Free How to Make Friends with Demons by Graham Joyce Page A

thumb, he took a step forward. "You've broken my nose, you ape," he said. "Get me a tissue."

     

Chapter 9
    Frankly, I didn't want to take Otto's money. I would much rather have closed the sale with the loathsome poet, Ellis. I once attended one of his awful poetry readings, in a bookshop on Charring Cross Road, where Jaz introduced us. I hadn't gone there to hear Ellis's whining verse; I'd gone for his custom.

    I'm obviously out of touch in so many ways. My idea of a poet is of some rough diamond in a threadbare flying jacket, slouching, in need of a shave, his breath stinking of garlic and black beer: the kind of charming brat who thinks his rancid breath alone is a challenge for any woman. But my stereotypes were all unpicked with this glimpse of Ellis, who turned out to be one who appreciated the sharper weave and the finer thread.

    I could tell you that his three-quarter-length coat fluttered with Armani's moniker, that the hidden lifts in the heels of his gleaming shoes obscured a Prada tag, or that the lovely Daniel Hanson scarf that he so carefully unwound from his soft white throat was handcrafted in China from the finest silk. I mean, what use to anyone is a well-dressed poet? I remember thinking it would be a pleasure to take his money for a forged book.

    I also recall noticing something very odd about the poet's beak as he flicked off his scarf and eyed the thin assembly that had turned out for him on that damp night. It was as if the moment of wrinkling his nose one time too many at some nasty smell had been trapped on his face. Below the thatch of his scruffy hair it hung like an icicle from a barn roof; dripping, too, because he had a tic, a nervous habit of running his index finger under his snout as he glanced about him.

    Oh hell , I thought, have I really got to sit here and listen to this dog's spittle-flecked, yammering verse? Yes , was the answer. We needed the sale, needed the money.

    Jaz had told me that Ellis had been in the running for the laureateship. I had to check what that meant. Someone who composes poems about the Queen and is paid with a butt of sack, or a sack of butt, I can't remember. Anyway, Ellis didn't get it; he got a kick in the butt instead. But in my research on our target I'd studied a slim volume of his work.

    Oh, give me the tongue of angels to describe his poetry. Well, it's very modern. It's clearly about something; but I have from it the feeling that I'm being told a joke which I don't get. Though I do get the sense that this doesn't matter, isn't a problem: that having the reader or the audience feel thick is part of the intention, that incomprehensibility is part of what makes his poems great.

    Anyway, to my surprise he stepped forward and said, in what's called an Estuary accent round here and in a voice loud enough not only for the present audience of six, but for everyone on the lower floors, "Gawd! Bit parky for poetry, innit?"

    My life! I remember thinking. Stroll on! Here's one who can jump easily from the Oxford High to my own dark origins on the Old Kent Road and back again without missing a single beat. And I thought: You be careful, sunshine, you're on my manor now, and we are not mocked without payment .

     

    It was perhaps a week after our visit to the nightclub—a week in which I'd failed to hear a single report from Stinx—when I used my lunch hour to pay a visit to Antonia at GoPoint. As usual, GoPoint had been emptied of its inmates for the day, with the exception of a therapy group in the small meeting room. The door to the meeting room had a vertical glass panel and I looked in on them. The group sat in a circle on hard plastic chairs and Antonia was leading the group in discussion. I'm not sure what they do in these sessions exactly: lay out their life stories, lament where it all went wrong, resolve to do better. I expect that's the drill. Celebrity addicts pay thousands for the same drill at The Priory and I don't think GoPoint, for all its