Getting Rid Of Mister Kitchen

by Charlie Higson

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A man kills a prospective buyer for his car. On the verge of becoming a name in the interior design world, he can't afford a scandal and must discreetly dispose of the body -- not an easy job when the whole of London seems to be conspiring against him.

Release date: September 17, 2015

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 224

Sample

All weather forecasters are liars. What is the point? I mean, what is the point of a forecast which is only at best fifty per cent accurate? That’s not a forecast, it’s a guess. It’s a lie. They stand there and they waffle on and on about high pressure fronts and isobars and wind chill factors, and whether it’s raining in Spain, as if I care whether it’s raining in bloody Spain, and they show you little pictures of clouds – which actually rain – and satellite pictures, and radar pictures, and it’s all lies. Have you noticed now how they’ve taken up telling you what the weather was like today? ‘And today was another sunny day.’ I bloody know what the weather was like today. Christ on a bike, they even get that wrong sometimes.

Weather forecasters are false prophets. Their position is the reverse of Cassandra’s. Cassandra, you may remember, was the ancient Greek prophetess who was cursed always to prophesy the truth, but never to be believed. Weather forecasters are cursed never to prophesy the truth, but always to be believed. Although, obviously, the curse is on us rather than them.

They should be banned, they should be shot, they should be stabbed by lightning and drowned in rain tubs.

I say this because last night they’d all announced that it was going to rain today. ‘Thunder clouds, storms, heavy rain, wear a mac, stay indoors …’ And so, this morning, expecting dark skies, I hopped out of bed and gaily rolled back the big roof blinds only to be poleaxed by an intense explosion of light which seared into my brain. It was gorgeous, a gorgeous bloody day. The sky a clear, dark blue, streaked here and there with high, pale wisps of white cloud. A Mediterranean sky. I must confess I gave a little cry as I was temporarily blinded by this foreign sun, burning down, shining, glancing off glass and metal, thick and liquid and heavy.

They’d lied to me again, the fuckers, those mendacious crooks at the Met Office, and there I was, sightless, swearing, fried, with needles inside my head, dry to the core and bad-tempered.

I waited for the hurting to cease and my retinas to settle down and I looked at the clock; it was quarter to eleven, which was a pain in the arse, as I’d wanted a lie-in. But the bloody sun had woken me. If I’d been warned I could have worn my blackout mask, my blindfold.

So, you see, I blame the whole thing on the weather forecast. I started the day on the wrong foot, pissed off and out of joint. If they hadn’t got it so wrong, none of this would have happened.

Let me tell you about it – this thing that happened to me. I don’t know if there’s a moral to this story, or even a point, but it happened, so there you are.

I stretched, my backbone popping all the way down, and dressed in baggy shorts and green vest. Ready to face the world. Ah, well, at least it wasn’t so bad getting up at the crack of dawn when the weather was like this.

I clambered down the steps from my sleeping gallery and sorted out some coffee. While I waited for the cafetiere to do its thing I checked my Psion to see what the day held in store. My short-term memory is not what it could be (my long-term memory is no better) and I constantly have to update my various organisers, charts, diaries, filofaxes, scraps of paper; the alternative memory storage facilities for the burnt-out hard disk in my head.

It being the weekend, I could have done with getting out of town, sitting on a beach somewhere with a cold chicken and a bottle of tequila, but I saw I had a full day ahead. There were a couple of guys coming to look at the car and some bint from the Observer was due in the afternoon to do me for ‘A Room of My Own’. Which would mean tidying the place up a bit. But that wasn’t till later so it could wait. There was also the message, ‘BIRTHDAY DINNER’. I’m sure the bloody gadget had the details of exactly whose birthday and where the dinner was to be held, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to access this extra information. So I chose to forget it. If it was important someone would give me a ring.

I poured a small measure of Jameson’s into my coffee and put the TV on to catch the end of the Saturday morning kids’ programmes, hoping Taz-Mania might be on. For about half a second I contemplated going round to the baker’s for some croissants, but decided I could not be arsed. Instead I rummaged in the kitchen cabinets for something suitable. I found a bag of microwave popcorn, put it in the machine and left it exploding away as I went down to pick up the papers. There was a pile of them spilled on the floor, Sun, Mirror, Guardian and Telegraph. I read the broadsheets for the gossip, the cultural stuff, the arts and whatever, and I read the tabloids for the news. There’s far too much of it in the big papers, the tabloids manage to sum it all up in some pithy headline like ‘Fuck off Krauts’ or something. I mean, let’s face it, there’s basically just too much news in the world. You can’t take it all in, you can’t react to any of it. One decent news programme a week on the BBC would be about right. Sift out what’s news and what’s just noise. Who ever reads last week’s papers? Last year’s? Even yesterday’s papers have a sort of sad, unimportant feel about them. No, none of it really matters.

I looked at the front of the Telegraph; more Africans were dying. They’d started by killing each other and then nature had got in on the act and now they had another full-scale disaster on their hands. Cholera it was this time. Jesus, change the name of the country and it could be a paper from any time in the last twenty-five years. Every year millions more of them seem to snuff it in some new apocalypse, and it never seems to make any difference. Next year there will be millions more around to die of something else, starvation or AIDS or war or something. And their population just keeps on growing and growing. It’s not just Africa, I’ve got nothing in particular against that lot, what I’m saying is that none of it matters. The Berlin Wall’s come down, apartheid’s been given its marching orders, the Arabs and the Israelis are still at each other’s throats, the Irish have bombed some people, the Muslims have bombed some other people, right-wing-survivalist-God-fearing-Christian-Cadbury’s-fruit-and-nut-case militiamen have bombed some more, the USSR and Yugoslavia have split into a load of countries that nobody can remember, let alone give a shit about, the Russians are shooting and bombing the crap out of their neighbours, the Iraqis are doing the same to the Kurds … we’ve had boom-bust-boom-bust, the Japs are all set to rule the world, the Japs are going bust, the Krauts are all set to rule the world, the Chinese are all set to rule the world, the Koreans are all set to blow up the world, America has a crack problem, England hasn’t won anything in any major sporting event anywhere in the world for as long as anyone can remember, and it’s all just blah blah blah …

What difference does any of it make? There’s too much news, too much blather, and the more you watch, the more you read, the more you listen, the less you know, and in the end you come to the conclusion that nobody knows nothing and nothing changes.

Anyway, I was just reading some choice bollocks in the Sun about a pop star being caught with the wrong woman when the buzzer went. I pressed the button on the intercom and asked who it was.

‘Hi, it’s Mister Kitchen,’ said a male voice, made thin and reedy by the speaker. ‘I’ve come about the car.’

‘You’re early.’

‘Took me less time to walk round from the tube than I thought.’

I considered telling him to sod off but thought I might as well get it over with. It would be one less thing to do later.

I went downstairs again and opened the front door.

He was a skinny chap, about my height and age, with little, round blue sunglasses, some sort of sixties mod-style haircut and an unhealthy complexion. On his feet were ridiculously large black boots, far too rugged for wearing around London, and over his arm was a neatly folded grey mac.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’ve already had a look at the motor. I assume it’s that one.’ He pointed to my Saab parked outside.

‘Yes.’

‘Looks fine to me.’ He came in without being asked. ‘I’ll write you a cheque.’

‘Don’t you want to talk about it at all?’

‘What’s to say?’ he said and I watched him clump up the stairs in his great boots. I closed the door and followed.

I couldn’t place the man. His accent was flat. He was either a prole who’d come up in the world or a pitiful middle-class guilt-tripper trying to sound more of a man of the people than he really was. Estuary English, I think the current jargon is. That no-man’s-land of speech and style that allows the ‘cor-blimey-love-a-duck-apples-and-pears’ cockney wide-boy to appear not quite so plebeian and the ‘I-say-chaps-what-ho-you-horrible-little-man’ middle-class twit with a chip on his shoulder to sound not quite so privileged. Class Esperanto.

I suppose it’s the accent I’m expected to adopt. To fit in. Being a youngish, London, man-about-town, nouveau entrepreneur kind of a bloke. But a man’s got to have some kind of pride. You can’t crawl in the darkness all your life and still look forward to a decent obituary.

You see what I was saying about being in a bad mood. Just this twerp’s accent had put my back up.

When I got to the top of the stairs he was draping his mac over the back of one of my chairs. He smiled at me.

‘Rain later,’ he said with authority. ‘They said so on the weather. It’s coming over from the North Sea, apparently. Wind’s turned. We’re going to be getting it from Siberia.’

‘Siberia?’ I said. ‘That is interesting.’

‘Yeah, apparently,’ he replied and looked around the flat, nodding his head. ‘All one room, is it?’ he said fatuously.

I’d had it done before I moved in, had most of the top floor removed, so that all that was left of it now was a platform for my bed opposite the huge skylights which I’d knocked into the roof. The rest I’d opened out so that kitchen, dining room, sitting room, office, whatever you wanted to call any of the parts, was one big space, broken by low walls and movable screens. The only other rooms were a tiny bathroom and spare bedroom.

‘I’d be worried the place would fall down,’ said Mister Kitchen, gawping up at the light streaming in through the roof.

‘A team of very expensive builders and architects ensured that there is not the remotest possibility of that happening,’ I said.

‘Doesn’t it get cold in the winter?’

‘I hit upon the novel idea of having heating installed.’

‘Expensive, though.’

‘Not particularly. It’s all insulated, double-glazed. Probably more energy-efficient than any of the other buildings in this road.’

‘Yeah, but still …’ He turned to me and grinned. ‘You can obviously afford it, though, can’t you?’

‘Mister Kitchen,’ I said grinning back at him, ‘much as I’d love to stand here all day fielding your witty insights, I am rather busy. Now, I believe you were going to write me a cheque.’

‘How come you’re selling the Saab so cheap, then?’ he said, raising his eyebrows in a failed attempt to look canny and raffish. ‘There something wrong with it?’

‘I wasn’t aware that I was selling it cheap.’

‘Very popular car, the old model nine hundred. Hippest car around at the moment. Your Saab enthusiast don’t like the new model, reckon it don’t look like a Saab … more like a BMW. Thought it might be snapped up before I got here. Tell you the truth, that’s why I’m early,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose and winking chummily. ‘The early bird catches the worm. As they say.’

‘Yes, they do say that, don’t they, Mister Kitchen?’

‘Maybe I ought to take a little peek beneath the bonnet. Just in case you’re trying to sell me a pup.’

‘Listen,’ I said, trying to disguise my impatience, ‘I’m picking up a new car on Monday. I meant to get round to selling this one ages ago. I’ve left it rather late so I need a quick sale. Okay? There’s nothing sinister about it. If you’re not interested, fine. I’ve got plenty of other people coming to have a look …’

‘Woah, woah, woah. Hang on to your horses. I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. Calm down, my friend. I just need to be sure.’

‘Mister Kitchen,’ I said, ‘Perhaps you’re not aware of the philosophical statement “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”.’

‘I am aware of that saying. I am also aware of “Beware strangers bearing gifts”.’

‘How about “Write me a cheque, or fuck off and stop wasting my time”?’ I countered.

‘You’re quite a rude man, aren’t you?’ said Mister Kitchen.

‘That’s neither here nor there,’ I said, and offered him a biro.

Am I rude? I don’t know. Sometimes life just seems too short. There’s certainly something about me that winds people up. I’m good-looking, slim, confident, well spoken, well educated, well off and I have a full head of hair, all qualities that the average Englishman despises. Plus I have a difficult streak, a compulsion to state the opposite view to whoever I happen to be talking to at the time. Waking up out of sorts wasn’t helping, either. I was feeling particularly uncharitable this morning.

‘You’re all the same,’ said Kitchen, picking up one of my steel lamps and scrutinising it. ‘You public school types. You’ve got no shame, have you? No concept of how you come across to other people.’

‘Here we go,’ I said.

‘You talk loudly on buses, and in restaurants, and you don’t care that everyone can hear you. You have no idea of how you sound. You’re rude to waiters and shop assistants, you’re arrogant and …’

‘This is all absolutely fascinating, Mister Kitchen.’

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m not having a go. I’m just stating a fact.’

‘Well, that’s a relief,’ I said.

‘Where’d you get this lamp?’ he said, frowning. ‘All this gear … This expensive crap that all you lot seem to have. Where do you get it? Is there some special shop in Knightsbridge, or somewhere, that sells this stuff to people with more money than sense?’

‘There is, in fact,’ I said. ‘And another in Chelsea, and a third in Covent Garden. Not to mention Glasgow, New York, Milan …’

‘I bet it cost you a fortune.’

‘It cost me nothing, Mister Kitchen. I made it.’

He picked up an iron piece about four foot high, with three spikes, like some medieval torture instrument. I’d made it during my gothic phase, about two or three years ago, when I’d been experimenting with downers and heroin.

‘What’s this supposed to be, then?’ he said.

‘It’s a candlestick,’ I told him. ‘Based on a sixteenth-century Catalonian design. Represents Christ crucified between the two thieves.’

‘How much you sell one of these for?’

‘That particular item, the Leveller, though no longer available, used to sell for somewhere in the region of six hundred pounds.’

‘Fuck me. Money for old rope, innit?’ he said and winked at me again, this time conspiratorially. I honestly believe that he thought he was being friendly.

‘I couldn’t live somewhere like this,’ he said, putting down the candlestick.

‘I doubt if you’ll ever get the chance, Mister Kitchen.’

He attempted to give me a withering look. ‘You sleep up there, do you?’ He was looking up to my gallery. ‘Don’t you worry about falling out?’

‘Mister Kitchen?’ I asked. ‘Are you completely mad?’

‘There you go again,’ he said, gesticulating with one hand like a man knocking on a door. ‘There you go again, thinking you can say these things to people. Thinking you have some God-given right to abuse people. You think you’re so superior, don’t you? Well, let me tell you something, my friend, underneath that stuck-up, overprivileged exterior you’re vulnerable, you’re soft, and one of these days somebody’s going to turn round to you and say, “No! No, my friend, you cannot act like that. No.”’

‘Mister Kitchen, I seem to be missing something here. Correct me if I’m wrong. But this is my home, my flat. You came in here uninvited, acting for all the world like one of the less civilised contestants on Through the Keyhole, insulting me, insulting my work … and somehow this means that I am rude. Is there something I’m not getting?’

‘You see, you don’t understand.’

‘What is it you object to, exactly, Mister Kitchen? My voice? You resent the fact that I speak in a certain way?’

‘I told you I don’t mean anything by it,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s nothing personal. It’s just that you have to be told. It’s for your own good. I’m just stating the facts.’

‘Let me state a fact, Mister Kitchen. Let me state several facts. Nothing personal, all for your own good. Your hairstyle is ludicrous, your clothes ridiculous, your accent preposterous. Your general manner is revolting. You are a self-righteous, boring prig. A phoney. And it’s not “Strangers bearing gifts”, it’s …’

I didn’t get any further than this, because Mister Kitchen hit me. Punched me on the nose, to be precise. It didn’t particularly hurt, too many corrosive drugs had been squirted up there for that. There’s nothing much breakable left and most of the nerve ends have been fried. But it can still bleed – in fact bleeding is about what it does best – and bleed it did. I tasted blood down the back of my throat and felt it dripping down my stiff upper lip.

‘You people,’ said Mister Kitchen, angrily. ‘You think you rule the fucking world, don’t you? Well, let me tell you, my friend, there is no more British Empire, the aristocracy is dying on its feet. Everything’s gonna change. Your days are numbered.’

I hit him back. It seemed the only way to shut up his tedious wittering. It surprised him considerably. I’ve got a fair punch and I got him in the eye, knocking off his sunglasses. He yelped something like ‘Blimey’ and staggered a bit.

‘I am not an aristocrat, you stupid cunt,’ I said. ‘I am an ordinary middle-class man who can’t be bothered to pretend that he’s something else. Now, do you want to buy my fucking Saab or not?’

He rushed at me and put his hands round my throat, knocking me backwards on to my long sofa. His right eye was weeping and blinking where I’d hit him.

‘I’m a better man than you’ll ever be,’ he cried.

‘That was never in question,’ I replied, gouging him in his good eye, which caused him to let go of me.

‘I’m not a good person,’ I said. ‘But I’m a happy person. Unlike you. You seem so bitter. Calm down. Enjoy yourself.’

‘Don’t patronise me,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘People like you have patronised me all my life.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ I said.

With that he picked up a wine bottle which had been broken in the scuffle and brandished the jagged end. I looked around. . .