The first step to finding the Bens was to follow the way he described his approach to the house in his wiriting. So there we were, on the Tube from Brixton to Tottenham. I was thinking about what a coincidence it was that he’d lived in Herne Hill, right inside my zone of influence. I wondered if I’d ever seen him. He seemed like the type to visit bars, so there was a good chance that I might have.
Nothing could be harder than spotting a suicide bomber on the tube.
Important as it is for some people to dress up noticeably, It’s just as important for everyone else not to notice them. It’s The London sport. Call it “Shock me not” or “Dress up look down.” Or something. They all seem to know the rules though. Sally, whilst eaglerly leaking sex into the carriage with her latin aires and crotch length pink minny, received only the briefest of eye flicks from the cannary yellow clad Tottenham supporters.
Tottenham and Brixton are pretty much at opposite ends of the Voctoria Line. Embracing what used to be the extremes of London. But where as Totteham was still a long way out, Brixton had been embraced by the Reno crowd.
The Victoria Line doesn’t actually go to Tottenham. (Sorry I’m surrendering the idea that a Londoner would actually read this book by supplying such irrelevant details) The footy heads would stay on the train until Seven Sisters and then go on the overland for two stops to White Heart Lane.
“We go to Wood Green, Si? Like in the book. Like good detectives. Like Senor Boagart! We go feel the mood!! We smell their trail like cute little beagle dogs.”
“Sure darl.” I told her.
You see I’m not a nasty person. I was really enjoying the thrill that this adventure seemed to bring to Sally.
I have my code of values. Just because I do things that you wouldn’t do reader, doesn’t mean that I’d do anything. I think the Christians really fuck things up with their idea that there is only one way of living and that any deviation from that is sin and that all sin is equally bad. I’m sure that not even the most pure Monk actually lives like that.
Violently mugging an old person is in no way equally evil compared with insurance fraud. The sexual examples are even more pronounced. Coveting your hypothetical neighbours wife as you like to see her splayed on the internet, is no way as bad as rape. Yes, I’m a pornographer with morals.
Having said that, I can feel that I’m about to cross an important moral line.
I sell fantasy. I live in fantasy, a lot. There must be a moment in every perverts life when he first crosses that line. When he moves from fantasy to action. When he goes offline and physical.
I was only planning to sneak over that line just long enough to get a good story.
The train is so loud at this end of the Victoria line that my ipod was almost useless so I took it off. Sally was happily stroking the snail which seemed to think her dress was some kind of tropical South American leaf. A few kids who hadn’t learnt not to stare at weird people were trying to get their parents to pay attention.
At wood green Sally placed the snail in her handbag and we walked up the steps to the exit.
I’d never been here before. It struck me as a very non pretentious non glamoaroised yet hugely populated suburb. It was raining heavily as we exited the station and people darted purposely around us like so many little tropical fish scattering from a predator.
“What now love?” I asked Sally, inviting her to set the agenda. I didn’t really fancy the idea of wandering around in the rain.
“un minuto”
She strutted over to an overweight and mangey looking seller of the Evening Standard, chatted to him for a minute to his obvious delite, and then strutted back with a smile on her face.
“Vamos”
We angled out along the shop fronts, sheltering as best we could from the weather. About four doors up Sally pushed open the door to one of the Londons millions of fried chicken shops. I was sure I could smell the trans-fats. I subconsciously rubbed my belly just to check that my six pack was still there, as though my body mass index might leap up just by entering such a temple of ugliness.
A moment later Sally broke my meditations. She talked rapidly through bites of chicken, a large box of which was held in one hand whilst the other gripped an oil glistening drumstick,
“You see!” “Lovely chicken, Pakistani workers” “And internet Café. Dravid (She waved her drumstick and smiled at the man at the counter who beamed back) says that it is the only chicken shop café around. We are on the trail yes!?”
“You know your right” I said quietly. I was thinking quickly and my heart had started beating a fare bit faster.
“If this is real then everything he wrote might be real. We might actually be able to find these people.”
I felt we’d arrived. We’d made the leap from cyberspace to reality. We’d jumped into a book.
“If you were Australian and you had just arrived in Wood Green, where would you go?” I posed the question rhetorically but Sally had an immediate answer.
“Weatherspoons!”
The bar was becoming busy with people gathering to watch the football game. The crowd seemed really diverse. Diverse in relation to age, ethnicity and apparent wealth. All brought in by the lure of cheap beer and food. Weatherspoons is very much the McDonalds for adults. Consistent, characterless and economical. The beer is often half the price of what you might pay at a decent pub, and the food, whilst awful, is similarly discounted. Add giant tellies playing sport and you have the natural habitat for Australians.
We took a table in the non-smoking section and Sally immediately began scanning the food menu with some interest.
“God, are you pregnant Sal?”
“What are you saying?” She snapped at me. “Just because I don’t live on guiness and falafel you stupid Irish vegetarian!”
She spoke to herself in fast Spanish, no doubt further commenting on my dietary choices and heritage.
“OK, I get the salad then. Happy now skinny boy?”
“And you go get it too. I’m doing all the thinking today. You at least get the drinks. Get me a Fosters. I want to sit here and think like an Australian. You so lucky to have me. Quick! Rapido! I am thirsty.”
“Sure darl.” I replied laughing as I rose. “You sit here and think like an Australian. I think I know a joke about that. Maybe I’ll tell you if you ask me nicely.”
“No Jokes. Go get my Fosters.”
“Ok.Don’t forget your snail.”
“Garcia!” she cried apparently having named it, as she grabbed at her handbag which was slightly crushed between her chair and a wooden rail.
About twenty people crowded around a long bar all trying to get served by very young looking bartenders. They all seemed to have a thick eastern European accents.
The idea that I could just ask the bartender if he new an Australian named Ben was completely improbable. At least half the conversation between patrons and staff seemed to be In Polish and I doubted that any of them would even recognise an Australian accent.
I was eventually served and I didn’t broach the subject. Possibly I could ask them later when it was quiet but I knew that finding the Bens was going to be harder than hanging around a bar waiting for someone to take an information dump on me. Maybe the Fosters would help.
Back at the table Sally was talking quietly into her handbag.
“Garcia is Ok. I think his shell it is quite hard.”
“How do you know it’s a lad? I think snails and slugs and that have some kind of kinky hermaprhodite thing going on.”
She ignored me and placed her bag carefully to one side of our little table. We both took long swigs from our Pint glasses.
“Show us the A-Z Sal.”
Very carefully she removed it from her handbag, wiped off a little slime with a napkin and handed it to me.
“This is White Heart Lane. The park that they walked towards must have been Bruce Castle Park. Given that what he said about Wood Green was accurate, we can probably assume that he wrote honestly about these details as well. If that’s the case then they must live somewhere in this area.” I said making a circle on the page with my finger that included about twenty or thirty streets.
“The house is three stories and has been recently renovated. We have something of an idea of what the older Ben looks like but not the other two, really, except that she wears a black fleece jacket and he thinks she looks pretty. You have to assume that they have strong Australian accents though.”
“Well done Bill. I think the fosters is working.”
“Thanks. But that was the easy bit really. Moving on from here is the challenge. I’ve got a few ideas though. We could go around knocking on every door pretending to do a delivery and listen for Australian accents. “
“Good idea, Let’s go.”
“Hang on. Look that’s the crude way to do it. It would take ages, and he might be out when we go past or, given that he probably doesn’t know anyone yet, he might not answer his door. If nothing else works we could try that later.”
“What then?”
“Not quite sure, but something more stylish. Something that we could use later to our advantage. “
“Very good work my friend, this time I go to get beer.”
