Chapter 1
Post Holiday Blues

It would be easy, writing with hindsight, for me to attach more emotional meaning to opening that door. I could tell you that I was full of trepidation, anticipation or even fear. I could make out that I was full of a feeling of foreboding as I slipped the key into the bronze Yale lock, or that I felt a strange emptiness flow over me as I turned it. Or even that I knew change was awaiting me on the other side as I slowly pushed it open, and that somehow I understood it was more than just the door to my flat and was a perfectly symbolic portal to what was to lie ahead.
But then I’d be full of shit. To be honest, I don’t even remember opening the door. I was fucked from the plane journey, eleven hours of boredom in a pressurised steel tube. The food was inedible, as always. The chair, when the kids of some wannabe Yardie I was too scared of to complain to weren’t kicking it, was broken somehow and refused to recline. The plastic glass of wine they gave me to compensate me for the chair tasted like acidic piss. The two movies they showed were Miss Congeniality and Thirteen Days; the first as vacant as I had expected, the second, despite my initial interest, probably ruined for me forever by the experience of watching it on a plane.
And equally, writing with hindsight, it’s not unfair to say that many of the events that were to follow my arrival home and are presented here were not in fact even that unusual. At least not for me, not then.
The first thing I do remember was the post. Not the contents; the usual mix of NTL bills, bank statements and junk mail, but where and how it was positioned. There was about a week’s worth on the hall table, arranged neatly and purposefully in a small stack between the phone and the Yellow Pages, which had remained untouched since the day it had been delivered. Well, except for that one occasion when Dr Ex and me had got all messed up on speed and beer, and the Good Doctor had been rummaging through it looking for prostitutes, insisting to me that in California “everyone orders hookers outta the phone book.” I tried to explain to him that things were a little different in South Oxfordshire And Area, but it had little effect, and I ended up having to rip the phone out of the wall in tears of laughter, as Ex tried to talk a sleepy aromatherapist into making a house call at four in the morning. “I’ll give you something to sniff bitch” he’d growled at her just as the line went dead, and there was still a fleck of my blood on the cover of the book from where he’d turned on me and wrestled me to the floor out of amphetamine fuelled desperation and anger.
But it wasn’t the stacked post that grabbed my attention. It was the six letters that still lay on the doormat that spoke to me. Reaching down and checking their postmarks confirmed to me what I already knew; that these individuals that had not received the same love and attention as their companions had arrived more recently, and over the span of the last three days. Their neglect spoke clear volumes to me. I sighed and pulled my suitcase and bag into the hall, closing the door behind. So, I told myself, it was like that.
I headed towards the lounge, looking for the note. I knew there would be one. I even knew where it would be. As I went, I passed her bedroom and glanced inside. I mean, I call it her bedroom, but it to be fair was only known as that for a few weeks. Looking through the doorway, and seeing the bed stripped of sheets and the cupboard door ajar and empty, it was clear I could go back to referring to it as the spare room.
The note was stuck to the front of the TV with a small, neat piece of Sellotape, as expected. I pulled it gently away from the screen, silently cursing the mark it had left, but admiring her handiwork with the tape. Me, I can only ever rip of a big jaggy strip of Sellotape – far too long and all ragged at the ends – but this hand been done by a professional, delicate hand. I opened the folded piece of paper to reveal just as immaculate handwriting.

Gabe,

Sorry – had to go before you were back. Will talk when you’re home. Hope you had a good time.

Laters,

Julia XX

So, hardly a “Dear John” letter then. But it wasn’t like I was expecting one, and I was expecting her to be gone when I got back. Man, that had been perfectly clear before I had left. If anything, my going had probably guaranteed her not being there when I returned. I knew that the day I’d got a refund on her ticket and spent the money on booking an extra week at the hotel. No, the only thing that surprised me slightly was the wording; “had to go before you were back”. What the fuck did that mean? She had to go because of some mystery, unknown reason, like; maybe she’d found somewhere to live and had to move immediately? Or did she mean she had to go before I was back because she couldn’t face me? Ah fuck it, either – both – were likely. And I had a pretty fucking good idea of where she’d gone anyway.
Seeing as it was close, I flicked the TV on. I scanned the room for the remote for a few seconds, until I spotted that it had been slipped into the gap between the cable box and the DVD player, with just the end protruding. Of course. She’d tidied; there was no way she would have left this place in anything but first class condition. Part of me wanted to accuse her of doing it out of spite; trying to make some comment about my habits and to rub it in that she wasn’t going to be there to tidy up after me. But in all honesty I knew that wasn’t true. It was just her, like I said; there was no way she would have left this place in anything but first class condition.
I sat down on the couch and stretched my legs out across the floor in front of me, flicking through the channels. At first I was confused at what I saw, then realised it was my body clock thinking it should be evening. I was expecting The Simpsons or Cowboy Bebop or something, and instead all I kept finding was Bargain Hunter, The Salon and endless generic DIY make over shows. I headed instead for the news channels; there was war to catch up on. News 24: British Marines still holed up near Basra. Sky News: Fears of suicide bombers at checkpoints. ITN: Is this Sadam or just a looky-likey? CNN: Live footage – Bombs over Baghdad. Fox News: Why protesting against the war is like spitting in the face of a dead soldier’s mother. I ended up on CBS, watching Dan Rather grill some pentagon official over whether they’d underestimated the Iraqi public. I hadn’t really seen any news for two weeks, I realised. Shock and Awe. Hearts and Minds. My head began to hurt. Whether it was due to American imperialism or just jetlag, there was only one cure.
I reached down between my legs and under the sofa, and pulled out the Cadbury’s Chocolate Biscuit Assortment tin. Lifting it up on to my lap I flipped off the lid. Everything inside seemed in order. I had half-expected Julia to have taken some grass with her, but she hadn’t. Not that I would have been pissed at her if she had. There was a bag with about a quarter of skunk in it, plus a small lump of hash, maybe a ‘teenth, wrapped in cling film. There was also two mobile phones, a Nokia 3210 and an ageing Siemens M35i, plus some Rips, a packet of Cutter’s Choice rolling tobacco, some King-size Red Rizla, a book of roach paper Aziz had brought me back from Amsterdam, and a box of matches. I took the two mobiles out of the tin first, and turned on the Siemens, which I used for work. After a few seconds, it started to be flooded with incoming text messages, from all the usual suspects. So they had missed me then, and hadn’t started taking their business elsewhere. I allowed myself a grin; it was good to know. I moved onto the Nokia, which was my personal phone, and was surprised when it started beeping almost as soon as I hit the power. The display lit up: black text, grey screen, yellow backlight:

Incoming Call:
HARDCORE DAVE

I hit answer.
“Hey man, how’s it going?”
“The G-man.” Dave’s voice was dry from smoking. “So how was it?”
“It was good.”
“Just good?”
“OK, better than good.” Which was far from being a lie, but I was avoiding the question. I didn’t feel like going into more detail right there and then. “It was like you wouldn’t believe. I’ll fill you in later.”
“Cool. You pleased to be back?”
“Oh yeah, ecstatic.”
He laughed. There was a pause, and I could hear video game noises in the background.
“What you playing?” I asked him.
“Soul Calibur 2. The ‘Cube version.”
“No shit? It’s out? Where did you get that?”
“Naoto’s Tokyo connection.” I could sense the barely masked glee in his voice.
“Should have guessed. How is he?”
‘Motherfucker’s kicking my ass as we speak.”
I Laughed. “How is it? It’s good?”
“Yeah, it’s sweet. You should come by and check it out man. It’d be good to see you.”
“Awww, you missed me?” I said mockingly.
“Gabe, I think half of Oxford has missed you. Seriously though, it’d be good to just catch up. Pop over.”
“Yeah, I will do.” I felt myself exhale heavily. It suddenly hit me how tired I was. “Just gimme a couple of hours though. I need to get my head straight. Then catch up with Aziz and pop round to Henry’s first.”
“Good to hear” he replied, in reference to the Henry bit.
“Oh I see.” I said, trying not to sound too much like I was taking the piss.
“See what?”
“Well, there I was thinking you were wanting to see your mate that had just got back from halfway around the world, when really all you are is just another desperate punter-“
“Oh for fuck’s sake man” he interrupted, “look, I – hang on – AHH YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT! TAKE THAT BITCH!”
I could hear cussing in Japanese. I didn’t understand a word of it, but it was undeniably angry.
“Cheating? WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN CHEATING?” Dave suddenly seemed to remember he was on the phone. “Gabe? Sorry man. Look I got to go show this homo here how to play the game. You gonna come round? It’d be good to see you man, really.”
“Yeah. Definitely. I’ll be round later.” It surprised me how much just talking to Dave had managed to lift my spirits. “I’ll give you a shout when I’m on my way.”
“Nice one, I look forward to it.”
“ Cheers Dave. Laters.” I hung up.
I let myself slump back into the couch. Checked the time on the Nokia: it was just coming up to half twelve. PM I assumed, but really I couldn’t tell through the jet lag. I took the lid from the biscuit tin and laid it shinny side up on my lap, then tore off a five-inch strip from the Rips packet and started to build up. I pulled a grape sized bud from the quarter of skunk, and as I crumbled it into the paper I realised how different it was to the ganja I’d been smoking for the last week; this was hydroponically grown shit, cultivated in the basement of some disused warehouse in Bristol or Cardiff, force fed chemicals and blasted for 12 hours a day with halogen lamps. Don’t get me wrong, it was good shit – I only ever had good shit – it just was a world away from what I’d been smoking. The weed in Jamaica was pure, untouched. It grew wild and, it seemed, it grew everywhere. If they sold it in supermarkets they’d brand it “free range” or “organic” or some other nonsense that would make you worry as to what was wrong with the regular stuff.
As I took the first toke off the completed joint in my hand I realised there was nothing at all wrong with the regular stuff. It was undeniably stronger than the Jamaican ganja, but that wasn’t really the point. This was premium Californian Red Beard skunk, cross-bred from a dozen other species to be some sort of tripped out super smoke. It was what you expected it to be. And damn right, at twenty-five quid an eighth. No, the point of the Jamaican weed was different – it was cheap, it was pure and it was gentle. It didn’t as much get you quickly stoned as sneak up on you, tap you on the shoulder and remind you that you had smoked it just when you least expected. It fitted the pace of life out there perfectly; you could smoke it all day – pure, no tobacco - and it would apparently do little more than relax you and help the Bacardi slip down. But then you would have to move or do something important, and suddenly everything would start to get more interesting. I liked that. It reminded me of being a kid again, of wandering around the streets of Oxford high as fuck, trying to suppress maniacal grins and avoid eye contact with the respectable people. That was the edge that I loved, that I missed now, that had been lost when I’d left home and got my own place, and smoking had become a more mundane activity that didn’t involve a walk home at the end of the night or the risk of being caught by disapproving adults. I’d felt that edge again in Jamaica, and it was undoubtedly down in part to the alien, some times threatening surroundings, but it was also the grass. It reminded me of the shit we used to smoke as teenagers, that old skool green weed you’d buy for fifteen quid an eight bag from someone’s dodgy older brother. You never seem to see cheap weed like that anymore – there’s no market for it. All anyone wants is the strongest they can get, and they’re willing to pay over the odds for it. Don’t ask me why, there’s a hundred possible reasons for it; maybe its because everyone seems to be necking cheap E and coke these days and need something for the comedowns, or maybe the cheap flights to Amsterdam have raised everyone’ standards. Fuck knows. My own personal theory is because everyone is a fucking impatient little tasteless prick these days – but hey, that’s just me. And I’m afraid you’ll just have to get used to that.

At some point before I’d left for Jamaica, I remember having worried about whether I’d be able to score over there. Seriously. I was worried that it wouldn’t be that obvious, that there would be some ducking and diving, back ally shenanigans to deal with. Or that I’d get ripped off. The image flashed through my mind of me stood there, in shorts and a bad shirt, the obligatory sunburnt tourist, handing some sniggering Rasta fifty bucks for a spliff’s worth of bog weed. Of course, I shouldn’t have worried at all.
We’d hit the tarmac at Montego Bay at about six pm local time. I remember walking down the steps from the plane and the heat in the air almost knocking me back onto my arse. Then followed a painful hour standing around in the air conditioned shack that passed for the airport – filling in immigration forms and being herded around by Airtours reps who assigned us hotels and buses while we waited to go through customs. I’d got stuck behind a family of sweaty Americans, the youngest one being a fifteen-year-old ginger boy who easily already had double my body mass, undoubtedly formed lovingly over a decade and a half from Popeye’s Chicken and Hershey bars. They were all drinking cans of Mountain Dew and guzzling almond M&Ms and bitching about the heat. It was like being stuck in the green room at the Ricki Lake show. Finally we were shuffled through customs, and started to make our way out into the car park to be shuffled onto buses. I was about two meters from the sliding doors when this black geezer appeared out of nowhere beside me and grabbed the handle of the suitcase I was carrying.
“Here mon” he said, “Let me take that for you.”
“It’s cool” I replied, clutching back the case “I’ve got it”. I started to speed up my walk. He matched me.
“What’s the hurry mon? You in Jamaica now, no need to hurry.”
“I gotta get my bus.”
“You want some ganja, mon?”
We both burst out through the doors into the blazing sun and I froze. My mind started doing those mad little calculations it does at times like that. This guy had spotted me in the crowd as an obvious business opportunity, but it kind of seemed like a compliment. It certainly seemed like a good idea. I’d been on that plane for nearly 11 hours without as much as a Silk Cut Ultra, and it was at least another two hours bus ride to Negril. By the time I’d got there, checked in and sorted myself out it was probably going to be getting dark, and somehow I didn’t fancy scouring the towns nightlife for the first time trying to score some weed. Undoubtedly a smoke was going to be necessary this evening, in fact the only things that appealed to me right then was a shower, a smoke and a Red Stripe in my hotel. I had two weeks here to explore and party, tonight I just wanted to kick back and relax. But scoring at the airport just seemed like an insanely stupid idea. I had no idea what the whole score was yet and it was probably going to be just as easy to pick up back at the hotel. It was fucking madness to risk anything here, with cops and security probably crawling all over the place. My mind was made up.
“How much?” I asked him.
He grinned. “You got twenty dollars US?”
“Yeah.”
“Give it to me.”
I slipped my hand in to my back pocket to grab my wallet, and slowly took it out. I suddenly realised I was shitting myself. I’d been in the country about five minutes, and already I was giving away my holiday money to some random shady character. I looked up to see the rest of my party already all the way across the car park, putting their cases into the luggage hold of the bus. It looked like one of those old US school buses you see on TV, but blue instead of yellow. I was stood in the middle of this dingy, obscenely hot car park, all alone except for this stranger that I was just about to buy an unknown quantity of unseen drugs from. I felt like I was in a badly made Foreign Office Public Information Film that they only ever showed on ITV at three in the morning.
I opened my wallet and unfolded and handed him two tens.
“Yeah mon. Now head over there,” he nodded past me to a structure I hadn’t noticed before, some kind of Kiosk. “And make like you’re buying a drink mon.”
I stared over at the Kiosk, and then turned back to him.
“You’re taking the piss, right?” I noticed the money had disappeared. Of course. “There’s a fucking police car parked right next to it.”
He sucked air in through his teeth. “Don’t worry about Babylon mon, we take care of tings. Now where you headed, Negril?”
“Yeah” I replied, a little curious as to how he knew.
“OK, that’s your bus over there. I’ll take this over”, he took my suitcase from my hand again, “And I meet I there. You go over to the store mon.”
I eyed him for a second. Then I turned and walked.
It was only about fifteen yards walk over to the kiosk, but in the oppressive heat and with my heart pounding in my chest it felt like miles. I felt light headed with fear, every sensible neuron in my head screaming at me that this was A Fundamentally Bad Idea. Not only had I given a stranger twenty dollars, but I’d left all my luggage with him too. Clever. The cop car I had to pass to get to the Kiosk didn’t help either. It was an aging Ford, a scratched and dented lump of decaying Detroit steel radiating a searing heat and unintelligible bursts of radio chatter. At the kiosk I approached the window, and inside a guy with short spiky dreads and an AC Milan football shirt was reading a paper, his head pointing down to the desk so I couldn’t catch his face.
“Alright,” I said. I instantly felt like a prick, a rush of embarrassing white boy un-coolness making my cheeks flush.
Kiosk Guy never even made eye contact with me, and from seemingly nowhere placed a bank bag of tightly packed ganja on the desk. To this day I don’t know how much was there, but the lump was about the same size as a pack of ten cigarettes.
“Thanks,” I said, and took it, stuffing it into my shorts pocket. I turned and walked back past the cop car. Maybe that’s the deal, I thought. It’s a set up. They sell you the gear and then they bust you. Maybe they’ve got monthly targets to hit or something.
I walked past the Ford. Sill it radiated heat and radio chatter. But nothing else. I started to feel more positive about it being there. For a start, it was empty. And looking up, to my relief, Suitcase Guy was standing right where he said he’d be, by my bus with my case.
He smiled when I approached him, a wide gold plated grin, and helped me load my luggage into the bus before offering his fist to me to knock.
“Welcome to Jamaica.” He grinned at me, and I thanked him back. I climbed up wooden stairs into the aging GM school bus, feeling like a cocksure school kid, to be met by a sea of scared, disapproving, confused and unsettlingly straight faces. Clearly they’d had to wait for me, and clearly, some of them at least, had seen everything.
A sudden vibrating sensation on my thigh ripped me from my grass-induced daydream, the Jamaican sunshine giving way to the dimly lit white walls of my flat. I looked down at my lap, the Nokia shaking and beeping on my leg.

Incoming Call:
AZIZ

I hit answer.
“Hey man, how’s it going?”
“Hey, you’re back! How was it?”
“Fucking amazing mate,” I said, one lobe of my brain still convinced I was there. “You wouldn’t believe it.”
“Yeah? You had a good time?”
“The best,” I paused, to let out a worryingly powerful yawn. I was beat. “Seriously. I’ll fill you in later.”
“You sound fucking knackered mate.” I could tell he was driving, almost shouting over the engine noise and the drum and bass pouring out of his stereo. It was this DJ Hype tape he’d had in his car as long as I’d known him, and we’d still occasionally listen to it now when we were cruising around.
“Yeah, it’s jetlag. My body clock is shafted. But I’m gonna try and just ride it out, otherwise I’ll be shagged all week. What you up to this afternoon?”
“Nothing man. Why, you wanna roll?”
“Yeah, if its cool. Said I’d pop over and see Dave later, but I’d better drop in and see Henry first. Looks like I’ve got a lot of people to catch up with.
Aziz laughed. “No problem. I just gotta pop into college and see some people, then I’ll be right over. Give me an hour, max.” I heard him inhale on one of his ever-present Marlboro Lights, and I had a sudden twinge of nicotine craving. “How’s the tan?”
I looked at my arm. “Fading fast, I think.”
He laughed again. “Least you aren’t burnt man. I see you in a bit.”
“Cheers Az. Laters.” I hung up.
I sank back into the sofa again, suddenly feeling more cained then I’d realised. My head was heavy, my body distant, and my throat dry to the point of irritation. My ears throbbed with the sound of mortar rounds and the screech of an A10 banking and dropping illumination flares over Iraqi positions in the “liberated” Um Qasa. Meanwhile, somewhere in Basra a hyperactive 21-year-old US tank commander scrambled over the turret of his M1, and turned to look at me. He looked like he’d just stepped off the set of Aliens, his futuristic body armour bristling with countless pouches and devices, and his face framed by the obligatory “hands free” headset, the one accessory no self respecting grunt will be seen without this war. His eyes told a different story though; two dark pits of primal animal adrenalin staring out from all the high technology, trying to focus on me while constantly having to dart over to the right where his outstretched arm was pointed. He was in the grip of First Combat Experience Rush, and his face hadn’t yet decided whether it was happy or not about him having his cherry popped. The usual stoned reverse-empathy had kicked in on my side, and looking at him I just assumed he was as high as me. Chill out man, it’s all good. What’s up, you need a light?
But he was insistent, and looked straight through the camera at me as he spoke, his excited mid western drawl above the low rumble of the Tank’s diesel engine almost a ‘Nam movie cliché. “I just came through here, and we ran right into multiple entrenched bogeys right over there. We held position, designated the units and the Apache just popped up right behind us man, right from behind that building there man, you should have seen it it was so sweet- “ His arms were raised in awe, silhouetted against the washed out Iraqi sky, his voice heavy with panting excitement, like he was telling his frat boy friends how he’d just nailed the homecoming queen in the back of his dads car, “- the timing was just perfect, and it was like BAMF! BAMF! BAMF! and they were out of here, but when the dust cleared we were still receiving incoming, and I was straight on the radio cussing them, Y’know I was all like WHY’D YOU STOP? KEEP (BLEEP)ING FIRING! KEEP (BLEEP)ING FIRING!”
And then he froze, interrupted, his eyes fixed off screen, the excitement gone from his pale face, the adrenalin replaced with battle-alert fear. The familiar staccato sound of AK-47 fire broke the silence, and instantly he was moving again, his back to me as he monkey-scrambled back into the turret hatch, and I thumbed the mute button on the remote to stop the sound of small arms fire from piercing even further in to my skull, and I slept.

The doorbell shook me and pulled me awake. Fuck. Probably just Aziz, but I’d wanted a shower and change of clothes before he arrived. No time now. I pulled myself off the sofa and stumbled into the hall. Doorbell again. Jesus Aziz, give me a fucking chance. My hand found the Yale bolt, and twisted it and let the door open inwards, blinding light spilling in like something out of Close Encounters.
“Ah, the elusive Mr Brown. Good afternoon.” The voice was calm and quiet, but in that way that demands and grips your attention, refusing to let go. It struck me then how heavily it contrasted with the figure that stood before; how surprising it was that such a commanding presence could be radiated from such a dishevelled shell. The dribbled egg on the lapels of the faded brown sports jacket, the unkempt grey hair, the faint reek of gin and body odour; it should all have conspired to make the figure in front of me less intimidating, but I knew this figure and it always brought, at the very least, hassle.
“Professor Taylor,” I replied, the shock of the situation seeming to straighten me from the grass and jetlag almost instantly. Good. I let Taylor step past me into the hall, scanning the street and the traffic on Cowley Road as he did. I could really do with Aziz not turning up right this second. “How are things?”
He turned to look over his shoulder at me, a wry grin on his face, and a flash of alcoholic’s rotten teeth. “Well, really, that’s what I’m here to ascertain.”
A followed him into the lounge, painfully aware of the sickly smell of skunk that hung in the air. I didn’t offer him a seat, hoping that he’d keep it short. I hated being around him, his presence not only making my skin crawl but always, it seemed, signifying impending trouble. Taylor was one of those typically Oxford phenomena; you’d see his type shuffling around the town’s bookshops, looking lost in cobbled back streets and nursing pints of obscure, cloudy ales in the corners of student pubs. It wasn’t until you had to misfortune to have to speak to them that you realised they were actually academics and not homeless mental patients on day release from Littlemore Hospital. It was the clear pronunciation and the stereotypical clipped, rational middle class accent that gave away their over educated roots. Of course, that’s not to say they weren’t fucking mental as well.
As for Taylor, I’d never quite decided whether he was mad or not. He was undoubtedly intelligent; a retired Anatomy professor who still held a chair at Christchurch College, but his intelligence – like his passion for hard liquor – was clearly never in doubt. But it had always struck me that something beyond the gin and vodka gripped his psyche, something dark, something in his past that disturbed him to this day. Or maybe not, maybe he was just a mean drunk trying to hold together a sober exterior. Hell, it wasn’t like I was ever going to ask him. He always reminded me somehow of a scruffy Ian Mckellen; not the crumpled, friendly uncle Gandalf Mckellen of Lord of the Rings, but the cold, evil and slightly camp Magneto Mckellen of X-men. Whatever, I certainly wasn’t about to start asking him personal questions about his childhood – I tried to avoid talking to him as much as possible, and would happily have kicked him out of the flat without a second thought, if it wasn’t for the unfortunate fact that he owned it.
“I really have had awful trouble getting hold of you the last two weeks, Mr Brown. I thought you might have disappeared, maybe been involved in some terrible accident. It’s quite a relief to see you in good health.” His sarcasm seemed to hung in the air. I knew instantly he wanted something, but that he was going to try and make me suffer by beating around the bush before he got to it. It was quite bizarre how clearly self-aware he was of how unpleasant his mere presence was to others, and even more disturbing when you realised he was getting off on it.
“I’ve been on holiday.” I told him, trying to avoid looking directly at his crumbled grey face, like a kid trying to resist looking into the sun, knowing that it would inevitably lead to pain but want to see how hard they could push it. I allowed myself a glance, but avoided the empty pits of his eyes, instead finding myself focussing on a sickening cluster of spit-bubbles and remnants of some white foodstuff that had gathered on the right hand corner of his mouth.
“Oh really? Anywhere nice?” The spit-food thing flexed and bubbled as he spoke. I looked away in a mixture of disgust and embarrassment.
“Jamaica.” I told him, instantly regretting it.
“Really? The Caribbean? Well I never, Mr Brown.” He ran a skeletal finger along the top the bookcase in the lounge. For the first time I noticed that it was nearly half empty, gaps in the rows of DVDs, books fallen on their sides in the excessive space. She’s taken everything that was hers. “Business must be, how do you say, booming.” He shot me that evil Mr. Burns grin of his.
“Not particularly. I got a cheap deal. You’d be surprised what the war on terrorism has done to the cost of trans-Atlantic flights.” It wasn’t a lie, the whole thing had cost me less than four hundred quid.
He laughed. “I can imagine. You had a good time I trust?” He inspected the end of his finger, looking for dust. He seemed disappointed with how little he found. “You and the lovely Miss Harris?”
“Julia didn’t come with me. We’re not together anymore. In fact she’s moved out. She hasn’t contacted you?”
“No, not at all. There would have been no need for her to, there’s only your name on the tenancy. But I am sorry to hear that.“ The sarcasm back again. “Had enough of your wicked ways, had she?”
“Look Professor, what exactly is this about? I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m actually quite busy and--“
“Oh, I’m sure you are.” He paused, seeming to relish the moment. “What this is about, Mr Brown is the rent.”
“What rent? The rents not due to next week.”
“That’s next month’s rent. I’m referring to this months.”
“You’ve had this month’s.” I was starting to feel my patience slip away.
“Correction, I have had half of this month’s rent. Three hundred and fifty pounds has been deposited in my account, but from what I recall from the tenancy, the agreed amount is exactly double that.”
Shit. She’d skipped out without paying her half of the rent. Fuck. My mind raced, trying to remember the few conversations we’d had before I’d left. I’d been pretty clear she was going, but what had we agreed about rent? I silently cursed her, but in the deep recesses of my skunk addled memory I had a growing suspicion I might have told her to forget it, just to avoid the possibility of having another screaming match. Still worth trying to blag it though, just to get this evil old bastard out of my face. “Right. Well I’m afraid the problem is with Julia. She must have cancelled her standing order when she moved out. You’ll have to take it up with her, I can give you her mobile-“
“You misunderstand me, Mr Brown. As I happened to mention earlier, it is only your name that is on the tenancy agreement, not Miss Harris, thus making you solely responsible for the full rent. And I expect it immediately.” That grin again.
“Okay, okay.” I found myself looking down at my feet, like a naughty schoolboy getting a bollocking. “I’ll get it to you as soon as I can-“
He interrupted me again and I looked up at him, a flash of anger igniting the inside of my skull. “I think you misheard me,” he said, “I need it immediately.”
“Ok, I’ll write you a cheque then.” It’ll bounce, motherfucker. But at least it’ll get your stinking arsehole out of my lounge. “I’ll just find my cheque book. Hang on a sec”.
“Wait.” For the first time, there was a sense of doubt, or maybe embarrassment, in his voice. “I’m, err, afraid a cheque will be inadequate. I need the funds immediately.” He was starting to sound like a broken record. Always with the immediately. But there was something else there too; something that explained his insistence. I had to force back a chuckle as the picture became clearer.
“How come?” I was near gloating now, enjoying the role reversal and his discomfort. “What’s the problem Taylor? Your wife giving you grief again?” It was said to remind him of the time he’d blown all his money on the horses and his wife had chucked him out on his arse, and he’s insisted on sleeping on our sofa for two painful nights. I’d never met the infamous Mrs Turner, I’m pleased to add, but I in no way doubted her ferociousness. In my imagination, where luckily she didn’t put in too frequent an appearance, she was a bloated, maltreated bulldog of a woman.
“Or maybe you’ve finally maxed out your slate at The Goat’s Head, huh?” I added.
There was a flash of rage across his face, and I’ll swear even some colour in his cheeks. It was the first real emotion, besides the ever-present self- pleasuring insidiousness, he’d displayed so far. He went to speak, but then I saw him freeze for a second, and with a blink of his eyes he seemed to have returned himself to his usual state of ice cool dominance, and when he spoke it was as calculated and chilling as ever. “Now come on Mr Brown, lets not get upset here. And Mrs Taylor is very well, thank you for asking.”
I instantly felt like a kid again, trying to weasel out of something. “The agreement was that I paid you by standing order, there was never any mention of cash-“
“True. But I believe the agreement was also that you wouldn’t use my property as a base for selling drugs.” I felt my heart sink, and my cheeks blush. So this was how he was going to play it. “I’m well aware of the little operation you have running from here, and I’m sure the police would be very interested in what I know.”
“You threatening me, Taylor?” I tried to sound pissed off, but knowing that probably I was wasting my time.
“Well observed, Mr Brown”
I wanted to take it further – well, I wanted to deck the fucker – but it struck me it would be futile. He was serious. He’d shop me to the police in a second, I could feel it. He wanted me out anyway - he could sell this place for at least a hundred and thirty grand, and that would buy him a whole lot of Gordon’s. Greedy old fucker. In fact, the only reason he hadn’t kicked me out before was that he was too fucking lazy and pissed to deal with estate agents and lawyers and shit. Plus the 700 quid a month must come in handy. Technically, he had his facts wrong; I wasn’t running any operation from his property, but the last thing I needed was the pigs sniffing around and finding out what was really going on. There was little point in arguing. He had me by the balls.
“Okay, I’ll get you your money. But I need some time. I can let you have it tomorrow.”
“Too late. I need it this evening.” A hint of embarrassment again? I wasn’t sure.
“Jesus Taylor, be reasonable,” He was taking the piss, and loving it. “I can’t just magic three hundred and fifty fucking quid out of thin air.”
“OK, I’ll be reasonable.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Midnight.”
“Midnight? Are you serious?”
“ Midnight. I think I’m being very generous. That’s technically tomorrow, you know.” He chuckled to himself, and turned to leave the room.
“Oh, cheers. And how am I meant to get it to you at fucking midnight?” I hardly fancied trawling the city’s pubs for him at closing time.
I followed him out into the hall. “You know where I live, correct?” he asked me.
“Yeah” He had one of those big fuck off townhouses in Summertown he’d blagged off the Uni, the jammy bastard. “Henderson Street, right? Fifty seven?”
“Correct. I have a social engagement tonight. I will be home by eleven, and will be retiring at twelve. I do hope I don’t have to make any phone calls before I sleep, I must admit that I do find dealing with the police rather unsettling.”
Yeah, I’m sure you do. We all remember, including the Oxford Mail and the local magistrates, that time you pissed the bonnet of that squad car down Little Clarendon Street. “Don’t worry, you’ll get your money.”
“Oh, I’m sure I will,” He opened the front door, but turned back to face me before he left. “Ahh, and one last thing, Mr Brown.”
“What?”
“Welcome home.”


Chapter 2
The Cat With No Ears

“So let me get this straight,” Aziz paused, taking his eyes off the road yet again to shoot me a concerned glare, “We’ve got to raise three hundred and fifty quid by midnight?”
“Yeah.” was my only response. It was the only the second time I’d had to clarify the scenario for him, but I was already getting tired of going over it. Plus something about the way he said “we’ve” instead of “you’ve” made me feel kind of uneasy.
“But that’s like,” He glanced at his watch, “just over eleven hours. Eleven fucking hours, man. Eleven hours to make what would normally take us a fucking week?”
Again with that us/we thing. Part of me had kind of hoped that having two weeks without my company would have put a bit of distance between him and my business, because after all, it was my business. To an outsider looking at the situation that probably sounds more than a bit harsh, especially when you consider that Aziz and his battered old red Fiesta were my only means of transport. But by no means, in my mind at least, was Aziz ever my business partner. I didn’t even consider him my “official driver” or any shit like that. Sure, I put a bit of cash and free gear his way, but it wasn’t like we’d ever had an arrangement. It had just turned out that way. He was on Julia’s course, and she’d introduced him to me up at the Student Union one night, and he’d happily bought some weed off of me. Then Julia had got into some hissyfit about me dealing in the union or dealing to her friends or something, and stormed off home leaving me with Aziz. We’d got chatting, had a couple more beers, and then I’d had to make my excuses and split, because I’d had deliveries to make. At which point his little face had lit right up, and he’d offered to give me a lift. Turns out he was, quite understandably, bored shitless with the crowd there that night and fancied a drive. The next night I bumped into him down the Union again, and almost exactly the same scenario played out once more, and it had done so pretty much every night following. Except that after a week or so we managed to cut the whole Student Union bit out of the equation, meaning that me and Aziz didn’t have to put up with Julia’s tedious Gap wearing friends on a nightly basis, and Julia didn’t have to throw any more hissyfits. Everyone was happy. Well, apart from maybe Julia.
And all that was nearly a year ago. But it was starting to feel a little awkward these days. I mean, Aziz was doing me the biggest favour; before we’d started hanging out together my only mean of propulsion had been a clumsy and tiring combination of bike, bus and foot, plus it was undeniable his student contacts had expanded my market considerably. And honestly, I was grateful for it all. But it was still unclear what, apart from the petrol money and his weekly eighth, he wanted out of the relationship. At first it had been pretty clear he was getting off on the buzz of just hanging round with a “full time dealer”, like he wanted to watch me in action and learn the ropes, but increasingly I was starting to get the feeling he wanted his own slice of the action. Problem was that was never going to happen – I wasn’t running a franchise here, and even with the contacts he’d brought in there still wasn’t enough custom to pay us both a wage.
“Look, I can tell you this right now,” he said, talking round the thin little spliff that had been hanging out of his mouth since he’d picked me up, “It ain’t going to happen man.” His voice was tense with that Asian-Essex boy wannabee gangster attitude he liked to put on at times like this.
“What are you on about? ‘Course it’ll happen. I’m gonna make it happen.”
“You’re gonna make it happen” he repeated, but with a severe lack of conviction in his voice, like I’d just claimed I’d been abducted by space aliens.
“What, you doubting me?”
“I ain’t doubting you, it’s just—“ he seemed to struggle for words for a second, and I knew he was just trying to be tactful, “It’s just I’m saying it ain’t gonna happen, is all.”
“You’re doubting me.”
“I’m not doubting you, I’m doubting the situation, okay?” He seemed frustrated. “I’m just saying it ain’t gonna happen, it’s just not possible.”
“Of course it’s fucking possible. What about that time I shifted that half bar in one night?”
“That was Mayday man. It was fucking Mayday!” His voice seemed to shift up an octave. “And we sold more than half that up Port Meadow to people we didn’t even fucking know.”
He had a point of course. Mayday was one of those weird Oxford traditions I’d never discovered the history or meaning of, just that it meant damn near every student in the city stayed out drinking all night and well into the next day. One contingent always ended up down by the river watching over-privileged black tie wearing fuckwits jump off bridges, while another headed up to the fields north of the city centre to sit around bonfires and hold impromptu raves. That was until the police started cracking down on the whole thing, and the nasty looking Mayday balls started evolving into what were commercial raves themselves, with all the predictably dull superstar DJs you’d expect and a ticket price to match. But it was still a busy night for me; just about everyone wanted some smoke, and those that did make it past the cops to Port Meadow were pretty much a captive market. Most of the year I dealt strictly just to people I knew, but Mayday was one of those times, along with Christmas and New Year, when I opened my stall out to all comers.
“So what then?” I asked him. “You got any better ideas?”
“You got no money at all? Nothing?”
“I’m brasic man. Overdraft’s well over its limit, all my credit’s card’s are maxed. Jamaica’s cleaned me out. Seriously. You gonna lend my three hundred and fifty quid?”
“Fuck off. I’m more skint than you are.”
“As expected.” I said.
“What about your parents?”
“Yeah, my parents. Right. Don’t take the piss. You know I haven’t talked to them for fucking years.”
“Then there’s just one option left,” he said.
“What?”
“You’ve gots to get that fucking bitch of yours to pay up, G.”
I sighed.
“What?” he asked, sensing my disapproval.
“Look, for a start, don’t talk like that man, ok?”
“Why not?”
“Cos’ you ain’t fucking American and you sound fucking stupid. What, I go away for two weeks, come back and Cowley Road has been transplanted into South Central LA? You got a hydraulics and a drop top fitted on this piece of shit you ain’t shown me yet?”
“Hey, you don’t like the ride, you know where the bus stop is.” He was laughing, but I know he wasn’t going to let it go. “But you ain’t going to tell me she isn’t a bitch, man. You said that yourself before you left.”
“What you said was “your bitch”. And she is not my bitch. She’s my ex-bitch.” I was just making a point, but the word bitch still felt uncomfortable in my mouth.
“Thank fuck.”
“Oh, thanks for the commiserations.” I replied, slightly surprised.
“What? Oh, come on Gabe, you knew this was going to happen. You hardly seem cut up over it, either.”
“No,” I replied, “I guess I’m not. It’s just…it’s just weird, you know?”
“Yeah,” he was suddenly sympathetic, with a sincerity that kind of surprised and embarrassed me. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Forget it. It’s me, I’m just crabby with the jetlag.”
We had come to a stop at the crossing lights just outside the Tesco on Cowley Road, and I watched an anti war protester and a Big Issue seller argue over the valuable turf outside the supermarket’s exit. For the first few days I’d been in Jamaica it had felt almost like a simulation to me; a digitally constructed paradise of lush green flora and Photoshop perfected blue sea and sky, created purely for paying tourists like myself. But now, staring out through the car’s windscreen, the drab grey of Oxford appeared far more artificial, and the early afternoon bustle of people in the street seemed like nothing more than a complex algorithm designed to simulate chaos -- an illusion of complexity and randomness that you knew would ultimately reveal itself to be sterile and predictable. I remembered Jamaica again, the images flowing quick and easily to me, lying stoned in a rope hammock on the beach, starring up into the tree above. The branches spiralled up into a mass of green and tan, paradoxically simple fractal patterns emerging from the organic chaos, and within this tiny green lizards the size of my index finger ran and climbed with machine like stop/start precision, their apparent lack of any sense of up or down creating stomach churning mockeries of gravity that would have filled Escher with envy. But even within the hyperrealism of the seemingly hand crafted structure of the tree and the robotics of the lizards’ movements, there was never any doubt that it was real, that everything I touched, smelt or heard was alive, and that the seemingly timeless bubble I lay in could be pierced from the outside at any moment. Even when relaxed I still felt that thrilling edge, the constant reminder that I was an intruder in an alien environment, that this was no engineered and moderated theme park but a living, breathing biosphere, where I was merely a welcome, safe visitor while I was able to keep my wits about me.
Oxford, in contrast, now seemed as artificial and two dimensional as the bland airport halls and corridors I’d stumbled through just hours earlier. Compared to the pulsating disorder of the Caribbean jungle even the haphazard culture clash of Cowley Road, forged by decades of immigration and an ever shifting transient population, seemed unforgivably lifeless and planned. The square-boxed geometry of the halal butchers, kebab shops, off-licenses and fake Irish pubs that usually presented itself as a town planner’s ungovernable nightmare, instead seemed as rigid and restrained as the low-rez backgrounds of a cheap Playstation racing game, the textures on the buildings and the animations of it’s inhabitants looped to give an illusion of depth and reality while not further taxing an already flagging frame rate. It was nothing more than a clever trick of the eye, which I’d somehow learnt how to see straight through.
“Heads up” I heard from my left, and I turned to face the half smoked spliff suspended just inches from my face. I plucked it from Aziz’s fingers and put it to my lips, but inhaled in vain as he’d let it die, and instead of filling my lungs with smoke it just filled my mouth with stale, tarred air. Fragmented drum and bass echoed from the Aziz’s ageing and tinny car stereo as two female figures crossed in front of us. Both carried bags, one Prada one Tescos, but that was where any similarity ended. While the first was formed from six foot of exposed tanned skin and designer denim, the second limped across in a stoop, her gender barely distinguishable under seemingly infinite layers of stained wool and rags, the hand that didn’t hold the fraying bag clutching a crumpled blue tin of McKewens Export lager like a war reporter clutching his microphone to his mouth. The economic distance between the two figures was suddenly shocking and awful to me, but I knew that no one else saw it, least of all the tanned girl, her eyes shielded by overpriced Gucci plastic and metal as she drifted across the road with puma-like grace. I guess that to many she would have been a symbol of stylistic perfection, every inch of her clothes and body a well planned and executed design decision, but just then she seemed as bland and flat as the grey buildings that flanked her. For that second everything about her; her past, her lifestyle, even her groomed and tailored DNA seemed to present itself to me in the form of another dull, predictable stereotype struggling to promote any real interest or reaction. But the second figure was different; there was no data, past or present, apparent in what she wore. I realised then that her multiple layers of bag-lady clothing did more than attempt to protect her from the harsh elements, it also shielded her from any attention, letting her melt into the shadows and ensuring certain questions, known only to her, were never even asked. I watched her reach the other side of the road and almost fall on to the pavement before Aziz let the car move off again, and for the first time that afternoon I felt something external to my immediate space spark my interest, and it came as a fleeting feeling of distracting, escapist relief. But then she was gone, drifting away from the periphery of my vision, and the distraction and relief was gone too.
I slipped my hand into the inside pocket of my leather jacket, fumbling for a lighter, but instead I yanked out the plain brown envelope I’d folded and stuffed there earlier before leaving the flat.
“What’s that?” asked Aziz.
“Dunno. Letter for Julia.”
“From you?”
“No man,” I tutted, “It’s not from me. It’s just some post for her, found it at the flat. Thought I might drop it into her work later.”
“Cool. You should.”
I looked at him sideways, wondering where he was going with this one.
“Why?” I asked him.
“’Cos then you can get your fucking money off her.”
I sighed again. I’d walked right into that one.
“Fucking leave it Aziz, allright? It ain’t gonna happen.” For a start, if I was going to drop it off at Cosmo’s, the bar she worked evenings at, I was going to make sure it was when I knew she wouldn’t actually be there. “Now you got a fucking light here or what? Jesus, only time I get a spliff off you is when it’s died and you’re too fucking lazy to light it up.”
He chuckled, pointing to a battered red Clipper that was rolling around the dashboard. I grabbed it and lit the spliff, inhaling as I sparked it, taking in a lungful of sickly-sweet skunk smoke.
“Open it” Aziz said, out of nowhere.
“You what?”
“The letter. Open it.”
I took another toke, and rubbed my temples with the fingers of my right hand before answering. “Why? Why the hell would I want to open it?”
“ I dunno man.” He shrugged, “Maybe it’s got money in it.”
I laughed, almost choking on a lungful of spliff, the extra oxygen making the hit have more impact and threatening to start my head spinning. “Right. So Julia’s receiving plain brown envelopes full of cash from-“ I squinted at the badly printed postmark. “Edinburgh. Sounds likely.”
“Could be. You dunno till you open it.” He sounded defensive, like he didn’t want me to make him feel stupid, so I let it drop.
“Can we just keep our mind on the matter at hand, huh?” I asked him, changing the subject, and refolding the envelope and stuffing it back into my jacket. “You said earlier you had something for me, what you got?”
“Duffy. Southfield Road.”
“For fuck’s sake Aziz,” I felt my heart sink. “You know I fucking hate going round there.”
“Don’t sweat it man, Duffy’s OK”
“Yeah, Duffy’s sound, it’s just those fucking retards he lives with.”
“Look, you want this rent money or not?”
I exhaled hard, trying to let out stress along with the smoke. I was starting to tense up just thinking about going round there. “Can’t he meet us somewhere though? The Firkin?”
“It’s not just him that wants to score. Apparently the girls want some too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. By all accounts, Emily’s got some new bloke,” He faked sounding all impressed, like it was a big deal. Emily would certainly be trying to make out it was, “and he’s some big caner. Wants to make out to him she’s “down” or some shit.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Chill out man, Jason might not even be there.”
And with that he’d hit the nail right on the head. Maybe he was right. Maybe he wouldn’t be there. I closed my eyes for a second; trying to fight back the fear and panic I could feel rising from the pit of my stomach.

Aziz pulled the car into Princes Street and as he parked it next to the kerb outside Henry’s Place I grabbed the parking permit from out of the glove compartment and stuck it behind the windshield. Aziz climbed straight out of the car and headed up the garden path, and I followed slowly, my back, legs and shoulders suddenly aching with the combination of stress and jetlag. As I mounted the kerb I dropped the end of Aziz’s joint into a small puddle of dark rain, the still burning end making a satisfying fizzle sound as it made contact with the water. The garden was a disgusting mess of split plastic bin bags, beer cans, bean tins and rotting newspaper, topped off with a shopping trolley and a battered traffic cone, as though the house’s student resident’s had felt some feline urge to scent-mark their territory in the most blatant and obvious way.
I met Aziz on the doorstep. I stared at him, and he stared back at me with a slightly toasted, but happy, glaze over his face. I stared back. He shrugged. I shrugged back.
“Keys?” I asked, finally.
“Oh shit!” He rummaged in his baggy jean pockets, “I totally forgot I had them man.” I’d left the keys with him for safekeeping. He produced them and for a brief second held them in front of my face, the bundle of keys chinking and glinting gold and silver in the dim sunlight, like an irregular, misshapen charm bracelet. And below them all, on a dull metal chain, hung Doreamon, the cute little blue and white robot cat from the future that had entertained Japanese kids for more than a quarter of a century. The key ring had been a present from Naoto when he’d returned from his last visit home, inspired by a confused and stoned conversation I’d had with him about Japanese kid’s TV where I’d surprised him by even knowing about the cyber-cat’s existence. In reality it wasn’t a key ring at all, but one of those charms that Tokyo schoolgirls hung from their cell phones in an attempt to protect them from microwave induced brain tumours, but I’d never figured out a way to attach it to one of our dull European handsets, and instead it had ended up on Henry’s keys. I kind of regretted that now; the poor earless cat was starting to look chipped and battered after months of being bashed and scratched against the keys and the inside of my pockets. It had been a treasured item when Naoto had first given it to me, one of those rare trinkets that somehow instantly have value to you, just because you know some thought, however fleeting, was put into buying it for you. But like so much else in my life it had become neglected and unimportant to me, forgotten until that moment and left to fend for itself. I suddenly felt guilty for the cheap lump of Taiwanese plastic it was sculpted from, realising then that I had spoiled something I would never be able to replace.
As Aziz found the right key for the door, I remembered the little cat’s story, or at least how Naoto had related it to me in his fragmented English. As far as I recalled, unsuspecting fourth grade class dunce and weakling Nobita finds the robot cat in his school locker, discovering that it’s been sent back from the 24th century by his descendants to sort Nobita’s life out, and to try and save his great-great-great grandchildren from the life of poverty and shame his incompetence has left them with. It’s kind of a Back to the Future/Terminator style wake up call for the poor Nobita – being told that you face a future of shame and poverty seemed just as harsh to me as being warned you were going to grow up a geek or that the world was going to be ruled by cybernetic killing machines shaped like Austrian weightlifters, and, to be frank, right then I was really starting to identify with the kid.

Aziz opened the door and I followed him into the house’s dank smelling corridor. We both entered silently, listening for other occupants, and hearing nothing I let the door behind me close with a loud click as if to announce our arrival. It wasn’t until then that I heard the sound of clanking pots and movement from the kitchen up ahead. I nodded at Aziz and tilted my head towards the stairs, meaning for him to head up to Henry’s room, and he winked back at me and started to make his way up. I exhaled hard again, half yawn and half stressed sigh, and with a certain degree of trepidation headed towards the kitchen. It pays to put in an appearance, I told myself. Stealth and security are the number one concern.
As it was I shouldn’t have worried, as the only person in the kitchen was Jens, the lanky German student that lived in the downstairs front room. He glanced up to look at me, whilst emptying a can of spaghetti hoops into a battered saucepan, a pleasant smile spread across his pointed face.
“Hey! Henry! How goes it?” He leant over to take my hand, shaking it firmly, ”Good, I hope?”
“Yeah, not bad Jens.” In the little time I’d spent with him I’d kind of developed a soft spot for Jens, almost to the extent that I regretted having to constantly lie to him about my identity. He was an honest, friendly guy, the sort of person seemingly able to show a genuine interest in anyone he met, a skill I envied him for at times. He was studying for an MA in European Finance, from what I remembered, and despite his obvious intelligence he had this air of slightly geeky naivety about him, that I had found kind of refreshing after dealing with the kind of cocky, arrogant individuals my line of business usually brought me into contact with. During the longest conversation I’d had with him, he’d recollected a time he’d had a run in with some drunken retard in one of Oxford’s tacky town centre pubs, and he’d ended up as the brunt of a series of anti-German jokes. Apparently these had centred mainly on the end result of World War Two, which had baffled Jens more than upset him, as neither he nor his intellectually stunted protagonist had even been conceived when those events had occurred. Even more bizarrely, his drunken commentator had been under the misapprehension that dropping the H-bomb on Germany had ended the war, and assumedly that Hiroshima was in fact a suburb of Frankfurt. I’d laughed, and tried to re-assure him that it was only a very small percentage of the population that still harboured some resentment towards him and his countrymen, but to be honest I had trouble convincing myself. I’d spent some time in Germany a few years earlier, and had found the mix of friendly people, rich food, cheap beer and Berlin’s underground techno clubs a pretty much perfect combination. That said, I don’t recommend ever getting the guided tour of Auschwitz on an LSD comedown. Not only does it leave you feeling full of disrespectful guilt, but also seems to stain you with a mind-fucking depression that’ll haunt your dreams with writhing concrete shadows and screams of pain for years to follow. Actually, thinking about it now, maybe that’s how everyone should be shown the place. Anyway, Jens was a nice guy, and talking to him always ended up with me wishing I would spend more time with him, and proposing that we should go out “some time” for one of those phantom good will beers that you both know will never materialise. And for that I always felt kind of bad.
“And you? Everything good?” I asked him.
“Ah yes, not so bad, not so bad.” He replied, stirring his spaghetti hoops with a battered looking wooden spoon. “I am busy, you know?”
“College?”
“Yes, yes. College. Always college.” He waved the spoon in front of his face like he was absent-mindedly trying to swat some unseen fly, drops of hot tomato splattering the already soiled cooker as he did so “Papers, exams, presentations…” He trailed off and punctuated the sentence with an exaggerated, slightly camp even, tut.
“There any one else in, Jens?” I asked him, scanning the kitchen for any signs of life, but instead just getting a sensory overload of mess.
“No, no just me. Katy is away, visiting her parents. And Nathan, he is in London for the weekend. Clubbing, I think.” He turned to a plate at his side, which bore two cold slices of toast, and started to spread pale margarine diagonally across them with a dirty looking knife. “Haven’t seen you here for a long time now, Henry. You have been staying with your girlfriend, yes?”
“Yeah.” I replied, trying my best to sound convincing, at least to myself. I felt a brief spasm of paranoid fear shoot up my spine, and tried to physically shrug it off. That cover story was starting to wear threadbare thin. I felt the sudden need to get out, to avoid further questioning. I had to come up with something quick.
I yawned. Long and hard.
“Henry my friend, you are tired? You look exhausted, I think.”
Bingo.
“Yeah, I’m knackered man.” I yawned again, then worried that I was over doing it. “I think I’m gonna take a nap, catch up on some sleep.”
“That girl of yours, keeping you awake is she?” he asked, a cheeky glint in his Aryan blue eyes.
I laughed nervously. “Yeah, you could say that”. I watched him pour the orange-red mess of hoops and sauce onto the toast, my stomach suddenly rumbling with hunger, as unappetising as his meal looked. I turned to leave before I was tempted to check the cupboards for something to eat.
“Take it easy my friend.” He said after me, “Sleep well.”
“Cheers.” I looked back over my shoulder at him. “It’s good seeing you man. We should go out for a beer sometime.”
“Yes.” He looked up at me from his plate, a warm smile across his face. “I’d like that.”

I pushed open the small room’s door to find Aziz cross-legged on the floor; Zen like, skinning up. It had been over two weeks since I’d last been here, and I was surprised at how small the room actually felt, and the mild, nagging sense of claustrophobia that had been with me since I’d boarded the plane home and had proceeded to follow me through the grey streets of Oxford seemed to intensify now. It was barely bigger than a large cupboard, and nearly half of it’s precious floor space was taken up the uncomfortable looking single bed, which along with the small desk that had been wedged into the opposite end of the room were the only pieces of furniture that had been in the room when I’d rented it, and still were.
Apart from a few scraps of paper and some leaky biro pens, the only things on the desk were an ageing IBM computer and a far older angle poise lamp. In fact, I realised looking at it then, the lamp was probably one of the oldest things I owned, and as such was the closest thing I had to an heirloom. It had lit a long series of my private rooms since I was at least twelve years old, and was sculpted from the finest chrome effect metal and glossy white plastic 1980s Hong Kong had to offer. At fifteen I’d taken some hormonal dislike to it’s over stylised, almost Kubrick-esque white curves, and had gone at it with spray can of matt black enamel paint. Not only had the sudden urge to do this ruined a perfectly good bedside table and horrified my parents, due to my failure to remove it from it’s place in my bedroom during the spraying, but it had also clearly not worked. Paint had started to flake of it almost immediately after it had dried, and had carried on doing so for the following decade and a half, until it now looked like the process had been reversed, and that the white paint was in fact flaking off to reveal black underneath. It still worked though; in fact it was on right then, proudly lighting the dim room on it’s own, but it’s chipped and battered appearance made me think again of the neglected Doreamon key ring, and I felt yet another small twinge of guilt and regret.
The computer was newer, but on the scale of things not much so. It was a battered Pentium I’d bought back at university, and had been destined for the bin men until I’d had the idea of sticking it on the desk here in the hope of making the room look more like a student actually did live here. I hadn’t used it for ages, and when I’d brought it round I’d literally just dumped it on the desk, unplugged. Then one night, for whatever reason, a group of us had ended up back here. Dave, ever the wannabe hacker, had been unable to keep his hands of the miserable beige box, and had it powered up and was nosing around it’s directories before I could say anything. Dave had this weird obsession with old computers, where he hated to see any silicon, however out moded or redundant it was, go unused. His home was full of aging games consoles, PCs and antique home micro’s, but rather than sitting around redundant each one had to have a practical purpose. So there was a half knackered Sega Saturn in his bathroom he used to play CDs when he was in the shower, a modified Apple 11e Classic in the kitchen for playing his vast mp3 collection when he was cooking, and a 12 year old dusty grey Amstrad laptop in the downstairs toilet so he could check his mail when he was taking a dump. It was as though, in his mind, leaving any computer unused was an insult to the designers and engineers that had originally brought it to life, and the fact that it was now obsolete was irrelevant, because at one time each machine had been cutting edge, with the potential to captivate and enthral those who came near it. As he’d brought my old IBM back to life, he’d told me that despite his never-ending lust for the latest tech, he never fell out of love with the machines he’d owned and used in the past. “Obsolescence is all in the mind”, he’d said, and it was though finding a use for everything was more than just a challenge to him, but something higher, something almost spiritual to him, that maybe he secretly feared the gods of Otaku-Geek heaven would refuse him entry if he failed to revive every one of their neglected creations that came his way. That night he carted the PC home with him, poor skinny Naoto struggling behind with the heavy JVC monitor. A week later the two had returned carrying the machine, and they set it up in the same place on the desk before Dave proudly gave me the guided tour of his latest creation. He’d augmented the dying silicon of the ancient processor with cannibalised parts of dubious origin; a new 40 gigabyte IDE hard drive, a scavenged Creative labs soundcard, A USB card, and the pierce de resistance, a tiny USB web cam he’d found at the back of one of his kitchen drawers. At first I was puzzled, but when he hid the camera in the top of my cupboard and showed me through the software he’d installed I have to admit I was more than impressed. The PC was meant to be left powered up permanently, the tiny camera taking shots of the room every 5 seconds and silently recording them to the new, copious hard disk. I was stunned; it seemed one minute I’d had nothing more than a gutless prop sitting on my desk, the next it was transformed into a covert, fully functioning high tech CCTV system, ready to capture any housemate that might let curiosity lead them into it’s domain.
I found myself staring up into its single hidden eye, Aziz still sat at my feet, when it started to dawn on me. This little room, maybe this was it now. Julia had gone, my money had gone, and in less than eleven hours the flat would be gone too. And this would be all I’d have left, this tiny rented room that wasn’t even legally mine to stay in, as it’s true tenant had been dead for nearly twenty years.
Poor Henry James Anderson, God rest his soul. He had been my discovery, the reward of a pitiful, rainy day browsing Oxford’s smaller graveyards and cemeteries, searching among the dead for the one that could fill my requirements. It had been late in the afternoon that I had finally found him, my determination fading fast and my energy sapped by the noxious drizzle and brooding sky. But when I found him, his existence blazed in white on black granite, I felt redeemed and looked into the grey sky and praised the Lord in that elated way only atheists ever do. Granted, I’d have preferred a better name, but it was the dates that filled me with joy. Born December 4th 1973, Died April 27th 1984, a tragedy of childhood Leukaemia. His birthday was the same year and month as mine, a perfect match. I took his details, and along with just £19.99, exchanged them with a website for his birth certificate. His birth certificate gave me a bank account, a credit card and enough paperwork to persuade the dull witted and money hungry letting agents that Henry Anderson still walked among us, and wanted to rent this tiny, forty five pounds a week room. A contact at the University provided not only the letter I needed to keep the Council Tax people off my back, but also a genuine Student ID card, it’s photographic evidence finally giving a familiar face to the long dead man. Everything fell into place. I had his identity, I had his room, and Henry James Anderson was born again.
But this room was never meant to be lived in, at least not by me. It was nothing more than a safe house, a deposit for my merchandise and money, somewhere for me to come to count my funds and bag up my goods. These days I never dealt in anything harder than weed, but getting busted with the amounts that regularly moved through my hands was still going to be a big deal and a heavy sentence, and I’d learnt from other’s mistakes that the best way to avoid the situation was to keep business and home life as physically separate as possible. Sure, I’d crashed here a few times; when things had got bad with Julia or I was just too fucked to crawl the rest of the way home, but live here? It might be the final option, but my head spun at the thought of it. Where the fuck would all my stuff go for a start; my books, my clothes, my records…my TV would barely fucking fit in here. No. It wasn’t going to work, living here under a dead man’s name. There had to be an alternative, and it had to work.
I looked down at Aziz, still sat at my feet, putting the finishing touches to his spliff. “Come on then,” I said.
“Hu hmmph?” he mumbled, as he swept his tongue left to right along the Rizla paper’s glue.
“Move your arse.” I explained.
“Oh, shit, yeah,” he muttered, sticking the spliff between his lips and clambering up onto the nearby bed, “Sorry.”
I knelt down on the floor where he had been sat, and pulled back the section of carpet that Julia had cut away for me with a scalpel, to reveal the floorboards below. I couldn’t help but admire her handiwork; she had cut the carpet so precisely that when it was laid down it was impossible to notice the cut, and when it was the missing section was a perfect square, framing the pattern of wooden boards below. Typical.
With a level of caution usually reserved for those people that handle weapons grade Plutonium, I lifted up the loose floorboard and placed it to one side, and stared down into the dank abyss below. I silently freaked out.
“Give us a hand here then,” I said, a slight edge of nerves betrayed in my voice.
Aziz took a long drag on his freshly lit joint, exhaling a long plume of smoke as he peered down at me from the bed.
“What?” he asked, with fake confusion.
“Fuck off. You know damn well what. There’s no way I’m putting my hands in there.”
He sighed, and lowered himself slowly off the bed. “You’re pathetic sometimes Gabe, you know that? I don’t know what the fuck you’d do without me man.”
To those that are lucky enough to be un-touched by it’s afflictions arachnophobia must seem like the most illogical of conditions; the idea that something as small and defenceless as even the largest household spider can cause apparently retarded panic in a fully grown human male does indeed seem ludicrous. But the true sufferer knows different, because they know what it is to inhabit that exclusive, illogical perception of reality where the mere sight of an arachnid can incite a thunderous increase in heart rate, a heaviness of breathing or even involuntary paralysis. They know exactly how terrifying the mere shape of a spider’s form is, how the movements of its legs can cause the stomach to knot, and how the slightest brush of skin against cobweb can inflict crippling fear. They know what it is to live a life where they subconsciously scan every corner, floor and ceiling of every room they enter for evidence, and equally how humiliating it is when they consciously discover themselves doing it. There is no logic to the behaviour at all, but that fails to make the experience any less real. In fact, it is here where the non-sufferer’s understanding truly breaks down; as it is this total lack of rationality and logic that makes the experience of full blown arachnophobia so mind-numbingly terrifying, because when it grasps you, for however fleeting a moment that may be, you understand truly what it is to have no control. You understand what it is to be insane.
I watched Aziz lower his hands into the hole, his arms being swallowed by the black as far his fake Rolex watch, and then he froze. I looked up at his eyes, but they were still focussed downwards, onto something unseen. Detail on his face became suddenly magnified; a bead of sweet on his tan forehead, a minute wrinkling of his smooth skin. A tremor of faint, unexplained panic rippled through my bowels. Silence.
Then he screamed. His hands left the hole in a blur, and he fell backwards against the side of the bed.
I didn’t realise I was screaming until I stopped, and I didn’t stop screaming until I hit my head against the desk, which is also when I realised I had managed to furiously crab-crawl backwards across the length of the room. Terror averted my eyes, and then with the most evil of paradoxes, terror forced me to look.
Aziz sat with his back against the bed, his left hand holding his stomach, the right held out in front of him at arm’s length, palm towards me, waving erratically. His head was arched back, eyes to the ceiling, and his whole body shook as he let out his familiar loud, whooping, Eddie Murphy style laugh.
“You’re a fucking wanker man,“ Was all I could say, as I pulled myself to my feet, shaking with unspent adrenalin and embarrassment, “you’re a wanker, a fucking wanker.”
He tried to stop laughing, and gasped for breath. “I’m sorry man, I—“
“No, no, don’t be fucking sorry,” I pointed at him, but snapped my hand back when I realised it was still shaking uncontrollably, “don’t be sorry, just don’t fucking do it, okay? You know how much that shit freaks me out, and I don’t fucking need it man.”
“I was only fucking kidding— “ he interrupted himself, by trying to suppress a laugh.
“Fuck you. Okay? Fuck you.” I was still shaking. “I don’t need this shit right now.”
“Okay, okay.” He pulled himself to his feet, wiping a tear from his right eye. “I’m sorry, okay? Have some of this and fucking calm down.” He handed me the spliff, and I took it while trying to hide my shaking hand.
“Just get it fucking out of there.” I told him, rubbing the back of my shaved head with my free hand. I toked on the joint, and as I exhaled I tried to force some of the tension out along with the smoke. The buzz hit me hard in my over-anxious state, and I lowered myself into a squat, worried my legs might buckle.
Aziz knelt opposite me, and carefully lowered his hands once more into the hole in the floor. There was no shock or screaming this time; instead he carefully lifted out the small grey metal safe and placed it on the carpet in front of him. The thing was small, less than a foot across and about six inches deep, but it was heavy and he had needed to use both hands to lift it out of the hole. It wasn’t really a safe at all, just some non-descript metal box that my grandfather had given to me when I was eight years old. I doubt very much that even he knew where it had come from back then, but he found it after clearing out his tiny East London council flat after my grandmother had died, and had asked me if I wanted it. You wouldn’t think that a plain grey box would have much appeal to an eight-year-old boy, but as soon as I saw it I realised the true power and potential of it’s one standout feature; you needed a key to open it. I had never possessed a key before, and more importantly I had never had access to the adult domains that keys gave access to; secrecy and privacy. It was a simple, tiny key; a short stubby silver arm with an elliptical loop, but I was mesmerised by it. At last it seemed to give me sole control over an area of space, however modest, and to me that was almost a godlike power. As such, I treated the key with the respect it deserved, always keeping it on me and never allowing such a delicate item to be lost. In return it had served me faithfully for over twenty years, keeping sweets and my most prized Star Wars figures away from the prying eyes and hands of my brothers, and then later shielding pornography and cigarettes from my parents, until now, when I had entrusted it with my own livelihood.
Aziz reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out the bunch of keys, the blue-white globe of Doreamon’s ill-proportioned head once again hanging below. He selected the tiny key, and held it delicately between thumb and finger, it’s diminutive size making his digits seem bloated and unwieldy in comparison. I suddenly felt an urge to reach out and seize the key back, as if somehow I could re-summon that mystical power it had once held. It was my key, and to give it away to another like I had seemed almost a perversion of everything it represented. But I resisted. My behaviour so far that afternoon had been mental enough already.
He unlocked the box, and opened up its arched lid, the ancient hinges creaking, and turned the whole thing round to face me. “Right then,” I mumbled, peering into the box, “Let’s see what we’ve got…”
Inside the safe was a bag of skunk about the size of a medium sized head of broccoli, my small black electronic scales, more Rizla, and a packet of WH Smiths Self Sealing Stationary Bags. WH Smith; the family bookshop and drug dealer’s best friend. I smiled. That always made me smile. Whenever you buy dope in this country it comes in a baggie - well, that’s not totally true, lesser dealers will use cling film, but really that’s the tell tale sign of an uncaring amateur – and the only place you can guarantee you’ll find them for sale is WH Smiths, right there on the high street of every British town. It always made me smile, and it always made me wonder. How many do they shift a year? Do they know what they’re used for? Or do some people actually buy them to put, well, stationary in? Is there really that much demand, in offices up and down the nation, to keep paperclips in little plastic bags?
Smiling away to myself, I took the bag of skunk out of the box and placed it on the scales. Just under three ounces, which was what I’d expected. It had been the tail end of a nine bar, the majority of which I had shifted in order to pay for my holiday money. There wasn’t a vast profit in skunk these days, but it was usually enough to keep me going. But tonight, well tonight was going to be tricky.
Whenever you see the police or customs people on TV talking about making a big drugs bust, they always like to talk about the “street value” of what they’ve seized. Well let me tell you one thing, when it comes to the quantities they’re talking about, street value is bullshit. The person they got that big pile of hash or heroin or crack or whatever off is never going to see anything near the street value. I mean, the street value of the bag of skunk in front of me right then was about six hundred quid. That is, if I weighed the whole thing up into twenty-four bags, each holding one eighth of an ounce. But it’s never that simple. Sure, a lot, maybe even the majority, of my punters only buy an eighth at the time, but soon enough they get smarter. You see, whatever the drug, there’s always a discount for quantity. If an eighth is twenty-five quid, then a quarter is forty-five. If a quarter is forty-five, then a half is ninety, and a whole ounce is one hundred and sixty. The police and the media would like you to think that the street value of a nine-ounce bar is eighteen hundred quid, but I deal right at the bottom rung of the ladder, as close to this mythical “street” as it gets, and I never see that much from one bar, and the guy I bought it off only gets half that from me. And the guy he gets his supplies from, well, they deal in kilos at that level, and I can guarantee that the so-called street value never even crosses their minds. But that’s all too complicated for the media and the authorities to even try and explain. It’s in both their interests to perpetuate this myth of the evil drug smuggler, dealer and pusher somehow all wrapped up into one. They don’t want you to see the efficient supply and distribution lines that make it all possible. They don’t want you to know there are thousands, of mainly honest, people making a living out of this. And most of all, they don’t want you to see that there’s an entire, unregulated and hugely healthy economy out there, and that it’s probably the best example of the very system they’re trying to uphold that you could ever imagine.
But as ironic as all of that might be, it wasn’t going to be of direct help to me in making that here hundred and fifty I needed. My best plan was going to be to hit my best contacts and shift as much of this, in eighth and quarter bags, as possible. Sounded simple, but it was going to be far from easy. At the very least it was going need eight individual deals, with each punter buying a quarter, and I knew that was never going to happen. In reality it was probably going to take twice that, and pulling that off in one night was going to be challenging, to say the least.
And time was getting shorter. So I got to work; chopping out the gear, weighing it up into eighths and putting it in baggies. Aziz gave me a hand, and pretty soon we had an efficient little production line going. We talked while we worked, and for the first time since I’d got home a sense of normality seemed to descend upon me. We talked about Jamaica, and I told him what the weed was like, and the story about scoring at the airport.
His eyes were wide with interest, as he scooped the remaining flakes of skunk up dropped them into a baggie. “But that didn’t last you for all the two weeks, did it?” he asked.
“Awww, fuck no. The second time I had to score, that was mental. I’m telling you man, it was seriously fuck-“
The Nokia beeped and twitched, interrupting me. I fished it out of my pocket.

Incoming Call:
DR EX

I hit answer.
“Hey man, how’s it going?”
“Fucking shit man.” Ex’s voice was cold and defeated sounding, but his Canadian twang was still unmistakable. “One hundred percent, ass-fucking Goddamned shit.”
“Well,” I said, slightly taken a back, “That’s nice.”
“I ain’t even fucking joking, dude. I am in a whole new world of fucking shit right here man.”
He sounded serious, possibly more serious than I’d ever head him. “What’s happened? Where are you?”
“I’m at home. Can you get round here? I can’t talk on the fucking phone.”
My mind went immediately to police involvement. “Is it safe?” I asked him.
“Yeah, yeah it’s fucking safe. Can you get over here?” He was insistent, if nothing else.
“Yeah, yeah, chill out. Me and Aziz will be round as soon as, but I got some shit to sort out first, OK?”
“Sure. Whatever. Just get over here when you can.” He seemed to relax, just slightly. “Shit, I forgot – how was your trip?”
“Ah, yeah good. Been shit since I got back though. I’ll fill you in when I get there.”
“Cool. See you soon, yeah?”
“No problem. Laters.” I hung up.
Aziz gave me an inquisitive look. “Who was that?”
“Ex. He seemed pissed off. Like, really pissed off.”
Aziz’s eyes met mine, and he could clearly see the concern in my face. “What’s happened?”
“Dunno. He wouldn’t tell me. Wants us to go round there.”
“Well,” he glanced at his fake watch, “He’ll have to wait. We need to get round Duffy’s first if you want to shift any of this.”
I sighed. Duffy’s. The girls. Jason. Last thing I needed. “Okay, lets move our arses then”.
I grabbed eight of the eighth bags, and stuck them in the tattered Rising High records bag that hung behind the little room’s door, before slinging it over my shoulder. I never carried too much on me at any time – it was the whole point of having a safe house. If I got busted now, the worst they could do me for was the ounce in my bag. I’d give them the address of the flat, and they’d find nothing but a few crumbs there. The rest of the weed went back in the tin, and Aziz put it back under the floorboards for me, and replaced the carpet.
“Ready to roll?” he asked me.
“As I’ll ever be. You got the keys?”
And he pulled them out of his pocket to show me, Doreamon’s blue-white spherical body hanging below, so cute and childish, and I wondered what his crossed, oversized anime eyes had seen in my future.