London Noir by Cathi Unsworth Read Free Book Online

reminders of a not so comfortable existence.
    Beneath me: the Harrow Road. This is the main artery that divides (at this juncture) Notting Hill and Maida Vale into an area uncommonly known as Maida Hill.
    More commonly known as Maida Hell.
    If it were a pen it would be broken. The scribe’s grasp sullied by an unthinkable, irremovable liquid; marking him forever as the guilty one.
    If it were a book it would be stolen. Pushed into a dark alley; fingers around its throat; gasping and bleating for its very existence to be ratified before being hauled over the coals and the very life beaten out of it.
    Sucked in.
    Chewed up.
    Spat out.
    Stepped on.
    MAIDA HELL.
    I spy with my little eye; the red, white, and blue blood vessels that jam their way through this darkened gray conduit we’ll refer to as the “Harrowing Road.” The number 18 bus domineeringly crawls the entire length of it like a fat, hideous tapeworm; its red and shining sixty-foot body bulging with sweating parasites. This Dipylidium caninum heads as far west as one can imagine, taking in “Murder Mile” Harlesden, where you could very well be “starin’ down de barrel of a ’matic,” as though you were merely being greeted by an old friend. Then forever you’ll sit on your backside next to some undesirable with few manners, as the nauseating carrier snakes its way through Wem-ber-ley and finally sets in Sudbury. Which is as far west as one can imagine.
    Or: it heads northeast, over Ballard’s Concrete Island; ceremoniously known as the Paddington Basin (which, in my opinion, is as good a place as any to let go of the contents of a now infested stomach!). Scolex features, then slithers up the Marylebone Road, and finally breaks itself down by Euston Railway Station to complete its lifecycle and let everybody get the hell out to the rest of the country. Which is precisely what I intend to do when all this is over.
    Not a hundred yards from where I stoop, the Great Western Road jumps over the lazy Harrow Road and becomes Elgin Avenue. This is also the sector where Fernhead Road comes to an end, along with Walterton Road, creating a psychic wasteland of sorts. This circumambience consists to my mind of five corners. (Traditionally four. Nineteenth-century ordinance survey maps will forever testify that Walterton and Fernhead came much later. However, bananas to all that.) These five corners shall become evinced and bring into our very consciousness the indurate domain of:
    THE SPACE BETWEEN.
    I’ll take you there.
    On one corner: the bank.
    Always full and with few tellers, most of who are off shopping in Somerfield and grabbing all the reduced-priced stock before it goes out of date later that day. Outside of the bank, they’ll flirt with the locals they looked down upon not a moment earlier. (Don’t kiss her, she’s a teller!) Then stroll lazily back to the jam-packed treasury, where one guy is now screaming the place down.
    “YOU KNOW ME! NIG NOG. WHERE DID HE GO?”
    The toothless, yellow-eyed man with the pee stains on his coat then begins to cry, and shamefully leaves.
    “Tosser. Jennifer, will you buzz me in?”
    The teller then shirks in to stuff her face with tuck and gossip, before slipping into a dream of tonight’s date with the new business manager, Clive. Twenty-two. Looks a bit like Ronaldo without the skills.
    He’ll part my lips with first and third and slip in the second. He’ll stare into me. Through me …
    Cream oozes from the doughnut she scoffs and lands on her skirt, which she wipes off with her hand. The rest of us? Well, we just lose another day silently practicing the art of queuing; bemoaning a self-confidence we just don’t seem to have been born with.
    On the other corner: the mobile phone shop.
    “Mobile phone, please?”
    A skinny girl in a tight sweater hands out flyers, which nobody takes, except this one bizarre-looking guy who lurks ominously, scratches his crotch, and then approaches her with a greasy