Dust and Desire by Conrad Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

of me and took me home. He was violently anti-hospitals, due to his mother having to wait for a replacement hip that was inserted the wrong way round, so he had no problems about me trying to escape. When we arrived at my flat, I nipped inside to get some money to pay him. I found the door was hanging off its hinges. Just outside the front door is a hatch that leads into the attic. This too was gaping. Inside the flat there was a hole in the ceiling and a pile of plaster and floorboards on the floor. The footprints from a pair of trainers were smeared on the wall where the burglar had reached to gain purchase as he dropped in from above. Because the door had been locked from the outside, he’d had to break out ; so a number of knives, including my favourite – an eighteen-inch Japanese vegetable knife that I used for chopping everything – had been snapped in his desperate attempts to get the door open. Mengele was nowhere to be seen. Nev, when I called him, was as shocked as I was. The place had been fine when he came to feed the cat as recently as the previous afternoon. I thanked him and rang off, grateful, at least, that he hadn’t walked in on the loonies while they were redecorating.
    Although there had been quite a bit of stuff shifted around or knocked over, there didn’t seem to be anything missing. Maybe the burglar had been freaked by the lack of televisual booty.
    ‘Jesus Christ.’
    The taxi driver crunched his way into my flat, his mouth sagging as if his chin had been swapped for a ten-kilogram weight.
    ‘Don’t step on anything,’ I said. ‘It’ll all have to be dusted for prints.’
    ‘I thought you’d forgotten about me,’ he said.
    I gave him his fare but he was reluctant to leave. I ventured into the kitchen. The drawers were hanging open like thirsty mouths, their contents junked on the floor. I saw Mengele’s tail whipping about outside, and opened the door on to the balcony. He was sitting on the roof, having presumably escaped through the small sash window above the sink once the ceiling had begun to be smashed open.
    ‘Good boy,’ I soothed, looking up at him. However, he was intent on a pigeon that was rooted to a single spot up on the chimney. The bird was eyeing Mengele as if it couldn’t quite believe the size of him. I left him to it and went back inside. The cabbie was putting down the phone.
    ‘Just called the police for you, mate,’ he said, in his best ‘tip me’ voice. I thanked him, forcing a smile, and ushered him out, then I sat on the sofa and tried to force some thoughts. I had to get out before the plods arrived. It was unlikely that Mawker would look upon this as leaving town, but you never knew.
    I got dressed, packed a small rucksack with some clothes, and dragged Mengele off the roof and into his cage. I made sure I had my keys and my wallet, before I went to the freezer and rescued the bottle of Grey Goose. Then I called a handyman mate of mine, Jimmy Two, and asked him to come round soon as he could, to board up and padlock the doorway. I went downstairs and stood on the pavement for a long time, wondering where the hell to go to next.
    When a police car turned into my street, I made a decision. Away was good enough, for now.

6
    B arry Liptrott worked lunchtimes at Lava Java, a club in Vauxhall, pulling pints, mixing margaritas, watching pissed office types try to salsa. That was what he did when he wasn’t holding up old age pensioners or shoplifting, trying to impress someone in the underworld, trying to get a leg up to the rarefied climes of… I don’t know, maybe twocking tricycles or beating up blind septuagenarians who had been unfaithful to their partners.
    I got there at around 1 p.m., long before the joint started kicking, and found my entry barred by a phenomenally ugly bouncer. He was so ugly it was like he was really trying at it. He’d have frightened chimps out of a banana factory.
    ‘Hi,’ I said. The bouncer seemed put out by