Night buses were failing to arrive in threes on every conceivable point along the Holloway Road. An icy cold blew in from Cassiopeia in a Ptolemaic sky of failing streetlamps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe average is actually two,\u201d said Sally. \u201cA statistician did some work on it, and they are supposed to clump in threes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think he actually said 2.2, so we\u2019re getting some fractional packets bundled together,\u201d I explained. \u201cIt\u2019s like the cosmic background; it\u2019s lumpy and uneven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sally accepted this with bad grace and lit up a Rothmans. Where probability was working against us, it was, she often felt, best to resort to carcinogenic magic. The name\u2019s Walton. My name that is. Felix Walton. That winter I was working on a case, and as is my habit under such circumstances, I was garbed in a Crombie denoting my rank of investigator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s a turnpike anyway?\u201d said Sally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou know what a tollbooth is?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUh huh. You know I don\u2019t like Wood Green?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve told me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIs that where Waldeck Road is?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to Waldeck Road. We\u2019ve already been there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou do know that a Moebius strip is just a twist of paper, don\u2019t you? It\u2019s not some kind of accumulator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019ll be our bus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s one of those corner houses. The windows make no sense. Two were removed and filled in to avoid a long forgotten tax regime, and two thirds of the height of the fa\u00e7ade is pebble dashed with white noise. Yellow light spills out onto the street along with revelers undressed against the November cold. Upon entering, Sally joins the toilet queue that already snakes down two flights of stairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou should have taken a pee in the pub,\u201d I tell her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWho\u2019s peeing? They\u2019ve most likely got a bucket-bong set up In the bath.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I leave her to it and shouldered my way through the crowded corridors in search of my quarry. I have an instinct for this. A roadmap. The gravity thickens towards the basement as the bass daubs around a large space splattered with strobe lights. The faces of people I had been in college with, ex-boyfriends and professors, are revealed momentarily in their skeletal forms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something gives in the music and the crowd swells into a mosh pit. A man could die in that ocean. Is there someone on the decks? The smoke obscures the far end of the room. Not dry ice. My fight or flight is triggered and I try to push back against the party. There\u2019s no reason to believe he\u2019s down here in any case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Someone grabs my arm, and I feel hot breath against my ear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWalton! The fuck? What you doing north of the river?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJonesie! Long time no see!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soma Jones is as close to me as the Paleozoic. He clutches a can of \u017bywiec in his other hand. His pupils are Druilletesque and he is still wearing his overcoat in spite of the tropical climate down here. I miss his next two sentences as the DJ drops something dense into the mix. The crowd has unaccountably calmed as the sounds have become more hectic. He leads me deeper in, further from the door that leads back up to the ground floor. How close to the bathroom is Sally by now? I strain back against his tug, but he grasps my hand tighter and gives my arm a yank that almost brings me to the floor. Smashed glass and cigarette butts, a cushion with an owl motif.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThrough here!\u201d He opens a door labelled Staff Only on some far wall and we are through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is always a mistake to take Wassgotterspeck at his word. He has a beard these days and the aspect of a Hollywood auteur. His hieratic instruments are a cheap corner shop cigar in one hand and a pocket calculator in the other. He is spread across three seats of a sofa that is the colour of long neglect, in spite of his posture which is upright and with his legs spread like a samurai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPay no attention to my form!\u201d he reminds Soma Jones, as he draws our attention to the cardboard boxes that are scattered, without apparent order, from here into the chthonic darkness. He chuckles to observe my curiosity. \u201cA former tenant tunneled all of this from the London clay. It\u2019s a wonder that he didn\u2019t bring the whole pile down on himself. He paid no rent during that whole period. Indeed I had new tenants in the house and had filed a report with the police that he had vanished.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re nothing but heart,\u201d says Soma Jones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNot this current crowd, you know? They\u2019re three guys who are studying social sciences at the Polyversity. One of them has moved his girlfriend in. She\u2019s not out of school yet. I\u2019ve got someone keeping an eye on her mum. She works for the NHS\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMr Walton already knows that. He\u2019s your someone on that case,\u201d says Soma Jones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAre you indeed? Nice to finally meet In person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not,\u201d I remind them both, \u201cI\u2019m not strictly speaking a person. I\u2019m the narrator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo you are,\u201d says Wassgotterspeck. \u201cThen again, our friend Soma Jones here is not by nature consistent either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soma Jones gives this little more than a shrug. Wassgotterspeck rises from the sofa. He appropriates the whole of the space. He strides towards us with tectonic ease, knowing that his merely presence will force the issue to a head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abruptly, with a leap quite out of keeping with his characteristic slouch, Soma Jones arches out one boot at Wassgotterspeck\u2019s hand and kicks the calculator from his grasp. The behemoth registers the loss of his instrument with a low bellow, and turns to follow its trajectory out into the darkness, where Soma Jones is already fast-forwarding across the plain of cardboard boxes, upending them to spill their contents across the ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOn that, you cunt!\u201d he yells from some far cavern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each and every box was filled with a hundred pocket calculators. Four by five by five. Each pocket calculator was identical to the instrument that Wassgotterspeck had only seconds ago held in his enormous hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He turns his attention back to me. \u201cFind my Casio!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like a needle in a\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBe the magnet!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time I caught up with Sally she had met the bucket-bong. She was gurning threateningly at a lad with a shaved-head who insisted on the fairness of the queue. A fake rasta had attempted to reason with her, but had found it difficult to argue with a woman. He took this as an ethical point in his favour and it allowed him to play down his primal fear of her absolute ferocity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMs. Kitchener!\u201d I called, \u201cwe have a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNah, mate!\u201d she grinned, \u201cI\u2019m mellow. Not a problem in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe emperor has lost his orb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think you\u2019ve lost you orb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNot everything is a metaphor, Sally.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lad with the shaved-head briefly tried to contend this point, until I showed him my badge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wassgotterspeck had gone by the time we came through the Staff Only door. Sally reached down and picked up a pocket calculator from the floor. \u201cThis one!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy this one?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She took a few steps. \u201cThis one!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I became uncertain why I felt that Sally would be any better at this than me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy are we doing this?\u201d she gave a sudden flash of lucidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m in Wassgotterspeck\u2019s pocket.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She nodded at that. \u201cThis one!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had been there on that fatal night. Of that they had made sure. I had been sitting in a Ford Capri the colour of a sucked cough sweet on the other side of the street. The Capri couldn\u2019t have driven away if I had wanted to; the engine had been removed. That, they felt, had been an important point in the scene setting exercise. They had spent weeks establishing the pizzeria, down to the shabby, laminated menus and the horrible mosaic tiles in the bathroom. The devil, they say, is in the details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The assassin had been set up with an ostensible motive. Soma Jones would recognize her and be put off his stride sufficiently to prompt him to transform. Instinctively. If he did not transform, then the assassin would be carrying the means to inflict a transformation upon him. In my line of work I\u2019d only seen an asci-iser once before. Nasty pieces of work: the grip and chassis were formed from vintage Lego wrapped in Woolworth\u2019s sticky tape. In the case of this one, I couldn\u2019t say where the brass bell of the muzzle had originated. I only saw it for a moment as she raised it to his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cShift, Jonesie! Fucking shift!\u201d I hissed unheard in the Capri. Jackson, who had been charged with keeping a watch on me didn\u2019t flinch. He carried on loading coffee and doughnut into his face. Soma Jones wasn\u2019t his concern. Who was watching Jackson, and who was watching them? It was impossible to say what layer of the onion any of this was happening on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By four in the morning most of the crowd who could still walk had already left. Sofas and carpets were littered with spilled ashtrays, the dying, and the former contents of their stomachs. The tenants were mostly tucked away under duvets, either sleeping or shivering toxins out of their nervous systems. The girlfriend who had recently moved into the flat, was in Leytonstone with a psychology graduate who knew some guys in an EBM band.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sally turned over the Casio in her hands. The case was half-split and there was a bruise to the plastic from where Soma Jones\u2019s boot had struck. She sniffed it. \u201cDoes that smell like Wassgotterspeck?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI have no idea. This is the first time I\u2019ve met him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She handed the calculator to me. I tried the power button. Nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two weeks later the house was emptied. The tenants had been accommodated elsewhere and the furniture had been removed. The wallpaper had been stripped from the walls and the carpets had been ripped up from the floors to reveal the wooden boards beneath. They were sanded-down almost white and the walls were painted regulation magnolia. Even the pebble-dash had been removed. Something that the contractors had insisted was impossible until they had been offered the unprecedented rate of pay that makes miracles occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was reading the local paper in the kitchen when Soma Jones strode into the room. All of the windows were open and fresh, cold air and a winter sun filled the room. He gave the unused fittings for gas and water a glance before noting the Casio sitting on the wide window sill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey did a good job with the place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cigar smoke preceded Wassgotterspeck into the room. \u201cWe were hoping you could sign the contract today.\u201d He handed him a Manilla envelope of A4. \u201cYou\u2019ll want to read the terms, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soma Jones handed the envelope to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wassgotterspeck squinted. \u201cIs this really how you want to do this?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soma Jones smiled and strode back out of the kitchen. There was a black Citroen waiting outside. Sally waved from the driver\u2019s seat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t see Wassgotterspeck all week. He left the keys with me, and I installed myself at The Duchess of Landsdown at the top of the road. It was one of those pubs where they had cleared out everything but the dark wood of the original bar. The tall windows let in a lot of white light and the silhouettes of bare trees. They served the usual bar food in there and I developed a taste for Theakston\u2019s to the extent that the landlord didn\u2019t even need me to ask for The Usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was two days before I opened the envelope. It hadn\u2019t been gummed down. That much seemed obvious. The middle sheaf of pages were the usual impenetrable legalese, but the first page was clear enough: the address, the owner\u2019s details and the tenant\u2019s. And there it was: Mr Saklas Jahweh. That was the prospective tenant. I turned to the bottom of the last page: spaces for the owner and tenant to sign and date the form. One witness each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Who was being set up here? I had been manoeuvered into a position where I would watch this farce with the pocket calculators play out at the party. Was Sally in on this too? She had found the Casio too easily, it seemed to me. I put all of the pages back into the envelope and ordered a steak and kidney pie from the bar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had bought a camp bed from the Army and Navy Store on the company account. I set it up in the highest room in the house to avoid the glare of the streetlights. Curtains were impossible without curtain rails and these had of course been thoughtfully removed from the place. I had aired the upper floors for days. The lower parts of the house I had kept closed since the standoff in the kitchen, so as to avoid the attention of burglars, potential squatters and psychogeographers. In spite of this the house still smelled of fresh paint and stripped pine. Johoba Avenue was quiet enough, although you could always hear traffic on Green Lanes at any time of the day or night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wassgotterspeck had thoughtfully set up mail forwarding with the Post Office for the previous tenants, and the only contact the house had with the outside world was through the local paper. There wasn\u2019t much to read it that, but I took it to the pub with me to calculate the magic squares of the Sudoku for an hour or so in the afternoons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was good enough connectivity everywhere but the basement. I scrolled past Soma Jones and Sally in my contacts several times a day before returning the phone to my pocket. Sometimes during an after dinner doze Sally would wink at me from the driver\u2019s seat of the Citroen. Usually it was Soma Jones climbing into the passenger\u2019s seat but sometimes it was Wassgotterspeck or sometimes it was me. Other times I was sitting in the driver\u2019s seat while Jackson loaded endless doughnuts and coffee into his mouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the fourth day a pizza flyer was put through the letterbox. The boy who posted it half-ran, frightened as I gazed at him through the bay window of the living room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the weekend I had settled into a routine between the house and the Duchess of Landsdown. It was on only leaving for a lunchtime pie that I noticed a feature of the house I had never seen before; a tower on the corner of Johoba Avenue and Pinwheel Street. The reason I had never seen it before was that it hadn\u2019t been there. There had been no time during my excursions to the pub to erect this extension, and I\u2019m certain that I would have noticed its farcical conical summit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I turned on my heel, only by inches avoiding the taxi who had not been able to anticipate my sudden change of plan. The stairs spiraled up the tower, on many turns there was little headroom and I had to crouch to continue. It would be impossible for Wassgotterspeck to climb up here. At the top was a small carpeted landing with a window that looked out at the opposite corner house: a crest dated 1882. The only other thing up here was a coaxial socket in the wall for a television. It had started to rain a little outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I came down I found that I had left the front door wide open. Several pizza flyers, all from the same place as the first had been left in the hallway. I checked up and down the street, but there was no sign of the delivery boy. The floorboards around the door had become muddy with my comings and goings. A few leaves had drifted inside. I went out to the pub closing the door carefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the Duchess of Landsdown someone was setting up a mic and a PA for a pub quiz later in the day. I barely had time to catch the landlord\u2019s eye when someone grabbed my arm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo how are you settling in, Felix?\u201d Sally escorted me to the bar where a pint of Theakston\u2019s was already waiting. \u201cI\u2019ll have what he\u2019s having!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere have you been?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cUh, in the real world? What sort of question is that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSorry, it\u2019s been a strange week. Do you remember if the house had a tower on the corner?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat house?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Jojoba house. Where they had the party.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sally accepted her Theakston\u2019s from the bar and turned to give me a theatrical wink. \u201cHow would I remember a thing like that?\u201d I remembered her in the bathroom. Defending the bucket-bong from a queue of undergraduates. How I\u2019d managed to extract her from that situation, I\u2019d never know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYeah, that thing they say about the nineties being the sixties upside down. Are you staying for the quiz?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI might stay and watch. I\u2019m not good with questions, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end our table won. Two Irish lads, who Sally got talking with, were good with the football questions. I wasn\u2019t much good for much other that old TV cop shows. The landlord gave us an envelope containing forty quid in Luncheon Vouchers. We shared them out equally between the team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWho\u2019s the stern-looking guy on the money?\u201d asked Ardal, the older of the two lads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWassgotterspeck,\u201d I told him. \u201cI met him a couple of times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou must be pretty high and mighty,\u201d said Cathal. \u201cFriends in high places and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been Up There,\u201d I told him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m not practicing either,\u201d said Cathal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPracticing what?\u201d said Sally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe doesn\u2019t go to church is what he means,\u201d said Ardal. \u201cI did my communion, got confirmed and all that. Used to be able to recite the Nicene Creed too. Sticks in my throat these days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cathal noticing that his friend\u2019s glass was empty said, \u201cI\u2019ll get you another one. Anyone else need anything.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes,\u201d said Sally. \u201cYes, I need you to sit back down.\u201d She leaned in towards him. At first he leaned in as well, until she grabbed the back of his head which set up a struggle. Ardal stood and stepped back as Sally and Cathal\u2019s chairs went over together rocking the table at an angle sufficient to spill glasses onto the carpet. Soma Jones kicked away from her as Sally held the mask of Cathal\u2019s face aloft for all the pub to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe fuck, Sally!\u201d Soma Jones stood up brushing beer off his jacket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhere did you learn so much about footie, Soma Jones?\u201d Sally flung the mask onto the bar. \u201cOr should I say Saklas Jahweh?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ardal backed away. \u201cI\u2019ll phone in the week. I\u2019ll\u2026\u201d he shook his head, \u201cI\u2019ll not want to be paid in Luncheon Vouchers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t go back to the Jojoba house after that. I left the keys with the company and handed in my licence. I knew I\u2019d probably never find work as a narrator in this town again. Then again, was it worth my peace of mind? And all of this only comes to mind because of something I found in the RNLI Shop on Holloway Road last week. I guess you probably know what it was. This one worked though. As soon as I thumbed on the power, up it came on the screen in red LED characters: 0.7734. I turned it upside down. I guessed that soon I\u2019d find my face on money of my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Night buses were failing to arrive in threes on every conceivable point along the Holloway Road. An icy cold blew in from Cassiopeia in a Ptolemaic sky of failing streetlamps. \u201cThe average is actually two,\u201d said Sally. \u201cA statistician did some work on it, and they are supposed to clump in threes.\u201d \u201cI think he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[63,64],"class_list":["post-171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-soma-jones","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171\/revisions\/173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.iotacism.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}