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Part 1: From Tom Irving’s Journal
December 27th, 1968
Today a customer ordered a gin and tonic and I forgot to put the tonic in. Not a good sign. Still, things were much worse before the pills started arriving. I remember one time an enormous American businessmen with an ugly face and the hiccups came in and ordered a Sazerac and I served him a ginger ale. He said “I ordered a Sazerac,” and I apologized and brought him a fresh ginger ale. I got stuck like that sometimes; I understood the Yank perfectly well but just couldn’t bring myself to pour anything but ginger ale. Then he just started cursing at me, which was terribly confusing because of all the hiccups.
DAMN IT, ARE Y-[HICCUP!]-YOU MENTAL? WHAT THE FU-[HICCUP!]-UCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Eventually Joe Gilmore the head barman came over and apologized to the elephant then mixed him a Sazerac (gratis, of course). Later Joe pulled me aside and said that next time something like that happened he’d have to give me the sack. Joe’s okay but sometimes he can be a real prat.
But that was all before the pills.
I don’t cock up much any more. Not usually, anyway. But it’s been almost a month since the last pill, and I’m starting to feel a bit barmy. The first thing that happens is everything starts to slow down. Yesterday someone left his wallet at the bar. I bolted out the door after him to return it but apparently he’d left three hours earlier. I don’t know where all the time went. Anyway he hadn’t tipped me very well even though I’d put plenty of booze in his drinks and had said “sir” and “may I” and “certainly” so I scrumped a fiver from his wallet. He came back in later to get it and didn’t even look inside to see if anything was missing. I could have taken hundreds.
Years ago when I was still seeing a therapist she told me that I had a “discontinuous” grasp of reality and that I needed to practice structuring my thoughts. She suggested I keep a journal. It’s one of the few things she suggested that ever worked, so I still do it sometimes. But mostly she just asked a lot of stupid questions and pretended to be my friend. The pills work much better.
I thought for sure that He’d send me one for Christmas but it never came. Instead I just worked the bar while all of the Savoy’s guests waltzed and laughed and staggered around the ballrooms slurring Christmas carols before retiring upstairs to bonk each others’ wives. Free love isn’t just for hippies, trust me. I hated watching the rich get bladdered but they tipped generously because it was Christmas. “Happy holidays, barkeep!” and they’d flick wads of cash in my direction like it was confetti.
December 28th, 1968
One of the things I love about my job besides the money is that all kinds of famous people stay at the Savoy when they come to London, and most of them drink. A few years ago when I first got the job I met Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey fom The Who. Both of them ordered a drink called the Savoy Corpse Reviver, which is a cocktail that Joe invented as a cure for hangovers. And they probably needed it, too, because they just kept laughing and swaying and tickling the young braless totties they’d brought with them. I’m sure they were all on drugs and don’t remember much, but I do.
There’s been another famous person in today or at least that’s what all the staff are saying, but I’ve never heard of him. He’s a Mohammedan and he’s got a long name with lots of apostrophes that I can’t pronounce. I understand that Arabic has its own alphabet, but I still don’t see why those people insist on putting so many syllables in everything. My name, Tom, is only one syllable and nobody has trouble with it. Joe, too. Anyway, moslems are typically teetotalers so I don’t expect I’ll meet this sheik fellow any time soon.
Between the money and the famous people this is a tip-top job and I’m chuffed to have it. I tended bar and bussed at a lot of filthy dives across London before I met Joe. My uncle was close friends with Joe and put us in touch before he died a couple of years back. He was the only family I had. Joe is very lucky to have me, because I know every drink ever made and I can name the country of origin for more than ninety different varieties of rum, a neat trick I picked up working at a rum joint in Notting Hill. Plus I’m good at making people feel big and important, being smallish and unimportant myself, and that goes a long way when you’re dealing with the wealthy gents that stay at the Savoy. They look very prim and confident but after a few cocktails they’re as sloppy as the rest of us and there are times when I think they’re the ones that need the pills.
Evidently this moslem character lunched at the Savoy Grill today and caused quite a stir by asking the female waitresses to do demeaning things like line up and spin around and sit on his lap. The girls had no choice but to smile politely and pretend to enjoy it, because our GM made it crystal clear this morning that the first of us to draw so much as a frown from the moslem would be thrown out on his arse and blackballed from seeking employ at the other London hotels. There’s this one waitress named Sandy, a real bawdy-looking redhead, who must have had it especially bad from the moslem because right after lunch she snuck to the bar and demanded a double shot of Scotch. Normally I would have turned her down because I could get sacked for something like that, but she smiled at me in this suggestive, cockeyed sort of way and I wanted to keep her around.
“Christ, Tom, I feel like a goddamned whore. Have you got any idea what kind of filth that revolting, misogynistic barbarian whispered to me? I swear to God if I weren’t in so much bleeding debt I’d have slammed my heel into his bollocks and told the GM to go fuck himself.”
I tried to remember what misogynistic meant but all I could think about was what kinds of things the moslem had wanted to do to Sandy. I wanted to ask her what he’d whispered to her but I thought she might get upset, so instead I explained to her that the moslem probably had a harem in his home country and that for him groping random women was just business as usual.
She looked up from her Scotch and stared squinty-eyed at me for a moment, then began to giggle. Her knockers bounced around and she brushed back her bright red hair and I suddenly felt very warm and a little nervous.
“Well, Tom, you might be a bit gormless but you mean well.”
She polished off her Scotch while I grinned like a Cheshire cat. For the rest of the day I stood up straight and I put extra booze in every drink I made.
I do know what gormless means, by the way. I might have been mad at Sandy for calling me that word, but it’s true that I can be a little subnormal when I’ve not taken a pill in a long time. When I first started seeing my therapist she asked me if I thought I was subnormal. I hate how she did that – asked me questions when she already knew the damn answer. But at the time I was very offended and defensive and I told her that no, of course I wasn’t subnormal. Looking back now it was a silly thing to say. I was subnormal, and she’d known it. She had a way of exposing you, making you feel like you were standing there naked in her office and she was examining you inch-by-inch through those coke-bottle eye glasses.
What I’d give to watch her analyze the moslem!
December 29th, 1968
I hope He sends one soon. Things are getting worse. I stayed at work today for four hours later than I was supposed to because I lost track of time. Every ten minutes or so my mind just floated back to the despicable dream I had last night. It was shameful, really, bloody shameful, but I couldn’t help it and I just kept spacing out and remembering all the lurid details.
In my dream the moslem was a big hairy man with a long, curved sword (a scimitar?) tucked in his sash who kept laughing and rubbing his beard. He found Sandy at the bar, then he tore off her clothing and lifted her little body onto the counter and told her to play with herself while he lifted his own robe up and licked his lips. I was behind the bar watching, nude, and my old therapist was beside me looking at my privates, then the moslem’s privates, then mine again, and scribbling notes. Then the moslem climbed up on the bar and mounted Sandy, gripping her neck with his fat sweaty hand while he slammed his long curvy tonker into her and she screamed.
The rest is too horrible to write down here.
Someone keeps knocking on my door but when I go to open it no one’s there. It’s too late for visitors, but I keep hoping it’s the box.
There’s the knock again. If no one is there this time I’m going to bed.
December 30th, 1968
It came today!
It arrived like it always does, in a tiny plastic bottle. Only this time, like twice before, He has enclosed a packet of yellow powder and a photograph of a man’s face with a name printed beneath it.
I’m feeling a whole lot more lucid now that I’ve taken the pill, so before I recount my day (which was uneventful anyway), I think I ought to tell the story behind the pills.
Three years ago, right around the time I got my job barkeeping at the Savoy and while I was still seeing my therapist, I found on my doorstep what I believed at the time to be a very suspicious package: a small, unmarked cardboard box that contained two items. First, a small plastic bottle with a green pill inside. And second, a typewritten note on an index card, which I’ve copied below:
Tom –
I am a friend. I know all about the problems in your head. I have helped hundreds of people just like you. Psychology will not help, because the problem has to do with the chemicals in your brain. Along with this note you will find the cure you’ve been searching for. The pill is a new medicine being used in America to treat problems like yours. It is tremendously effective. Please take it.
Your friend
Well, I might have been subnormal but never in my foggiest hour was I dense enough to consider swallowing a drug I knew absolutely shite about. I replaced the pill and the note, tossed the box into my closet, and forgot about the mysterious incident altogether.
Then one morning, exactly one week after the box had arrived, my uncle’s landlady found him facedown in his scrambled eggs, dead as a doornail. The coroner said that he had sustained a heart attack, which is unusual but by no means unheard of in middle-aged men. I went off my trolley. Totally unhinged. Whatever stability I’d developed through therapy and a regular job evaporated then and there, and my mind went into a tailspin. Over the next few days I attempted suicide twice – fainted the first time, botched it the second time (still have the scars). I bimbled the streets for days until my feet were blistered and I was so haggard that the bobbies took me in and locked me up. Those were dark days.
I didn’t sleep. Didn’t eat. My therapist phoned me dozens of times and stopped by my flat at least twice, but I’d sequestered myself in my bedroom and had unplugged the telephone. I tried drinking, but that made things worse. I wanted morphine, but didn’t know how to get it. So I just sat on my bed and withered.
Ultimately I reopened the cardboard box in my closet hoping that the little green pill inside would kill me.
I chased it with tap water and perched on the edge of my bed, waiting to feel something, anything. For twenty minutes nothing happened. Then the ringing I’d been hearing in my head for days stopped. All at once I felt full of beans, real frisky. And very lucid. But there were these gut-wrenching pangs of hunger in my stomach, so I stumbled downstairs and outside to a nearby pub. Everyone stared rudely at my gaunt frame and the severe black bags under my eyes (what’s it to them, anyway?), but I paid them no attention. I ordered two portions of fish and chips and ate every bite. Ten minutes went by and suddenly I was right knackered, so I climbed back up to my flat and slept for the first time in days.
Two days later, after I’d cleaned myself up a bit, I phoned Joe and told him I was prepared to return to work. He was reluctant, but after enough begging he caved. “I dunno, Tom. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, but the first time you start crying or go bedlam on a customer, you’re gone. Understand?”
But I felt better than ever, and Joe noticed. For nearly a week I imagined that I was, for the first time in my life, a proper human being.
Toward the end of the week, though, the pill’s effects began to wear off and my mind reverted to its old tricks. Still, I’d tasted normalcy and I battled to practice it hourly. I may have slipped up a few times, but Joe didn’t catch on and nothing too catastrophic happened.
My daily struggles grew more and more challenging. I felt on the verge of relapse when another box arrived. This time in contained only the green pill – no note. I swallowed it instantly.
The pills continued to arrive at roughly weekly intervals for seven months.
One week during that seventh month I returned from work to find the familiar parcel waiting inconspicuously on my doorstep. I ripped it open eagerly, as had become my custom, but was gobsmacked to discover inside not only the green pill, but a packet of yellow powder, a photograph, and another typewritten note. Intrigued, I arranged all of these items on my writing desk and inspected each in turn.
The photograph was of a distinguished-looking old man with silver hair and a Savile Row suit. I recognized him immediately as one of the guests at the Savoy who had stopped by the bar several times. Fond of gin drinks, I recalled. Printed at the bottom of the photo was a name: Sir Dennis Bruce.
Next I turned my attention to my benefactor’s note, which I’ve copied here:
Tom –
It seems these pills have worked out magnificently for you! I’d like to continue sending them, but I must ask you to do something for me in return. The man in the picture is staying at your hotel. The next time he orders a drink at your bar, I’d like you to mix in the enclosed yellow powder. Be discreet. And you needn’t worry about harming him; the powder is innocuous. Once you’ve done this favor for me I will resume my sending of the green pills.
Your friend
I searched frantically for a sign of my benefactor’s identity. I wanted desperately to ask what the yellow powder was and who Sir Bruce was and what he had to do with anything anyway. Alas, the cardboard box was, as I have already remarked, quite blank, and the other items were equally unyielding in the way of clues.
Naturally I did nothing with the yellow powder at first. I feared that if I were to act upon my benefactor’s request I might become embroiled in some grim conspiracy, and I certainly wanted no part, conscious or otherwise, in visiting harm upon a knighted British citizen.
The following week, no pill arrived. Nor did one show up the next week. On the third week my mind was mush again and I started to say very strange things to customers. I told one gent’s wife that she really ought to carry a cat with her at all times just in case. She nearly spat up her drink. I showed up an hour late to work one morning and told Joe that he was late. Nearly got the elbow for that stunt.
It struck me that without the green pills, my uncle, or my old therapist to fend for me, I’d be hopelessly lost if I let things unravel. I thought about bringing the yellow powder by a chemist to find out what it really was. But I didn’t know any chemist, and I was worried, in a certain way…
This might seem a bit wicked, but my concern was that if I showed the yellow powder to a chemist and he found out it was poison and remembered me, that I wouldn’t actually be able to slip it into Sir Bruce’s drink for fear of being found out. Now, I certainly don’t believe I would ever have actually wanted to do such a thing in a normal state, but, like I said, my mind was bonkers and at the time I wanted to keep my options open.
In hindsight I should never have been so concerned. I’m still not sure what the yellow powder is, but I’m fairly confident it’s not poison.
That’s because the next day around supper time, I did it. While I was mixing a gin martini for Sir Bruce, I slipped his drink under the bar real subtle-like, as though I were shaking it for him down there, then sprinkled in the yellow stuff. When I brought the martini glass back up into the light, everything was tip-top. Looked just like a gin martini ought to look.
Thing is, my hand was trembling so violently I nearly upended the thing (just imagine if I had!). I was mortified. I slid the glass across the bar to Sir Bruce, who looked up at me with an astonished frown like I was soaking wet or my hair was pink or something. I’m sure I was pale as ivory. My heart was pounding so loud in my chest I thought for sure he’d hear it. But wouldn’t you know it, he sipped it once, sipped it twice, nodded in appreciation and tipped his glass to me! “Damn good martini,” he said, then turned back to the posh lady he’d come in with.
He sat there drinking with that lady for another hour – had two more martinis – then took her arm in his and with a big booming laugh he swept her out the door and into a cab.
I never saw Sir Bruce again. For days I read all the papers I could buy, scared to tears that I’d find his obituary in one of them. But that never happened. Far as I know, Sir Bruce is still alive and well, whisking beautiful society women into and out of ritzy bars the world over.
The green pill came the next day, by itself.
About a year ago today the same thing happened. Different gent’s picture. This time it was a Frenchmen named Blaise Lambert with a thing for absinthe, but it was the same yellow powder. Only difference was there was no note this time. I suppose that’s because my benefactor assumed I’d remember what to do from the first time. Given my psychological struggles, I took His trust in my memory as a sort of compliment.
Well, I did Lambert’s powder just like I’d done Sir Bruce’s, only not so nervous. He gulped it right down and had himself a merry night, though he, being a Frenchmen and naturally more lascivious than his British counterpart, had two women to Bruce’s one.
And now, tonight, I’ve got a third target. The name on the photograph He sent is Dhahab Al-Khatib. The moslem. But the face in the picture is not at all what I was expecting: it’s older, maybe sixty, very clean, slender, with a neatly trimmed black beard and a pair of very intelligent brown eyes behind spectacles. Not at all the hairy brute that had appeared in my dream from the other night. The moslem’s picture makes him look much more like a scholar or a barrister than a manhandler of female waitresses. It’s really quite a disappointment.
Trouble is, I’ve still not seen the moslem around the bar. It’s like I said, he’s probably a teetotaler, so I’m just not sure how to feed him the yellow stuff.
Suppose I’ll snooze on it.
December 31st, 1968
It’s all gone sixes and sevens! I’ve got my things packed in case I’m forced to skip town, though I hope it won’t come to that. I simply can’t believe He’d do something so vile to me, not after sustaining me for so long and not after everything I’ve done for Him.
I’ll start from the beginning.
Today around 11, before lunch hour when the hotel wasn’t terribly busy, I was walking back to the bar from the staff toilet when I happened to glance down a hallway and wouldn’t you know it, I see the moslem himself, looking just like he does in my picture (but a lot shorter that I’d imagined). Well, he’s got some skirt pinned up against the wall and he’s breathing down her neck and I’m smiling ear-to-ear thinking he’s going to shag her right there in the hallway! What a libido this chap’s I got, I say to myself, so I decide to linger and have a watch at what happens next.
But just then the moslem leans back and the girl he’s got cornered pushes her hair out of her face and I realize it’s Sandy! I figure I ought to walk over and cuff this guy in the face, because I remember how much Sandy hates him and I’m wondering now whether the filthy bastard is forcing himself on her. But before I can take two steps forward, I see Sandy smile and slide her hand down to his crotch! Then they both laugh and embrace and I high-tail it to the bar before either of them could spot me.
It’s incredible that a girl like Sandy, after whingeing about what a monster this moslem is, would go arse-over-tit after his todger like that. But then I’ve never really understood women much.
About thirty minutes later while I’m trying to push the whole episode out of my head, just as people are trickling into the bar for their lunchtime cocktails, the moslem walks right up and asks me for a glass of water! (I can only imagine how he worked up the thirst.)
Naturally I’m thinking this is it, the best chance I’ll get to slip him the yellow stuff. Only just as I’m pouring him the water, I realize that the stuff is in my jacket, which I left in the back room. So I freeze up, glass of water in my hand, wondering what I ought to do next. The moslem’s watching me, though, and I can’t think of any excuse for not giving him the water. So I put it down in front of him and he thanks me.
The only plan I can come up with under so much pressure is to start a chin wag with the moslem and hope that if it’s interesting enough conversation, he’ll stick around and order another glass of water. Thing is, I’m not exactly a conversationalist. The only topic I’ve really got any knowledge about is drinks (which is, thankfully, what most of my customers want to talk about anyway). So I decide to start there.
“You don’t drink?” I asked.
He shook his head. “’Shun them so that you may prosper,’” he says it slowly with a heavy, choppy accent.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Intoxicants, gambling. These are sinful habits, and so we shun them.”
This from a man who in all likelihood just bonked a serving girl in the hallway. But I keep my composure. “Don’t have to be a habit, you know,” I pointed out. “Me, I rarely touch the stuff, but that doesn’t keep me from appreciating a quality Scotch on special occasions. Don’t you ever celebrate? Take tonight, for example: It’s New Year’s eve. A little champagne is in order.”
He smiled. “It is not the frequency of the act but the act of association that is dangerous, my friend. You say you don’t drink alcohol often, but do you drink it every time you celebrate?”
I thought over his question for a second. “Suppose I do,” I admitted. What I did not admit was how very seldom I had cause to celebrate.
“Ah!” he said, wagging his finger. “You see, that is the problem.”
“How so?”
He leaned forward now. I fancied that was a good sign. “Let me ask you a second question. If you were deprived of drink tonight – or on some other ‘special occasion,’ as you say – would not the occasion then be less enjoyable?”
A neat trick, that. I’d risen right to the bait, of course. But he was correct. “I suppose it’d be a bit of a downer, yes. Drinking is part of a proper celebration, after all.”
“But can you not see how this is a weakness? You have conditioned yourself to associate drink with celebration, and celebration with drink. To defeat your happiness on any one ‘special occasion’ all an enemy need do is take away your drink.”
Strange way to put it, I thought. “Well, I don’t see why anyone would do that. But come now, you must have your share of weaknesses. Don’t you smoke?”
“Never.”
“Coffee, then?”
“Not a drop.”
“Sex?” I asked, hoping to catch him in a lie.
He hesitated a moment, but then he said “no” quite resolutely. Ha!
“Well,” I continued with a grin, “I do know you’ve got at least one dependency. Something I’ll wager you couldn’t go a single day without.”
“I am intrigued,” he ceded. “What do you mean?”
“Prayer,” I answered. “It’s five times a day, isn’t it, being a moslem?”
He laughed and clapped his hands, evidently quite pleased with my challenge. “Yes! You are quite correct. Prayer is a habit – a dependency, even. I’ll grant you that. But it is not an association, and it is associations – not habits in themselves – that are dangerous.”
“Well,” I said, “I’d like to hear you explain the difference. But before you do, I need to go make a drink for that bloke down there, so hang tight.”
Another man had indeed approached the bar, which afforded me an opportunity to escape the moslem. I made the new chap’s drink – vodka gimlet – then slipped into the back room where I’d hung my coat. Working quickly, I palmed the packet of yellow powder and reappeared before the moslem, who had nearly finished his water. Ought to be easy, I thought. I’d make like I was leaning down to fill his next glass from the icebox, then…
“Food,” said the moslem. And that was all.
“What of it, mate? I can have something sent over from the Grill if you’re hungry.”
“No, no! What I mean is that food, too, is a habit. Just as we pray, we must eat many times during the day. But the key is that the act of eating, like the act of prayer, is not linked to any person, place, or event. We do not, for example, eat only when a bell is rung, like Pavlov’s dogs. Nor do we take water only when the color of the room we are in is, say, blue. And nor do I pray only when I am thankful, or mournful, or bored.”
I couldn’t help myself. “So what you’re saying, mate, is that rather than drink on special occasions, I ought to drink all the time?”
Then he loosed a big thundering peal of laughter. Felt embarrassed for him, he laughed so loudly and awkwardly. He clapped his hands again, too. Some of the other customers shot him looks. On another occasion I might have been pretty chuffed about it – most gents don’t find me so entertaining – but I had other things on my mind.
“So what brings you to London?” I asked, changing the subject.
“A business transaction,” he replied, but by his cryptic grin I could tell he had abridged his answer.
“What’s your business, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Silver,” he said.
“Sounds glamorous.”
“I believe you would be surprised – what did you say your name was?”
“Tom.”
“Tom, when you have something truly special, truly rare – immensely valuable – I think you would be surprised just how many people want to take it from you. There are many evil people in this world, and when they want something badly enough they will do very evil things to get it.” He paused a moment, glanced around suspiciously, then leaned in. “Can you keep a secret, Tom?”
“Sure can,” I said. “One of the first skills we learn in bartending.”
“Just a few hours ago,” he continued in a whisper, “just this very morning, I sold all of my silver. Every last bit of it. And I could not be more pleased with my decision. Let someone else surround himself with bodyguards and sleep with a pistol under his pillow! I’ve had enough of that. Let someone else worry about all of the evil people in this world.”
Now I’m no precious metals expert, but I do know that there’s a lot of silver out there, so I wasn’t real sure what this moslem was talking about. He sounded a lot more like a drug dealer than a silver trader to me. But that wasn’t any of my business. Fact is, he’d finished his water.
“Well,” I remarked, “this most certainly qualifies as a ‘special occasion.’ So if you can abide my sinful habit, I’d like to propose a toast – Scotch for me, water for you.”
At that I picked up a new glass and leaned over behind the bar where the icebox was. Put a couple of cubes and the yellow stuff in, added the water, and swirled it all together real quick-like so that by the time I’d swapped his empty glass with the new one it looked just like regular old water.
“This,” I proceeded, raising a Scotch I’d poured myself earlier, “is to your newfound peace of mind, and bugger with all the silver in 1969!”
“Allahu Akbar!” he exclaimed enthusiastically. And next thing I know, he’d tilted his head back and was pouring water down his throat.
What happened next is difficult to describe.
I’ve already mentioned that the first two gents – Sir Bruce and the Frenchmen Lambert – just gulped their drinks right down without a second thought. Hell, Sir Bruce even complimented me on his martini. But this moslem fellow must have tasted a difference, because as he lowered his eyes back down to meet my own, they were full of fire. This was worse than anger, whatever it was. I mean it was hatred. And he just stared at me with those eyes, scorched me with them, for what seemed like an eternity before I broke the silence.
“Is something the matt—“
And this is where it got ugly. He hurled the half-empty glass at me (missed me, thank God – shattered against a shelf behind me) then started screaming in that harsh, scratchy language they speak. Sounded like he was spitting shrapnel at me. And he stood up and there was spittle spraying from his mouth he was screaming so loud, and everyone looked over and started gasping and whispering, but not a damned one of us could understand what he was saying.
I began to move back a little, because at this point I’m thinking he’s hysterical and he well might come over the counter, but to my surprise the moslem goes dead quiet. This lasts for a couple seconds, max, then – and this part really confused me – he started crying! I mean, really sobbing! I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood still, hoping he’d go away. Well, at some point he reaches across the bar to where we keep the cocktail napkins and he grabbed one. Just one, mind you. I’m thinking he’s going to dry his eyes with it. But instead he takes out a pen and writes something on the napkin, then slides it over to me.
I move forward to see what he wrote, but before I get a chance to look, he gasps, clutches his gut, and sprints full throttle out the door and onto the street.
A few of the other customers called me over to offer their sympathies. “What a nutter!” says one. “Man’s a savage,” says another. “You stayed calm, kid. Did the right thing,” says an American. “It were me, I’d of broken a bottle and sent that raghead on a one-way trip to St. Peter’s funny farm.”
But I just stood there whiter than a French flag, horrified that what the American had said might actually have come to pass. Had I killed him? The way he’d been clutching his gut when he ran out… But it’s impossible to say. Might have been an allergic reaction to whatever the yellow stuff was. Or it could have been a coincidence.
In any case, if the moslem does live I don’t reckon I’ll have this job much longer. Soon as he reports things to Joe or the GM I’ll be out on my arse. Almost makes me hope he dies.
Like I said earlier, I’ve got my things packed. But the truth is, I don’t think I could actually bring myself to run anywhere. Not yet. This is where the green pills come, see, and without them I might as well be in gaol or dead – in St. Peter’s funny farm, to use the American’s expression.
I think maybe I’ll stick around for one more pill. The last one will start to wear off in a few days, and I’m going to need my wits about me if I’m going to make a clean break.
Here’s what the moslem wrote on the napkin:
وقال انه يعيش من الفضة يموت من الفضة
Part 2: A Newspaper Article
The Guardian
January 5, 1969
Murder and suicide at the Savoy
Police have connected a bizarre suicide in London’s East End to the murder of Dhahab Al-Khatib on New Year’s Eve.
Mr. Al-Khatib, an oil magnate from Saudi Arabia, was found dead on Waterloo Bridge just before midnight on December 31. A crowd of celebrants had gathered to watch fireworks on the Thames, several of whom saw Mr. Al-Khatib stumbling and yelling incomprehensibly before collapsing near the center of the bridge, presumably drunk. A passerby eventually tried to help the man to his feet, but phoned the police after finding him unresponsive and cold to the touch.
An autopsy revealed lethal quantities of cyanide in Mr. Al-Khatib’s blood, and a murder investigation ensued.
In a press conference held yesterday, police announced that they had identified Mr. Al-Khatib’s killer, but explained that they would be unable to question the culprit, as he too had been killed — evidently by his own hand.
Thomas Irving, 24, died in his East End apartment yesterday morning from a self-administered dose of cyanide, doubtless from the same supply he had used to poison Mr. Al-Khatib. Though his motives for murdering Mr. Al-Khatib remain unknown, the evidence against Mr. Irving is overwhelming.
There is, first of all, the fact that Mr. Irving worked as a bartender at the Savoy, where Mr. Al-Khatib had been staying on business. At least three customers witnessed an impassioned altercation between Mr. Al-Khatib and Mr. Irving less than an hour before the former’s death, which culminated in Mr. Al-Khatib hurling a glass at Mr. Irving. The glass shattered against a wall, and fragments are being analyzed by forensics experts for traces of poison.
Perhaps more damning were the contents of Mr. Irving’s apartment. Resting on his desk beside a unlabeled pill bottle, police discovered a 20×30 cm photograph of Mr. Al-Khatib, with the name of its subject printed across the bottom of the image.
An extensive search uncovered a dozen identical pill bottles in Mr. Irving’s apartment, as well as two additional photographs. Police are not disclosing the subjects of the other photographs, but have assured reporters that both individuals were contacted immediately, and are alive and well.
A journal was also found among Mr. Irving’s belongings, but some thirty pages had been torn out. Police believe that Mr. Irving expurgated content that would have incriminated him had it come to light.
Despite the seemingly incontrovertible case against Mr. Irving, a number of questions remain unanswered. There is nothing to suggest, for example, that Mr. Irving had met or even spoken with Mr. Al-Khatib prior to New Year’s Eve. Police have speculated, based on the photographs found in his apartment, that Mr. Irving may have been contracted as an assassin by some malevolent third party — organized crime, perhaps, or one of his victim’s more cutthroat competitors. They admit, however, that this theory is tenuous at best; Mr. Irving had only one negligible crime on his record, possessed minimal education, and never received any training in combat or chemistry. He led, by all accounts, an unremarkable life.
An alternate theory is that Mr. Irving was mentally unstable, and that he murdered Mr. Al-Khatib during a spell of temporary insanity. But this theory is inconsistent with the nature of the crime, which was clearly premeditated.
Furthermore, although it is true that Mr. Irving received psychological treatment on several occasions, his former therapist has dismissed violent behavior as incompatible with her patient’s psychosis.
“Tom exhibited textbook signs of a mood disorder,” said Dr. Eleanor Piatkowski in an interview with The Guardian. “Most likely he was a manic depressive. He also had a very low IQ. I can certainly believe he committed suicide — he had attempted it once before. But kill someone? No. Not unless it was self-defense, or he was tricked into it somehow. Tom was harmless.”
A final wrinkle in the curious circumstances surrounding Mr. Irving’s suicide are the pill bottles that police collected from his apartment. Only the bottle found next to Mr. Al-Khatib’s photograph contained traces of cyanide. Residues found in the other bottles were of a different chemical, the nature of which is not yet known.