, and, as he cruised past and beyond a slower vehicle, he let the boy he had been scramble down the gully and stand once more on top of the overhanging bluff to stare at the house across the scant water patches of the dried-up riverbed.

  The construction of the house had been started by one Roscoe Syminton, an expatriate, who, it was rumoured, had made it big in Minneapolis. His haulage business there provided enough cash for him to consider building a dream showplace back home. So, he commissioned an agent to find a site near Stop 42, where he had spent happy boyhood years in the countryside, and, when that was done, he hired an architect. The foundations had no sooner been dug when he was killed in an automobile accident, with the further unfortunate result being that the fraudulent nature of his business was exposed, leaving his inheritors and creditors nothing but tax bills, lawsuits and grief. All work on the house stopped.

  Five years on, the Levallois brothers, Jean and Loulou, from town, purchased the site and erected, bit by bit, the completed edifice. Emmet, slightly younger than Corinne in her story, latched on to them and their various helpers like a limpet. He obediently fetched and carried as they put on the roof and painted the outer walls. Slowly, a weird notion formed in his head that one day he would live there, one day the whole place would be his. How this would come about he did not know. Perhaps Loulou will give it to me, he thought, for all my work. He was less certain about Jean, who had a quick temper and a fearsome trajectory of spit.

  At home, Granma said, ‘Don’t go there, foolish. They’re not proper men.’ Whatever that meant. But go there he persisted in doing, and as often as he could. When he was told that the man who had initially started building the house was dead, it occurred to him that those there now might also die. He pictured himself coming across their bodies somewhere well away from the road, off the path, somewhere deep down in the tangle of the gully, lying prone underneath the bluff. Jean’s face still looked hard and fierce set. Loulou’s was sweet and round, his features untroubled by the flies that swarmed about his head. Death, he realised, could open doors, especially if someone was brave enough to hurry it along. Singing to himself contentedly, he ran along the track down to the property, which now for certain was destined to be his.

  Fitting his hammer in the inside pocket of his coat, Emmet left his younger self, who had dreamed foolish dreams, and the car at the western edge of the Sander Housing project. He located Afton House on the estate map and strolled through the arch in the outer block to the courtyard beyond. The night air was chilly and damp. A faint precipitation graced his shoulders and the tips of his shoes. He sighted a phone box and made his two calls.

  Entering Afton House, he passed by the lift and climbed the stairs to the third level. He turned right along the walkway. A car alarm went off somewhere below, followed by a medley of barking dogs. He rapped lightly on the frosted-glass pane of a door then repeated it loudly three times. A single dog continued to bark. A light came on in the hallway. The door opened a fraction. Behind it stood the figure of an elderly black woman, gingerly clutching the chain.

  ‘I’ve come to play,’ Emmet said gently. ‘I’m sorry I’m late. I guess they’ve started without me.’

  ‘Do I know you? You haven’t been here before.’

  ‘No, that’s true.’

  Emmet shoved the door open violently, bursting the chain. He propped the woman against the wall as she toppled back away from him. He strode quickly into the room at the end of the passage. Voices halted suddenly. Cards stayed stuck in hands. Hammer at the ready, Emmet motioned to one of the five men seat
ed at the table to get up. A couple of swift left jabs to his guts dropped him to his knees. He began sobbing softly. The others began swearing.

  ‘Let’s get acquainted,’ Emmet said. ‘Do right. Heed my message and I’ll be gone like a bad dream.’

  Their faces told him, as their eyes kept focused on the hammer, that he would not have any further trouble.

  *

  Hallie dreamed of respite. She imagined herself stretching out on the carpet at her feet, which was now transformed into a perfumed meadow where the prickle of the grass itched between her toes and softly chafed against her legs. Scents of wild flowers assailed her nostrils until she felt her very being begin to dissolve in the shimmering heat haze. On my own, she thought. By myself, just like the ads but without the camera crew hovering at a discreet distance.

  Frankie Ramirez, the minibus driver on Wednesdays, was late. The majority of the cleaning gang, who had ventured out for the expected pick up, had come back in, colonising the atrium as best they could.

  Ruby was busy settling into the receptionist’s domain. One by one, she spread the contents of her bag onto the oak-veneer counter top: a tissue box, a sachet of painkillers, the folder of holiday photos sent a day ago by her daughter-in-law, a thermos of tomato soup, the little crucifix she had bought when Willie was sick and it seemed they might lose him forever, the case for her contact lenses.

  Across the other side, Hubert Penley stretched out on the fake-leather chesterfield, his body poised between wakefulness and fitful sleep, a moist dribble of saliva lurking at the corner of his mouth.

  Mohammed, Riz and Vladi, the Ukrainian, played three-card brag at the glass table beside the circular wall of the meditation area where a plaque in four languages informed visitors of its purpose.

  The rest grumbled about lost time. They fidgeted unhappily, sitting then standing, smoking then deciding not to, watching the seconds creep onwards on the giant digital clock, then decamping to stare at their reflections in the long mirrors of the toilets, which Amelie had sprayed and wiped half an hour ago.

  ‘Every floor timed to the second. Every building timed to the minute. They lay the figures on you and they say figure it out. You do as the contract says or you don’t get the work. But they don’t pay down time. Oh no! That’s down to you. That’s your loss. So Frankie’s sick or something and the new man’s lost. You ain’t cleaning, you ain’t earning. You get home late. But that’s not part of their deal. It’s down to you. Dead time. No account time. I tell you!’ Amelie’s raised voice made the card players look round and gave Hubert’s frame an involuntary twitch.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Hallie said. ‘After all, we could walk away. Get lost. Two less on the bus. Miss the next building. Show them it sucks.’

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Anywhere. Somewhere. I think there’s still a club around here on Loret Street. In the old days, it was The Blue Papaya. I used to go there off and on. You could dance, get a cocktail, meet a stranger if you wanted. It had a certain allure all of its own. I liked it. Then Manny The Pilot got stiffed there and things changed. Two out-of-town tourists wedged his body in the broom cupboard. Poor guy was still alive when the ambulance arrived, but he died before they got to the hospital gates. Emmet went to the funeral. They closed the club for a while. That was the time Minty Wallace was ill, terminally it turned out. Jimmy Massoura, his possible successor, and Lenny Hovitz, the number one rival, were both inside on long stretches. Jimmy for conspiracy to murder and Lenny for armed robbery. So, in the circumstances, Manny The Pilot was just one of those things. Emmet stopped working regularly. I guess you could say the law prevailed in the end. Well, on the surface at least. Anyway, fashions changed. People began to do things openly that they once kept hidden. There wasn’t any cause for shills and dives and clubs like The Busted Flush, Midnight Eve’s and The Blue Papaya. You want to gamble? Go to the casino. You want to fuck on the q.t.? Go to a private suite or an Eros Hotel. You want to be dominated or just watch? Pick up the phone book and dial personal services.’ She laughed. ‘I’m showing my age. It’s a club for young folks nowadays.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that, man. But dressed like this. Uh huh!’ Amelie shook her head. ‘When baby goes, she’s gonna go all glittered up.’

  ‘Anyhow, at least I got some good news before I left home. A courier came. Emmet’s been offered a job driving round a woman called Emily Brown. It starts later today if he wants it. It’s not for long,’ Hallie shrugged, ‘but what can you do?’

  ‘When did Hubert say the bus left?’

  ‘About twenty minutes. Something’s up. Shouldn’t someone ring again?’

  ‘I’ll do it. No one else will.’

  Amelie walked off to the line of pay phones near the tall entrance doors. She called the operator and reversed charges.

  Left on her own, Hallie wondered where Emmet would be right now, still at the party or back at home getting some rest. She did not like the sound of the night visits he had said were a possibility. ‘The hours have nothing to do with it,’ he had answered to her questions. ‘It would be the same in daylight.’

  ‘Who are these people?’ she had persisted. He had given her the dead-lizard treatment, eked out with snips of Sembele’s spiel about how inclusive the Old Man was determined to be nowadays, stuff about different peoples in one nation. ‘Do we know them?’ she had asked. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘We don’t.’ It was the same old story. Ever since she had met him he had kept himself apart from his fellow countrymen. ‘I left,’ was all he would say with a shrug. Yet this Sembele knew him. They all knew him, imputing terrible deeds to him, deeds whose ruthlessness went beyond any crime he had actually committed. In their eyes he had done it for the big whites—that was what set him on his own. He had not done it for himself and certainly not for them. He had sold himself to the man and had exulted in the power of his chains. ‘Jest followin’ orders, capt’n,’ as she had heard the braver souls mutter out of his earshot. God knows he had never been a thinker. ‘Get ready and do it and drop the “get ready”’ was his motto. Now here he was, working with people he loathed, poking his nose into politics he did not understand. This Emily Brown thing could be a saver, a way out, if only he would take the chance, because he had ended up just like her, she realised ruefully, cleaning up other people’s messes, handling other people’s shit.

  One of the other pay phones rang. Amelie, cradling the receiver to her breasts, gestured towards Hallie to pick it up. ‘Thank you for answering,’ a woman’s voice said when she reached it. ‘This is Elizabeth Kerry on behalf of the executors of the Amadeo Cresci Foundation. I have a message for you. The message is—’ Hallie was on the verge of hanging up, but she held on as the voice continued ‘—Ute Manoko thought he had a deal, an opening in Europe as well as Japan. The trouble lay behind the scenes betraying the seller. If Ute had found them they would have died a dog’s death. Instead, a one-time “block of wood” from the internment camp recognised Ute in the street and did away with him.

  ‘Social news is Ms Emily Brown is visiting Greenlea. Her well-wishers hope she has a happy stay and that she is soon reunited with her errant father.

  ‘Don’t trust Chance Company. They don’t trust you.

  ‘Meanwhile, Kraus Fraternity are trying to package the old, sordid, dirty little secret. Get in touch with Vera Sowenwell. She knows the score.

  ‘Thank you for listening to this short bulletin. This is Elizabeth Kerry.’ The line went dead.

  Hallie was still mulling over the astonishing call when the phone rang at reception. She watched Ruby reluctantly put down the photo she was engrossed in and answer it. Ruby spoke, then spoke again more forcefully, before firmly replacing the receiver. It trilled again. Ruby ignored it. Hallie felt the urge to go over and pick it up herself, but Amelie was at her side. The phone had given its last spasm by the time they reached reception.

  ‘Who was it?’ Hallie asked. ‘What did they want?’

  Ruby h
ad a safari photo in her hand. ‘They go all over the place. Africa. This is Africa.’

  Hallie took the photo obligingly.

  ‘Nobody really. Gobbledegook. Could have been a pervert or an insomniac with nothing to do. Though come to think of it, it was a woman, so forget that. Probably wrong number. She didn’t say who she wanted. What company is this, by the way? I never know.’

  ‘Insurance,’ Hallie said. ‘It’s the Steady Drift Insurance Company headquarters. What did she say?’

  ‘Some country out east, Asia I think. It was a kind of jingle. It rhymed with coffee and tea. Java. That was it. Javanee.’

  ‘No names?’

  ‘Names?’

  ‘Yes. Who the caller was. Other names.’

  Ruby shook her head. Amelie said, ‘There’s been a breakdown. Frankie phoned head office. He isn’t sick. He’s on his way in another minibus. He’ll be here any minute now. Ten they said when I called. I’ll let the rest know.’

  Ruby started to re-confine her bits and pieces in her bag. Mohammed and Vladi pocketed the small amounts they had won from Riz. Amelie shook Hubert’s shoulder. ‘What you cooking, lover?’ he said, as he stirred himself awake. Hallie went to the toilet to tell the others.

  Frankie was all apologies when he pulled up at last. They piled past him into the bus, complaining of the cold as they hunched together inside. Hallie thought about Emily Brown. She tried to picture how she would look. A godsend or a threat? Nothing formed. She was too tired to think properly. No perfumed meadow awaited, just another building to clean. Beside her, Riz launched into a story about the TV actor and movie extra, Lucky Motion, who he had worked with once. ‘Baby, I’ve heard it,’ Hallie muttered softly, as she closed her eyes.

  TWO

  Although you become a fish

  and throw yourself into the sea,

  I shall search for you