Frozen by Richard Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

Mandovini, Fashion Services,” and an arrow pointing up. Another beginning, I suppose. The day I began to look for the truth about Verity.
    The studio was three storeys up, right at the top of a mouldering building in the no man's land that fringes Soho to the north. You entered through an anonymous door squeezed between a shop selling old vinyl records—singles in a tottering wooden tray outside, LPs in a chaos of piles and racks inside—and a boutique with a tiny mullioned window and a minimalist display: two lava lamps and a cigarette lighter shaped like a penis. Each storey of the building was separated by four narrow flights of stairs. The boards were worn and grey, with green paint at the edges. The turns between each flight were so tight you had to edge your way round.
    Verity and Sam had the usual Soho collection of neighbours. The first floor was a knocking shop (“As in ‘knock twice and ask for Rosie,'” Verity used to say). The second floor was a flat; an old and completely silent man lived there, with a wild look in his eyes, a drooping fleshy nose, and a torn once-white vest. When anyone came or went, he would open his door a slit and watch them pass. He never spoke. Verity and Sam had decided unilaterally that they would call him Norman. Verity swore she'd seen young women traipsing in and out, and that he held regular orgies, but he was seventy-five if he was a day, and the flat stank—you could smell it even when the door was closed.
    “Poor Verity,” Sam muttered, as she climbed up past Rosie's knocking shop. She glanced back over her shoulder to check I was following. “And there's Paris in two weeks. This is a nightmare.” The old man's door was closed, but she yelled cheerfully, “Mornin', Norman,” and paused briefly on the landing for a reply. Something rattled woodenly behind the door. Sam wrinkled her nose, and resumed climbing.
    ‘I mean, why now? Paris was going to be dynamite. Her collection's brilliant—really, it is. She was so happy.” The stairs ended with a blank door, flat and painted a deep, flaking blue. There was a Yale lock set into a flat metal plate. Sam prodded at it with a key. “Why didn't she tell me?” She pushed into the studio without looking back.
    *
    It was a long, low room with floor-to-ceiling windows along the length of one wall. Ancient cast-iron radiators stood in front of them; the marbled lino had curled up round them, and buckled seams stretched in parallel lines across the floor. Rolls and swatches of fabric were jumbled on trestles, making the room almost impassable and filling the air with the sharp, solvent smell of new cloth.
    A young man was just visible in a far corner, half buried under a mound of gaudy material. He was bent over a sewing machine, his wet-look hair almost touching it. As he worked, his head wove slowly back and forward as though he was trying to puzzle the meaning of what he was creating. In fact, he was so close to the gauzy orange fabric that I was half convinced his nose-stud would catch on it and rip it. Or the spike in his eyebrow. Or the one just above his chin. Nearer the window, another boy was fussing around a clothes dummy, also pierced in unlikely places—him, not the dummy. He was scrawny, dressed in army fatigues and a vermilion-sequined waistcoat. He had a mouthful of pins and a haggard look. “You remember Jean-Marie and Nathan, don't you, Harry?” Sam said.
    I didn't. The boy at the machine glanced up for a moment but said nothing. The other looked over and said, “Mmm-mm-mmmm,” through his mouthful of pins.
    “Nathan, Nathan, looser , love-bun. Pleeease !” Sam dashed over to the dummy and primped at a seam near the waistline. To me the dummy looked as though it (He? She? Impossible to tell) was wearing a patchwork of discarded plastic bags—but then, I was far too unhip for the fashion business, as Verity had never stopped pointing out. Even Nathan's studs unnerved me. Sam looked back at me, still