London Fields Read Free Page A

Ward), or like a criminal's cream Rolls-Royce, parked at dusk between a tube station and a flower stall, the eyes of Keith Talent shone with tremendous accommodations made to money. And murder? The eyes – was there enough blood in them for that? Not now, not yet. He had the talent, somewhere, but he would need the murderee to bring it out. Soon, he would find the lady.
    Or she would find him. 

Chick Purchase. Chick. It's hugely unsuitable for such a celebrated bruiser and satyromaniac. A diminutive of Charles. In America it's Chuck. In England, apparently, it's Chick. Some name. Some country . . . Of course, I write these words in the awed hush that follows my completion of the first chapter. I don't dare go through it yet. I wonder if I ever will.
    For reasons not yet altogether clear, I seem to have adopted a jovial and lordly tone. It seems antique, corrupt: like Keith. Remember, though: Keith is modern, modern, modern. Anyway, I expect to get better at this. And soon I must face the murderee.
    It would be nice to expatiate on how good it feels, after all these years, to sit down and actually start writing fiction. But let's not get any big ideas. This is actually happening.

    How do I know, for instance, that Keith works as a cheat? Because he tried to cheat me, on the way in from Heathrow. I'd been standing under the sign saying TAXIS for about a half-hour when the royal-blue Cavalier made its second circuit and pulled up at the bay. Out he climbed.
    'Taxi, sir?' he said, and picked up my bag, matter-of-factly, in the line of professional routine.
    'That's not a taxi.'
    Then he said, 'No danger. You won't get a cab here, pal. No way.'
    I asked for a price and he gave me one: an outlandish sum.
    'Limo, innit,' he explained.
    'That's not a limo either. It's just a car.'
    'We'll go by what's on the clock, yeah?' he said; but I was already climbing into the back and was fast asleep before we pulled away.
    I awoke some time later. We were approaching Slough, and the metre said £54.50.
    'Slough!'
    His eyes were burning at me warily in the rearview mirror. 'Wait a second, wait a second,' I began. One thing about my illness or condition. I've never been braver. It empowers me – I can feel it. Like looking for the right words and finding them, finding the powers. 'Listen. I know my way around. I'm not over here to see Harrods, and Buckingham Palace, and Stratford-on-Avon. I don't say twenty quids and Trafaljar Square and Barnet. Slough? Come on. If this is a kidnap or a murder then we'll discuss it. If not, take me to London for the amount we agreed.'
    He pulled over unhurriedly. Oh, Christ, I thought: this really is a murder. He turned around and showed me a confiding sneer.
    'What it is is,' he said, 'what it is is — okay. I seen you was asleep. I thought: "He's asleep. Looks as though he could use it. I know. I'll pop in on me mum." Disregard that,' he said, jerking his head, in brutal dismissal, toward the clock, which was of curious design and possibly home manufacture and now said £63.80. 'Don't mind, do you, pal?' He pointed to a line of pebbledash semis — we were, I now saw, in some kind of dormitory estate, green-patched, shopless. 'She's sick like. Won't be five minutes. Okay?'
    'What's that?' I said. I referred to the sounds coming from the car stereo, solid thunks followed by shouted numbers against a savage background of taunts and screams.
    'Darts,' he said, and switched it off. 'I'd ask you in but – me old mum. Here. Read this.'
    So I sat in the back of the Cavalier while my driver went to see his mum. Actually he was doing nothing of the kind. What he was doing (as he would later proudly confide) was wheelbarrowing a lightly clad Analiese Furnish around the living-room while her current protector, who worked nights, slept with his legendary soundness in the room above.
    I held in my hands a four-page brochure, pressed on me by the murderer (though of course he wasn't a murderer yet. He had a way to