Desmond Skirrow - I Was Following This Girl

I was following this girl down Piccadilly. I have followed girls before, of course, all sorts of girls in all sorts of places, but this time it was different. This girl was Kiki Kondor striding ahead of me, not just some fabulous, cheese-faced, bandy-legged, pimply-breasted syndrome from the front of Vogue. And Kiki Kondor is not just the richest girl in the world. According to William Hickey, to name only a few, she is also the most beautiful.
I did not know, of course, why I was following her. The fat man had winkled me away from my empty desk and issued bis instructions.
'What's she done?' I said. 'I'm not a bloody policeman, you know.'
'No,' said the fat man, 'you're just the part-time help. I have a little job and I can't spare Musgrave.'
'You're right there,' I said. 'He's dead.'
'Of course,' said the fat man. 'I remember now. Anyway, I don't know what she's done. It's a purple from Washington. So just keep an eye on her. Go and see Greene. And remember, no contact. It's a purple, not the red light'
'Ha,' I said. Another bloody watching brief. I have experienced the fat man's watching briefs before. In wet weather, in fact, I can still feel some of them.
Upstairs, Greene was manicuring his cacti. He operated his office equipment and took out a thin folder.
'Well, old boy,' he said. 'Nice to see you again. It's a simple job, this time. Just keep an eye on her. It's a purple from Washington, that's all. But remember, no contact' Like civil servants everywhere, they talk in duplicate.
He handed me a photograph of Kiki Kondor. But I didn't need it. I see the glossies as often as the next man, and like him I have known and worshipped the exact miraculous curve of her calf, and the particular golden flow of her hair, and the millennial beauty of her high-boned face.
Nevertheless it was a fine September morning, and following this long-legged bomb around London was more inviting than going into the office to write a jingle for stone-ground Peruvian yogurt, the new taste-miracle, so I walked through the park to the Fullbright Tower, where she had her astronomical penthouse, and waited until she came swinging out of the lift.
In the flesh she was like her pictures, only more so. She was even prettier than Cary Grant. She was younger too, and her legs were longer and bells rang. I stopped yawning and followed. She eyed the taxis and decided to walk, laying a fragrant trail down Park Lane. I followed like a Bisto kid, eyes closed and dreaming dreams. Then I opened my eyes again and found that I was following a big lolloping goon. I stepped out.
Kiki paused to look at the trees. The big gorilla paused. I paused. Kiki stepped out. So did the gorilla and so did I, hoping for a little action to spice the day.
Then, down at the bottom of Park Lane by Piccadilly, Kiki paused again. Her lovely leg tested the traffic like a gazelle at a waterhole. The gorilla came close behind and appeared to hail a taxi. And as Kiki stepped into the stream of traffic, the taxi roared like a Jaguar and charged.
Christ, I thought, doesn't she know that life is a jungle and Hyde Park Corner is a Roman Games? The lithe, blithe, reckless doll, I thought. Then I breathed again. The gorilla was stretching a paw to save her.
On the other hand, perhaps he wasn't. I stopped breathing again.
Then I jumped, right across the traffic between two blind buses, to land clutching Kiki Kondor on the kerb in the middle of the road. The gorilla, I saw, was on his back and rubbing bis neck and Kiki was soft and pneumatic in my arms. She flowed like milk and honey and I wanted to go on holding her. She smiled.
'Is this your famous British hospitality?' she said.
But she was a purple from Washington. The fat man has said no contact and he has longer arms than any gorilla in the jungle, so I smiled sheepishly and put her down. She didn't want to go, I think. Then she shrugged and she went. And I followed her, all through the golden day, observing the sweet life in action.
She had done her delicate shopping in Fortnum's, thumbed over a few thousand poundsworth of aesthetic gibberish in Bond Street and toyed with a flaming pancake in a restaurant I had once visited with my boss. She had seen me several times, of course, for I am no bloody policeman and I have never learned the art of being inconspicuous. Her smile had grown colder as the hours had passed. I was dragging a little too. Even the backs of her glorious knees were palling after four hours' close study. Now, I hoped, she was heading back to her eyrie on top of the fabulous Fulbright Tower, London's newest landmark, where iced water spouts from every wall, or it may be Tony Bennett.
We walked in tandem up Park Lane and I hustled through the cosmopolitan lobby, keeping her in sight. The major-domos' noses almost touched the floor and in the scurry of subservience I lost her.
But she popped out suddenly from behind a pillar by the lift.
'Look,' she said.
'Why should I?' I said. 'Every other man in the place is looking.'
'You're following me,' she said. 'If it's just the bashful old-world charm, it's all right. But if it's the kinky, swinging London bit, we'll have to do something about you.'
I blushed a little, for there was some truth in what she had said. I shrugged. 'Nothing like that,' I said.
'But you were following me, weren't you?' she said.
'Well,' I said. 'yes. In a way. But I shouldn't be talking to you like this.'
'Why the hell not?' she said.
'You're a purple from Washington,' I said. "That means no contact'
'Jesus Christ,' she said. 'Not another of you.' The flesh of her face tightened in anger. Her flat belly sucked in. Her eyes, her nostrils and her breasts dilated. Then the private penthouse express lift opened its doors.
'Get in,' she snapped. And I am not such a fool as to disobey an angry woman.
We went up without stopping to the roof. It was brighter up there and a breeze was switched on. She did not speak to me on the journey. I think she was trying to tell me something. But a job is a job. I did not know why she needed watching but mine is not to reason why, the fat man always says.
Outside the lift on the roof, I followed her along a path of bright blue tiles between herbaceous borders of flowers which were too big, too juicy and too out of season to be true. I felt them, but they were not plastic. They were real. Then she barked at me and I jumped off the velvet lawn. There was a grunt as I did so and I looked behind me to see the big gorilla of the morning, lolloping towards me, clawing his paws.
I stepped aside as he rumbled past. I chopped his neck and he flattened six feet of fat flowers. He bounced up and came at me again, growling, too fast for me to step aside again. I braced myself and took him with a straight right arm. He went down again, this time harder, and on the tiles. I folded his hands over his chest and went on into the penthouse, through a small rich hall into a large rich parlour. A man was standing on the carpet, toying with a pale, over-watered whisky.
He was a bronzed delight of a man, wide-shouldered, narrow-hipped, prairie-eyed and prissie-mouthed. I made a moue of surprise. I knew that little prissie mouth.
'Newman,' I said. 'Fancy meeting you.'
That was not true. I did not fancy meeting him. I work most of my time in an advertising agency, finding big solutions to little problems. I never fancy meeting the little problems outside office hours, and Newman was one of the smallest problems of all, the most inadequate of all the inadequates who flap their soft hands around the fringes of business.
By now, he had noticed me and for this I admired him. It is no easy task to look down your nose at a man who is three inches taller than yourself, but he was managing it.
'Brock, isn't it?' he said.
'Yes,' I said. 'I think it is.'
We both knew my name quite well, as it happened. Our orbits had crossed once and I had spent a good deal of my boss's money on the ghastly Greek muck he thinks it is smart to be seen eating. I had even been to his bachelor flat to hear his collection of nearly early jazz. But my boss is a good boss. He had moved me out of contact.
'It's a small world,' I said.
'Too bloody small,' he said, mincing back on his flyweight feet.
'You're right there,' I said, searching for the phrase. Then I found it. 'You're right there, you inadequate, half-hard creep.'
He ignored me. He was busy helping Kiki off with her coat. He handled her inadequately but with familiarity. I shuddered for her but she seemed to accept his touch. 'You know him?' she said.
'You mean Brock, dear?' he said. 'Yes, I am afraid so. Try to ignore his oafish manner. He's a muscle-man, that's all.'
'Grah,' said the girl. 'He's been put on my tail. I told her, Junior, that I can look after myself. Especially with Deirdre about the place.'
Newman shuddered. 'I wish you'd get rid of Deirdre, dear,' he said.
'Perhaps you do,' she said. 'But that's my business. You just tell this Mr. Brock that I don't need his services, whatever they are.'
'Ha,' I said. 'You needed them this morning.' She looked at me. 'What are you talking about?' she said coldly.
"That gorilla,' I said. 'He nearly had you under a taxi this morning. And he nearly got to you again just now.'
'Where is he now?' she said.
'On the tiles,' I said proudly. 'I laid him out myself.'
'You bloody fool,' she said. She turned to Newman. 'The bloody fool's beaten up poor old Bugsy. Go and see to him, Junior.'
Newman nodded. He didn't care about dear old Bugsy. 'Brock is obviously a fool, dear,' he said. 'But I think you need some sort of protection while I'm away.'
The girl looked him over. There was the same sort of distaste in her eye that she had been using on me.
'Well, one thing's sure, Junior,' she said. T don't need protection while you're here.'
He flounced and tried to think of something to say. Then, as is common practice among British business men, even
American ones, he looked for somewhere to offload his anger. He saw me.
'Don't just stand there,' he said. 'Do something.' 'What?' I said.
'Anything,' he said with a vicious, effeminate petulance. 'Get me another drink.'
I walked over to a loaded table and chose the largest of the cut-glass tumblers. I filled it carefully with twelve-year-old scotch. Then I walked back across the carpet. He held out his mollified hand.
But I raised the glass high, like a MacGregor of MacGregor, and poured the whole drink over his inadequate head. And I watched the little amber Niagara cool his brow.
'Is there something else?' I said, but he just stood there. I looked at the girl. Her eye was still as cold but there was a little interest in it. Then the interest faded and she went out. Newman mopped himself up with a gleaming handkerchief, leaving his face an odd dry yellow, the mixture of white rage and sun-lamp tan. He clamped his little prissie mouth into a slit and pushed his face closer to mine than I cared for.
'If I had the time,' he said, 'I would teach you a lesson you would never forget and don't you forget it.'
'No,' I said. 'In fact, I'll remember it.'
'You'd bloody well better not, you bloody gorilla,' he said, 'if you know what's good for you.'
'I won't,' I said.
'You will,' he said, 'if it's the last thing I do.'
He seemed to know what he thought he meant. He continued to gaze into my eyes and flare his nostrils. Then he turned on his heel and strode out after the girl.
'I don't like leaving you with that oaf,' I heard him say. 'But you know mother.'
'Aw shut up, Junior,' I heard her say. 'I'll get rid of him. Now hurry off to mummy.'
Then I heard a sort of spitting. I turned and saw what I assumed to be Deirdre, over whom Newman had shuddered. She was certainly sinister. She was almost certainly female. She was not smiling but I think she was laughing. Then Newman came back into the room, on his way out. He paused at the door to say some last words.
'Remember this, Brock,' he said. 'You're not wanted. Step out of fine and I'll eat you for breakfast.'
'Grrr,' I said and took a step towards him. He went out fast and the room seemed fuller without him.
So I just stood there. So did Deirdre. As I had suspected, she was almost certainly a woman despite her double-breasted Courreges suit and her Shepherd's Market barbering and her knitted silk tie. Her face was masculine, too, in a cruel Neapolitan way. But there was a certain swelling, of hip rather than breast, which she had not been able to suppress.
I am a man, like my father before me, and such women disconcert me. So I poured a drink and offered it to her. She looked at it, walked silently past me and poured herself a great galloping cognac. Then Kiki Kondor came back into the room and the dyke faded into the fittings.
I used all my eyes on the girl for she had changed into something comfortable, a sort of white wrapping through every carefree gap of which escaped a smooth dark glow. And she was everything that everyone everywhere had said she was, plus another twenty per cent for which they have no words. Her legs were longer, her hair was brighter, her eyes were wiser. And there was the ambience. Perhaps it was simply my dirty mind, but the air, where it was in contact with her, was moving in an excited little nuclear dance like the crown on the sun.
I shouldn't be here, I thought. The fat man will drown me in Calvados. But purple from Washington, I thought, magenta from Moscow or green bloody flashes from Pebloodykin, I am no more than a man.
T'm glad I stayed,' I said.
'You'll be sorry if you don't go,' she said. T don't need watching. You've had your job, Mr. Brock. Goodnight.' And she went. I looked at the butch who was sipping her brandy in the corner, and wondered what to do. The fat man had told me to stick close to the Kondor girl and I wondered just how close he meant. Deirdre was about to tell me. She put down her brandy and came up close. She smelled of Old Spice and she hissed when she spoke.
'You heard,' she said. 'You heard Miss Kondor. We don't need you here. Not an ape like you. Nobody needs apes.'
'Why do you say that?' I said politely. She looked up at me and I began to worry. There was a bottomless well of malice in her eyes and without the flicker of a signal she drove the sharp toe of her shoe into the side of my ankle.
'Apes cheese me,' she said. 'I've been up to my ass in apes all my life, and I don't like it.'
I yelped and stepped back. But she was still looking at me. Her thin body was relaxed but I saw that her hands had stiff ened into chopping edges and her feet were set flat and apart.
Jesus, I thought, here we go again. Like the lady said, I've done my job and I don't have to get into a rumble with a charlie-girl. And anyway, I thought, I don't know the form on mixed karate. The rules just have to be different.
'Well,' I said, 'I'll be off.'
When I reached the door she was still behind me. Her face was still impassive but there was a droop of regret to her lean brown frame. And a pretty little shooter in her hand.
'Goodnight,' I said. 'Perhaps I'll see you in the morning.'
She spat something vicious and shut the door. I pressed the button for the lift and dropped down to earth cursing Kiki bloody Kondor and her stroppy bloody dyke and the bloody fat man in Addison bloody Road. I forgot to curse Newman. He was too inadequate to remember.
Down among the people I looked at my watch. It was still afternoon so I went back to the office. There was not much work and I had been able to oblige the fat man largely because it was September and all the brand managers in London were still stroking their suntans and holding their transparencies up to the light. Nothing much was happening in the advertising business.
When things are happening, advertising is as exciting as bingo. Some of the most average minds of our time work at it. They think weak and sound strong all day, and at night they feed their ulcers and beat their wives. But the days grow short when you reach September and life in the advertising business is one long hiatus. We drift like ducks asleep.
My secretary was waving her hands in the air, drying her nail varnish.
'I didn't expect you back,' she said, 'so I was just off.' I grunted and looked at my mail. But I did not open it.
'Poulton's been in,' she said. 'He's fixed a meeting for eight-thirty tomorrow. It's in the book.'
'Don't I take Angie to dinner tomorrow night?' I said.
'Yes,' she said. 'But this is for the morning.'
Christ, I thought, these young lions. Poulton handles soaps and detergents and knows that godliness comes a very poor second to cleanliness. He had been losing his grip on things and was having some sort of crisis, I thought, quite apart from his daily detergent orgasm. He had just changed his secretary, for instance.
'Was he having some sort of swing-around with that girl of his?' I said.
'What?' said my secretary, 'With Penelope? I can't imagine it'
'Neither can I,' I said. 'But has he?'
'I'll find out,' she said. 'He left this.' She handed me one of his orange envelopes, saying Private and Confidential in red IBM letters. It had been opened.
'Read it,' she said. 'It's a scream.' Then she lolloped out, leaving the door wide open for she knows that I like to watch her swing down the long corridor to the lift.
When the backs of her beautiful knees had faded into the distance, I looked at Poulton's memorandum. It was addressed to the six younger lions in his private sudsy empire and my copy was for information only. This meant that there was no real need to read it. But I did.
The subject was Poulton's increasing anxiety regarding the quality of service to the client. This was nothing new for he was that sort of operator, but this time he had a solution to his problem.
'In the long term,' he wrote, T am convinced that we will not serve Client's best interest by sheer, unremitting labour alone. I therefore wish conservation to be practised by the group.
T have recently conducted a personal pilot study of methods, and the following procedure is to be observed as from 1st, October inst.
'In each seven-day period after that date, one whole day is to be set aside for non-Client activities, e.g. personal relaxations, family intercourse, squash or golf. Only the most pressing Client considerations are to be allowed to interfere with this arrangement.
'In the interests of co-ordination I have chosen Sunday for use as this 'day of rest', and I am confident that the adoption of what I shall term the 'sabbatical' principle will result in a sharp and, I hope, rapid improvement in group efficiency.
'I will, of course, continue to hold my weekly brands review on Saturday mornings at my home.'
It went on a bit from there but I stopped reading and pondered. I was pondering the imponderable, however. Poulton has served his time at the Harvard Business School and there is nothing more imponderable than that.
Then the telephone rang.
I looked at the telephone for a while. It was, of course, the fat man on the rampage. I could have been somewhere else, I suppose. But then again, wherever I could have been, he would have telephoned, for as far as I was concerned I was not where I should have been, on Kiki Kondor's pneumatic tail. So I picked up the telephone.
'What do you think you're at?' he said.
"That girl's got more protection than I can give her,' I said.
'What do you mean?' he said.
'A murderous butch bitch,' I said, 'called Deirdre.'
'Grah,' he said. T heard about her. But that's no excuse for falling down on a job.'
'Get stuffed,' I said, since he couldn't reach me down a telephone line. 'I've been tailing that toffee-nosed sweet-lifer all bloody day. I don't want it. She doesn't want it. Deirdre doesn't want it. So I knocked off.'
'You're going to knock on again,' he snarled. 'But first you stay where you are. I've put two of the sergeants into the Fulbright Tower for the moment and Greene and Muir will be around to pick you up. You go with them. Then you get back on the job. See?' He slammed the telephone onto its cradle but Greene was still holding the extension. 'Meet us outside,' he said, 'in ten minutes.'
'Argh,' I said.
'You'd better,' he said. 'I've just been with Him and He's jumping up and down.'
I put down the telephone. The fat man seemed to be working his conqueror's syndrome even harder than usual and I am not stupid enough to ignore it. But at least I could make the bastards wait. I climbed the stairs and looked in on my boss. I wondered on the way why the fat man was working himself up over this dolly. She was very rich and very important, I supposed, but she was not as British as all that. There were
Kondor factories spotted all over Europe, I knew, but the fat man usually stuck to domestic affairs. It was beyond me. So I shrugged and climbed the stairs.
My boss was surprised, I think, to see me so late, and though his chauffeur was sulking in the foyer he gave me a whisky. Then he sat back and grumbled comfortably for a half-hour or so, about the corporation tax mainly, but also about the otters in his moat. They were scaring off the ducks, he said, and since he had been doing his shooting from the bedroom window he had quite lost the habit, he said, of driving down to his bit of rough.
It was all very snug. When he finally dismissed me, the shadows were filling his leathery old office. The rest of the building was empty now and the lift had switched itself off, so I walked down the echoing stairs. I heard the telephone ringing in my office again, and announced myself, expecting to hear the fat man on another rampage. But it was Grosvenor 9000.
'Please hold the line,' it said softly, with a Doris Day chuckle in its dainty voice. Then it clicked a few times and I heard two musical pips.
'Scramble,' said a deep American voice.
'Huh?' I said.
'Scramble,' it said, a little louder. 'How?' I said.
'Is that John Brock?' it said. 'Yes,' I said.
'Well,' it said, 'This is Kelly Byron. Scramble.' 'How?' I said again.
'Jesus K. Reist,' said Kelly Byron. 'Didn't that fat limey give you the goddamned scrambler?' 'No,' I said.
'We picked a real doggy one this time,' screamed Byron.
'All right, all right, all right,' I said. 'What can I do for you?'
'I'll tell you what you can do,' he said. 'You can get back on the goddamned job. Don't you limeys know a purple when you see one?'
'I've been on the goddamned job all day,' I said, 'and I need a little time to myself. I have things to do.'
'That's your problem, Brock,' he yelled. "The deal was twenty-four hours surveillance. Purple, for Christ's sake. And here you are swanning round some goddamned agency.'
'Have a care,' I said. 'And kiss off. If you're talking about the same girl as I've been following, she's safe in her penthouse.'
'That's not the deal,' he said. 'Are those fairies picking you up?'
'If you mean Greene and Muir,' I said, 'they are. Whoever you are.'
'You'll find out who I am,' he said. 'You goddamned limeys. You're all schmucks. You couldn't catch a dose of rose cottage in a Chinese brothel.'
'We bloody well could,' I said, but he had slammed down his telephone. Down in the square Greene and Muir were both waiting.
They are curly-brimmed, velvet-collared daffodils from Addison Road, the fat man's elegant legmen. They both wear the tie with the pale blue stripes and they both appear to be out of the same old rosewood drawer. But Greene is sharper than he looks, honed, like his father before him, with a craftsman's care.
They had the fat man's car. Muir tipped his curly brim to a Mayfair angle and led the way. The fat man's car is a great gleaming slab of Pontiac. Just another automobile in Los Angeles, I imagine, but in St. James's Square it obtruded like Steve Reeves in Cheltenham Ladies' College. I walked into the back with Greene, and Muir slid gracefully into the driving seat. He flipped the tiny gear lever and rolled us silently around the Square, across Piccadilly and up Dover Street.
'Where are we going?' I said.
'Grosvenor Square,' said Greene.
'What for?' I said.
'He didn't tell us,' said Muir.
'He never does,' said Greene. 'All He said was to deliver you there as soon as possible. Then to deliver you back on the job. And, as you see, He gave us His car. It's that important.'
'Hot diggetty,' I said, for Grosvenor Square is no more than a garden for the American Embassy. We were now passing through Berkeley Square. Outside the J. Walter Thompson agency I saw a thin young copywriter I once knew. She was guiding a fat old copywriter back from a late lunch and when I whistled she removed her hand from his shoulder to wave. , He fell flat on his face. I envied him for he was about to have an idea. He has written some of the greatest advertisements of our time from that pavement.
Then the lights changed and we rolled on into Grosvenor Square, God's own corner in this foreign field. Greene and Muir got me onto the pavement and marched me up the steep steps. Muir hesitated and looked back at the car. Greene snorted.
'Better move it, eh?' said Muir. 'You know what He's like about parking tickets.' Greene snorted again.
'But look at that gaggle of coppers,' said Muir.
'They are here,' said Greene, 'to protect America from her enemies. Not to knock off her friends.' He started off up the steps again. 'There is not a copper in London,' he said as he went, 'who is going to book a bloody great Pontiac like that, not in Grosvenor Square for Christ's sake.'
So we carried on. High above our heads the angry golden eagle hovered as big as a Beachcraft, hoping, I expect, for some un-American rabbit to be chased out of the gleaming glass doors below. And the late watery ray of the September sun glinted on the gold trim between the windows. The autumn weather was turning the leaves gold too.
'I haven't got time,' I said.
'What for?' said Greene.
'The waiting game,' I said.
'You're probably right,' said Greene, and Muir snickered. At the top of the steps we paused for breath. Then a neat blue uniform materialised behind a slab of plate glass and pushed it open for us. He stood to attention, thinking, I thought, that our Pontiac was one of theirs, though that may have been an injustice, for when he spoke it was with real Irish music which floated on a breeze of real Irish Guinness. There are Irishmen in every Embassy in London and they may win yet.
He welcomed us and led us through more plate glass and across Italian marble-type vinyl to two marines behind a desk as big as a billiard table. So far as I could see they were unarmed.
'Howdy,' said one of them. 'How may we help you gentlemen?' He was looking at me for I am a couple of sizes bigger than the other two. I didn't know how he could help me so I shrugged. The marine's big-country eye took in Muir's old-country elegance.
'If it's the recital, friend,' he said, 'you're a shade early.'
'What else do you have?' I said.
'You name it, friend,' he said. 'We got it. And it's all a shade early. Early New England Needlework down that way, early American Engraving up this way. Early Shaker Woodwork in the Brook Street Foyer, early Mickey Mice now showing in the reading room. How early do you like it?'
'No;     bloody early as all that.' I said. 'li you come back tomorrow,' he said, 'I can do you a nice Ek is Yolutional Dynamics. That's before its time too.' "What's that?' I said.
'Yolutional Dynamics?' he said slowly. 'I don't know.' He turned to the other marine. 'Do you know, Chester?'
"Sure,' said Chester. 'It's like clockwork pictures. Very interesting.'
'Sounds great,' said the first marine. But by now, Greene had found his pieces of paper. He was reading from one of them.
'Mr Kelly Byron,' he was saying. 'Economics Section, Commercial Unit'
'You'll need the sergeant for that, friend,' said the marine. T thought you were just here for the culture.'
'You can never tell with limeys,' said Chester, and buzzed a buzzer.
The sergeant, when he came, looked like Victor McLaglen as all good sergeants should. He frisked us with his muscular eyes and Muir staggered visibly. I just stood there while Greene went through the whole security routine, credentials, telephone calls and the signing of radio-active passes. Then the big rocky sergeant marched us into America.
The Embassy is a big place. We marched briskly through not much more than a half-mile of rubberised corridors. In carpeted alcoves over the whole distance, gorgeous girls guarded silent doors. We skirted acres of dim, serene bookshelves that must have held every American dream from Plymouth Rock to Elvis Presley. We crossed a great green cavern of a room filled with sharp men and winking machines, all buzzing with the gentle bedlam of a Shropshire beehive.
Here and there we caught snatches of the deep music of administration and once we caught the glimpse of high-level policy in the making, just the flash of nylon shirt-sleeves and cardboard cups through an opening door. It was ethos, ethos everywhere and only coke to drink, and it awed Muir, impressed Greene and reminded me of Unilever House on the eve of a new detergent offensive.
Then we reached the Economics Section. It was just another alcove and another silent door guarded by another gorgeous girl. But this one expected us. She rose like a snake-dancer and dealt us through the door.
Behind the door was a big room, filled with executive furniture and a brisk atmosphere. A man was approaching fast across the carpet. He decelerated and stopped, only inches from my nose.
'Well,' he said nastily,' 'I guess you got here.'
T suppose I did,' I said.
'This is Kelly Byron,' said Greene.
'Well come on, come on,' said Byron. He looked at Greene and Muir. 'And if you two gentlemen are in a hurry we need not detain you.' He pulled away on the long journey across his carpet. I followed at a fast lope, for in the distance I could see a Charles Eames chair and a bottle of Bourbon beside it. Behind me Greene looked at Muir and Muir looked at Greene. Greene coughed.
'I think perhaps, old boy, we'd better wait,' he said.
'As you wish, gentlemen,' said Byron, 'as you wish. This way, Brock.'
I said goodbye to the bottle and followed. We went out of another door and down another long corridor. It took only a few seconds to catch him, then we were rushing along together.
'I say,' I said.
'Shuddup,' he said.
'Where are we going?' I said.
'Didn't they tell you anything?' he said. 'Can't you limeys even communicate?'
'They didn't know,' I said.
'Ah well,' he said, accelerating towards a blank wall, 'there's no goddamned time now. You're goddamned late, Brock, and we're cutting it goddamned fine. Morton Fairchild is waiting now.'
'Who?' I said.
He stopped dead and looked at me. 'Eeek,' he said. 'Morton Fairchild for Christ's sake. Morton Fairchild IV. Who else? The Oil Fairchild. The Railroad Fairchild. The Airways Fair-child. Jeez. Now shake it, boy, shake it.' He unlocked a door in the wall, shoved me in, pressed a button and we whooshed upwards. He shook his head and tutted as we went. Then the lift stopped and he was out, skidding down a royal-coloured carpet. There was one door only up there. He pressed the buzzer, the door opened and he sighed.
'I'll be here when you come out,' he said. He lowered himself into a big fat purple leather chesterfield. I looked back at him as I went through the door. He was finally, for the first time since I had met him downstairs, at rest, switched right off. Americans are like that, or possibly just Americans in London. They are either all go, like some of their systems, or all stop like others. Kelly Byron was now all stop. He might even have been thinking, I thought, but I doubted it. He looked to me like one of God's own action men. His shoulders were a little too draped for a thinker. I wondered what he was doing in the Economics Section. Then the door closed behind me.
The room was empty but for me. There was carpet on the floor and there were pictures on the wall, two of them, painted by hand and individually lit to prove it. But there was no furniture, just one more door in the opposite wall. A little light-box glowed above it, telling me to wait. So I looked at the pictures. I may work in advertising but I know what I like so long as it is Bosch, Breughel or Botticelli. I am not allergic to other artists, I simply think that they need never have bothered.
Both the pictures on the wall, moreover, were American and heavily framed. The one in front of me was all bloody bandages and old, old glory. Crazy Horse was splashing in for the kill and Custer was saying something brave to Rosebud. I turned to the picture behind me.
It was glowing green and gold. The red barn was there and the white house, the dappled cow and the speckled hen. The catfish were biting and the corn was as high as Deputy Dawg's eye. So I turned back to Custer's Last Stand and looked at the scalping in the bottom left-hand corner. Then I turned again and looked at the naked boys splashing in the creek. Then I remembered Richelieu.
When he was in his prime, they say, and playing France like a pin-table, Cardinal Richelieu used aesthetics to weigh up his visitors. Like all big-dealers everywhere, he always kept everyone waiting, and his waiting-room was hung with two pictures only. One picture was martial and the other was pastoral. Before he got down to business, the Cardinal would secretly observe each bored and waiting guest.
This way he would get himself an edge, for the man who is pulled by the battle-scene is a mild and gentle soul. And the man who is drawn to the birds and the bees is hard and tough and aggressive in life.
I told myself not to be silly. But just in case this Morton Fairchild IV had studied his history I divided the remainder of my wait with scrupulous care between the two pictures. And at last the little light clicked off and the door buzzed open. The room behind it was unexpectedly chintzy. But the voice which invited me in was not chintzy at all. It spoke with ah the deep, billion-dollar authority of the all-American male.
'Mr Brock,' it said. 'Come.'
I walked right into the parlour. It was much more of a parlour, in fact, than you would ever expect to find on the top floor of an American Embassy, even the London one. The soft green carpet was spattered with daisies, the walls and the frilled chairs with rosebuds. There was a cartload of expensive stripped pine about the place, some pewter and a dear old lady pouring tea. I looked around for Morton Fairchild IV.
'Sit down, Mr Brock,' he boomed, but I still did not see bim. The little old lady was clinking away at her fine bone china. She looked up at me.
'Milk or lemon?' she said with all the deep, billion-dollar authority of the all-American male.
'Milk, please,' I said, and studied her more closely. She was old, as old as a lizard and twice as wrinkled. She wore some sort of timeless silk ruffled dress and under it her body was tiny and fragile like the cups she was clinking.
Where she got that googly voice from I could not guess. She looked like a tubercular baby shrew and she sounded like Paul Robeson on a clear day. Perhaps a doctor would know about it. I sat down and took my cup.
'I'm here to see Mr Fairchild,' I said.
'I'm Morton Fairchild,' she said.
'Morton Fairchild IV?' I said.
'Yes,' she said. 'Morton III died before you were born, young man.'
'Oh,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'
'No need to be,' she boomed briskly. 'We weren't. He went soft in the head like all the Fairchild men. I'm glad I was a woman. I was, you know.'
'I'm sure you were,' I said.
'Yes,' she said. "Then he shot himself in it'
'In what?' I said.
'The head,' she said. 'He was cleaning his Peacemaker, we think.'
'His Colt Peacemaker?' I said.
'Yes,' she said. 'He was always playing with it, especially towards the end. He got it from Earp when he finished his first railroad, you know.'
Buddy, I thought, can you spare a dime?
T can spare you a lot more than that, young man,' she boomed, 'if you can stick to the job you've been given.' She sipped her lemon tea and looked at me severely over gleaming gold rims. Her deep voice went down a few tones and up a few decibels. 'If, that is, I decide to allow you to continue. I am told that you find it difficult to take things seriously.'
'Well,' I said, 'I do work in advertising.'
'Not for long, perhaps,' she said. T have a good deal of influence young man. So you had better take me seriously.'
Well, I thought. These old big-deal biddies. They may have inherited the earth and all the oil in it but I can take them or
I can leave them. Apart from my hair and my salad, she can keep her bloody oil. I have a good job and a full larder, I thought, and I'm only here, in a way, as a favour to the fat man and who is he to ask favours for a start? I don't have to sit here like this, I thought. But she was still looking at me. 'Yes, Mrs Fairchild,' I said.
'Good,' boomed Morton Fairchild IV. She got up from her dainty armchair. Standing she was no taller and no younger, but she was a lot less fragile. She nipped smartly across the room to a writing table and took a sheet of pink paper. She scanned it briefly.
'This is an abstract of your particulars, young man,' she said, peering closely at the signature, 'from someone illegible.'
Also illegitimate, I muttered to myself. I knew the colour of that paper. It was the fat man's personal pink. I wondered again how he came to be reporting to the Americans. He disliked overseas complications.
'Since it was reported to me that you had fallen down on this little job . . .' she said. I started to say something but she held up her hand. 'No need for explanations, Mr Brock. I know the girl can be difficult. But as you were recommended to me by your superior as the best man for the job, I thought it was necessary to check for myself. And one thing bothers me.' She wrinkled her nose at my particulars for a while, then walked back to the tea-table.
'What bothers you, Mrs Fairchild?' I said more politely than I felt. It was about time somebody told me something. What with the button-down gorilla downstairs and the tea and the crumpet and the silver threads among the chintz and the voice like a New Jersey boardroom, it was all getting too bloody much. To say nothing of the fat man going into writing about me. He puts as little on paper as a happily married lover.
'It's a matter of character,' the old biddy was saying.
'What's wrong with my character?' I growled.
'Not much, I suppose,' she said. 'And you rate high on all the animal qualities. And, I suppose, reading between the lines, I suppose you can be said to rate adequately on intelligence.'
'Ha,' I said. 'You don't even know if I'm anthropomorphic or cyclothymic'
'Huh?' she said. Then she glittered. 'Ah, you mean the Richelieu bit. Well, young man, I just put those pictures there for amusement and you can't win every time. At least I've learned that you know your history, eh? And everything's there in the history books, is it not?'
'I suppose it is,' I said. 'When you come to think of it.'
'Yes,' she said. 'Quite so. But as I was saying, I have my doubts about one aspect of your character.'
I nodded for I agreed with her. Over the long, dragging years I have listened to my friends and looked at my navel and come to a similar conclusion. But I have learned to live with it. What, I thought, is it to do with this dainty old biddy? Who does she think she is?
'Morton Fairchild IV,' she boomed. 'That's who I think I am.'
I had not spoken a word, I think. But perhaps I have an expressive face. And she was still booming away. 'Tell me about yourself, young man,' she was saying.
'Well,' I said, thinking hard. 'I was born on a Friday, I eat overdone meat and I drink sweet white wine. I enjoy my work and I do not play games, not even with myself. I like earning money and I like spending it. I am solvent, no debtors, no creditors.'
'Yes you have,' she said.
'Name one,' I said.
'Isaac Bevan,' she said without consulting the fat man's paper. 'A tailor in Hammersmith Broadway.'
'He's more of a gent's outfitter,' I said, 'and I don't count him. Anyway, how much do I owe him?'
'This gives no details, of course,' she said, waving the paper, 'but as I recollect from your file roughly, of course, it's about one hundred and sixty-three dollars and maybe seventy-seven cents. Does that sound about right?'
I fiddled in my head for a few minutes. Then I used my ballpoint. Fifty-eight pounds, fourteen shillings, unless we have devalued again. That was probably the baggy blue hop-sack. I nodded.
'So you see, young man,' she said, 'it will pay you to be frank with me.'
'So let's get down to my character,' I said.
'All right,' she said, putting down the pink paper. 'As you can see, Mr Brock, I am a very old woman. But that simply means that I have been a woman for a long, long time.' She nodded at me in a disconcertingly ungrandmotherly way. 'I don't really need a report to tell me about you, young man. Any real woman can read you like a favourite book. 'You're what we would once have called a philanderer, are you not?'
I bridled a little at that. I am not a philanderer, of course. Sex is here to stay and I can live with it as well as the next man. But, I thought.
'A good deal better than the next man, I think, Mr Brock,' she said. 'But if you are to do this job for me, I shall require what we might term a guarantee of continence from you.'
'Huh?' I said. I was tipping over into wonderland and she was losing me. In the first place, I thought, what job? In the second place, what continence? Over the years, the fat man has taken me away from my desk for all sorts of little jobs and each time I have been asked for guarantees, against spending too much or shooting too often or taking too long or going it alone or playing it for laughs. But nobody has ever asked me to guarantee to keep away from girls. Life is not long enough for that.
'Well,' I said, 'I suppose I can take cold showers and lukewarm milk. Would that be all right?'
'Don't be flippant, young man,' she said.
'No, Mrs Fairchild,' I said politely, for she had switched on her big boardroom volume again. 'But it's an odd request. We are talking about Kiki Kondor, aren't we?'
'Of course we are,' she snapped. 'When you are finished with me and with my man Byron downstairs, you are to go back to the Fulbright Tower and keep a twenty-four hour guard on the girl. And this time you will not fall down on the job. I want the girl in safe hands until Friday, and yours have been recommended. But while you are working for me you will keep yourself corked, sex-wise. Do I make myself clear?'
I have never seen anything so incongruous as the dainty teacup that she raised to the lips which had just been rattling out the orders. It should have been a pint of Old Grandad, or a ten-gallon cigar. And come to that, I was not at all sure that I would be working for her, corked sex-wise or panting passion-wise. In fact, I was beginning to be fairly sure that I would not be working for her. I am my own master, after all, pink, free and Protestant. Not, I thought, this fascist old biddy's Uncle Tom. The trouble was, she was still looking at me.
'Yes, Mrs Fairchild,' I said politely.
She relaxed and smiled. 'Good,' she boomed, 'Let's have a proper drink, eh?' She waved at a tray. Oid Grandad, it really was, ice, soda, and heavy glass tumblers. I poured two loud snorts and she knocked one back while I was still squirting my soda.
'There's just one thing,' I said, pouring her another.
'Yes?' she said.
'What's it all about?' I said.
'Oh,' she said. 'Nothing to concern you. The girl has been getting letters. It's usual for anyone with her sort of responsibilities and money. I've been threatened myself by almost every mail for forty years.' Her eyes glinted as she thought back and I wondered what kind of reckless fool would imagine he could do her any sort of harm at all.
'Nevertheless,' she said, 'I've seen the sort of thing the girl has been getting and there is a nasty feel there somewhere. More consistently nasty than the average muck. But that needn't concern you, young man. I simply want you to stay with the girl.' She poured herself another drink. 'And this time I mean stay with her. You've been instructed twice now and that must suffice.'
'I'd like to know more,' I said.
'You know what you need to know,' she snapped. 'Byron will instruct you about your reports. Now I have other appointments.'
T still have to know more,' I said. 'If you simply want muscle you can use your man downstairs. Or look in the yellow page. Surveillance discreetly effected. Escorts provided. Photographic and special services . . . Stimulating massage under plain covers, five guineas a day and expenses. But not me.'
She must have believed me. I almost believed myself. She slammed down her glass and snapped her eyes. 'All right, young man,' she said. T suppose I must regard you as a little more than the usual piece of muscle. So listen and forget. It's all very simple. The girl figures largely in a delicate piece of negotiation. I've spent too much time and money, and too much depends on it to take any risks. It's as simple as that.'
'So why don't you use your gorilla down in the Economics Section,' I said.
'Byron?' she said. 'No, young man. He knows his way around back home. But even there I would have borrowed a man from Washington. And over here I'm borrowing you. It's the only rule I never break.'
'Oh?' I said.
'Yes,' she said. 'Local talent pays off best.' 'Grah,' I said.
'Do you know about this girl?' she said. 'Who doesn't?' I said.
'Do you know where her money comes from?' she said. 'Yes,' I said. 'Her father.'
'Do you know where his money comes from?' she said.
'Yes,' I said. 'The Kondor Gebrenschellenfarben.'
'That,' she said, 'and a lot more besides. And the girl is no lotus-eater, whatever the papers say. On her twenty-first birthday, Karl Kondor took her into full partnership. Soon afterwards, he went into some sort of withdrawal and now lives like a hermit in Lichtenstein. He still runs his affairs but the girl has most of the executive responsibility. And she takes it seriously.' She nodded, a soft light in her eyes. 'She is a girl after my own heart, Mr Brock, and I want her looked after. A great deal, more than you can possibly grasp, depends on it.'
I shrugged. Ah well, I thought, resigning myself to the prospect, I shouldn't be surprised. I have sat at the foot of enough boardroom tables to know just how big the big-dealers believe themselves to be. Just great happy global families slicing the whole world into neat, bite-sized hunks regardless of race, colour or creed. Then they stumble into the murky overlap where big business becomes politics and vice versa.
Jesus, I thought, perhaps she thinks she is going to do a takeover bid for Europe and crown herself queen. Not another of them, for Christ's sake. But I could see why the fat man was jumping.
'All right,' I said. 'But I still don't see why I should keep myself corked.'
'You don't have to see,' she said. 'I've spent too damned long setting up this marriage to let you play games now.'
'Marriage?' I said.
'Merger,' she said. 'Merger. Get on the beam, Brock, and keep your ears open.' We sat silent for a moment. Then she spoke again. 'Just one more thing, Mr Brock,' she said. 'Yes, Mrs Fairchild,' I said.
'I have one other rule,' she said. 'I never threaten. But in this case, I will say this. If you tamper with that girl while she is in your care, I will have one of Byron's boys nail your pelt to my barn door in Texas.'
What froze the air around me was that the silver-haired old biddy meant every word she said.
'This way, Mr Brock,' said another ail-American voice behind me. Kelly Byron was standing in the open doorway. She must have pressed a button. The big American accelerated towards me, did a sharp U-turn that burned the carpet, gathered my shoulder into his fist and propelled me towards the door. He nearly drove me straight into oncoming traffic. 'Hello again,' I said.
Newman recoiled. He did not speak and neither did I for Byron was steering me around the inadequate creep and out of the anteroom into the corridor. I looked back as we went, wondering what on earth the old biddy could possibly be wanting with a half-man like Newman. But she was presenting her fragile back to the room, pouring another snort of Old Grandad. Newman was mincing across the room, talking petulantly.
'What's that oaf doing here?' he was saying as the door closed behind us.
We shot down the corridor to the lift.
'What's that creep doing here?' I said as we waited.
'Eek,' said Byron, screwing up his face and peering at me. 'You'll have to watch that mouth of yours, man. That's no creep. At least, if he is, and I'm not saying he's not, you better not hear me say so, if you understand me. That's Junior.'
'Junior?' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'Morton Fairchild V, no less, except she won't let him call himself that.' 'But his name's Newman,' I said.
'What's in a name, man?' said Byron as the lift light winked. 'Fifty billion dollars by any other name, like they say, huh? come on, come on.'
We got out of the lift and scorched the rubber all the way to his office. The gorgeous girl was still guarding his door and Greene and Muir were lounging near, eyeing her. But we shot straight past into Byron's office where he dropped into a chair and parked himself behind his desk.
'Right,' he said. 'What did you think of her?'
I was still thinking about Newman and why, if he was really the old biddy's son, he was not called by the old biddy's name. Big-dealers usually like to see their name stamped on everything in sight.
T still don't understand about Newman,' I said.
'Like what?' said Byron.
'Like why he's called Newman if his name is Fairchild?' I said.
'You would if you knew him,' said Byron. 'I do,' I said.
"Then you'll know,' said Byron. 'What?'I said.
'That he's a nothing-type creep,' said Byron. 'But don't you listen to me saying so. Mrs Fairchild's watered off with him, that's all. She's been pushing him in various directions ever since he grew up, if he ever did. She got me to take him down to Texas, for instance. But he was back in New York inside of a week, with a broken nose, and a bruised coccyx. Some hunkie had kicked him off the rig.'
'What happened to the hunkie?' I said.
'She fired him, of course,' said Byron. 'Then she passed him over to me. The man rated high on situational ethics, as you would expect, so I slotted him into management'
'And what happened to Junior?' I said.
'The same kind of thing everywhere,' he said. 'For a while we thought we had found his niche.'
'Where?' I asked.
'Moussarde,' he said.
'One of our clients,' I said. 'He couldn't have done much damage there. It's the third biggest food company in the world.'
'Seventh now,' he said. 'I suppose he didn't do much damage, not long term. But Mrs Fairchild has a sizeable interest there and it cost her plenty. Junior handled the Brown Label launch. You may remember.'
'Jesus,' I said, remembering. Brown Label had been the biggest thing in modern marketing, a new kind of instant food. It was newspaper news too, not just the ordinary amazing scientific breakthrough that suddenly makes food old-fashioned so rush out and buy while it's sixpence off and a plastic dandelion thrown in. This was one of the real leapfrog leaps that so seldom happen in peacetime. And Moussarde had a headstart on the whole big deal
But they had flopped it. Not only out of an understandable beady-eyed eagerness to beat the competition. Somebody up in the rare Swiss air of their top management had designed a global launch which was a painstaking catastrophe down to its tiniest detail, from critical flow to the colours of the packaging. After three months of chaos, Express Foods of America had snatched the whole market, nine hundred Moussarde men had their heads chopped off, three large advertising agencies went out of business and the production director shot himself.
The only people who profited, besides Express Foods, were the business colleges. The Brown Label operation forms the marketing syllabus in every business college from Harvard to Watford. It contains every known marketing mistake together with a few that had been considered impossible to make.
'Good for Junior,' I said. 'You must both be very proud of him. What's he still doing with Moussarde?'
'Well,' said Byron. 'It cost Mrs Fairchild so damned much that she thought she'd better leave him there. He can't do that sort of damage again, not now they know him. So she had him moved to London, partly because of the exchange rate and partly because British Moussarde are so goddamned limey. He spends most of his time now polishing his jazz records and she made him change his name just in case.'
Then he realised that he'd been gossiping. He straightened up. 'That's enough of that, man,' he said. 'Tell me, what did you think of Mrs Fairchild, eh?'
'A real sweetheart,' I said. 'Did you hear what she said to me before I left?'
'What?' he said. "That about nailing your pelt to her barn door? Yeah. And she meant it, boy. Running Red Bull's done it before.'
'Who?'I said.
'One of my boys,' he said. 'Apache. Not pure Apache, of course. Just seven-eighths. Your pure Apache wouldn't do no more than just scalp you.'
'I see,' I said.
'Of course,' said Byron, 'You're one of these hairy, half-ape-type limeys and he wouldn't know where to stop anyway, heh-heh-heh.'
'Heh-heh-heh,' I said.
'Don't laugh too loud,' he said. 'That little old sweetheart runs the big half of the States. Like I said, from the oil in the ground to the planes in the air. Why man, even the General Motors budget is bigger than whatever it is your George Wilson
ITG-3 33 or McCallahoon or whatever bis stupid limey name is spends on the whole damned island, free dentures included.' He jingled the coins in his pocket. 'And we, Mrs Fairchild that is, can buy up General Motors between two bites of a beefburger. So watch it, Brock, watch it, boy.'
Then he fumbled in his desk and threw me a little black box, pocket-sized. I opened it and found two thick discs, ringed with rubber. He took them from me, picked up one of his many telephones and snapped the discs onto it, one to each end.
'This, he said, 'is how you report. It's a pocket scrambler and so long as the telephone you are talking to is also scrambled you can talk safe, even on your goddamned limey phones like you have over here. Right?
'Right,' I said.
'I've been through this once with your goddamned fat boss,' he said.
'He doesn't care for gadgets,' I said. T expect he threw it away.'
'Shuddup,' he said. 'You report twice a day every day. Noon and midnight on the dot. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing. Right?'
'Right,' I said, a little louder this time.
'And you dial this number,' he said. 'Grosvenor 9000, the ordinary public Embassy line. Right?
'Right,' I said, louder still.
"Then you ask for this number. I'll write it down for you.' He gave me a shp of paper. "Then you wait for two pips. That means you are connected either to me or Mrs Fairchild. Then you scramble and report. Right?'
'Right,' I said, very loudly indeed.
'What's the matter?' he said. 'Am I confusing you?'
'In a way,' I said. 'What shall I report? Weather conditions? The state of my sinus?'
'Huh?' he said, puzzled. 'Mrs Fairchild doesn't want to know about your goddamned nose, man. You can't be that dumb.' He got up and walked about in agitation. 'Look man, it's just a simple little job, for Christ's sake, and hardly worth all this build-up. Any one of my boys could tackle it blindfolded but she wants the best of the local talent and when in London and all that type stuff.' He looked at me with a sort of wonder. 'You're the best?' he said doubtfully.
I just sat and waited. It was either that or pushing his face into the back of his head. And in the end he went on talking.
'Still,' he said, T suppose you'll do. It's just a thick-ear assignment after all and, man, you certainly qualify.'
'You want to qualify too?' I said hopefully. He looked at me.
'You can cut out the hard talk right now,' he said. 'AH you got to do is a simple job of putting a chick in cold storage. Even a goddamned limey can do that, huh?'
'A chick,' I said.
'A broad,' he said. 'You must know.' 'Ah,' I said. 'A bint.'
'If you say so,' he said. 'You got to put a bint in cold storage.' 'You mean kill her?' I said.
'Jesus no,' he shouted. 'You know what you got to do. You just got to keep this Kondor dame on ice for Mrs Fairchild. And like she said you got to keep yourself corked. That's a piece of very high-quality tail, you know, heh-heh-heh. And Fairchild Junior, I mean Newman, is interested.'
'Get stuffed,' I said. 'I'm no pimp.' I got up to go. He got around the desk, flipping the switch on his talk-box as he came. 'Get those two limeys in here fast,' he shouted. Then he let in his clutch and did a fast four-wheeled drift around the corner at me.
'Look here, Brock,' he said. 'You're bugging me.' He came up close, his draped shoulders bulging like spinach and grabbed a handful of my shirt. I sighed, put the heel of my hand to his chin, fitted my fingertips across his low, shiny brow and pushed. Not hard, for I flow with the classical Newtonian flow, in direct proportion to the initial pressure. But Kelly Byron flowed right across his desk into his black leather chair and he was still revolving when his dolly girl rushed Greene and Muir into the room. Greene took in the situation at a glance.
'Did you touch him?' he said to Byron. 'You shouldn't have touched him. I'm terribly sorry old man. I should have warned you, but you took off at such a lick, don't you know.' Then he turned to me and frowned. 'I don't know what He's going to say about this, Brock.'
I was too full of big American dealing to take any big British stuff on top. 'He can get stuffed,' I said. 'And you can get stuffed and the silver-haired old biddy can get stuffed.'
'What silver-haired old biddy, old boy?' said Greene with interest.
'He means Mrs Fairchild,' yelled Byron.
'And you get stuffed,' I said, 'you muscle-brained creep, and Running Red Bloody Bull too.' I started for the door.
'Stop him,' shouted Byron. 'Get the bastard back on the job, you goddamned limey fairies. What will Mrs Fairchild say?'
'You stop him, old boy,' said Greene. 'But don't you worry. He's very conscientious really. And I shall put it all in a report, of course.'
'A 229/z, if you ask me,' said Muir severely. But by then I was thumping up the corridor.
I lost my way once or twice and when I finally reached the marble halls and a sight of England again, I was even angrier. I steamed past the marine sergeant. He was talking on the telephone and took time off to blow a whistle. So when I reached the doors the two marines were in my way.
'Ease up, man,' said Chester. 'Sarge wants to talk with you.'
I grunted something. Chester declined and moved closer and I sighed again. Then I prepared to strike a last blow for empire before the sun finally set. The marines looked interested but Greene spoke up from behind with all the ancient authority of his pale blue tie and the immemorial playing fields where he won it.
'For Christ's sake, Brock, old man,' he said. 'Not again, there's a good fellow.'
'Yeah,' said Kelly Byron from a long way back. 'Leave the bastard go, sarge. The limeys will deal with him.' And reluctantly the marines relaxed.
Greene wheeled me quickly out through the plate glass into the clean September air of Grosvenor Square. The Pontiac was still at the kerb. A visiting traffic warden was kicking his heels and licking his hps but there was no ticket on the windscreen. Just an innocent bystander standing by as always, examining the dashboard.
I was still angry, and without really meaning to I elbowed the man out of my way. Then I remembered my manners and turned to apologise. He was standing quite still, a short thick figure looking up at me through a pair of very green eyes. They were oddly green, almost fluorescent. It was just a trick of the lowering sun, I supposed, but startling. And a little eerie. He stared at me for a moment, like taking my picture. He almost opened his mouth to speak, I thought. Then he smiled a little smile, turned on his heel and walked off. I shrugged and sat in the back of the car.
'Well,' said Greene when Muir had joined us and rolled us out of the square, 'you cocked that up, eh? We start off as some kind of reciprocal lease-lend and inside of an hour you're mixing it into an international bloody incident. That Byron may look like a hoodlum to you, Brock, but that's just because he's not British. He's a big wheel, you know. And you, my friend, are a bloody fool.'
'Drop me at my flat,' I said.
'I really think, old man,' said Greene, stroking his furry bowler, 'that you'd better come along to Park Lane and get back on the job.'
T think so too,' said Muir from the front seat.
'My flat,' I said. 'If I have to nursemaid this bloody sweet-lifer then I'll need my pyjamas, won't I? And my after-shave and that.'
'And a bottle of bromide, if you'll take advice, Brock,' said Muir from the front seat. But Greene bowed his head and understood. He has played a lot of cricket, where one does not rash. One walks slowly like a gentleman, bat under arm and everyone waiting. He gave Muir the word and we peeled off down Piccadilly, around the corner into Sloane Street and home to my flat.
They both followed me into my flat and while I took off my clothes and showered, Greene poured them both a drink. Then I dressed with care and scratched myself up a meal, three thick slices of gypsy sausage, a couple of tomatoes and a large, nourishing glass of whisky and water. Muir, who still lives with his family, shuddered, but Greene nodded his approval.
Then the telephone rang. Muir picked it up and spoke. Then he listened hard, sprang to attention and handed it to me.
'It's for you,' he said. 'It's Him.'
I took the telephone from his manicured hand.
'Brock,' I said.
'Well,' he said, 'get on with it. I've just had that bloody American on at me again. I'm losing patience.'
'So am I,' I said. 'And you're not helping. You didn't give me his scrambler you know. And you forgot to tell me it's an all-night job. You better get on the beam, fatso.'
'Just you watch it, Brock,' he snarled. 'And keep your drooling hands off that girl, too.'
'Don't worry,' I said. 'She doesn't like me.'
'Well, keep it that way,' he said. 'Now get over there on the double.'
So I packed a bag. I put in a clean shirt and some old pyjamas. I looked at yesterday's everlasting blade. It was a little jagged so I took another. I looked at my new aftershave, a sample from the office. It leaves a man all male, said a little flag on the stopper, and you never know your luck. But I left it on the shelf and packed my Yardley which leaves me just the way I think I am.
Then we all had another drink and Muir drove us off. The theatre traffic was blossoming and in not much more time than it takes to walk I was back in the Fulbright Tower, with the best of Greene's British luck echoing in my ears. In the vestibule, a stuffed grey uniform bowed low, for it remembered seeing me with the richest girl in the world. And at the door of the penthouse lift, was a big, thick, ugly man.
It was one of the fat man's sergeants. He gets them on loan from the Special Branch and this one had done his spell on the door at Addison Road. He remembered me and he fingered the fitted pocket in his baggy trousers, where he keeps his kinky black cosh.
'It's been a long time,' I said.
'Not long enough,' he said. That's the way with these big, ugly Specials when they get themselves seconded away from their big, ugly bosses. They get too big and too ugly for their big, ugly boots. But they know their job.
'She's still up in the penthouse,' he said. 'At least she hasn't come down here. Tunnicliffe's up there now, waiting for you to* take over.'
'Anyone been up or down?' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'A flabby smoothy went up a while ago.'
'That'll be Newman,' I said.
'And something queer in trousers came down and slammed out of the place just afterwards.' 'That'll be Deirdre,' I said.
'You may be right,' he said. 'Anyway, now you're here, I'm knocking off. Tell Tunnicliffe I'll be in the bar.' 'Which one?' I said.
'The one where they serve draught Guinness,' he said, licking his big, ugly lips.
"They charge eleven shillings a pint here,' I said. 'And it's not just to impress the guests. It's to discourage people like you.'
'A mere bagatelle,' he said, patting his pocket to make sure his expense money was still there. He pressed the button, ushered me into the lift with an impertinent flourish and swaggered off towards his Guinness. I wondered what the visiting big-dealers were going to make of two sweating Specials harmonising Nelly Dean in the elegant Bannenburg Room. Then the lift let me out onto the roof. The stars were switched on up there and Tunnicliffe appeared from the shadow of a little crippled apple-tree. Another thing about Specials is that nobody can ever tell them one from another. Perhaps it was Tunnicliffe who had done his spell on the door at Addison Road. He remembered me and fingered the fitted pocket in his baggy trousers where he keeps his kinky cosh.
'It's been a long time,' I said.
'Not long enough,' he said.
I put my bag down by the tree and looked at the penthouse. Soft lights were glowing behind the curtains.
'She's in there, all right,' said Tunnicliffe. 'And she's on her tod. Now I'll be off.'
'Not so fast,' I said. 'What about Newman?'
'What about him?' said Tunnicliffe.
'Tunnicliffe downstairs,' I said, 'told me that a bloke came up and hasn't come down again.'
'I'm Tunnicliffe,' said Tunnicliffe. 'He's Chamberlain. And the bloke that came up went down again.' 'Chamberlain said he didn't,' I said.
'Well,' said Tunnicliffe, 'he wouldn't have seen him, would he? He's still at the party, isn't he? Chamberlain's been watching the foyer, for Christ's sake.'
'What party?' I said.
'The party two floors down,' said Tunnicliffe. 'The bleeding party the bloke came up and took the girl to. I followed, of course, and that's where they went. This party. Lot of bleeding fairies, if you ask me.'
'But you said the girl was in there,' I said, nodding at the penthouse.
'That's right,' said Tunnicliffe. 'She came back, didn't she? The bloke stayed there. Now, if it's all perfectly clear, I'll be off.'
"There's no hurry,' I said. 'You stay here while I go and have a peek at this party.' 'What the hell for?' he said.
'I don't know quite,' I said. 'Did you find out who lives down there?'
'Yes,' he said. T told you didn't I? A lot of bloody fairies. Well, two of them, anyway. They've got the whole bleeding floor to themselves down there, booked in the name of Frirn-leigh.'
'Right,' I said. 'You stay here.'
'It's a bleeding liberty,' he said. 'By rights, I'm off duty now you're here.'
'Don't worry,' I said. 'Tunnicliffe's down in the bar, lining them up for you.'
'I'm Tunnicliffe,' he said. 'You illiterate bastard.'
"That's right,' I said. 'I won't be long, I expect. I'm not much of a party man.'
The lift from the penthouse floor was a private driverless express, stopping only at sea-level. So I walked down the stairs which wound around the lift shaft to the top public floor of the Fulbright Tower. It is one of London's swinging places with bars and a restaurant where the prices are highly adjusted to include a view of the Palace and, on a clear day, the sound of barking corgis. There was a man I know, slumped against one of the bars. But he was only a Unilever man, so I carried on down the stairs to the next floor.
This was just one big apartment, but the doors were wide open and all the noise was coming from the other end. I padded along the carpet and sidled into a vast room. About one hundred assorted swingers were drinking champagne and twitching in what might have been a frug. All the women were cool and all the men were hot, and on a raised platform at the end of the room a giant jukebox was pumping out a noise like the end of the world.
I made for the bar. Everyone in sight was drinking champagne but I had recognised the barman. It was Charles of the Ritz, which meant that all tastes would have been catered for. He greeted me with surprise and gave me the whisky which I craved. Then he gave me another and I put a wall behind my back while I surveyed the scene.
The girls were of all ages, all sizes and all tints, but they were all girls. All of them had buttocks and most of them had breasts, and the room was bright with ten thousand pounds-worth of gossamer gear and the air was heavy with the scent of Worth and Lancome and Jean d'Albert and Californian Poppy. Here and there, like cherries in a fruit cake, were familiar faces from stage and screen and commercial.
'Who are you?' someone said. I turned. He was absolutely exquisite.
'John Brock,' I said politely.
'Golly,' he said. 'A gate-crasher. I didn't ask you, did I?'
'No,' I said. 'I was hoping to find Kiki Kondor here.'
'Oooh,' he said. 'You're almost a neighbour then, Johnny. I'm Frimsie Frimleigh, your host' He offered his tiny hand and surveyed the crush. The frug was getting fruggier. He giggled. 'She just went, I'm afraid. Adrian's here, you see, and I quite forgot.'
'Adrian?' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'And he's a little bit tiddly again, of course. So you'd better not let him know you're after little Kiki, eh?'
I followed his eyes towards a piece of drooling beefcake, one of the vaguely familiar faces. He was standing in a corner with a glass, swaying, arms folded and face like thunder.
'Oh, him,' I said. 'You mean the poor man's Wallace Beery.'
'What's that?' he said. 'Ha, I see. Adrian.' He giggled again. 'I must tell Bubsie. Terribly good. Terribly subtle.' He glided away and came back again. 'You won't go will you Johnny? Swenson is coming tonight. Newman asked him, you know. But of course, Kiki would have told you. I hope she comes back. Swenson wants to meet her apparently.'
'Swenson the beatnik?' I said.
'Swenson the guru,' he said. He screwed up his face. 'He is a guru, isn't he, Johnny? Or is it a mantra. Anway, darling, it's that sexy sort of poetry and all that sort of thing, you know? Of course you know. The poor man's Wallace Beery. Terribly good.' He chuckled again and I hoped he was going to tell me why. But he smoothed his fragrant cheek. 'Is he really a beatnik, Johnny?' he said doubtfully. 'Will we like him? I mean, does he smell?'
'I think so,' I said. 'I read about him in Time Magazine. He takes his clothes off.'
'Oooh,' said Frimsie. 'Don't we all?' and he rushed off to tell Bubsie. I continued to drink my drink and started to look around for Newman. But a vast man walked up to me and planted great hands against the wall, one each side of my head. When he was satisfied that I was properly fenced he asked me what I felt about Othello and then spent a long time telling me.
There were too many bloody theatricals at this party, I thought, and stopped listening, keeping an eye out for Newman through the actor's vast armpit. Charles smuggled me in an occasional drink.
But it was hard not to listen. The vast actor had very creative ideas about Othello, he said, but nobody would listen. They were all bloody queers, he said. Then he started weeping. He said he thought he was a bloody queer himself. Then he stopped weeping and told me that I was a bloody queer and he was going to break my arm. I kept on nodding and he kept on talking and after a while I ducked under his arm and slid away. When I looked back he was still talking to the wall.
So I circulated and in the course of time I found myself in the storm centre, all quiet with Newman. His nostrils dilated.
'Look,' I said, making an effort. "There's no point in going on like this. Whether we like it or not, I'm doing this small job for your mother. If we have to run into each other, let's try to accept the fact.'
'You're the hired help, Brock,' he said. 'And get about your business. You should be upstairs now. And make the most of gjt. You won't be on the job for long.'
'What I was trying to say, you half-hard creep,' I said, 'is why don't you stop behaving like a half-hard creep?'
'I shall only tell you once,' he said, telling me twice, 'Miss Kondor is up in her apartment and that's where you should be.'
'What's that?' growled a voice behind me. A great hand thrust itself over my shoulder and grabbed Newman's silk shirt. 'Are you the creep who brought Kiki Kondor here, then?'
'Yes,' I said, turning. 'He's the creep.' It was Adrian, the big drunk. I smiled. If he can see straight, I thought, he's going to break Newman's nose. But Frimsie rushed up and the magic moment passed. \
'Golly,' he said. 'Do you boys know each other?'
'No,' I said. 'Are all these weirdies friends of yours?'
'That's not kind, Johnny darling,' said Frimsie. 'And anyway, some of them are quite normal. Especially darling Patty here, aren't you darling?' He pinched the fattest part of a short fat dish in bursting, well-bottomed organdie. She turned with a shriek of delight, kissed him, waggled her tongue at Newman, ignored Adrian and looked me up and down.
'Aren't I what, darling?' she said. She began prodding me here and there with her short fat mischief-finger.
'Normal, darling,' said Frimsie.
She stopped prodding me and came closer. Then she put on the pressure. Parts of her squeezed flat against me so that other parts of her could reach me. She was strong but I stood my ground. She stood on her toes and put her arms around my neck. She looked into my eyes.
'I'm so normal,' she said, 'that you're not going to believe it.'
'Oh darling,' said Frimsie. 'Not now. You are a bore, Swenson's coming in a moment.'
'I met him once,' said Patty into my eyes. 'Last year when he was living in Rudi's temple. That was before he went to India. He smells.'
'Oh, dear,' said Frimsie.
'He's right over the edge,' I said, 'from what I read in the magazines.'
'Don't believe all you read, darling,' said Patty. 'He has a lot to give.' 'And here he is,' cried Frimsie.
The whole room had stopped. Someone had even killed the jukebox. It was now covered with a heavy black silk drape, a sheet, I supposed, from Frimsie's big bouncing bed.
I peered over Patty's frizzy hair to look at Swenson. He was-standing in the doorway like Armageddon, wildly underdressed in a collarless flannel shirt and a dirty linen suit. This was what I had read about, the angel-headed Moses of the Hydraulic Apocalypse. Or something.
He drew a queer sign in the air with his dirty index finger and advanced into the silent room. In his wake trailed a shorter thicker prettier figure holding a tiny tape-recorder and a little transistor radio, carrying these symbols of pop-culture across the room with the same reverence with which the ancient druids must have carried Stonehenge across Salisbury Plain.
They passed close to us. Patty quivered, perhaps in memory of what Swenson had to offer. Swenson's eyes were fixed on higher things but the little disciple's green glims took me in as they passed. I shrugged and watched them take their place on the platform before the black-draped jukebox. Swenson placed hilmself carefully and the disciple folded himself intricately onto the floor.
There was a long still moment. Then Swenson moved. He flung his hands high into the air like a naval flagwagger making the letter S. Then he brought his hands back down and folded them like an artichoke upon one another. This took some time. Then he spoke in a thick scratched voice.
'Shiki fu i ku ku fu shiki shiki soku ze ku ku soku ze shiki,' he said.
'Eeeek,' I said. Patty was still squashed against me but more interested now in the guru. She shushed me. 'What the hell was that?' I said.
She tutted. 'He said,' she said, 'that form is not different from emptiness is not different from form is the emptiness is the form.'
'He may well be right,' I said. Patty unstuck herself severely from me. But she kept her hand in my trouser pocket, for by now Swenson was into a welter of words. I think he was speaking his poems, for now and then he would pause and explain. But for the most part it was a screaming scratchnig gibberish of praise for the Vortex, whatever that is, spattered with brand names and tears for his father, castrated by the artifascist admass.
There were also a lot of snippets of information about what to do with boys and girls and lysurgic acid.
Then, for a while, he got onto a bit which seemed to make more sense to me. Not only could I vaguely understand what he was saying but there was even a sense of kookie familiarity with it. Unless, I thought, he was getting to me.
'The ape,' he was screaming, 'walks with a twig upon his shoulder and the woman with a hat upon her head. For apparel and the wearing of it is Ambivalence. Men wish to display themselves and desire to hide. In their clothes they find their crutch and when they look upon the breasts of their women they see only the brassiere. For the female breast is to be supported and proffered and hidden from the sight of man and the woman who removes her glove undresses her hand.'
And it went on and on. I shook my head and stopped listening. But the feeling remained, that I half-recognised this gibberish. Then the big wild man worked himself up almost out of earshot. The thick little man on the floor unfolded himself too and started whanging sound from the two boxes, Indian-type screeches from one and a beat-group from the other.
Then, right at the peak of tolerance, it all stopped. Swenson raised his arms high and made his queer little sign on the air. Then he screamed into the silence.
'Tenderness from Evil,' he shouted. 'Man must not dress in symbols. The coffee hisses from within the can as the air enters it. Man, the naked hero-citizen.'
And he began to take off his clothes, praying and gibbering as he did so. I looked around the room. It was in shock. Then Patty began to twitch beside me. Her hand crawled out of my pocket and fumbled my belt. It was time for me to go and I went. I pressed through the twitching crowd and made for the nearest door, the one behind the jukebox, and as I passed I saw the thick disciple with the green eyes had disappeared.
But Swenson, completely naked now, was bending down from the platform over Frimsie, gibbering softly into his ear. Frimsie looked uncomfortable so I touched his arm.
'I'm just off,' I said. 'Thank you for the show, Frimsie.'
The guru stopped gibbering and slowly swivelled his head towards me. A pair of almost white eyes peered at me through the wild hair.
"Who is this?' he said.
'This is Johnny, guru,' said Frimsie. 'A dear friend, Johnny Brock.'
Swenson stood up tall on his platform, big and obscene before the black shape of the jukebox. He pointed his dirty finger at me.
'Cry hunger,' he said loud and thick. 'Cry greed. Foul the human nest and you set the cymbals ringing. Protect those that do so and you will know your karma. God watches man and man watches God.'
I shrugged. He bent his big flabby body forward and breathed a cold fish's breath into my face.
'Kiss off,' he whispered so that only I would hear him. 'The dyke told you once. I'm telling you last. Kiss off, Brock, and stay kissed off.'
It figures, I thought. They make a pair, Deirdre and this floppy kink. He put a big, dirty hand on my shoulder. I took the wrist and squeezed. I kept on squeezing and I was breathing hard before his hand went limp. Then I pushed past him and out. Behind me, they flocked to the groaning guru. Frimsie rushed after me.
'You were right, Johnny,' he said. 'He's horrid.'
'What was he saying to you?' I said.
'I don't quite know,' he said. 'It wasn't making sense, but I think it was to do with your girl-friend.'
'My girl-friend?' I said.
'Kiki,' he said. 'Kiki Kondor.'
'Oh,' I said. 'Forget about it. She's rich and he's just another mystical creep on the make.'
He smiled faintly. 'You sound like you've met a lot of them,' he said.
'I have,' I said. 'I work in advertising.'
Frimsie took a deep breath and went back to his unsavoury party. I stood for a moment in the quiet back corridor, pondering Swenson's poetry and listening for the sound of W. B. Yeats turning in his bee-loud glade. Then I took the stairs on a run for it was about time I was getting about my business and pointing Tunnicliffe at his big sweaty pint of Guinness.
The Unilever man was still slumped over the bar. He saw me this time and waved his glass dimly so I put on an extra spurt and slammed around the corner with my head down, straight into a hairy skirt coming down the penthouse stairs.
'Ah my son,' said a deep voice. T seem to be misdirected. Can you help me, please?'
I stood on the stairs rubbing my head and looking at the monk with whom I had collided. He was smiling a broad fatherly smile.
'The restaurant,' he was saying. 'Yes, my son, we are not so different from other men. Like you, we need to eat, you know. What did the bard say? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?
And if we bump you, do we not ache, I thought, still rubbing my head. I directed him to the restaurant and walked on up to the penthouse, wondering what he was wearing under his black robe. Whatever it was it was as hard as steel, and I had a small swelling to prove it. Running into the church, I thought, is like being coshed by a luger. But monks don't pack guns, I thought, do they? No. I thought, of course they don't. They don't need to.
Back on the roof, Tunnicliffe was all steamed up so I let him go. He went, swearing, and I was alone. The lights still glowed softly behind Kiki Kondor's curtains. But I was in no hurry to buzz the door. I walked across the grass to the parapet. Far below was Park Lane, lit up now like the seaside. From that height it was no more than a red dotted line of buses on a gleaming ground of taxi-cabs. Further ahead, within the vast black shadow of Hyde Park were the sleeping London sheep and the lovers and the wandering drunks and the tight-trousered guardsmen and the suicides and the homeless old men and the little lost girls of the evening.
I turned away. I do not like the dark parts of London. I thought about the man downstairs. I did not like him either. Ugh, I thought, the sweet life is turning sour. I wondered what was familiar about his gibberish and then gave up. I took a deep breath, picked up my bag, walked up the path and leaned on the buzzer.
As it chimed, the door swung open beneath my weight. I walked in. The little hall was empty. So was the parlour. One corner lamp was shedding the soft light, and even more softly, Dick Haymes was shedding love letters all over the apartment, straight from his heart in a big mahogany stereo-box.
I put down my bag, found a chair and listened. Kiki was almost certainly in bed now, and with any luck the butch might not be back. And there are no songs like the old songs.
I listened while the strings sugared the scene. Then Dick started giving again. He memorised every line. He kissed the name that she signed. And then, while he was reading them again right from the start, another voice overlaid his. It was sharper, but it was even sweeter.
'Come on, honey,' she called. 'Where are you?'
I got up and looked in the kitchen. It was empty.
'Come on,' she said again.
'Where are you?' I said.
'In bed,' she said. 'Where else?'
I walked gingerly into the room from which her voice came. She was, in fact, in bed, a big bed beneath a cloud of muslin that trailed from the podgy golden hands of four high-flying cherubs. It was all very conventional, as conventional as a Hollywood musical.
Her glimmering hair flowed over the white pillows and the long, roller-coaster line from her round white shoulder, up over her miraculous hip and along the long curve of her leg flattened out my memory of the Rokeby Venus. And whatever it was she was wearing, it was certainly not just a nightdress.
She was smiling too. In fact, she was smiling at me as though she had never seen me before and was getting a pleasant surprise. I preened a little and smiled my smile.
'Don't spoil it, honey,' she said. 'Don't scowl at me like that.'
Altogether, by and large, whichever way I looked at it, and
I took time to look at it all ways, this was a different Kiki Kondor. I wondered if it was wishful thinking and put my hand in my pocket and pinched myself. I was awake all right. Perhaps, I thought, this is the Kiki Kondor that we have all been taught about, the Amelia Earhart of the jet-set, switched on and transmitting, flying to the moon, swinging on the stars.
Behind me, Dick Haymes closed his case. The record-player clicked, whirred and reloaded. Tony Martin took over, laying on the lyrics with a confectioner's trowel. And over on the big white bed, Kiki stretched iike a long, lazy cat. I felt my claws coming out.
'Aaaah,' she purred, and she stretched even more. 'There are no songs like the old songs, I always say.' She had even stopped sounding like the gorgeous toffee-nosed bitch of the afternoon.
'So do I.' I said.
'In that case,' she said, 'why don't you relax, big man, and listen to the music in comfort. Kick off your shoes and loosen your tie, eh?' She waved a languid arm. 'And let's both have another drink.'
I followed her finger. There was a bucket with champagne but the bottle was empty. So was the bottle beside it. I looked at her.
'More in the kitchen,' she said. 'Always more of everything here, honey.'
'Is Deirdre coming back?' I said.
'Deirdre?' she said blankly. 'Oh, you mean Deirdre, do you? Oh, no. She's not coming back.' 'Where's she gone?' I said.
'Why should you care, honey,' she said. 'I'm here, aren't I? Anyway, she flew. Deirdre flew.' She flapped her lovely arms to show me how. So I looked for more champagne in the refrigerator. Back in the bedroom it popped and she giggled. She was, of course, a little smashed. She had got through two bottles, it appeared. I looked at the label and nodded. So did she.
'Quite a good drop of charlie,' she said. 'Good old charlie. There's nothing like a glass of charlie, is there?'
'Nothing,' I said, handing her a glass. 'Where did Deirdre fly to?' But she stretched her arms high and joined Tony Martin on his high note. I sat down and sipped my Blanc Brut. The record-player whirred again, this time into Dick Powell. I stretched out in my chair. This was my kind of music. So was the champagne tinkle of the girl on the bed.
But I kept my cork in. It was partly a matter of stupid male pride, I suppose. Any man who can't keep his cork in doesn't deserve the bubbles. And also, of course, the fat man's beady eye is almost everywhere. So I just sat and she lounged and we both let the old songs drown us in treacle. After a while I was almost asleep. I was certainly dreaming.
'Are you comfortable, honey?' she said.
'Mmmm,' I said. I opened one eye to look at my watch. Then I closed it again. Only eleven-thirty. Not time to report to Kelly bloody Byron. 'Where do I sleep?' I murmured.
'Are you kidding?' said the sharp, sweet voice from no more than an inch away. I opened my eyes and looked into hers. They were big and soft and as deep as the oysters under the sea.
She was kneeling on the carpet beside my chair, her chin in her hand. Her other hand was thumbing a sharp nail down my arm, tracing the curve of my bicep. I continued to look into her eyes for I had nothing more to say than any other rabbit. So she dug her long mandarin thumb-nail into my arm.
T said,' she said softly, 'are you kidding?' Her breath fluttered gently on my lips.
I was thinking about as fast as a drowning straw. I can take it or leave it as fast as the next man, in spite of Morton Fairchild IV. And I almost never leave it when I can take it. In fact, I thought desperately, if I can't take it, I won't go. So I opened my arms and she came into them like a ball into a socket. And whatever it was she was using for a nightdress, it was as soft as her skin.
'Eeeek,' I said.
'What's that, honey?' she said into my big, manly terrified chest.
'The Jekyll and Hyde,' I said. 'Why?'
'What do you mean?' she said softly.
'Well,' I said. 'You weren't like this earlier.'
'Let's just say,' she said, 'that I hadn't really seen you before.' She giggled a private giggle. Then she wriggled a private wriggle. It slightly destroyed me but I stayed corked. Then she bounced to her feet.
'More charlie,' she said. 'We need more charlie.'
I poured more charlie.
'Never leave the charlie,' she said. 'You're a long time dry.' And she fluttered to the bed. I stood there, watching painfully.
'Come on, honey,' she said, looking up and spilling her charlie. 'Whoops, sorry.'
I was proud of myself then, I think. And gruff and paternal and plain bloody stupid.
'No,' I said. 'I'll put my feet up in the spare room.'
'What?' she said, not believing her ears. And I said it again, not really believing mine. Jesus, I thought as I walked from the room. Who is protecting whom? What am I doing here? What am I not doing here? And why am I not doing it? The fat man will never know. Mrs Fairchild will never know. If this gets out, I shall have to grow a beard.
I wandered around the house locking up tight, then I took my bag into the spare room, put on my pyjamas and lay on the bed. There was only a bedside Playboy on the table so I put out the light and closed my eyes. Then I opened them again. She was standing in the light from the doorway.
'What now?' I said sternly. I switched on my lamp.
'Tell me why?' she said. Tears began to roll, but they were champagne tears.
'For God's sake,' I said, 'you're smashed. Go to bed and to sleep.'
'Don't you like me?' she said.
'You're the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.'
She stopped crying and smiled like the sunrise. She nodded happily and her long gleaming hair splashed over her shoulders.
'Well then?' she said.
'You know very well,' I said, 'that I'm here doing a job. I didn't want to do it. And you don't want it done. So don't for God's sake let's complicate things. And anyway, it's not you, it's your bloody charlie. You never saw me before today.'
'Charlie,' she said and ran out. Then she came clinking back with two slopping glasses. She put them down carefully and sat on the bed.
'I knew as soon as I saw you,' she said. 'When a girl sees the right man she doesn't need time to make up her mind.'
'She does if she sees him through a mist of booze,' I said.
'Charlie's not booze,' she said indignantly. 'Charlie's charlie.'
'Aw, shuddup,' I said. I closed my eyes and hoped she would go. After a while she wriggled on the bed and punched me.
'If I wasn't Kiki Kondor,' she said, 'and you weren't whoever you are, doing whatever you're doing, would it be different then?'
'You bet it would,' I said. 'But you are and I am.'
'Don't be too sure,' she said. And she stood up, struck a pose and scalped herself.
'There,' she said, letting the long golden wig fall to the rug. 'What do you say about that?'
Her own hair was short and black and bubbly. li made her look younger and less expensive and altogether more reachable. She sipped her champagne and waited. So did I.
Then she stamped her foot. 'You're no gentleman,' she said, 'If you can't treat a girl like a lady, why do you make with the bloody muscles?' There was suddenly a homely touch of London in her voice, so different from the previous Heathfield sound that it brought all the marvellous meat to life. It was now getting too much to take. She was sending me up.
'Grah,' I said. 'You bloody sweet-lifers. Anything for kicks, eh?' I got out of bed and slapped the golden wig back on her head and grabbed her and carried her, kicking and yelling, back to her own room. Then I realised what she was yelling at me.
'But I'm not Kiki bloody Kondor,' she was saying. 'I'm not. I'm not a sweet-lifer and I'm not too precious to handle and I want some more charlie.'
I dropped her on the bed. 'What's that?' I said.
'Well look at my hair, you bloody fool,' she said, 'Or are you colour-blind?'
'Who are you?' I said.
'The name's Julie Bateman,' she said,
'And where's Kiki Kondor?' I said.
'How do I know?' she said. 'She never tells me where she's going. She just goes.'
'You've done this before?' I said.
'Of course I have,' she said. She put her wig straight again. 'With this wig and a low light I'm a dead ringer for the Kondor girl. Whenever she's in London I get a call, usually from the butch. There's no harm in it. She wants to get away on her own. And I am an actress, after all. What's the difference?'
'An actress?' I said.
'Well,' she said, 'a model anyway.' She grinned again as a new wave of charlie hit her. 'I've been all over the place in that wig. Ascot and everywhere. Half her pictures are of me really.'
'Where does she go?' I said.
'I've often wondered,' she said. 'I think she must have a bloke out to grass somewhere, eh?'
I nodded. It figured, I supposed. Kiki Kondor didn't have to be as lotus-eating as she was painted. Once a girl gets into the limelight, I supposed, she is in until she wrinkles. And if she was half as human as she ought to be then she would need a little time to herself, even for lotus-eating.
'All right,' I said. 'What did she say when she called you?'
'Nothing much,' said the girl. ' She just said she was lumbered with you and I could send you up or bring you down or do whatever I felt like. I was worried about it all being so close-up but she said you had only seen her today and that you were a bit thick anyway and I was to play you along for a few days. So we arranged to change places in Frimsie's loo downstairs and here we are.'
The bitch, I thought. I wondered what the fat man was going to do to me. I looked at my watch. It was long past twelve. I should be reporting to Byron. To hell with Byron. I thought. Anyway, there's nothing to report.
'Well,' I said, 'there's nothing to do about it tonight. To hell with it. Let's finish your charlie. Or would you like some cocoa?'
She was drowsy now, and she wanted cocoa. Which is my kind of luck. So I brewed it up and sat on the edge of her bed talking for a while. Below the booze and above the long legs she was a nice girl. She had parents in Chelmsford, and was doing a little modelling while she pretended she was about to hit the theatre. The soft lights, the dry champagne and the ludicrously lush pent-house had got her all fluffed up for a while. But I did my big daddy bit and then I tucked her up.
She called goodnight to me as I put out her light and I felt the beginnings of a stupid pious glow where they say the heart is. So I collected my sponge-bag and went to the bathroom to shower it away.
I hung my pyjamas on the warm tiled floor, took my pink Lux from the sponge-bag and turned on the jet. It hit the back of my neck like the Severn Bore. The tiles came up to meet me and I fell headlong into a small eternity.
I opened my eyes. They did not focus so I closed them again and watched something easier. I watched very slowly and very hard, like Liberace kissing Marilyn. I snickered. It hurt, but I went on watching very hard. I snickered again. I was watching a red light with yellow edges, like a lump of glowing horsemeat. Kiki Kondor swung into the light, took off her hair and swung out. The fat man was peering through the glare and I tried to tell him something. But he was pouring Calvados and I did not know what I was trying to say.
Then something wriggled in the horsemeat. A naked hairy white maggot. It was Swenson, screaming his motivational gibberish, a lunatic Doctor Dichter with fat, wet lips. I tried to remember who was Doctor Dichter but Mrs Fairchild was glinting over her gold rims and throwing Running Red Bull at me, in full warpaint. His tomahawk was out and I tried to move away from it. Then I drowned again in a flood of new pain.
I waited a little and started again. There was soft carpet against the flesh of my back. I flexed my arms. A long time later, I felt them move against my body, sluggishly. And painfully. I put my hands flat beside me and heaved. I heaved again and the whole of my strength got my body a slow inch off the floor.
Suddenly I was on my feet and steel bands were around my biceps holding me upright. Or I was still on my back and the world had slipped. I opened my eyes and made one more effort to focus.
The world was one big, ugly sneering face and the air was its breath. I tried to step back out but the steel bands tightened. They were hands, holding me upright from behind. Then water splashed across me and my head cleared.
'Let him go,' said the sneering face before me and the steel bands were relaxed. The man in front of me put a big hand on my chest and pushed and my legs went again, dropping me across the room onto the carpet. The man stood over me, waiting for me to move. I could see him clearly but I was still waiting for my mind to focus.
'All right,' he said. 'Put him in the chair. He's not going anywhere.'
The hands hauled me up and threw me down, into a soft chair. I was beginning to remember. This was Kiki Kondor's bedroom. No. I remembered, it was Julie Bateman's bedroom. She had been sleeping. We will wake her, I thought carefully, we must make less noise.
'Shush,' I said out of my screaming head. 'We'll wake the girl'
'We won't do that, you bastard,' he said. 'So start talking.' 'When a woman takes her gloves off,' I said, remembering, 'she is undressing her hand.' 'What?' he said. "That's who Dichter is,' I said. 'Who?' he said.
'Motivation,' I said. ' Why people do things. Why they buy things. The deep subconscious reasons. He says women are jealous of cigars.'
'What's he saying?' said another voice.
T don't know,' said the man in front of me. ' Some sick, kinky filth.' He sliced his hand across my face. But I wasn't talking that way. Dichter, I remembered now, is a name from advertising. He says that brown packs mean stronger food than yellow packs. He says that labels with rounded corners appeal to women. The hand sliced across my face again.
'Shut up,' said the man in front of me. 'And start talking.'
The blows had cleared my head. 'What about?' I said weakly. 'Who are you?'
'You know what about,' he said and stepped aside so that I could see the room. My aching eyes took it in slowly. An ice bucket on the floor in a pool of water. I remembered the champagne. There were broken bottles on the floor too, more bottles than I remembered. Kiki must have woken up and drunk more. The big lamp, though, was hanging by its flex from the table. She should have called me. The drapes above the bed were torn. Kiki, I mean Julie, was on the big white bed, frozen in deep, loose-limbed sleep.
The rest of the room was a shambles. I looked at the girl on the bed again, not knowing how she could have slept through whatever had happened. She was not sleeping. She was dead, nastily dead with a nightmare twist to her mouth and wide, staring eyes.
But I took in the scene without shock. I think I even nodded my head. Then, like a child with a lesson to learn, I went over whatever there was. Kiki Kondor, Julie Bateman, Dick Haymes, Dichter, no not Dichter. It was Swenson's gibberish that reminded me of Dichter, Dichter was nothing to do with anything. Then I remembered again the champagne and the girl's tiny voice as I switched off her light. And the hiss of the spray in the shower.
Then I saw it all the way it was. A young beautiful broken girl on a soiled white bed. I think I growled. Then the big man was no longer sneering above me. He was flat on the carpet and my hands at his throat.
But for too short a time. I was weak still, and I was easily hauled away and back to my feet. The ape got up, stroking his throat and came up close to me. He backhanded me viciously.
"The questions can wait,' he said, 'while you learn a little lesson.'
He backhanded me again. I shook my head, trying to see him straight. He hit me again and the telephone rang. He nodded to the ape who was holding me. Then we waited. I heard a low voice outside and the other ape came back.
'You'd better leave him,' he said. 'The super's coming up again.'
'We've got a couple of minutes,' said my ape and lifted his hand again.
'I wouldn't,' said the other ape. 'You know what the super said.'
'Shut your bloody trap,' said my ape. 'And hold him. He has to learn his lesson, don't he?'
I watched his raised hand hard, trying to anticipate it. But my ape took too long licking his cracked lips. The door sounded. And a harsh whisper cut the air.
'Let him be,' it said. I turned my head and saw a slender man in a wrinkled grey suit. He walked over and looked at me. He looked at my belly. I looked down. I was naked. And deep red tramlines crossed my torso from shoulder to belly.
'Get him something to cover himself,' whispered the slender man. One of the apes went out and came back with a big towel. He flung it at me and I wrapped it around me.
'Super?' I said. He flipped a warrant card at me.
'Groon's the name,' he said. 'Chief Superintendent, Special Branch. That's your last question. Now you tell me things.'
I opened my mouth. 'No more questions,' he said. 'Just talk.' He was still speaking in the same harsh whisper but there was no difficulty in hearing him. It cut through the room like an old, used razor-blade.
But I had nothing to say. I just stood there, trying not to see the girl on the bed. Groon put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me, without violence, onto the chair. He stood over me, smaller and slighter and infinitely more formidable than his apes.
'Right,' he whispered. 'Nothing to say. So I'll tell you. John Brock, 3a Chiswick Street, SW1. You followed the deceased, Miss Kondor, from this hotel this morning. You accosted her and assaulted a member of her staff. You followed her for four hours until she returned here. You accosted her again in the vestibule of this hotel and ascended with her in the lift. You left soon afterwards. Then you returned. Right?'
'Yes,' I said, 'but.'
'And when you returned,' he whispered, 'you drank champagne for several hours. Then you killed the girl.'
'No,' I said. 'I didn't.' He sneered a whispering sneer and waited.
'I was in the bathroom,' I said. 'I was coshed. That's all I know.'
'What were you doing in the bathroom?' he said. 'Taking a shower,' I said. He reached towards me. But he did not strike me. He laid his hand upon my hair. 'Your hair is dry,' he said.
'I was coshed as I turned on the water,' I said. I bowed my head to show the gash in my neck. He looked at it impassively.
'Better,' he said. 'Do better, Brock. She hit you with one of the bottles. You drank a lot, did you?'
'No,' I said. 'There were two bottles and she drank most of those. And she had been drinking before I got here.'
'Two bottles?' he said. 'Count again.'
'Where was I?' I said.
'What?' he said.
'Where was I when your apes found me?' I said.
'Come on, Brock,' he said. 'You remember. Go on, remember.' He bent down close to my face. 'You can remember, boy. When we found you, you were there, on the bed, on top of the girl. You weren't taking a shower were you? You were over there on the bed.' His voice went on, whispering obscene pictures into my mind.
'Shut up,' I said. 'Shut up.'
•      r -Why. boy?' he said. 'Why? Don't you _, { .- j :•: .: - ; .-. . Don't you want to remember what
. _ -ri i —2 A big haul like the Kondor girl? Well. boy. . ;. _ gt: . our pictures in the paper next to hers. But it won't be in the glossies.'
'I was coshed in the bathroom,' I said. 'I was never near to her after—'
I was going to tell him that I had never been near her after I had learned that she was not Kiki Kondor and I put her to bed. But I clamped my mouth without knowing why. Except that my job had been Kiki Kondor. Perhaps it still was.
'After what?' he whispered.
'After nothing,' I said. 'I was never near her.'
'Do better, I told you,' he said. 'Look at your belly, boy.' I looked at the red tramlines on it. 'You didn't do that yourself, boy. Now look at your fingernails.' I looked at them. I looked at Groon and saw that his face was frozen in sick disgust.
'You forgot the manicure, pretty boy,' he said in his harsh whisper. 'You think we won't find where those fingers have been?'
He turned away with a weary droop to his shoulders. 'Give him his clothes,' he whispered. 'And take the bastard out of my sight'
Dawn comes slowly in September. It was six o'clock before London showed itself and the early buses could rumble down Park Lane without lights. I was still high above them, in the penthouse. Groon had gone away. Then the police doctor had come and the pathologist and the photographers and the rabbit-faced technicians. They had all handled me hard and questioned me hard and condemned me. They had found shreds of the girl's skin under my fingernails and shreds of my skin under hers.
They had put me through every test in the manual and only one result puzzled them. When they tested my blood for alcohol content, the low figure stopped them. But they had shrugged and started again and now Groon was back, leaning against the door and giving the room the cold fish eye.
I had come to know him almost too well during the long night. He was a different cut from the usual Special Branch brass, just as rough and just as ugly but with an unexpected touch of concealed outrage. After the beginning he had controlled it and treated me no differently, I suspected, from the way he would treat any other lawbreaker, large or small. Now there was nothing in his eye at all, no feeling, no surprise. But I shivered.
'Why didn't you tell me?' he said in his harsh, loud whisper.
I said nothing. I had already told him too many times that I had not killed the girl. But I had not told him about the girl, that she was not the girl he thought she was. I was still wondering why.
But Groon was walking across the room. He stood in front of me.
'Just one last time,' he whispered.
I still said nothing. He turned away. Then he pivoted back on the ball of his foot and his right arm straightened into my
belly. His fist kicked like a boot and I doubled up. He chopped my exposed neck and I crumpled onto the floor. Then he stood over me, breathing hard.
The pain stopped after a while but I stayed there. If I moved, he was going to kick me. And if he kicked me I was going to kill him.
Then, a long time later, he whispered down at me.
'I had you cold,' he said. 'And there is nothing that anyone anywhere can say to tell me you didn't do it.'
I looked up at him. He looked down at me. Then he turned and shouted over his shoulder through the closed door. It opened and Greene came into the room.
Groon looked at him for a long cold minute. Then he jerked his head at me and went out. I got up off the floor.
'I'm glad to see you,' I said. 'Jesus, I'm glad to see you.'
But Greene said nothing. He simply waved for me to follow him and walked out of the room. Groon's apes were still outside but they said nothing and made no move to stop us. We went to the lift, waited for it and rode down to the vestibule. A pin-striped manager with a faceful of red worry-patches rushed up to us and started asking many questions but Greene froze him and walked on out.
The fat man's Pontiac was not waiting for us. It was the old, beat-up Hillman. Greene stood back to let me in.
It was now six-thirty and the roads were still clear. It took four minutes through Bayswater to Addison Road. At Notting Hill Gate, the Irish were dragging their hangovers towards the building sites and crumby-eyed bed-sitter girls were queuing for their yogurt.
Tunnicliffe or Chamberlain or some other bloody sergeant was on the door at Addison Road and he stood up at the ready as Greene walked me into the hall. I made to walk up the stairs to the fat man's landing but Greene stopped me. He jerked his head.
'In there,' he said. 'He's up, but he has someone with him I think.' The sergeant crowded me into the small cold waiting room behind the desk. I sat there looking at the lincrusta panelling and thinking about the fat ruthless bastard upstairs.
I first met him just after the war. I was on my demobilisation rave, drinking myself back to civilian life, and he took an interest in me. We drank a lot together. He started putting me through little tests that he devised, mainly a matter of setting up trouble here and there, pouring me into it and watching me scramble out.
The he propositioned me. He was setting up some sort of trouble-shooting unit, he said, and he was prepared, he said, to try to teach me a little sense. I declined, for I thought I had grown tired of violence and I was looking forward to settling into a quiet, well-paid advertising job and spending my days cracking plover's eggs with all the loose minds in tight dresses I had been told about.
This I did, eventually. But not before he had sent Greene and Muir after me with enough money to bribe me into his training programme. This, since it was all in the days when the cold war was about to warm up, included all the sort of training you would expect. Armed combat, from bazookas to small-bore cigarette lighters. Unarmed combat with the sacks of wet rice and the sharp steel toes. And plain combat with everything from the jawbone of an ass to silver-plated fish-forks.
I also learned the tricks of the trade like how to blow off my head with iodine and smelling salts, or how to get money out of a British consul. And then, when I was young and eager and stupid, he put me through my paces all over the free world, in case I ever felt like changing my mind.
Before I finally found my advertising job, I had broken more laws than I ever knew existed in more countries than my geography teacher had told me about. The fat bastard had recorded my progress in words and pictures, tapes and film. And ever since, whenever he has had what he calls a simple job, he waves his evidence under my nose and I have to jump. Out of my cosy, carpeted office into the cold, hard world where Omo washes no whiter than Tide.
Then I looked at the lincrusta panelling again. Perhaps all that was all over. Greene had not been rough in the Hillman, for his school had not taught him how. But he had been colder than I had ever known. And like all good number two men, Greene was no more than a mirror of his boss. If the fat man believed Groon, he would throw me to the hyenas. Which brought my thoughts to Julie Bateman, dead and broken on the big white bed. This was the picture I was trying not to see. Not until I could do something about it. So I stopped thinking and waited.
Then, after a while, the sergeant punched open the door and jerked his ugly thumb upwards. I went up the stairs and into the fat man's room.
He was sitting behind his desk in his pyjamas and the frogged smoking jacket he uses as a dressing-gown. He was sipping his early morning Calvados. And there was no twinkle in his eye. I sat opposite him.
'Did you do this?' he said.
'Do you think I did?' I said.
'Groon knows you did,' he said. I said nothing. He continued to sip his reeking glass. His bright, beady eyes, burrowing into mine. He put his glass down onto his desk.
'I don't think you did,' he said, after a long, jittery minute. 'I'm not sure. But I don't think so.'
After the jitters I started getting angry. I also started getting up from my chair.
'Well,' I said. 'You'd better make up your mind. I'll tell you just once. I didn't kill that girl. I didn't manhandle her. What I told Groon is the truth. She drank a little too much, I put her to bed and went to take a shower. I was coshed and I woke up in her room with two bloody Specials standing over me. Now I'm going. Goodbye.'
I started for the door. But his voice whipped me to a standstill.
'Come back,' he said. 'Sit down.'
I went back and sat down. He poured more Calvados and sipped it.
'Groon says you did it, Brock. But it's all the same whether you did it or not.' He slammed his glass down and for the first time in the years that I had known him, I heard his voice high with anger. 'What matters is, you've failed. A simple job, Brock. Keep an eye on a girl. And not for me. For the bloody Americans. And she ends up dead. You think I care whether you did it, or whether you let it get done? Either way you're finished, Brock.'
Then he calmed down a little. 'Grah,' he said. 'I'll feed you back to Groon. You're no damned use to me.'
'Try it,' I said. 'Give me back to Groon, you fat bastard, and see where it leaves you.' I was not sure what I meant or if I meant anything. There is only one man in the world who can frighten the fat man, and he never issues threats. He merely writes memoranda. He is an academic moneyman in a horsebox in the treasury.
The fat man put his hands flat on the desk before him. In his eyes was no spark, now, of recognition. I was a stranger, an expendable stranger.
'No,' he said. 'I won't give you back to Groon. But you are no further use to me. And you know what has to happen.'
I nodded. But I did not know what had to happen. I knew that the fat man's mind worked, like a computer, in plus and minus, black and white. Anything less than success is failure and failure means the axe. But in the fringe between police-work and security work, the axe can mean anything from a quiet execution in a Sussex nursing-home to a pension in Canada. Nevertheless, I nodded.
"There's just one thing,' I said.
He waited without interest.
"The girl,' I said. 'It wasn't Kiki Kondor. I don't know where Kiki Kondor is. But I do know that she is not the girl Groon found dead in the penthouse.'
'Groon says differently,' he said.
'Groon doesn't know,' I said. 'I didn't tell him.'
'All right,' he said. 'You tell me.' So I told him. He thought about it, buzzed Greene and we waited while Greene checked. Then they both made some telephone calls, including a long one to the Special Branch. After a while, the fat man got back to me.
'You seem to be right,' he said. 'Groon knew about the hair, of course, but assumed wrong. The girl is not the Kondor girl. But whoever she is, he still says you did it.'
I said nothing.
'I am now,' said the fat man reluctantly, 'prepared to believe you.'
'You sound disappointed,' I said.
'No,' he said. 'Not disappointed, Brock. You have still fallen down on a job, but you're off the hook for a while. You have another chance. You are lucky.'
'Right,' I said. 'I'll get out and after whoever killed Julie Bateman.'
'No,' he said. 'You'll get out and after the Kondor girl.'
'But I don't know where she is,' I said.
'You'll find out,' he said.
'Don't you care about Julie Bateman?' I said.
'No,' he said.
He was right, of course. He always is. Nobody had killed Julie Bateman, I realised. Somebody had thought he was killing Kiki Kondor.
'You're on your own now, Brock,' said the fat man.
"That's nothing new,' I said.
'You will find the Kondor girl and hang onto her. I'll keep Groon off your back and he'll keep quiet about this, as far as he can. But you're on your own.
'Right,' I said.
'But I'll be watching,' he said. "This is more than just a job, remember. It's a personal favour from me.'
'And that,' I said, 'I do not understand, not after the song and dance you made about retiring from the international scene. You even threw a party. And now you're falling over backwards for the Americans.'
'Not the Americans, young man,' said a deep, billion-dollar, all-American voice from a far corner of the room, 'he's falling over backwards for me.'
The fat man's parlour faces west over the waste of Holland Park and the morning sun was not yet lighting it. I peered into the gloomy corner where Morton Fairchild IV was sitting, fitting the seedy Edwardian fittings like a well-worn button-boot. Beside his inlaid scrabble table, under his signed picture of Rosa Lewis, she looked like something he had picked up in Portobello Road.
She was no more friendly than the fat man.
'As you must have been told,' she said, 'you're very lucky, Mr Brock.'
'I don't see it that way myself,' I said.
'There are very few people who care about your view of things,' she boomed. 'What we care about now, is for you to get on with your job. Find Kiki Kondor, young man, or you will regret it.'
I flinched, picturing my lily-white pelt browning in the Texas sunshine. She nodded. I looked at her, and from her to the fat man and from the fat man back to her. One was as big as a pink elephant. The other was as fragile as a baby shrew. But there was something very alike about them.
'There still seems to be something I should know,' I said. 'I get the message about the big global deal. But it all seems a bit intense to me. To say nothing of little Julie Bateman. Nobody seems to care a fish's tit.'
'Mind your language, Brock,' growled the fat man. 'I'm sorry, my dear.'
'Not at all,' said the old biddy. 'He's quite right, of course.'
She tapped the table briskly. 'We're sorry about the girl,' she said. 'Of course we are all sorry. But we have to find the Kondor girl. That takes priority now. I still have confidence in you, young man. I take some of the blame myself. I never expected this sort of violence. And you will be doing a greater service than you realise if you carry on, young man.'
ITG-5 65
'Don't you get soft with him, my dear,' growled the fat man. 'He'll do whatever you want and he'll do it without the sweet talk too.' But there was a hint of his old familiar nastiness now. I was off the hook. Not out of the doghouse altogether, but things felt a little brighter for me. So I pressed my luck.
'These letters,' I said. 'You mentioned some letters. Threatening letters. Where are they?'
'I don't have them,' said the old biddy. 'I saw them once and they worried me. As I told you, they felt nastier than usual.'
'Where are they now?' I said. 'I'd like to see them.'
'Junior may have them,' she said. 'You must ask him when he comes back from Hamburg.'
'You mean Newman?' I said.
'Yes,' she said. 'My son. He flew to Hamburg yesterday.' 'But I saw him last night,' I said. 'Where?' she said.
'At a party,' I said. The fat man snorted.
'What the bloody hell were you doing at a bloody party last night?' he said. Then he remembered the old biddy. 'I'm sorry, my dear,' he mumbled.
'It was a party that the Kondor girl had been to,' I said, 'downstairs from her pad in the Fulbright Tower. Full of weirdies and kinks and poor little rich creeps like Newman.'
The fat man growled a warning. But Mrs Fairchild waved her hand. There was something about the old biddy, quite apart from her oilwells and her airlines and her wagon-train voice. She also possessed a real female smile that had nothing to do with her age, just sharp and knowing and wise and savage.
'You must be mistaken,' she said. 'Junior flew to Hamburg for me yesterday.'
"Then he's playing hookey,' I said. T spoke to him. In fact, now I recall it, he had fixed up the party with its guest of honour. A mystical quack called Swenson.'
'I know of Swenson,' she said. 'Junior has a good deal to do with him. He wasted a lot of money on the man before I put a stop to it.'
'Swenson,' I remembered, 'was hoping to meet Kiki Kondor.'
The fat man shrugged, but I wondered. 'Look,' I said. 'What exactly has Newman to do with the Kondor girl?'
The old biddy looked at the fat man. He nodded. 'I suppose so, my dear. He can keep his mouth shut. He had better.'
'I hofte so,' she said. 'Well, Mr Brock, it's all very simple. It is essential to my plans to find the Kondor girl and keep her safe. Last night's nastiness makes it even more important. I've spent too long setting up this marriage to take any risks with it'
'Your Freudian slip's showing again,' I said. 'You mean merger.'
T mean marriage, young man,' she said. 'It may be Freudian but it's no slip?' 'Marriage?' I said. 'Yes,' she said.
'To that inadequate creep?' I said.
'To Morton Fairchild Junior,' she said over the fat man's warning rumble.
'Grah,' I said, forgetting my position. "The sacrifices you bleeding tycoons make for us consumer units. I hope both your companies will be very happy.'
I turned away, stupidly angry. I know, of course, that there is very little left but the profit motive. Even Christian Stewardship swings like Unilever. But I keep forgetting that the holy state of matrimony is in the bloody ratrace now. Still, I thought, it's no skin off my big nose. And anyway, this is the sort of thing that distinguishes us from the beasts of the field.
Take the poor, shivering rabbit, I thought. He is hardly better than an animal and he mates for the simple pleasure of mating. Ever since the first man rolled off the last of the she-apes and stood on his two dragging feet, he has been messing about with the sex-urge. Sex, like charity, has to show a profit nowadays. Take Henry VIII.
'Take the Flanders bleeding mare,' I said.
'Why not?' she said. 'You needed some help at that particular point in your history, young man, just as I need Karl Kondor now. But there's a much simpler reason for this match. To me it is more important than anything else in the world.'
'Don't tell me,' I said. 'Let me guess.'
'No,' she said. 'Not money. It's Morton Fairchild VI. I need an heir, young man. And the Kondor girl will give me the sort of boy I need. And I have long accepted that I must leapfrog Junior in the business. I need a grandson.'
I must have looked doubtful, for she switched on her big boardroom volume again.
'I am an old, old woman,' she said. 'But you can take it as a fact that I will not die until I can hand over.'
I nodded, for I believed her.
'But why Kiki Kondor?' I said. 'There must be a million healthy breeders nearer home, all wriggling for a stab at Junior. And all a lot cheaper to set up, no doubt.'
'I want more than a healthy breeder,' she snapped. 'It's Morton Fairchild the Sixth I'm putting into production, not just any bouncing baby boy. And I am old-fashioned, Mr Brock, as well as old. I believe in blood. I want an heir with power in his blood.'
'Or just money,' I said. 'So you thumbed through the rich girls.'
'Yes,' she said. 'You're a fool if you imagine there is any power where there is no money. There's still a little in the royal blood, I suppose. But it is diluting fast and anyway, I don't have time for protocol.'
'So you flipped through the little rich girls,' I said.
'And got myself a short list,' she said. 'Then I put Byron's boys onto them and when he delivered the facts I ran them all through the big IBM at Cape Canaveral.'
'Is that what delayed the last moonshot?' I said and the fat man rumbled again.
'So there you are,' she said. 'Now you know why you have to find her.'
'What about Junior?' I said.
'What about him?' she said. 'He will do as I tell him in this matter. You are right, of course, about him and I sympathise with your feelings. But all this is irrelevant. You find the girl, Mr Brock, you keep her safe for me and you will be rewarded. You fail, and you will suffer.'
The fat man decided it was time to reassert himself.
'Now you know,' he said, 'why you are to keep your drooling hands off her, when you find her.'
I looked at him and rubbed my mischief finger on my thumb. He sighed, heaved himself across the room to the scrabble table. We were almost back to normal, I hoped.
'Excuse me, my dear,' he said to Mrs Fairchild, looming across her tiny body. He opened his picture of Rosa Lewis and from the safe behind it he counted out a fat pile of notes.
'No,' said the old biddy. 'You must let me pay.'
'Certainly not, my dear,' said the fat man. 'Have this one on us.'
One of the good things about the fat man, I suppose, is that when he delegates, he really does. Now I was back in the cold glow of his favour and had been given my instructions, he switched me off like a light. I tried to ask a few questions but there were no answers to them. He simply buzzed Greene to telephone ahead of him, then he ushered the old biddy out towards the Connaught where he likes to eat his morning eggs and gammon. He thinks people take him for a television personality.
Down in the hall, the sergeant sneered. But his sneer was not so open as before. The fat man's radiations move with the speed of light. I was still in the doghouse, the sergeant knew. But not quite up to my withers.
I looked at my watch. It was almost eight o'clock. I went home, laid out some clean clothes and took a long shower. Nobody coshed me this time so I sat down to work out what to do.
This was easy, of course. All I had to do was to find Kiki Kondor. And all I knew was that she had faded into the night. I knew that she was in the habit of doing this, according to Julie Bateman, so she probably had a routine for shaking off the sweet life. Perhaps the butch would know. I telephoned the Fulbright Tower and asked for the penthouse, but I was put through to somewhere else. The Special Branch, by the big, ugly sound of the voice that spoke. I put the telephone down and spooned a double spoonful of America's favourite coffee into my mug.
Where, I wondered, would the jet set land when the jet set wants to land? And how would I know that? So I went for a walk in the park. The sweepers had just swept away the wayfarers and it was still too early for the lovers. The grass gleamed in the sunshine and Piccadilly rumbled through the trees. Habit, I suppose, pointed me towards my office.
Soon, I was walking through St James's Square, shoulders hunched and eyes down deep in what must have looked like thought. On the corner, a man got in my way. He was short and thick and I gripped his shoulder and looked into his bright green eyes.
'Look,' I said. 'One for sorrow, two for joy. When's the wedding?'
'Huh?' he said. 'What are you talking about?'
'Magpies,' I said. 'Are you a bloody magpie? Once in Grosvenor Square, once at Frimsie's and this is the third time.'
'You're off your head,' he said. He looked down at my hand that was gripping his shoulder and closed a handful of long fingers around the wrist. I gripped harder. So did he. I turned on the pressure. So did he. And for some seconds we gazed deep into each others eyes and played a sort of Indian wrestling match. But we could neither break the other's grip. Beads of sweat rolled down his face and I felt the veins stand out on my neck.
We would have been standing there yet, I think, but my secretary floated out of a taxi beside us and asked me to pay the fare. The man broke my grip, turned the corner and disappeared into Jermyn Street.
'Who was that?' said my secretary.
'Just a passer-by,' I said, massaging my wrist. It was going to turn as purple as the thick man's shoulder.
'Christ,' she said. 'You're not in a mood, are you?' I flexed my wrist and scowled.
'Yes,' she said, 'you are.' So we ascended in silence. I put my feet on the desk and gazed into the middle distance. She fetched coffee and made herself scarce. Then the telephone rang. Superintendent Groon was checking on me. His harsh whisper rasped along the wire like static.
'What do you want?' I said.
'Nothing at all, pretty boy,' he said. T just want to know where you are.'
'You've been told to leave me alone,' I said.
'Just for now, pretty boy,' he said. 'Things might change.'
'The woman called Deirdre,' I said. 'A butch who lived with the Kondor girl. Has she been back?'
'No,' he said. 'But I've seen her. She doesn't like you, pretty boy, any more than I do.'
'Where is she now?' I said, but he put down his telephone.
'Argh,' I said, and put down mine. Then my secretary came back with more coffee, but I got up, straightened my tie and told her that I was going out.
'Don't hurry back,' she said. I slammed out of the room straight into Poulton.
'Ah, Brock,' he said. 'So sorry you weren't able to make our little meeting this morning. Some crisis at home, perhaps?'
'What bloody meeting, you snide bloody bastard?' I snarled.
'The Taylor Nelson Market Study,' he said over his shoulder from half way down the corridor, as he loped off to have a word about me with anyone who might listen.
There was a cab crawling around the square in the sunshine. The cabby was almost smiling and he took me almost gaily to Park Lane. The same pin-striped manager was in the vestibule, his red worry-patches faded or powdered out of sight. But he saw me and his cheeks began to glow again. I pushed past him into two strong grey flannel arms.
'The penthouse is closed, friend,' said the man behind the arms. But I was not going to the penthouse and, anyway, it was only the house detective. I thumbed the button for Frimsie Frimleigh's floor and soon I was above such things.
All Frimsie's doors were open and I padded into the big room. It was full of debris from the night before but it was empty of people. So was the bijou kitchen behind it, but coffee was percolating on a streamlined gadget. I poured some and took it back into the big room. I sipped it. It was as hot as love, sweet as sin and as black as the way ahead.
After a while there was a mumuring from the depths of the apartment. Steps sounded uncertainly on the bathroom tiles. Then Frimsie peered around the door. He was wearing a purple robe and I saw him immediately. Not long after that he saw me.
'Who's that?' he said, gently massaging his left kidney with his right hand. The action disarranged his robe and laid bare one elegant white shoulder over which he continued to peer, like Theda Bara in her harem. 'Is that you, Bubsie darling? My lights are acting up again and I can't see what's happening.'
'Nothing's happening,' I said. 'Nothing's happening at all It's me, John Brock. We met last night.'
'Golly,' he said. You're still here. What can you be thinking of me. You'll be wanting breakfast, I expect. Don't go.'
He disappeared. I heard a gurgle in the bathroom then he reappeared and made his uncertain way towards me.
'Oooh,' he said when he was within eyeshot, Vou clever boy. Coffee.' I went into the kitchen and fetched him some of his coffee. He drank deep and hot, regarding me over the rim of his mug.
'It's Johnny, isn't it?' he said. 'I'm terrible about names. Never forget a torso, though you wouldn't think it to look at me.' He giggled. 'Where on earth did you sleep, dear boy? You should have said.'
I told him not at all, that I had made my own sleeping arrangements and that I was just dropping in to look for Kiki Kondor.
'Oh,' he said, disappointed. 'You're after dear Kiki again.' He switched his interest down to the irreducible Harrovian minimum.
'Yes,' I said.
'Well, I don't know where she is,' he said. 'She went off last night before you came. And not, as you know, without upsetting Swenson. He had come especially expecting to meet her, you know. Heaven knows what she got up to after that, dear boy. but I expect we can imagine, can't we?' He shuddered. 'The poor guru had to make do with that strange pussycat of Kiki's. I really can't see what on earth they have in common.' He sipped more coffee and looked at me again over the rim of the mug. It seemed to help him focus. 'Golly,' he said.
'Why?' I said.
'It was you,' he said. 'Swenson was wild with you too. He was absolutely livid after you went.' 'Why?' I said again.
'Ask me another,' said Frimsie. He flounced. 'I must say, dear boy, it's a bit off, you know. Coming here looking for your trollop. If you big butchers can't remember where you leave your little bits of crumpet, you can't expect me to sweep up after you. After all, I'm the last person to ask, aren't I?'
'I'm beginning to see that,' I said. I put down my mug, thanked him and turned to go.
'And there's no need to go off in a huff, either,' he said. 'That only makes it worse.' I turned back. His big brown eyes were pitying me.
'If you've really lost her,' he said, 'I'm sorry. She's a bit of a puss is our Kiki.'
'You know her well?' I said.
'Oh,' he said. 'Who doesn't? Mainly by hearsay, of course.' He flapped his hand. 'And the things I've heard them say, dear boy.'
'I'll bet,' I said. 'But I'm interested in finding her and she'd faded away again. She does it quite often, I'm told. Where do you think she goes?'
He shrugged. 'Could be anywhere, dear boy,' he said. 'She's not short of the fare, as you know. She has a little private place outside Torremolinos, of course. But, no, she wouldn't be there, would she?'
'Why not?' I said.
'Surely you know?' he said. 'Nigel is there with Peter. They're having another trauma, darling.'
'Oh,' I said. 'Where else does she have a little place?'
'Almost everywhere,' he said. He pouched his cheeks prettily and meditated. Then he shook his head slowly. Then he raised his eyebrows and sparkled his eyes. Then he giggled. 'Go and ask Adrian, dear boy.'
'Adrian?' I said.
'Don't you know anyone at all?' he said. 'I see I'll have to take you in hand.' I stepped back a pace, but he was speaking figuratively, I think. 'You know Adrian, silly. That lovely piece of beef. He was here last night. She was teasing him before you came, the cruel puss.'
I remembered. Adrian was the big ex-face from stage or screen or advertisement. I nodded.
'Well,' he said. 'I shouldn't be telling you this because you ought to have heard it already, but Adrian had a terribly torrid thing with little Kiki. It's all over now, if in fact it ever started. Some people say it's what put him on his primrose path. Well, actually, that's what he says himself. He says he was never rejected before. But he's a bloody liar, dear boy. And I know. I rejected him myself more than once. But it's terribly sad, isn't it?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Terribly sad.'
'And I do think she treated him badly,' he said. 'And all the worse because she seemed quite keen on him. Anyway, why I'm telling you is this. She took him off once, right in the middle of the last thing he did, for Antonioni or Sam Spiegel or one of those arty ones, you know? That's what makes him such a bore, dear boy. When he came back he was a changed man and drinking like a codpiece.' He giggled. 'Golly,' he said. 'A Freudian slip. I've been longing to make one, haven't you?'
'I made mine years ago,' I said. 'When was all this with Adrian?'
'Oh,' he said, 'aeons ago. Millenia, dear boy. Eight or nine months at least.'
'Where does he live?' I said.
'I really couldn't say,' he said. 'I only asked him last night because I met him, quite by chance outside Harrods and he looked so lonely. Then, if you please, he had the nerve to tell me when he got here that he is back with his wife, that shaggy little bitch from Cromer Repertory, I think. Anyway, he's living somewhere improbable like the Fulham Road and hoping to do some advertising on television.' Frimsie sniffed and I remembered. One of the casting girls at the office had been waving Adrian's photograph under my nose for weeks. She had been a fan of his during his doggy days and was now pressing me to use him in a catfood commercial.
'Thank you, Frimsie,' I said. And I crossed my heart and hoped to go.
'Think nothing of it, dear boy,' he said. T can't say I hope you find her, but if you don't, come back and have a drink. Just open the door and push your way in. Unless, of course, it says engaged.'
I walked up the corridor to the lift. Then I walked back again and poked my nose through the door.
'What about Newman?' I said. 'What happened to him last night?'
'Oh, Junior,' said Frimsie. 'He went off with Swenson.' He shivered a little. 'I say, Johnny, that Swenson is marvellous, isn't he? And so dirty with it. I would have offered him a bath but he smelled so wonderfully earthy.'
'Where did they go?' I said.
'Oh,' he said. 'Off to Swenson's temple, of course. I gave a cheque, you know, and he's going to ask me for a weekend.'
'Where is it?' I said, hoping for an exit line. But Frimsie didn't know.
Down in the vestibule again, under the grey flannel eye of the house detective, I tried to use the hotel telephone. In the end, as usual, I gave up and walked down Park Lane until I found one of the speedier public boxes. Including the wrangle with the new number system, it took no more than ten hot minutes to get Adrian's address out of my office. Frimsie had been almost right. Adrian lived in Beulah Street, which is like the Fulham Road only more so. And his full name was Adrian Armitage, a name I should have remembered. It still featured medium large on old credits on Sunday television, mainly in the many epics about the few that they pumped out of Elstree just after the war.
It was a fine morning for walking so I took a taxi-cab. Beulah Road is a dead-ended terrace about a mile past the World's End where London is fading fast. I found the house and descended the basement steps past uncollected rubbish to what the agent had probably called the garden flat.
I knocked the door. Then I knocked again and it was opened. She certainly looked shaggy and she was possibly from Cromer Repertory. But she was no bitch. She just looked a little bitter. She also looked apprehensive, as though I might have come for some money so I gave the name of my advertising agency to relieve her apprehension, for my boss never allows nobody nowhere to owe him money. I asked for Armitage and she immediately thought of something else about which to be apprehensive.
'What's he done now?' she said. 'O Christ, has he missed another audition? He said something about a commercial for you. He's not at all well, you know. I'll go and wake him.'
She rushed off. Then she rushed back and asked me inside and rushed off again before I could explain myself. So I looked around. The room was shabby but clean. There were too many pictures of Adrian Armitage in it, smiling his sunshine smile and projecting his beef with half the pussies in Spotlight.
I lowered myself into an armchair but one of its springs was loose. I tried a wooden chair at the table but one of its legs was loose so I stood on the rug, listening to the sounds of altercation from another room. Then the shaggy little woman rushed through the room, mouthing curses, into a dungeon of a kitchen. I heard the clinking of glass and she came back with a slopping tumbler.
'His medicine,' she said as she rushed past me. 'He's not at all well.'
I shrugged. It looked like whisky, it smelled like whisky, and through the open door I could see a friendly dimpled bottle. I hoped his medicine would do him good. Then she came back, pretending to smile.
'He won't be more than a jiffy,' she said. 'Do sit down. I'm Judith Armitage. Can I get you some coffee or something?'
I could still see the whisky, but I supposed it was his personal bottle. So she made coffee and we waited. At rest, she was pretty and should have been prettier. Then Armitage thumped through the room, a big blond haverer in a stained robe. He closed the kitchen door behind him and glass clinked. Then he came back wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, sat on the chair with a broken spring as though it was a baronial seat and smiled at me. The smile was a faded smile, but he used it as though it was tingling fresh.
'Judy says.I've missed my audition,' he said. 'I can't imagine how.' He worked on his smile for a while. The whisky worked too, jolting a little life into the big drooping frame. But it was only an actor's kind of life, not the real thing.
'I'm afraid she got it wrong,' I said. 'There is the matter of a Kat-E-Kan commercial that I think we would like you to do for us. But my secretary will be in touch with you about that. My business is a little more personal. I simply want to talk about Kiki Kondor, if you can spare a few minutes of your time.'
'Oh,' he said.
'Grah,' said the wife. 'He can spare the time, all right. He can spare the time to talk about her. But I don't have to listen.' She went out into the kitchen and started slamming pots against pans. Armitage waved his hands.
'You know how it is,' he said.
'No,' I said. 'How is it?'
'Pretty bad at the moment,' he said. 'I think I have to apologise for something.' 'What for?' I said.
'I don't know,' he said. 'I never know until I apologise. That's how I usually find out what I'm apologising for.' T see,' I said. Ugh, I thought.
'Funnily enough,' he said, 'it's almost certainly to do with Kiki Kondor. I saw her last night. Only for a few minutes mind you. But I got crocked later on and I must have said something when I got back this morning.' He screwed up his eyes. 'I saw you last night, didn't I?'
'That's right,' I said. 'At Frimsie's. I was looking for Kiki, as a matter of fact. Frimsie said you might know where she goes when she goes.'
He nodded a bit, pondering me and the problem. Then he got up and went into the kitchen for another snort.
'I could do with a snort myself,' I said when he returned. He seemed to think this a bit of a liberty. He stood up as tall as he could, looking down his beak, freezing me with the eagle eye from one of his old scripts. When this didn't work he thought himself into the hospitality role and brought the bottle and two glasses. He filled one of them for himself and poured one for me. I suppose it was more than you would give a sick kitten on a cold night.
'Say when,' he said when I had taken the glass from his shaking hand.
'That's fine,' I said. 'I'm not very thirsty.'
He thought for a moment. Perhaps I was being impertinent. Then he swallowed his drink and poured himself another.
'About Miss Kondor,' I said.
He smiled his faded smile again. But the spark of jealousy was in his eye, as bright as a traffic light. 'What's it to you?' he said.
'I'm just interested in finding her,' I said. 'You used to run with her in your doggy days, Frimsie said, and you might know where I can find her.'
'Frimsie,' he said. "That screaming old mole.' He poured another drink. 'Try her bloody penthouse in Park Lane.'
'I've been there,' I said. 'She's gone. Where does she go when she fades the scene?'
He shrugged. 'Anywhere,' he said. 'Everywhere.' His eyes softened with happy memory. I tried a leer.
'Frimsie says it's all over for you,' I said. 'So now you're settled down you can share the good news, eh? If I can find her, I think I might make it for myself.'
I felt the creepies crawling over me. And, to his credit, so did he. His lip curled in something more genuine than an actor's act. He balled his fist too.
'You creep,' he said. 'You can get the sort of thing you want in Greek Street. If you have a couple of quid.'
I felt ashamed of myself. I also felt uncomfortable for he was more sincere than he should have been. 'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I didn't think you felt that strongly.'
'Well, I do,' he growled and poured himself another drink. The bottle was nearly empty now so I swallowed what little remained of my tiny one and poured myself another. Armitage watched me in silence, reverting to his untouchable eagle act, regarding me as golden Popocatepetl might have regarded Columbus and his syphilitic sailors as they swarmed up the slopes of the Andes, slaughtering the noble buffalo as they came. But I did not flinch and neither did I go, so he put on a slightly flabby cool. We sat and looked at the balding carpet.
'Do we need another bottle?' I said cosily.
'Well,' he said doubtfully. But his murky eye lit up. I pulled some notes from my pocket and asked where to get it.
'No need,' he said, waving expansively. 'Judy won't mind popping out.' He shouted to his wife, took the money and gave it to her. She screwed her face into an oath, curled me with her angry blue eyes and slammed into the street. There was no need for words when Armitage had money for drink, and she was back in minutes, for she knew the course. She slammed the new bottle onto the table and went back into the kitchen. She kept the change, I noticed. She probably needed it.
By the time we were half way down the bottle, a long fifteen minutes later, Armitage had switched acts again. Now he was the strong nostalgic loving man, a latterday Errol Flynn pausing on the rim of the world to look back at the sun and the sea and the girls. Especially the long-legged girls.
I could see then why his shaggy little wife had shut herself in the kitchen. The girls read like a Broadway Melody with an X-certificate. He completely forgot me for a while and sat there slopping whisky and mumbling out all the quirks and fancies of all the sex-pussies in the pictures on the wall, complicated little stories involving balloons and champagne and hot ovaltine and purple ribbon and toil and sweat and tears. Some of it I remembered from old copies of Confidential and some of it I recognised from the brown-paper-wrapped books of my youth. And all of it, I hoped, was poppycock for I like my film stars straight not kinky.
When he was well into his wishful think down memory lane, full of whisky and swaying loosely in front of his picture gallery, I tried an interpolation.
'You don't have a picture of Kiki Kondor up there, I see,' I said.
'Ah,' he said, but not to me. 'Kiki, lovely Kiki. Too wild to frame, too precious to display.'
He turned to look over my head with eyes more glazed than his pictures. 'How mad and bad and sad it was,' he said, 'but O, how it was sweet.'
Jesus, I thought, these bloody actors. Do they never stop acting? No, I thought, they never do. They never stop for the fear of finding out that they never actually started. When they have a script in their hands, they can just about get by between performances. But when there is no script and they try to write their own it's like open day in the parrot house.
But Armitage had stumbled across the room to a cupboard and was drooling over a box of photographs and mumbling things I did not wish to hear about Kiki Kondor. I walked over to look at the photographs he was drooling on. They were all happy snaps of him and her in film studios, on beaches, on horseback, in a nightclub. The record of a swinging affair. She was long and lithe and beautiful. So was he. I picked up the last photograph. They were laughing in a pretty street of cottages outside a rural-type pub.
'Where was this one taken?' I said. He came back to the present for a moment, recognised me, scowled and grabbed the picture. Then he looked at it and sank back into his maudlin blur. Then he went into a sort of knickerbocker glory all about a Garden of Eden just made for two and the summer sunshine of a golden age. Perhaps he was writing a song.
I expect he's the sort of bloody theatrical, I thought, who grows roses, pink passions and purple bloody peaces. And then, I thought, he will stand in his garden like Hamlet, muttering home-spun metaphysics from Christopher Fry and flapping his arms like Sibelius.
Then he wept.
Then he crumpled the photograph and threw it away.
'The bitch,' he sobbed, "The bitch, the bitch, the bitch.'
There was a small rustic coifee table on the rug beside the empty fireplace. He picked it up and hurled it against the far wall so that it smashed into his picture gallery. The tinkling of glass and the splintering of wood brought his wife back into the room. She pulled him away towards the bedroom, pushed him inside and closed the door. Then she came back.
I tried to look my sympathy but she wanted none. Nor did she want apologies.
'It's not your fault,' she said. 'You weren't to know.'
'What?' I said.
'That any whiff of that Kondor cow does this to him,' she said bitterly. 'He's not as bad as this normally, you know. But he had a bad night last night.' She picked up the photograph from the floor and snorted.
'What's it all about?' I said.
'The old story,' she said. 'Bloody vanity. Bloody middle-age. Bloody infatuation. Bloody little sweet-life teasers. That cow wrecked him and I'm trying to sweep up the pieces.' She looked at the photograph again. 'You gathered that, I suppose. This was their bloody swansong.'
'I gathered that,' I said. 'Where is it?
'God knows,' she said, it's the cow's hideaway. She wanted to give him the painless brush so she took him there, wherever it is.'
'But he must know where it is,' I said.
'No,' she said. 'He flew there on gossamer wings, like they say. And came back smashed.' She sneered. 'Love is blind, didn't you know? Blind bloody drunk." She threw the photograph at me. 'Look at him there. He's smashed to the gills. How would he know where he was?' She sneered again. 'It was his greatest role, you know.'
I looked. Armitage was smashed all right. Kiki Kondor was just about holding him up. The bitter girl took me to the door and I gave her my name and my office number and promised to see that Armitage got some work. She waved her hands, throwing everything away in disgust.
'Who cares?' she said. 'And another thing, Mr Brock. He probably gave you a lot of drunken, ecstatic, clinical detail. It's all wishful thinking, you know, every prod, poke, and bloody bite of it. I should know.'
I had guessed that, but as she said, she should know. I said nothing. And she softened a shade.
'He wasn't always like this, you know. And it's not altogether his fault, I suppose. 'There's a real actor under all that booze. He's not much to live with now, but he was a miracle to watch before the films screwed him up. And that Kondor cow.'
She closed the door and I walked back towards Chelsea. In the King's Road all the fake Chippendale was gleaming in the junkshop windows, freshly woodwormed with genuine seventeenth-century lead shot. The  boutiques were  busy
knocking another inch off the hemline. The peaches were blooming and the greenstuff was sunning itself. The expresso bars were full and the eggeries were filling.
Then the old Chelsea clock chimed twelve. It was time I got to a telephone and scrambled. I stepped out longer and wondered what to say.
tg-6
SI
My flat was near so I went there, telephoned the Embassy, uttered the magic number, waited for the magic pips, fiddled with my scrambler and listened.
'Is that you, Brock?' said Kelly Byron.
'Yes,' I said.
'Where are you, boy? he said. 'You're in trouble, hey?' 'No more than usual,' I said. 'Let me talk to Mrs Fairchild.' 'You can't do that, for Christ's sake,' said Byron. 'She's in conference.'
'Well, in that case,' I said, 'goodbye, Kelly, I must leave you.' 'Wait,' he yelled. 'Are you some sort of goddamned nut? Haven't you got anything to say?'
'What about?' I said. 'I'm reporting in, aren't I?' 'Well,' he screamed, 'report, man, report.' 'There's nothing to report,' I said.
'Look,' he said, 'I don't know where you've been. But wherever it was, it wasn't where it ought to have been. There's been a killing, man.'
'I know,' I said. 'I was there.'
'I've been on to that curly-brimmed faggot of yours,' said Byron, 'and he won't give me anything. Neither will your goddamned cops. But Jesus, man, Jesus, where were you?
'Going about my business,' I said. 'Not very successfully, I grant you, but that's just our British way. You have to lose the battle to win the war.'
'Going about your business,' he said. 'The only business you had is now in the morgue.' He went on a bit from there, sounding like a man in need of help, so I helped him.
'Shut up,' I said. 'It wasn't her.'
He spluttered but he stopped. Then he started again.
'You're nuts,' he said. T got the tape right here on my desk. It's not in the papers yet, it has a big D on it. But we get it and we got it'
'Have you seen Mrs Fairchild this morning?' I said.
'No,' he said, 'I told you, didn't I? She's in conference.'
So I told him the whole tale and in the end he seemed to feel that he would be a happier man if he believed me. But I grew no fonder of him for that. Nobody was seeming the least concerned about Julie Bateman, the little dead dolly. Not even me, I realised. I wondered about her parents in Chelmsford. If I could find this Kondor girl, I thought, I could perhaps feed her back to the big dealers where she belongs. Then I could do something about little Julie Bateman. Or go and see her parents, at least, and say something. If I could think of something to say.
Nevertheless, I thought, the girl is lying dead meanwhile, unmourned and unknown and nobody cares at all. It is the way of the world and we have to live it. But we don't have to like it.
'Are you there, you goddamned limey fink?' Byron was shouting. I undipped the scrambler from the mouthpiece and spoke for a minute and a half. Then I put the telephone down. I needed a drink.
I could have drunk my drink at home, of course, but drinking at home, if you live alone, is no way to look for the way ahead. Drinking at home brings out the earwigs. The last time I drank hard at home, the earwigs manhandled the achoic box and now Judy Garland comes out lopsided. So I took a taxi to Dean Street where the French pub is.
The French pub, of course, is no more French than Edmundo Ros. But they serve French bread and Dylan Thomas used to drink there so I asked for marc, which is to brandy as scrumpy is to cider. I sipped, shuddered and took the stuff into a corner. Then I pulled out my photograph of Kiki Kondor and Adrian Armitage, the one I had slipped into my pocket in Beulah Road.
I examined it. It told me that Kiki Kondor was very good-looking and that Adrian Armitage was very drunk and it told me very little else. A little street of calendar cottages curved out of the picture behind them, a slice of wooded hill rose above. I sipped my drink and nodded. If this was the Kondor retreat, I was one step on my way. I would place it in any lush wooded valley west of Slough. Well, I thought, I don't have to go scratching around the Norfolk bloody broads or Salisbury bloody Plain.
Then I looked at the pub before which they were standing. But the sign was out of the picture and it was any village pub in any village street. I nodded again and sat there wishing I knew what to do. So I bought another marc, borrowed a dejected copy of the Daily Mirror from the bar and thumbed through the day.
It was a great day, said the Mirror. The master-bakers were striking in sympathy with the dockers and a pygmy donkey had been born in Whipsnade. Alfred Hinds was in hospital, Frankie was in the charts, a Birmingham teenager had killed his middle-aged wife and my stars said not to worry, even when tempted. But I am an Express man myself, so I took no notice, went on worrying and turned to the advertisements where the real news is.
And everything was happening. There were three amazing new detergents on the scene, five amazing new kinds of soup, a new fourpenny stamp with the picture of a blue tit on it, four new everlasting razor-blades and two new cigarettes, each cheaper than the other. There was the Great Shell Money-Making Contest, the Great Heinz Balloon Race, the Great Maxwell House Silver Teaspoon offer and I was glad to be alive. I bought another drink.
The stuff began to work. If you close your eyes and do not listen, all the sad and drunken voices blur into one rubbery rhubarb wail, a formless dirge in memory of the old Bohemian Soho that never ever was. I have spent some of my saddest hours in the French pub and this was beginning to be one of them.
1 opened my eyes to stop the noise and rolled up my Daily Mirror into a telescope through which I could observe the scene. Each sad drinker looked like Breughel weeping at the wedding. All except one, a big ugly man leaning on the bar sipping a big ugly rum-and-peppermint. That's the trouble with these big ugly Specials. They give themselves away by the big ugly drinks they drink.
I swivelled my telescope off the Special and over the bar. There was another familiar face in the far dark corner. A small thick man with green eyes, Swenson's acolyte, drinking tomato-juice. But he didn't look at me so I stopped looking at him. I put down my telescope and picked up my photograph again. It was just a village pub in a valley. If I had a few spare months, I thought, and a bladder the size of Lake Windermere, I could find it. There can't be all that many pubs in England. But it was just about time I had a spot of luck.
'Ah,' said a voice above my drooping head. 'Thinking rural, eh, my dear fellow?'
I looked up. It was an old, precious friend, very much off his beat. He is not a Dean Street type of chap at all, more of a pink gin at the Junior Carlton where the weighing machines are upholstered in cracked brown leather and they leave you on your honour to pay for your port.
'Have a drink?' I said, rising.
'Of course,' he said. 'But not that juju-juice you have there.' So I bought him a half-bottle of sweet rosy wine, just off the slow boat from Marseilles. He sipped and nodded with immaculate reluctance. Then he nodded again, at the photograph before me.
'What a gorgeous girl,' he said. He twitched his little finger in the vestigial Whitehall equivalent of a dig in the ribs. 'May I?'
He picked the photograph from the table and examined it, hiding the drool in his eye. Then he gave it back to me. 'An absolutely exquisite piece of crumpet, if I may say so, my dear fellow,' he said. 'Though I can't say I care for her friend. Looks as though he can't hold his liquor, what?'
'Oh,' I said, 'this was taken some time ago. She's finished with him.'
'Goodoh,' he said. "Though I envy him. A few happy days and nights with a dish like that would set me up for the winter. Especially down there, eh?'
'Down where?' I said.
'Down there,' he said. 'Bag o'Nails.'
'Bag o'Nails?' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'A pretty little place, isn't it?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Charming.' I drank down my drink almost gaily. This looked like my little spot of luck.
'Yes,' he said, looking at the photograph again. 'Set me up for the winter. Nowhere to stay in Bag o'Nails, of course. But the old Ox-Ox isn't more than a stone's throw, as you know.' He was now in a rosy glow of wishful thinking. There really was something about Kiki Kondor. 'The Tudor Room I would say, for a dream of a girl like that. It has that sexy black bathroom, hasn't it?'
'What has?' I said.
'The old Ox-Ox, my dear fellow. You must know it. Best place for a spot of passionate this side of Yeovil. You're an Oxford man aren't you?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Pembroke.'
'Oh,' he said. 'Nevertheless, you must know the Ox of Oxfordshire, outside Burford. We always call it the old Ox-Ox.'
'Who does?' I said. This was like talking to Greene. These upper, curly-brimmed classes seem to think that their own little circuit takes in the whole bleeding world.
'Everyone, my dear fellow,' he said. 'The chaps at the club. We still use it a lot. Good eating there, a surprisingly good cellar for one's purposes, and terribly comfy rooms.' He nodded. 'Thermicules Arichadnae in the vicinity too. Only spot in England, I shouldn't wonder.'
I nodded. He was not fooling either. He was a surprisingly eminent bug-collector.
'I'm thinking of taking a spin down there this afternoon,' I said, now that I knew where it was.
'You bloody lotus-eaters,' he said, i wish you'd find a job for me in that shameful business of yours.' But he worked in Whitehall and after another quick half-bottle, he sloped off to meet his PPS, I think, or his DDP.
The big ugly Special at the bar was now on his third rum-and-peppermint and making careful notes with a ninepenny ballpoint in a sixpenny notebook. I wondered what he was writing about my friend and went upstairs to telephone the garage. Bill was there and after a while he came to the phone. He said he had nothing much to do and he would be pleased to fill my tank, check my oil and water and bring the old Volvo around to me in Dean Street.
There was a snag though. There always is, for Bill is a Volvo man from way back. Every time I try to collect my car I must wait while he puts it together again, each time slightly differently. This time it was another variation on the Rudd Conversion, something to do with a manifold, I think he was saying.
'There's no doubt in my mind, guv,' he said. 'The old hotspot thinking has a lot to commend it.'
'Just so long as it goes,' I said.
'Go, guv?' he said. 'You won't even see me coming.'
That was what I was afraid of, I said. My trouble is that there is no other garage within walking distance of my flat. I could buy some other car, I suppose. I could even buy British, I suppose, since I usually take a taxi-cab. But the thought of the hurt in Bill's eye has always stopped me.
Anyway, he said that he would screw the thing together again and whistle it around to Dean Street in no more than thirty minutes. So I went downstairs, bought myself another drink and while I was at it asked Gaston to give the Special a large rum. Gaston slid it along the bar, rumbled something in his Dubonnet-type Cockney and I took my glass back to my corner. The Special looked at the drink, looked at me, looked away hastily when he caught my eye, wrestled with his sense of duty, lost and drank.
I was feeling a little happier now. Kiki Kondor, of course, might well be somewhere quite other than Burford or thereabouts. But it was only a couple of hours' pleasant driving, and I could pretend I was getting ahead. Better, at least, than following my ignorant nose around London, trying to find a hunch to prickle my spine.
Swenson's green-eyed acolyte was still in the corner. He was a sort of hunch, I thought, and I had a half-hour to wait. I finished my drink, tugged my forelock at the Special and walked out into the Soho sunshine. The Special gulped his drink and followed. And so, I was happy to see, did the thick man with the green eyes.
So I took them on a quick tour of the square mile of vice. Old Compton Street in the midday sun is not half so coloured as the Sunday supplements. In the evening, I suppose, if you screw your eyes out of focus like the accidental lens of Terence Bailey's Hasselbladt or David Donovan's Brownie, you might be able to imagine, I suppose, that the good-time Charlies from Worcester Park, I suppose, are all Camberwell tearaways on the rampage, and that all the fat girls in the doorways are gorgeous, clean and kindly.
But in the golden September sun things just don't look the same. The flies crawl over the minced horsemeat in the delicatessen window. The grubby pop-artists sun themselves outside the boutiques. Little tired girls with big tired breasts flit between the lunchtime strip clubs carrying their fluorescent working gear in little plastic handbags.
The record shop in the corner was heaving some new loud sound out into the street where it belongs, but there was real music in the air too. Down by Mrs Parmigiani's, the Happy Wanderers were pumping cracked jazz in the clear blue sky. I walked across the road in order to put my money in their hat, and reflected in the window I saw my followers cross behind me. I popped quickly into Mrs Parmigiani's, tipped the wink to the lad behind the cheeses and walked through the tiny back-yard. I climbed over the crates and the wall into another yard, through a garden gate and into Carlo's kitchen. I apologised to Mrs Carlo who was mixing up a morass of her famous zabaglione out of Bird's custard powder and V.P. Wine, and I walked through the restaurant into Frith Street, I crossed the road, walked briskly back to Old Compton Street, crossed the road in the lee of a lorry and into the tobacconist on the corner, with doors in both streets.
There, while they rummaged for cheroots, I watched the door of Parmigiani's. First the ugly Special came out and hurried back towards the French pub. Then green-eyes came
out with a little parcel of cheese. He looked up and down the street, shrugged and strolled off. I paid for my cheroots and followed him on the shady side of the street.
Now I was following my own tail. I felt like wagging it too. Green-eyes turned down Pater Lane, one of the desolate alleys up towards Soho Square. I followed. There was a salt-beef bar in the lane, filled with the scrag-end of show business, and there was a shoe-bar, filled with chattering birds, each hopping delicately on one high-heeled foot. Then there was a dirty book-shop filled with dirty browsing men, and after that there was the Blue Riviera, a strip cellar. My man turned in there and after waiting for a while I rushed up to the door waving my hand.
'Now showing,' said the man on the door. 'It's now showing.' 'What is?' I said.
'Almost everything,' he said. 'From neck to knee.'
'Too early for me,' I said. 'Never till sundown.'
'You pukka bleeding sahibs,' he said. 'No wonder we lost the bleeding empire."
'Actually,' I said, 'I was trying to catch a friend. I caught sight of him as he went in.'
'Oh, him,' he said. 'One of them, are you?'
'One of what?' I said.
'One of them pretentious bleeding perverts,' he said. The day's coming, mate when that type of intellectual arrogance will get you your just bleeding deserts, you mark my words. Along the bleeding passage and down the stairs. Then ask again. He may not be in. I know he's in. And you know he's in. But he may not be in.'
'Who?' I said.
'Kramer, for Christ's sake,' he said. 'Who are we talking about?' 'Kramer,' I said.
'Well there you are, then,' he said.
I walked along the passage. Deep down below in the Blue Riviera I heard the bright surprising sound of Tijuana brass. The girls usually like to do their grinds and bumps to the softer sounds of Nat King Cole, because, I suppose, his gentle voice alkalises the acid sniggers of the audience. Nevertheless, time was passing. I walked down the stairs and looked into the cellar.
The lights were dim and the tables were empty, just a couple of hard drinkers at the tiny bar. A big girl peeled herself off and came towards me.
'Hello, dear,' she said, 'Are you feeling lonely?' 'Kramer?' I said.
She looked disappointed and jerked her head at the far wall. There was a door in it. I watched her prehensile bottom on its way back to the bar then 1 threaded my way between the tables to the door in the wall. A strip of stamped plastic was pinned to it, telling me that I was on the threshold of the registered office of Vortex Incorporated, Consultants. I pushed and the door opened.
Behind it was an empty office, incongruously expensive, all green leather and battleship steel. I coughed into the silence. I closed the door loudly. But nobody came. I tried the door in the opposite wall. It was thick and solid and firmly shut. I put my ear to it and heard a mumbling voice, a single voice pausing now and then. Green-eyes was talking on a telephone, I hoped.
There was another telephone on the desk so I took a chance, picked it up cleanly and quickly and put it to my ear. I was in luck. It was an extension, and the voice of Green-eyes was rumbling out of it.
'As soon as you can manage it,' he was saying. 'The guru was very specific about the need for fast action.'
There followed a silence, and after it a dimmer voice from the far end of the line, an old-school, top-management, Savoy Grill, donkey-type voice. It brayed slowly and it was filled with doubt.
'As I told you yesterday,' it said, 'I'm not at all sure about this. It's all rather drastic, don't you know? And it's a biggish parcel.'
'Yes,' said Green-eyes. 'But I can only repeat the guru's advice.'
'Of course,' brayed the telephone. 'And I do have the greatest faith in his remarkable wisdom. But are you quite sure he wants me to sell?'
'Quite sure,' said Green-eyes. 'He was specific'
'But now?' brayed the telephone. 'Now? On a Dow Jones twenty-point fall, for God's sake?'
'Yes,' said Green-eyes. 'Now.'
There was another long silence. The donkey coughed twice but he did not speak.
"There was one other thing,' said Green-eyes. 'The guru is looking forward to seeing you this week.'
'What?' brayed the donkey. 'When?'
'At the cyclic,' said Green-eyes.
'I say,' brayed the donkey, happier now. "That's quite an honour, eh? I'll be there, of course. Amazing fellow, you know, that Swenson. A genius, no less, in my humble estimation at least'
'He certainly is,' said Green-eyes. 'Until Thursday, then. And may I take it that you will arrange that little matter?'
The donkey coughed. 'Well, yes, I suppose, if he says so. I'll think about it. After all, we've taken the vow, eh?'
'Quite,' said the Green-eyes. 'Where the guru leads, we must follow. God watches blindly.'
'Quite,' said the donkey. 'And who watches God?'
The line went dead and I stretched my hand carefully forward to drop the telephone onto its cradle. But it started whirring again and I listened. Green-eyes was dialling. I waited. After a while I heard a grunt.
'Kramer here,' said Green-eyes.
The other end grunted again.
'Tell Swenson I'm having trouble with Burlington Bertie.' 'Who?'
"The mug from City Foundations. He doesn't want to sell. I've had to ask him down for Thursday. He needs to hear the holy sound again. His faith is slipping.'
'Ah,' grunted the other end. 'I'll tell Swenson. He's got that creep in there with him now.'
'Well,' said Kramer. 'He'll have to spare the time. I don't trust the creep and I'm not at all sure about the woman either. If it all comes off, then all well and good. If not, we'll need the Burlington Berties as much as ever.'
'Don't worry,' grunted the other end. Swenson knows what he's doing. But I'll see your bloke gets the works. We'll have him foaming at the mouth.'
Then the line went dead. I waited, replaced the receiver and prepared to go. Then I looked at the paper under my hand. While I had been listening my hand had been fiddling with the drawers of the desk. All but one was locked and immovable, but I had pulled out the shallow pin-tray from under the desk top and a paper was taped to it.
But I scanned it with disappointment for it was no more than a taped telephone list, with numbers in Zurich, Frankfurt, Brussels, Brighton, Paris and Milan. Brighton? I wondered what Brighton was doing in such glittering company. But all it told me was that Kramer was a continental operator. There was nothing for me there and then so I pushed the list back into the desk and walked to the door.
'What are you doing here?' said a voice behind me. It was Kramer, his green eyes gleaming bright.
'Ah,' I said. 'I thought the place was empty. I was looking for Swenson.'
'What for?' he said, walking towards me.
'Well,' I said, wondering fast. 'I've just come from Moussarde.'
'You're a bloody liar,' he said.
'Well,' I said, 'not Moussarde exactly. It's Newman. He would like to get in touch with Swenson at once.'
'Now I know you're a bloody liar,' he said. I wondered why. Perhaps, I thought, because Newman was with Swenson already. But I looked at my watch.
'Anyway,' I said, 'I'm a bit pushed for time.' I turned to go. Then I turned back again, just in time to ride the left-handed cosh he was swinging at my shoulder. I also saw the flash of a knife in his right hand. I checked myself quickly and as he went past me into the door I chopped him backhanded. Then I caught him as he fell and dragged him quietly back to the desk. I propped him in the chair and sat on the desk in front of him to wait while his head cleared.
When it did, he saw me and tried to come at me again. But I slapped him down, put my foot on his chest and bore down on him. He grunted and gave up.
'Ah,' he said, 'You'll get yours, Brock. You ducked it this morning somehow, but you'll get yours.'
'Ducked what?' I said.
'Ah,' he said, 'kiss off.'
"That's what Swenson said,' I said.
'And you better had,' he said. 'Swenson doesn't joke. You better keep that big nose out of his patch.'
'If we had world enough and time,' I said. But at my back I always hear the fat man's Pontiac hurrying near. The fat man is only half as old as time but he is twice as accurate as a Rolex Oyster and it was no part of my assignment, if I could call it that, to get into a rumble with Swenson and his lads, not even if he was conning the whole of British industry with his metaphysical revivalist gibberish. All I had to do was find Kiki Kondor and leave the rest alone. So I tapped Kramer's nerve-end and closed the door gently behind me.
I got back to the French pub just in time to buy myself another drink, a polly water this time, before Bill came in.
The big ugly Special, Gaston said, had rushed in, telephoned and rushed out again. I bought Bill a drink but we had to hurry it, he said, as he had parked on a double yellow line.
As it happened we could have taken our time. The traffic warden, the one with the frog face they call Judge Jeffrey, had watched BUI into the pub then pounced. He was still licking his indelible lead when we reached the car but it made no difference. So we stood there while he did his job under the eyes of all the swinging Terrazza people.
I cocked a snoot at Mario, said goodbye to Bill, got into the car and made an angry mess of a three-point turn back towards Shaftesbury Avenue. A fat black Jaguar was coming out of the car-park opposite and I nearly clobbered it. I could have done so with no trouble at all. But how was I to know that Kramer had woken early and staggered down Old Compton Street after me?
By now it was getting on towards three o'clock and closing time. The workers were streaming back to their offices. But I knocked none of them down, not even my secretary, who was saying goodbye to a man in the middle of St. James's Street. I tooted and she pretended not to see me.
So I cut up into Mayfair, out into Park Lane, around the Marble Arch and down the Bayswater Road. Including one sweltering jam at Shepherd's Bush, it took no more than forty minutes to get into Western Avenue and away. And not much longer to get through High Wycombe and into the fields.
Then it was pleasant. The sun was still high in the thin blue sky and still hot, and the road was fast and curving. There is a breathless stretch of race-track that bypasses Oxford, the city of dreaming causes, and then comes the beginning of the Cotswolds. I swooped into Witney, where the blankets come from, and up out again onto the high, bare, straight road that follows the ridge to Burford.
Kiki Kondor is no fool, I thought as I looked down into the great sunkissed spoonbed on my right which must contain Bag o'Nails. This was the right sort of country for a getaway hole. Not quite so right, I thought, as my own piece of country, for I have an anonymous cottage too, in the more intricate crinkles of the far western edge of the Cotswolds. But still, I thought, she's just a girl.
I pulled up in a lay-by and looked at my roadbook. But Bag o'Nails was not there. So I rolled down the wide hill into Burford to ask somebody. Burford is a pretty town but very picture-postcard. So are the people. I had to buy a pot of weak tea, four home-made scones, a spoonful of Olivers' jam, a dollop of Cow and Gate Farmer's Wife Double Devon Cream and a Lyon's chocolate Kup-cake, just like any other tourist, before the prissy lady in the chintz smock would tell me the way ahead.
And at last, before the sun sank in the western woods, I said hello to Bag o'Nails.
It was all as pretty as its picture, just a street of tiny houses, not even a hamlet, in the lush bottom of a fold in the hill, not even a valley. It took its name from the little pub at the far end of the street, no more than a cottage like the rest but white-washed and labelled with beer signs. There was a sweet, six o'clock hush over the little place.
But the door of the pub was open. I walked in, to a tiny shining bar-parlour. The floor was polished, the tables were scrubbed and the walls were alive with dead animals, the savage stuffed heads of foxes and otters and even stags from far away. And in glass boxes between the staring heads swam great fish of the size that usually gets away.
While I was trying to stare down all the glassy eyes, the landlord clumped into the bar.
"That's a fine show,' I said. 'I expect you get plenty of time for a bit of sport down here?'
'Them,' he said, eyeing the menagerie. 'They're not mine. They're the wife's.'
'Some of my friends,' I said, 'have sporting wives. But nothing like this.'
'Aye,' he said. 'She's very proud of them. That big grinning bastard there, and the one with the grey whiskers on the end, she bagged them both yesterday, look.'
'What,' I said, 'both of them?'
'Aye,' he said.
'She must ride hard,' I said.
'No,' he said, 'I drove her. What'U it be?'
'A brandy, please,' I said. 'And a ginger ale. What do you mean you drove her? You mean, like to drink?'
'Aye,' he said. T suppose it's like drinking. She's addicted, you might say, to auctions and that. There's this big one, every Tuesday, in the Corn Exchange at Cirencester if you're interested in that sort of thing.'
'Ah,' I said. I had thought for a moment that I had stumbled onto a piece of the old Mary Webb. But this was not the way ahead. I drank my drink and put the glass on the bar.
'You'll be wanting the White House,' he said.
'Will I?' I said.
'Aye,' he said. 'It's out of the street and up the lane by the corrugated shed.'
"Thank you,' I said. 'How did you know?'
'I've lived here all rny life,' he said. 'I ought to know the White House.'
'No,' I said. 'I mean how did you know I wanted it?'
'Well,' he said. 'You get to learn how to weigh people up behind a bar. Smart clothes, foreign car, brandy and ginger ale. And this is a small place. The only way out is over the hill. So anyone who's coming here is coming here, unless he's lost. And you're not lost. He looks too bloody sharp to lose himself, I says.'
'I wish he was,' I said.
'Aye,' he said, deep in his deductions. 'And he's not here to see Bill Sail, I says, nor yet old Alf. And nobody never comes to see any of the other bastards. So he's here for Miss Bateman, I says. For once in a while, she's having visitors.'
It figured, I suppose, and I could have guessed it. If Kiki Kondor was in the habit of switching circumstances with little Julie Bateman it was not a vast intuitive leap to suppose that she would have also switched names.
The landlord was pulling himself a pint. He looked at it. Then he looked at me. 'The last bloke she had down here,' he said, 'drank me dry and wrecked my snug. Are you an actor?'
'No,' I said.
'Thank God for that,' he said.
'Can I leave my car in your yard?' I said.
'Yes,' he said. And like a fool I left it. The White House was up a steep, dim lane. Half way up, where I started puffing, the house became visible through the trees, looming against the evening sky like a whitewashed lighthouse. But there were no lights.
I padded out of the lane onto the bare crown of the hill and through an open gate. My feet crunched loudly on the gravel. The house was small and pretty, clinker-built of white painted wood, but elegantly proportioned. The guard netting of a tennis court showed against the sky and below me to the right the last light gleamed on a small swimming pool. It was the complete country pad, by Ideal Home out of House and Garden.
But though the night was thickening, there were still no lights. I crossed by fingers and hoped she was there. I walked around a bit and found a garage behind the tennis court. It contained a silly little Mini-Moke, the fun car for the sweet life. But this might have been merely one of the fittings, like the tennis court and the pool. There was space in the garage for another car. So I walked around the house, peering in
the windows and seeing nothing but shadow. It looked like a fruitless journey. Then I tried the door.
It did not swing slowly open with a long, empty creak, but I was not disappointed. I did not consider myself sincere enough to be optimistic. Nevertheless, it was a Yale lock and I did have my Diner's Card which has opened more doors than it has bought hot dinners. And then the door did swing slowly open with a long empty creak and I walked in, knowing I was alone and fumbling for the light switch. So it was a nasty shock to find the hard prod of a gun barrel in my side.
But shock is one man's stop and another man's go. About the only thing my post-war training did for me was to put my fight-or-flight mechanism into a state of permanent readiness. I am older now, of course, but before I learned to cope with it, I had about as much control of myself as Pavlov's dribbling dogs. I would tashetaze at the fall of a rose-petal, and the syndrome was still working. There in the dark hall of the White House, my hair was dilated, my nostrils were standing on end and the adrenalin was gushing like oil.
And the gun was rattling on the floor and my fingers were clamped on the wrist of the hand which had held it.
I had also swivelled, raised my elbow, and tucked the strange arm beneath mine, so that a twist of the torso would break it. But a whimper stopped me just in time. The trouble with the Pavlov syndrome is that it will not listen to reason, not even the fragrant one which had just travelled from my nose to my brain. A touch of musk, a touch of Siberian jasmine and the ordinary human exciting odour of a woman.
I relaxed my grip a fraction, the whimpering stopped and the language started. I recognised some of the words, mainly the four-letter English ones, but also a few of the five-letter French ones. And I could guess about the longer, nastier German ones. I also recognised the voice.
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97
Take it easy,' I said. 'It's me, Brock.' But I kept my grip on her wrist while I pulled out my lighter and lit myself up. Kiki Kondor's scared, white, beautiful face gleamed in the tiny twilight of the flame. She breathed a long sigh of relief as she recognised me and I felt her body relax against mine. I let go of her wrist and started looking again for the light switch.
'Wait a moment,' she said and walked into the dark. Then we were blinking at each other in a strong white light. She was still worth blinking at, lithe and long-legged in tight slacks and a bush jacket. They were both olive but not drab. The bottoms of her slacks were tucked into soft sealskin boots and a wide brown belt bound her tight waist.
'Just grow a beard,' I said, 'and you'll solve Castro's recruiting problem for ever.'
But she was fraught and pale and the worry in her eyes made them even bigger and deeper. The gun was lying on the floor between us and I let her pick it up.
"That was a cold welcome,' I said.
'I thought you were someone else,' she said.
'Who else?' I said.
T don't know,' she said. 'I heard you prowling about out there and I thought—well, I'm glad it's you.'
There was no welcome in her eye. But, on the other hand, neither was there the distaste with which she had favoured me before. She turned and I followed her through the hall into a room at the back. She switched off the hall light as she went. The room was lit and tightly curtained. She closed the door behind me and sat down. I saw that she was still trembling.
'Calm down, ducky,' I said. 'You look as though you need a drink.'
She smiled faintly and nodded towards a cupboard. I fiddled with the bottles in it. 'How did you find me?' she said. 'I suppose Julie told you.'
Then she thought. 'But she couldn't have told you. She doesn't know about this place.'
'No,' I said. 'It hasn't been that simple. Julie Bateman did let her hair down, of course.'
'Oh?' she said.
'I mean,' I said, 'she took it off. And I think you'd better let yours down too. Start talking.'
"What do you mean?' she said. 'Tell you what?'
'Anything,' I said. 'There's so much. What you think you're doing down here in the woods. Why you stood your stand-in in. Who you were expecting when you stuck that gun in my side. Why you are so frightened. Why you went to such lengths to fool me.'
'You flatter yourself,' she said, with a touch of her original toffee-nosed arrogance. 'I'm not hiding down here to get away from you, Mr Brock.'
'Call me John,' I said.
'I'd rather know how you found me,' she said.
'That was easy,' I said. 'Frimsie Frimleigh said that Adrian would know. He didn't though. He was too smashed when you brought him down here for his ten days of heaven.' She blushed and I continued. 'But he did have a picture and I have a friend who collects bugs.'
'What do you mean?' she said.
'You may not know it,' I said, 'but you chose the same retreat as Thermicules Arichadnae.'
'I don't know what you mean,' she said. 'But what about Julie? Where is Julie now?'
Julie Bateman was dead. I took the memory out of its cold angry storage for a moment and compared it with the frightened girl in front of me. Physically, they were just beautiful twins. But even through the champagne glow, Julie Bateman had showed a cosiness that Kiki Kondor lacked. But even under her fright, Kiki pulsed like a dynamo. This was the difference, I thought, between the leaders and the led. Or perhaps, simply between the rich and the poor. If one of them had to die, I wondered, which one should it have been?
It was an impossible question and it was not the time to ponder the imponderable. I shrugged it off. Neither was it the time to grieve for the poor little dead model girl. Violence and the hard skin it develops is one of my occupational risks. I spend the rest of the year sitting at my desk weeping for the sparrows and leaving cheese out for the mice. But on this sort of job, death leaves me as cold as a corpse. And Kiki was asking me again.
'She's dead,' I said. And I looked at her carefully. She was shocked. Whisky spilled from the glass in her hand as a spasm of shock ran through her body. But there was no surprise in her reaction. She sat there, gripping her glass and looking at me, seeing nothing.
'Is that what you expected?' I said. But she did not answer. After a long while she spoke.
'It would have been me, wouldn't it?' she said.
I opened my mouth to tell her what I thought of the sweet-lifers who own the world and feel for nothing but their own, soft, sweet-smelling, pampered skins. But I saw that the pain in her eyes was real pain, not just selfish fear. She was grieving for the little model girl who had been unlucky enough to look like her.
I regretted my rough handling. I took the glass from her hand and fed a little of the spirit into her hps. Colour came back into her cheeks, and as the colour came back she came into my arms and wept real tears of sorrow. I tried to calm her but I never know the words to quench a weeping woman, so I held her tight and let her cry and perhaps the strength of my arms did what my words could not do. After a while she calmed and I made her drink another drink.
'Now,' I said, 'it really is time we talked.'
She nodded.
'You didn't know about Julie Bateman,' I said. 'So why were you so frightened when you heard me?' T got a call,' she said. 'When?' I said.
'Just before you came,' she said. 'What was said?' I said.
'Nothing,' she said. 'I answered and the phone went dead.' 'It could have been a wrong number,' I said. 'It could have been,' she said. 'But I don't think it was.' 'Why not?' I said.
'I've been getting calls,' she said. 'Nasty calls like some letters I've been getting. Then the caller stopped talking. He would ring and I would answer and hear breathing. Just breathing. Then the phone would go dead.'
'Did you give your name?' I said.
'Of course not,' she said.
'It was probably a wrong number,' I said. But I wondered if it was. I had found her too easily, thanks to my bug-hunting friend. But that was merely a piece of labour-saving luck. Nowadays, nobody can stay out of sight for long.
'Who knows about this place?' I said.
'Almost nobody,' she said. 'Deirdre knows, of course.'
'And Newman?' I said.
'You mean Junior?' she said. 'He knows I have a place hereabouts. He's never been here though.'
'Ah,' I said. 'And why did you fade like that? You were obviously expecting something nasty.'
'Oh,' she said. 'I don't know. Perhaps I was, but it's a long story. And if I did expect something, I didn't know what. I just got jumpy. Deirdre got on my nerves, playing up over you, as a matter of fact. Then she went off in a filthy rage and I was up there on my own, and, oh, there were other things on my mind, too.'
'You mean Junior?' I said.
She blushed again. If she was not so absolutely elegant, I would have said that she bridled. "That's not your concern,' she said.
'It bloody well is,' I said. 'It's all my concern. It's me who gets jumped on if you get took. And, anyway, the old biddy told me all about it. She's cooking up some big world-rocking deal with your father that will send the gnomes of Zurich back into their toad-stools, and you have to consummate it.' I was starting to get angry again.
'It's more than that,' she said, unhappily.
'Yes,' I said. 'She wants a brood mare. She needs a grandson. She was very explicit about how I must keep my hands off you.'
And just to prove I was stronger than her, I suppose, I grabbed her and kissed her, hard on the lips. It was no more rewarding than it should have been. So I let her go again and poured another drink.
For a while, we both sat in an uncomfortable silence.
'All right,' I said. 'I'm sorry.'
'Don't be too sorry, John Brock.' she said. 'It doesn't go with your face.'
'You'd better tell me about this Deirdre,' I said. T have to do something about something, don't I?'
'There's no need for that, sir,' said a burry, west-country voice behind us. 'There's no need at all. I've come for the lady now, look, and it might be better if you were to leave everything to me.'
Kiki twitched and gasped, and I turned, foolishly remembering the wide-open front door. But I had been too involved with the frightened girl even to hear the click of the hall door behind us. It was wide open too and a man was standing there, shading into the shadows of the hall behind him.
He filled the doorway like Victor Mature once filled the space between the temple columns. His thatch of rough yellow hair reached the top of the frame. His great humped shoulders pressed out against the uprights. A chest like a barrel packed out the tweed, leather-patched jacket and thighs like the haunches of a shire horse packed the legs of the washed-out corduroy trousers.
One leg of the washed-out corduroy trousers. The left leg flapped hollow. Then a massive bolt of wood swung out of the shadow of the hall into the room. It was more of a pitprop than a crutch but it settled its rubbered end delicately onto the carpet. The great, one-legged body followed it in a queer, sudden fluid jerk that brought the man half across the room with no more effort than I might have used to shift the weight on my feet.
I looked at the crutch again. It was as strong as it needed to be with all that weight to carry, two three-inch rods of gleaming black wood, perhaps ebony, clamped twice by black iron clamps. One of the rods swelled at the top into a carved and cushioned shape which fitted the man's armpit as though it had grown there.
I looked up at his face. It was hard, not like tight healthy flesh but like bare brown rock, and the features were weathered into it as into an old used carving. The eyes were black caves. But they were smiling.
'Sorry, sir. Very sorry about this, look,' he was saying. T had no call to creep in and startle you now, did I? But then, you see, I didn't know you were here.'
His voice was a country voice, neither deep nor sharp, the sort of voice which burrs and buzzes like a paraffin lamp. There was the tug of the forelock in it, but in what little is left of rural England, the tug of the forelock is likely to mislead for it rarely denotes the servility it sounds like. It is simply the ancient desire to keep things the way they were before the Tolpuddle Martyrs lost the taste for beef and beer and homebrewed Stilton and began lusting after cheap shop-cake and instant coffee.
I regarded the intruder with approval for our whole merrie heritage. It was dashed a little, perhaps, with the envy any townie feels for the green-fingered, nut-brown sons of the soil who live their tranquil lives in the fat lap of old mother Nature. But Kiki was trembling again with what I supposed to be fallible female intuition. So this was no time, I felt, for a cosy post-mortem on the crysanths.
T think, perhaps, you'd better come back tomorrow,' I said.
He stood there smiling and silent, planted on his massive crutch. I turned to Kiki.
'What's his name?' I said.
'Satan Smith's the name, sir,' said the big man gently. 'Miss Kondor don't know me, look. Ah, I'm sorry, miss. You're going by the name of Bateman down here, aren't you? Anyway, sir, I'm afraid you didn't understand me. I've come for the lady now, I said. See?'
'Well,' I said, 'the lady doesn't want to go anywhere, so there's no need to waste your time.' It's not that they're all nut-brown idiots, I thought, away from the bright lights. It's just that they live at a different tempo. After all, it takes a good year to get a potato out of the ground. It's not like advertising. They have to live slower and they get to think slower. The big man was sighing.
T don't know who you are, sir,' he said. T was told nothing at all about a gentleman. Just the lady, they said, to take over the hill.' He pulled a big watch from his pocket. He listened to it, shook it, listened again and looked at it. Then he put it carefully away. 'Time's getting on, sir, and I have the van outside, look.'
'Ah I see,' I said, thinking that I saw. 'You're the local taxi-man. Well, old son, you've got the wrong lady. There must be another white house hereabouts, and some other lady who wants to go over the hill with you.'
'No, sir,' he said patiently. 'I'm not a taxi-man.' 103
'Well, who are you then, for Christ's sake?' I said. It was all getting a bit silly.
'Well, sir,' he said, 'I'm a deliverer, aren't I? Stands to reason, look, if I'm here to take Miss Kondor over the hill. I'm here to deliver her.'
'Grah,' I said, wondering if it was all to do with inbreeding. And not wondering at all just how he came to know Kiki's name. 'Who and where?'
'Ah,' he said. "That's two separate questions, look. They both have the same answers, mind, but I don't mean no disrespect, do I?'
T don't know, do I?' I said. 'Until you answer me.'
'Well,' he said. 'Perhaps I don't know the answers, do I? And then again perhaps I do. But like I say, time is getting on and I have to take the young lady now.'
'Not on your big bucolic nelly,' I was saying as he swung his crutch forward for one more precise giant step towards me. I should have saved my breath for other things. His body followed with the same odd fluid jerk as before. But this time his foot did not land beside the delicately aimed rubber stump. It carried on through the whole long swing and it landed in my chest with just enough force to save my ribs from caving in. I cannoned backwards, the wall behind me knocked a gale out of my lungs and 1 slid down the wall into the carpet.
'Like I said, sir,' he said, 'time is getting on, look.'
I started to get up. The rubber end of his crutch centred delicately on my breast bone and pushed me back against the wall. He was standing as still on his one leg and planted as solidly on the carpet as an old oak tree.
I wondered what to do. For a start I knocked the crutch away from my chest. He wavered off balance for a moment and I rolled sideways to my feet. But he was fast. By the time I was upright again he had recovered and leaped a great leap to the right, pushing off on his big crutch and swinging away like Tarzan.
And his leap had manipulated me right into a corner. Once more I wondered what to do. I was going to have to fight him and I was surprised to find it difficult to start. Satan Smith was not much bigger than me, so it was not just ordinary cowardice. He had only one leg, of course, and that must have been the trouble. Ever since King Arthur turned the blind eye we have been taught to handle the halt and the lame and the female with velvet gauntlets.
But I had always thought that chivalry was simply a wishful figment of hysterical Celtic imagination, and I was shocked to find that it had got to me. All those bloody stories, I supposed, about Saint George and Robin Hood and Robert Browning and old Errol Flynn and young Doctor Kildare and Batman.
I stood there in the corner and cursed the human condition. If I ever have a son I can call my own, I thought, I will raise him on Restif de la Breton and Mickey Spillane and Margaret Mead, to encourage a proper attitude towards obsolescent ideas. Satan Smith was still smiling silently before me. His huge left paw hung at his side, fingering the iron clamp that bound the two thick rods of his crutch.
'Ah well, sir,' he said gently, with an almost genuine reluctance. 'I see that you're going to be difficult. I expect you feel you have to be, don't you? You must be this Mr Brock they mentioned.' His right arm came across his body and slapped smartly against his crutch as though he was about to slope arms. But when it came away it brought one of the rods of black wood with it. He hefted the three-inch baulk in his hand. Then he slashed. I ducked and it whistled over my head into the wall and I heard the crunch of faffing plaster.
I tried to slip under the rod and out of the corner but it was now making its return journey and belted me back against the wall. I grabbed hold of the rod and twisted it, but his great paw was stronger than mine. He slashed me on the shoulder and swung backwards a few precise inches, placing himself as carefully as a tennis player.
But the ball was my head. He was about to split it open. There was a tiny pause while our eyes locked, each looking for a signal from the other. Kiki was huddled against the wall where she had been for the last ninety seconds? More of a lifetime, I thought.
But for my own heavy breathing, the room was absolutely silent. I heard an owl hoot at a mouse, as the owls must have hooted in old Sherwood Forest. Satan Smith handled his crutch as Little John must have handled his quarter-staff. But Robin Hood had been a luckier man than I. Little John had two ordinary human legs, not a great black crutch like a power-assisted pogo-stick.
The injustice of it all made me angry. I pushed off from the wall with all my hands and all my feet headfirst for his belly. He swayed sideways on his crutch and I missed him, but at least I was out of my corner. I tucked my head in, rolled over the carpet onto my feet, turned as I rose and went back fast. This time I got under his wood. My head was coming up hard and I let it go, straight into his nut-brown mug. It nearly did for the pair of us but it worked.
Satan Smith went down like timber. I took away the two parts of his crutch and weaved around for a moment.
Then my head cleared slightly. It was still ringing like Beverley Minster, but I could see through the noise. I looked for Kiki. She was whitefaced but steadier on her feet than I was. She was pouring whisky. I hoped it was for me.
'Soda?' she said.
'No,' I said. 'Just top it up with a drop more of the same.'
Kiki was making a huge and successful effort to bear up and grin.
'Well,' she said. 'Whether I liked it or not at the time, Mr Brock, I have to say that I'm very glad you came.' And she looked as though she meant it. I stood there drinking my scotch and waiting for the great cracked bells in my head to stop jangling. After a while they did. A soft steel band took over. I swayed to its beat while I looked at the girl.
She was just as gorgeous as before. But now she was very much more delectable. I poured myself a drink and pondered this fact. Up until then, she had been no more than a piece of beautiful trouble and now she was a lot more than that. Perhaps, I thought, the fright of the fighting had softened her up and started her juices flowing. Or perhaps, I thought, it was me who was kinky. The bit of action may have aroused the beast in me.
Then I realised with relief that it was all more wholesome than that. The distaste had gone from her eyes, and with it the toffee-nosed arrogance. And the hard fact is, breasts and buttocks notwithstanding, the most attractive thing a girl can do for me is to like me.
'Call me John,' I said. And this time she did.
'All right, John,' she said. She smiled a slightly trembling smile. Then she stopped smiling.
'What are we going to do?' she said.
I looked at Satan Smith, lying as big as Juniper Hill on the carpet. 'First,' I said, 'we are going to tie him tight.' She fetched a spool of kitchen cord and watched me while I festooned it about the big man.
'Have you ever see him before?' I said.
'No,' she said. She shuddered. 'He knew my name though, didn't he?'
'And mine,' I remembered.
'How did he get here?' she said.
'Deirdre,' I said. 'Did Deirdre tell him?'
'She wouldn't tell anyone about this place,' she said.
'Who is she?' I said. "What does she do?'
'It's hard to say nowadays,' she said. 'She's been with me a long time. She was my father's right hand. Then he went into a sort of retreat. I do all his signing for him and she advises me. And as she'd been with him for twenty years she was a big help at first.'
'She's older than she looks,' I said.
'She's always looked like that,' she said, 'ever since I was a little girl. But lately, she's been behaving a bit oddly. More than a bit, in fact, and I haven't known what to do about it.'
'It's nothing to do with me,' I said, 'but if you asked me, I'd say you should get rid of her, certainly if you intend to marry Newman.'
'Why?' she said.
'She's in love with you,' I said.
'Don't be so absolutely disgusting,' she said. 'Or so wrong. As a matter of fact, she's on Mrs Fairchild's side about Junior. Because my father is keen on the idea, I suppose.'
'Are you really going to marry that creep?' I said. 'Just for the sake of the business?'
'It's not like that,' she said almost meekly. Then she thought for a moment. 'Well, perhaps it is. But you don't know the whole story.'
'Then tell me,' I said.
T can't,' she said, 'And anyway, you wouldn't understand.' 'Grah,' I said. T know. This thing is bigger than both of us.' 'Yes,' she said defiantly, 'it is.'
'But don't you see, baby?' I said. 'No matter how fast you run, you can't run away from yourself.'
But she had been to the pictures too. she grinned. 'Call yourself my father?' she said. T never had a father.'
She walked to the window, lifted the corner of the curtain and switched to another film.
'It's quiet out there,' she said. 'Too quiet,' She sounded smashed. I had not seen her drinking. 'Anyway, who cares?' she said. 'We're not going out there.' She pointed to Satan Smith. 'If you'll hump him into the kitchen we can lock him in the cellar. Then I'll make you some coffee and show you where to sleep.'
'Don't be a bloody fooL' I said, 'Whoever it was sent that 108 lump of rural England after you will be coming after him soon.'
'Aaaah,' she yawned, 'yes. so they will.' 'So come on then,' I said. 'We have to go.' She flopped into an armchair, 'You go,' she said. 'I'm tired.' 'For Christ's sake,' I said. 'Wake up. What's the matter with you?'
'I took a tablet,' she said, 'to calm me down. You've had half a bottle of whisky. I've had one little tablet and it's beginning to work. So don't be cross.'
'What the hell was it?' I said. 'An eight-ounce Mil town?'
'Nothing like that,' she said. 'Just a Smooth Crossing.'
'A what?' I said.
'A sea-sick tablet,' she said. 'I always take them. They never make me sea-sick, not even on boats. They just make me sleepy.' She closed her eyes.
This was the blind bloody end. I was now lumbered with a sleeping giant on the one hand and a sleeping dolly on the other. And I was feeling a little dozy myself. But if Satan Smith's friends were awake, they would be round for him shortly, whoever they were. We had already wasted too much time.
I went over to the big man and felt around for his happy-spot. It was well-developed and easy to find and I squeezed it hard enough to keep him under for another couple of hours. Then, feeling like Mr Sandman, I tiptoed over to Kiki and humped her into the kitchen. She was soft and fragrant and snoring like a drain. I sat her on the mat, took the ice-tray from the refrigerator and banged three cubes into my hand. Then I knelt down, took a deep breath, unbuttoned the neck of Kiki's silk shirt and poured my ice down the delicate chute.
Two of the cubes slid all the way down to her warm brown belly. But the other slid into the sweet shadowy cleft between her breasts and this was the one which hit the jackpot. She jumped and screamed and did a breathtaking dance for me. Then she took a swipe at me and then another swipe for laughing.
'Deirdre was right,' she yelled while I dodged. 'You bloody great ape.'
'Come on,' I said and hustled her outside before she dropped off again. I remembered the Mini-Moke in the garage and was on my way to get it when I saw the gleam of Satan Smith's van beyond the gate. It was an old beat-up Bedford.
I shoved her into the cab, climbed behind the wheel and pressed the starter. The engine turned quickly and quietly until we started moving. Then it made as much noise as the Flying Scotsman. I found the light switch and lit the lane ahead with a weak yellow glow.
'Where are we going?' said Kiki, almost asleep again. 'Oh, where are we all going?'
'Go back to sleep,' I said, for I did not know where we were going.
We ground down the lane and along the road towards the houses. I wondered just where to go. Anywhere at all, I supposed. After all, my job was a simple one. All I had to do was to hang on to Kiki now that I had found her. So long as I could shake Satan Smith off my tail and whoever was behind him whether it was Swenson and Kramer or Deirdre or someone quite else, I was away to the races. Mopping up was someone else's job.
There would be hotels to the west, I supposed, where we could go, even without baggage. And in fact, I remembered, we were on the edge of my own bit of country. I could break my unbreakable rule and take my work home. It was less than an hour's ride.
But it might have been a thousand miles. One of the good things about the Cotswold country is that over the hill is far away. Over the hill is always another tiny valley, as like as a twin and as different as Mars. Move from one valley to the next and you are suddenly a foreigner, to be looked at by curious eyes. Over the hill is like over the rainbow. Except that nobody particularly wants to go there.
And you can understand why, I said to myself, as I rowed the van along on its rickety gear-lever. There are hulks like Satan Smith waiting to take you over the hill. I slammed on the brakes and fumbled around for a road map.
I found one at last underneath Kiki, and shifting her melting, acquiescent hips off it gave me a slight case of the kinks. But I lit my lighter and read my map. It was a large-scale map which showed every house in the tiny street. The landlord had been right, of course. There was only one road out and it led past Kiki's steep little dead-end, right over the hill. In the other direction the road petered out into a green dotted line.
So what the hell, I thought. Let's go over the hill like Satan Smith said he was going. Kiki snored her agreement so I drove on into the village and stopped at the pub. My car was in the far dark corner of the yard and I carried the girl across to it. As we went she opened her eyes and kissed me goodnight. I arranged her on the back seat, spent a long lovely time tucking the rug around her and went back to the van.
Then I banged on back past the cottages and up the hill. I changed gears noisily all the way. If anyone at all was waiting over the bill he was going to hear me.
On my slow way up the hill, I had time to ask myself if I knew what I thought I was doing. I had no answer. I was doing it, whatever it was. on the principle of perverse action.
This is a principle I always follow when I cannot see the wsy ahead, for it involves no decisions. It is simply a matter of following the nose and so long as you do it quickly and the nose is not pointing where they are looking, it sometimes works, whoever they are.
If they are holding out their hands for bread, for instance, you ram a piece of cake down their throats. If they are expecting a kick in the teeth, you bury your fist in their belly. Whatever you do, you do it instantly, head down and without thinking, in the unlikeliest way at the unlikeliest place. It also works with girls sometimes.
So when I reached the top of the hill I started winking my headlights. I also put my foot right down and coaxed the van up to a thundering forty miles an hour. If it was making half as much noise as I was hearing from inside the cab they would think, I hoped, if they were there, whoever they were, wherever it was, that I was Satan Smith with a monkey on my back.
But the whole point about perverse action is that you never stop to work things out. I also started hooting my hooter in long and short bleeps that might possibly sound like signals.
I was now on a long straight hill-top road that I thought I vaguely knew. I remembered a chi-chi pub along the way, with a large car park for the carriage trade, the sort of place that might well be chosen for a rendezvous, I hoped. But I passed it winking and hooting to capacity and nothing happened at all. Nothing pulled out of the park behind me and I was now a couple of miles from the village. And my watch said it was well past eight o'clock.
So I gave myself another mile. If nobody wanted to play 112
by then, I decided, I would cut my losses and roll back down the hill, massage Kiki into consciousness and drive her across the hills for a thick steak and a bottle of Burgundy. Then we would settle down somewhere for the night and to hell with Mrs Fairchild.
This prospect so pleased me that it was almost a disappointment to find two bright lights staring at me from my driving mirror. Whatever it was that was shining there had not been there a few seconds before. So it had either pulled out blind from the pub behind us or out of a dark lay-by on the way. It was coming up fast too and its lights were winking in sympathy with mine. For one nasty moment, I thought that it might be the sneaky Oxfordshire policemen. But I stuck my head out of the window and heard, not the jangle of the law, but an ordinary blaring horn, deeper than mine but playing the same tune, like a moose bulling it up in the springtime in the Rockies.
So I searched the road ahead and saw some trees coming up, counterpointed in the bright lights from behind me. I opened the door of the van as I swung into the shadows, stood on the brake and, as the van rolled to a halt, jumped out and into the trees.
I had just about six seconds to get out of the likeliest place before the big car roared up. It overshot the van. Then its brakes squealed and it reversed to park about six feet behind. It was a big overfed Jaguar, silhouetted in the glow from its own bright headlights. Two figures bounced into the light and walked over to the van, swearing quietly to each other. When they found it empty they swore some more and looked in the back. One of them walked over to the Jaguar.
"They're not in there,' he said.
'Don't be so bloody ridiculous,' said a powerful voice from within the car. 'Well, they're not.' 'Where are they, then?'
'Perhaps that one-legged bastard is having it away in the bushes.'
The two legmen started shouting into the darkness. In the light from the cars I could make out their shapes, short and thick. I recognised one of the voices. It was, of course Kramer's voice. I offered him my silent grudging approval. He was a more expert tail than Groon's big, ugly man.
'Come on, Smith,' he was shouting. 'Stop playing the bloody rrc-8 113 fool. And leave that girl alone or you'll be in real trouble.' Then a spotlight clicked and swivelled over the scene. The man at the car and the big car itself disappeared behind its glare. I pressed myself forward into the tree which was shielding me from the light. And I stood as still and as rigid as a frightened rabbit.
The spotlight moved over my hide without faltering. The man behind it was still shouting at Smith.
'Come on out,' he was saying, 'you bloody one-legged ram.' I started wishing that I really was Smith. He would have known what to do. I wanted a friend. Or a gun or a big mad dog. There were three of them out there, perhaps more. I felt cautiously around with my foot hoping to find a good thick fallen branch. But Cotswold copses are the tidiest in England and all I felt was the rustle of the first leaves of autumn.
Then the spotlight caught the other dark shape, still standing by the old van looking out into the night, searching for a movement in the trees. There was a sudden clatter to my right and he moved. The glint of metal showed in the shadow and he fired as he leaped into the dark.
God knows what had started him off. A badger, perhaps, or a fox, a large hare or even a deer. But the spotlight had held him clearly for a moment and I had seen him. It was my green-eyed tail, all right.
He was now in the trees, crashing about dangerously close to me and shouting loud.
it was some sort of bloody animal,' he said. 'What's the fool playing at? Smith, you bastard, Smith. Bring the girl out here to us.'
Then he blundered right into me. I am less hard than a tree. I try to keep myself fit. I walk through the park to work and I spend too much money at Mighty Joe's Judo Studio. But I shall never be as hard as Joe and even Joe will never be as hard as a tree. Kramer's shoulder drove the wind from my lungs.
He grunted and felt around for me and started to shout. But he was smaller than me and I got my arms around him tight, heaved him off his feet and crashed straight out into the light. I was also roaring as I went, as loud and as lunatic as the battle-cry I used to envy a Black Watch major behind whom I ran through the Aldershot battle-course.
I did not quite capture the real Tannochbrae accent but the general effect was good. The sudden screaming gibberish up there on the silent top of country made its point, and from what I could see of the opposition through the legs of my burden, it had all frozen in shock.
As I ran, I had heaved the little man up over my head and though he was small he was heavy. His weight was toppling me forward and I was having to run faster to keep beneath his centre of gravity, heading straight for the spotlight and the car behind it.
So I took the natural advantage, pushed off on both feet and straightened my arms. Kramer hurtled ahead of me into the light and the man and the car. I did a painful forward roll over gravel back onto my feet, across the dark road without stopping and over a low dry-stone wall that I managed to see just in time.
I crawled along behind it for a few feet so as not to be exactly where they thought I was. Then I lay still, trying to gulp in the cold air silently and listening to the echo of the crunch of the little man as he had hit the car.
The spotlight had crunched too. Now the headlights of the Jaguar winked off.
'Switch off the lights on that bloody van,' said the powerful voice from inside the car. There was a weak answering groan from Kramer and another from the man at whom I had thrown him. The deep voice grunted again and I heard the clunk of a car-door. I risked a look and saw a black shape walking across to the van. Then the van's lights went out and the night was absolute.
Being blind is not just not seeing. It is not knowing. Once, in the Gulf of Bangkok, I heaved myself into my hammock, shook the cockroaches from my book, found my page, closed my eyes and stretched my arms. When I opened my eyes again I was blind. The world shrank into a screaming desolate pinhead and I lived all the rest of my life between two beats of my heart.
Then the murmurings of my messmates began again. And the emergency lights flickered on and I could see. All that happened was that something had moved in the sea, perhaps a porpoise or a dolphin or a Japanese submarine. And some fool had turned out the lights. But for that long split second in unexplained blackness I knew the helplessness of being blind. And ever since I have hated the dark.
So i lay in the blind night as still as a stone, angry and afraid and alone. Then the man in the car started talking in a low voice.
'Are you all right?' he said.
One of the others groaned. But I heard feet on the gravel. He was getting to his feet. 'Yes,' he said. 'But Kramer's out cold. Where is he?'
'He must still be across the road, I think,' said the man in the car. 'I haven't heard him move away.'
'Can we risk a light and take a shot?'
'The spotlight's smashed,' said the deep voice. 'Be quiet. Wait and listen.'
For a long nasty while there was silence. I moved my blind hand along the top of the wall before me, looking with infinite caution for a big loose stone. I got my hands around the biggest I could feel and raised it silently high above my head. Then I heaved like the Highland Games and sent it crashing across the field behind me. The field sloped away from the road and the stone rolled down through crackling stubble into the black.
'There he goes,' said the man in the car. 'We'll never get the bastard now. What got into him, I wonder? You never know with these bloody yokels.'
'He's an ape,' said the other voice. It was a slighter voice, sharper and with a hissing overtone that was vaguely familiar. T should never have used him. Nobody needs apes.'
'Where did you pick him up?'
'Kramer fixed him,' said the hissing voice. 'Said he was reliable. But he's more trouble than he's worth, obviously.'
'If you ask me,' said the man in the car, 'the whole bloody business is more trouble than it's worth. I think we ought to be getting back.'
The hissing voice cut viciously into the night. 'We'll stay here until we have the Kondor girl,' it said.
'Don't you take that tone with me,' said the man in the car. 'This isn't a major operation. In fact, I've only your word for it that he wants the girl at all. And with you in the act, well, I can't see why he wants her.'
'Are you doubting my word?' The hissing voice grew sharper still, and the silence which followed it was cold and dangerous.
'No,' said the man in the car, after a while. 'No, I'm not doubting you. It's just that you haven't been with us long and I usually get my orders direct'
'You've had them,' hissed the voice in the dark. 'You've had them direct from me.'
'AH right, all right,' growled the deeper voice. 'But don't forget we have to be back for the Thursday Cyclic. He has a couple of prospects and I have to be back to give them the treatment. And they're bigger stuff than this bloody girl.'
'We'll get the girl first,' said the hissing voice. 'This yokel obviously didn't have her. We'll have to try her house.'
'We'll try,' said the man in the car. 'But remember it'd be a four-hour drive back. We'll have to let them know too. I'll telephone from Newbury perhaps. Or Selborne. We'll see how we go. You know the way to the girl's place?'
'Of course I do. Let's go.'
The voice hissed into vicious silence and I heard the clink of the ignition key. Then the lights switched on. I resigned myself to losing them and waited ready to jump as soon as they were gone. I would have to drive the van back to Bag o'Nails and take Kiki out before they found Satan Smith.
But they paused for a moment. Far down the road, over the rim of the hill, a car roared. Its headlights poked up into the sky for a brief flash, then levelled and grew bright down the straight road towards us. They lit the big car and the van across the road and one figure beside the Jaguar's open door, shovelling in the body of the other. I tensed and crouched, balancing on my left hand and the ball of my left foot.
Then, as the car roared past and the headlights blinded the scene, I vaulted the dry-stone wall into the wind of the car's passing and whooped across at the Jaguar. I smashed the standing figure into the open door and onto the man within. Then with all my strength I heaved the door on them both, savoured their screams, scuttled to the van, kicked the starter, hauled the gear into reverse and slammed my foot down. The engine screamed and the van backed into the front right wing of the Jaguar with a kick like the kick of a lovesick mare.
I was simply trying to make a three-point turn in the dark and narrow road and the collision was a fortuitous one. But if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing several times. So I made it a six-point turn instead, slamming the Jaguar as hard as I could at each point of the turn. By the time I had the van pointing the right way I had switched on the headlights and I was able to ram with more precision. I aimed for the left front wheel and I think I broke the axle.
By then, the van was a mess too, and the radiator was spouting water. But I coaxed it away. A few shots came my way and then I was into the darkness and over the edge of the hill and coasting down to Kiki with a good deal of time in hand.
And by the time I had reached the yard of the pub, I had stopped trembling. I am less fond of violence than the fat man will believe. But I am more realistic about it than most people. My mother may be to blame for that, or her mother before her, or Sigmund Freud or this sweet modern life. I may even be to blame for it myself. But I would rather kick a man in the crutch if he deserves it, than sell him aspirin at nine hundred and seventy-three per cent over the odds, or devalue his pound and put a tanner on his pint, or bind bis wife in inflammable pointed brassieres, or spray weedkiller over his singing birds, or shoot him into space, or press a button and burn him into the wall.
I was still muttering to myself when I swung the limping van into the yard of the pub. I parked neatly against the wall, lifted the bonnet and tore out all the wires I could see, wishing I had done the same to the Mini-Moke at the White House. Then I nipped over to my car. Kiki was not there but the rug was still warm. I went into the bar and breathed my relief. She was looking at the animals, holding a glass of brandy. She smiled.
'Mr Mayo put it on the slate,' she said. I took it and drank it. I needed it.
'Come on, I said. 'We're away.'
'But Mr Mayo is just doing me some bread and cheese and onions,' she said.
'He'll have to eat them himself,' I said.
'I don't mind if I do,' said Mr Mayo, clumping into the bar with a plate. 'That'll be one-and-six. And three-and-nine for the brandy.'
I payed him and handled the dozy bird out of the bar.
'That big chap,' he said as I was walking out of the door,
'Did he find the house? The chap with the leg missing, I mean?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Thank you for directing him.'
'Think nothing of it,' he said. 'It's just that if you see him there's been a phone call for him, just this minute. If his name is Smith, that is.'
'Yes,' I said. 'His name is Smith. Any message?'
'Of course there is,' said Mr Mayo. 'He's to wait for his friends down by the corrugated shed. At the bottom of the lady's lane, that is.'
'I'll tell him, if I see him,' I said. 'Do you know who it was?'
'No,' said Mr Mayo. 'Some sort of foreign name it was. Nice sort of chap, wasn't he? Nice manner to him, I thought.' 'Very nice,' I said.
'Pity about his affliction,' he said. 'Big chap like that.'
He started eating an onion and 1 went out to the car. Kiki was sitting in the front passenger seat. I pulled out of the yard and back up the hill and along the straight top. I put my foot well down and flipped past the Jaguar fast But my headlights swept the wreck with relish. There had been survivors for I had heard shots, but I saw nothing of them and I did not care.
'Where are we going?' said Kiki.
'Out to dinner,' I said.
'Good,' she said. 'But I shall want to change. Can you stop at the house?' 'Not bloody likely,' I said. 'Be your age.' She grunted. 'What is it?' I said. 'What?' she said. 'Your age?' I said. 'Guess,' she said.
'Twenty-five,' I said. 'Too young to be coy about it.'
'John Brock,' she said. 'You're quite sweet, really. Do you have a mirror in this hot rod?' I pulled down the sunshade to show her the vanity mirror behind it and I gave her my comb. She switched on the roof light and fiddled while we burned the high straight road out of Oxfordshire and west into Gloucestershire.
In twenty miles we passed only one other car. For the rest there was nothing but the bright spread of our lights and the breath of the wind through the open window. Now and then I would brake while a rabbit shook himself out of his trance and lolloped out of the light, and once a short fat fox crossed our path, or it may have been a tall thin badger.
Then we reached Birdlip top, the edge of the Cotswolds, high above the midland plain where the fields are a lush green carpet all the way to Birmingham. I rolled a little way down the hill and pulled up for a moment. Kiki whistled at the fairy lights of Gloucester spread out far below us.
But we were among cars with misted windscreens. The silence of the loving within them was too loud for my comfort, so I turned and drove south-west, where the great limestone Cotswold slabs wrinkle into the deep green folds.
The high road with the stars above became a steep switchback tunnel winding down through high banks of beech trees and past clumps of dark cottages in the black bottoms of the valleys too far from the sky even for television to reach them. Then we crossed the bridge over a dry canal and climbed again. I drove quietly there, and changed gears with care, for in that lane lives a brigadier with a shotgun, and he shoots it at the little farting cars of the rally-drivers.
Then we were over the railway line, past the airfield and onto the flat tops again. Kiki's sea-sick doziness had all gone now, and her eyes were sparkling.
'Are you hungry?' I said.
'I could eat a horse,' she said.
I could probably fix that, I thought. I drove through the cornfields into Tetbury, parked the car and walked Kiki through the quiet streets to the hotel. The moon was up now, floating directly over our heads, and it was painting the little stone town black and white, as sharp as a drawing from a
nursery rhyme. We tiptoed past the thick pillars which hold up the Market House waiting for Wee Willie Winkie to run out of the shadows, but he stayed wherever he was. In the hotel, however, the waiter ran out, waving his hands.
'Are all the children in their beds?' I said.
'It's past eight o'clock,' he said. But he was Italian. His liquid brown eyes misted in sympathy with Kiki's long lying story and he ran back into the kitchen. Violent words floated back to us, then the clatter of pans, then the fragrance of the grilling of meat. Then he returned, waved his hands over a corner table and sat us down in front of two large pieces of meat and two pints of cold bright beer.
When the plates were clean and the mugs were empty, Kiki thrust out her long legs, leaned back, puffed a gleaming thread of hair out of her eyes and belched a delicate belch.
'What now?' she said with a great fed feline smile on her face.
I looked at her. She was gorgeous. All girls are gorgeous, of course, even the pretty ones. But Kiki Kondor, now that she liked me, was getting to be more than I could bear.
'I'm in your hands, aren't I?' she said.
'Yes,' I said, it's a pity you didn't feel that way yesterday.'
'Well,' she said. 'It was different then. I didn't know I needed your help, did I? And also, I didn't know that you were a lot nicer than you look.'
I preened. Not many gorgeous girls tell me how nice I am. My mother did once, I think, and there was a Wren with a musical name but Kiki broke the train of thought.
'So what now?' she said. She jerked her delicate head. The waiter was juggling with sugar cubes and wanting us to go. It was very late for Gloucestershire, so I decided. There were rooms upstairs. But she was too much of a girl to sleep in a warm, carpeted, comfortable, expensive, lonely hotel bedroom.
T am going to break an unbreakable rule,' I said.
'Oh?' she said.
'I'm going to take you home,' I said.
'We can't go back there,' she said. 'You said so yourself.'
'Not your home,' I said. 'My home. I have a cottage about twenty minutes from here.'
'Good,' she said, standing up. 'And what's this rule you're going to break?'
'Taking you there,' I said. T never ever take a job home.'
She stamped her foot. 'I'm not a job,' she said. 'I'm a girl.' 121
Then the musical Tetbury clock chimed twelve chimes. I twitched like Cinderella. 'What's up now?' said Kiki.
'A telephone call,' I said. 'I have to make a telephone call before we go.' I gave her some money to pay the bill and looked for a telephone. It was outside in the fancy-dress baronial foyer, in a moth-eaten sedan chair. The sleepy night-porter got the Grosvenor number for me and I closed the door, did the hokey-kokey and clipped on my scrambler.
'Brock?' said Kelly Byron. 'Is that you, Brock?'
'Yes,' I said.
'Well, come on, man, come on,' he said. 'Where are you? What are you doing? We got to find that girl, man, we got to find that girl.'
'Relax,' I said. 'I've got her. She's here with me.'
He sighed like a gale. 'Let me speak with her,' he said. 'Put her on the line.'
'Not just now,' I said, for I had seen her walking upstairs in search of the ladies' room. 'She can't come to the telephone.'
'Why?' he said. 'Why? Is she all right? What's wrong with her? If she's damaged, Brock, you'll have to answer. Mrs Fairchild was explicit. Where are you, man, where are you? I'll have a man there straight away.'
'Shut up,' I said. 'She's all right. She's just powdering her nose.'
'Ha,' he said. 'Well, where are you? You have to tell me where you are.'
'No,' I said. 'We'll keep that a secret. It's safer that way.'
'Oh boy,' he said. 'Oh boy, Brock, you're building up the trouble.'
'That may be so,' I said, not really caring. 'But I've just spent the evening shaking one set of tails off my arse and I'd rather keep her quiet until Friday. Don't worry, I'll deliver her to the old biddy.'
'Don't you refer to Mrs Fairchild like that,' he was saying when Kiki floated downstairs freshened up and gleaming. She opened the door of my sedan chair and squeezed into the seat beside me.
'Come on, Johnny,' she said. 'I'm tired. Take me to this pad and put me to bed, hey?' She yawned. 'Just coming, ducky,' I said.
'What's that?' screamed Byron down the long line from London. 'What's that? I heard that, Brock, I heard that. You're taking that goddamned girl to bed, I heard you. You know what'll happen if you do that, Brock, you know what'll happen?'
'Of course I do,' I said.
Kiki's eyebrows were raised at the noise so I unscrambled my line and spoke for a while. She giggled, hooked her arm in mine and led me out into the starlight. The little waiter ran after us and gave me a brown paper bag. He was smiling like a Neapolitan sun.
'What's this?' I said.
'Provender,' she said. 'Milk and eggs and that. I'm going to cook your breakfast.'
'Where's my change?' I said.
T told him to keep it,' she said. 'He's sweet.'
'All of it?' I said.
'Of course,' she said.
I put her in the car and drove back through the cornfields. If you are born young and beautiful, I supposed, and knee-deep in hard currency, perhaps you learn to treat other people's money with the contempt it deserves. Then I shrugged, for it was the fat man's money, not mine.
Soon our headlights lit up my own particular huddle of little grey stone houses, that clings to the side of the greenest slope in the county. I switched off the motor so as not to wake Mrs Twissle and we rolled down the lane and into the cow-parsley. • And I led Kiki through the pitch-black village to my cottage.
Nobody, certainly not the fat man, knows about this cottage. No road passes its door, it has no name, no number, no telephone, and apart from Mrs Twissle, no neighbours. It is always there. It has been there for six hundred years, and if I am in it when the big bang burns me into the wall like a shadow, I will burn happy.
Mrs Twissle keeps it aired and dusted and victualled up with instant foods and dried bananas, and she will take a message from my secretary if I am about to be fired. She asks no questions, tells all the lies she can think of, shrieks with eldritch laughter for the pleasure of being alive and jugs a hare better than Isabella Beeton.
But at this time of night she was asleep with whatever man she was sleeping with. I led Kiki silently over the wall and through the trees. I pulled out the stone that hides the key and, with a tiny pang at my shared secret, I ushered her into my house.
'Well,' she said when I lit the light, "how pretty.'
'It's not the Fulbright Tower,' I said, not without pride. I took sheets and blankets from the warm cupboard and showed her the spare room. Then I went back downstairs to the kitchen to make cocoa. I put one mug in my bedroom and knocked her door.
'You can come in,' she said. I opened the door and goggled. My knees turned weak. I felt the juices of panic rise within me. And butterflies hit my stomach like swarming locusts.
Here and now, in this day and age, sex is not as precious as once it was painted. Sex is everywhere, on the beaches, on the bookstalls, on the streets. Jayne Mansfield sends it up, Norman Mailer mucks it up and William Burroughs makes it up. Harold Pinter pickles it, Malcolm Muggeridge mixes it, Brigid Brophy calls it a bloody shovel and James Bond does it with a snorkel. The twentieth-century man is exposed to more sex in one short forty-hour week than his grandfather got in sixty glorious years.
Nevertheless, Kiki Kondor, sitting on the rug before the fire in my little spare room, was the whole song of Solomon, hps like scarlet thread, breasts like young roses, navel like a goblet and belly like a heap of wheat. The joints of her thighs were like jewels and she was wearing one of my string vests from Austin Reed. I listened to the voice of the turtle.
'Stay me with flagons,' I said. 'Comfort me with apples.'
'Sit down,' she said. 'You'll spill that cocoa.' So I let my legs go and, like water, I found my own level.
'Don't be soppy,' she said. 'It's all I could find that suited me. Don't you wear pyjamas?'
'Not down here,' I said. I gave her the cocoa. She sipped it and stretched her long legs towards the fire to warm her toes. I pulled myself together.
'This is all very unsatisfactory,' I said.
'What do you mean?' she said. T think it's all marvellous. Even the cocoa.'
'I don't mean that,' I said. She rose like a dream to her feet.
'Do you mean me?' she said. She tugged at the bottom of my string vest and pulled it into a sort of Mabel Lucie Attwell skirt, i think it's rather attractive.' She twirled.
'If you think you're teasing me,' I snarled, 'you are. And you'd better pack it in. Drink your bloody cocoa and get to bloody bed.'
But she knelt down on the rug beside me, put her long bare arms on my shoulders, looked into my eyes and kissed me.
'That's to thank you, John Brock,' she said, 'for turning up the way you did.'
Then she pushed hard and I was lying on the rug with the richest girl in the world on top of me. Her hps were touching mine and when she spoke to me I tasted her breath.
'I'm not teasing, Brock,' she said. 'So what's unsatisfactory.'
'Not a blind bloody thing,' I said.
Then, a bit later, she said, 'Kiss me, Brock,' and behind my back, once again, I heard the fat man's chariot hurrying near, and Kelly Byron and the old biddy shouting about continence.
'Kiss you?' I said. 'Kiss you? I shouldn't even be doing this.' So I stopped doing it, twitched my torso and rolled her off onto the rug. I got shakily to my feet, turned down her sheets, picked her up and dumped her in the bed. Then I slammed out into the bathroom to beat myself with a cold wet towel.
Then I walked back, cooler and a little less pregnable. Kiki was lying in bed, her long curves smoothed out by my thick blankets. But her hair was splashed over the pillow.
'Are you all right?' I said.
'Yes,' she said, her eyes closed. 'Put the light out, I want to go to sleep.'
'You will,' I said. 'I put a tablet in your cocoa. But first, let's see if we can decide what's happening.'
She shrugged and the sheets fell away from her shoulders. They were brown and smooth and round and she seemed not to care.
'Don't you care?' I said. 'You're being chased all over England. This can't be usual, even for a gorgeous dolly like you.'
'Of course I care,' she said. 'I was frightened. But not with you, Brock.' She sat up in bed and stretched her arms. But this time I did not twitch. The way she sat and the way she opened her long arms lit up the picture that I had been keeping in the dark part of my mind. I looked at my watch. Just twenty-four hours ago, Julie Bateman had been alive and melting and full of charlie.
Kiki saw her in my eyes. She shuddered and lowered her arms.
'I know,' she said. 'I was not forgetting. Only pretending to.' 'Those letters,' I said.
'The letters that worry Mrs Fairchild?' she said. 'I wish I'd never mentioned them.' 'But they must have worried you as well,' I said. 126
They were a bit spooky,' she said. 'More vicious than most. Vaguely religious and hysterical. Sodom and Gomorrah, and a lot about fouling the nest and about money and the business. And there was a bit that cropped up all the time.'
"What was that?' I said.
'Something about God,' she said. 'God watches blindly and who watches God? Something like that'
T met a man called Swenson last night,' I said.
'I know of him,' she said. 'Junior wanted me to see him. He said my father would benefit from his advice. Queer sort of a poet, I thought'
"Those letters,' I said, 'sound like his poems.'
'Don't be silly,' she said.
'I'm not being silly,' I said. 'One of Swenson's men was following me around London all day yesterday. And I had a run-in with him in Soho. He was also one of the men who was waiting for you and Satan Smith tonight, so it doesn't need Sherlock Holmes to conclude that Swenson is the man who is chasing you.'
'Elementary,' she said. 'Now tell me why.'
'I don't know,' I said, remembering what I had heard in the dark up above Bag o'Nails. 'But you'll be pleased know that you're not a major operation.'
'Charming,' she said. 'Conclude me some more.'
'All right,' I said. 'Swenson is mixed up somehow with Newman, I mean Junior, your future inadequate spouse. And he also has some sort of contact with Deirdre. And Deirdre, don't forget, knew how to find you.'
'Hm,' she murmured. The tablet was working now, and her eyelids were drooping. In another minute she was asleep. I arranged the sheets around her, switched the fire down to one bar, opened the window and kissed her sleeping lips.
Then I tiptoed to my room and lay in bed listening to the screech of a hunting owl across the valley.
Then I got out of bed again, put on my dressing gown, found some money and padded out of the black village to the telephone box on the crossroads. Muir was on night duty in Addison Road.
'Why are you still awake?' I said. 'It's past two o'clock.'
'Him and His bloody scrabble,' said Muir.
'Never mind,' I said. 'Here's something to help him go to sleep. Tell him I've found the Kondor girl.'
'He knows,' said Muir, unimpressed. 'That man Byron's been on the fine complaining about your attitude.'
'Oh,' I said. 'Well, anyway, take down these names. Swenson. And Deirdre.' He grunted without enthusiasm.
'Deirdre,' I said, 'is a butch who works for the Kondor girl. She walked out of the Fulbright Tower last night. See if anyone knows where.'
'Perhaps the night-porter will remember something,' he said without enthusiasm. 'And Swenson?'
'Anything you can get,' I said. 'Anything at all. He's a sort of poet. With disciples. You know, metaphysical?'
'What do you mean,' he said, 'metaphysical?'
'The way you felt about your cricket captain at school,' I said. 'Get what you can, eh?'
'Where are you?' he said. 'I'll ring back.'
'I'm not available,' I said. 'I'll telephone you in the morning.'
'Ask for Greene,' he said. 'It's my day off.' So I walked back through the village to my bed. Kiki was snoring her delicate snore, the owl was still hunting across the valley and when I woke up, the thin, warm September sun was slicing through the curtains.
What woke me, in fact, was the grave, steady gaze from Kiki's eyes. She was up and dressed, wearing her own slacks and one of my jumpers from the cupboard, and she was standing by the window as still as a statue, holding the curtain a slice apart.
When she saw that I was awake, she pursed her mouth for silence and jerked her head for me to come. Her eyes were big and round and swivelled back to look down through the curtains. I slid out of bed and joined her fast, expecting to see anything at all, from Satan Smith to Groon. But all I saw was Clutterbuck's cows.
'Well?' I said.
'They're in the garden,' she whispered.
'That's not the garden,' I said. 'That's Clutterbuck's field. The garden's round the other side.'
'I've never seen them this close before,' she said. 'Are they safe?'
'You just stick close to me,' I said.
'Not until you put some clothes on,' she said, so I dressed and took her downstairs.
While I went to get some bread, she scrambled eggs and made coffee. And while she was clearing up I went back to the telephone box.
'Muir left a note,' said Greene, 'and I've been on the line to Seebie.'
'Good,' I said. 'Tell me.'
'This Swenson's a poet,' said Greene. 'Look here, Brock, you're not using official channels again to get copy for that bloody magazine, are you?'
'No,' I said. 'He's the bloke that's chasing the Kondor girl, I think, and I want to know about him.'
'Oh,' said Greene doubtfully, 'I can't see why he should be. He's a bit weird, but Seebie has nothing on him, old boy.'
'Nothing at all?'I said.
'He has something, of course,' said Greene. 'Seebie has something on everybody. Quite a lot, actually. This chap Swenson is down in the book as a Class Two Complex. But it's all above board, says Seebie.'
'What?' I said.
'Yes,' said Greene. 'He's a poet, as you know, and quite well thought of on the loony fringe. Eggheads, you know. I don't go for his gibberish myself. I prefer a little Tennyson. Perhaps a spot of Swinburne for kicks. But not this sort of crap.'
'Yes, yes, yes,' I said. 'But what about the man?'
'He seems harmless enough,' he said. 'He travels around, giving recitals and taking his clothes off, Seebie says. Taking his clothes off?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I've seen him do it.'
'Ugh,' he said. 'Yes, well, I suppose you advertising chappies have to get around don't you?' 'Anything else?' I said.
'Seebie says no,' he said. 'He can't see why you're checking on the chap. He says his income is surprising, especially the contributions from industry. But it's all above board, he says, and there are no grounds for investigation.'
'Contributions,' I said. 'You mean money?'
'Of course I mean money,' said Greene. 'The chap's as rich as Croesus, as you probably know.'
'He doesn't look it,' I said.
'They often don't,' he said. 'But Seebie says he is and Seebie's never wrong about money.'
'Exactly where does he get it?' I said.
'Hang on,' said Greene, 'I have it all on an onion-skin, but it's still damp.' I waited. 'Here we go,' he said. 'He started filling the old ditty-box about three years ago when he started hitting the headlines.' Greene whistled. 'The first big contribution he got was from General Bakeries of America. A flat
itg-o 129
million dollars, it says here. I say, old boy, can they afford that kind of money? You know these things.'
They could then,' I said. 'But not now. They're out of business.'
'Ha,' he said. 'That's a fly boy, eh? He got in there at the right time. Anyway, his current list of patrons looks pretty gilt-edged, I must say. Listen to these.'
And Greene reeled off a list of big companies that read like the back page of the Financial Times. Venus Confections, Ardua-Astral, Cosmetique, Soixante-Neuf, Boston Tea, The Anacron Watch Company, Moussarde.
'Moussarde?' I said.
'That's right, old boy,' said Greene. 'Moussarde, City Foundations.'
'Hang on a minute,' I said. 'Moussarde is Newman's company.'
'Newman?' said Greene.
The old biddy's son,' I said. 'Morton Fairchild Junior.'
'Oh,' said Greene without interest. 'Anyway, there it is and I'm damned if I can see why Seebie can't have the common decency to put things in alphabetical order. One's records get into an absolute pickle, you know.'
'Swenson gets big money from all these companies?' I said.
'Yes,' said Greene.
'What does he do for it?' I said.
'How should I know, old boy?' he said. 'Seebie says he's on their books as a consultant. What they consult him about is your guess, not mine.'
I wondered. General Bakeries had made business history, dropping to the bottom of a buoyant market in two short years. Venus Confections was losing its share steadily and Anacron was accelerating its recent deceleration as though the brakes were seizing up. Moussarde, I remembered had moved emphatically down the scale, largely due to Newman's Brown Label operation. I wondered about the other companies on Swenson's list.
'Are you there, old boy?' Greene was saying.
'Yes,' I said. 'Where does Swenson hang out?'
'He has an office in Soho,' he said. 'A registered office. I ask you, Brock, a poet with a bloody registered office.'
'Anywhere else?' I said.
'Seebie says he has a temple somewhere,' he said. T ask you, Brock, a bloody temple.' 'Where?' I said.
T don't know,' he said.
'Can Seebie find out?' I said.
'I can't keep pestering Seebie,' said Greene. 'It costs money you know.'
'What's he want my girl for?' I wondered.
'She's not your girl,' said Greene. 'And that's the sort of intuitive leap I have been taught not to make. And anyway, all you've got to do is to look after the girl. Leave the rest to us, eh?'
'That's what the fat man said,' I said.
'I know, old boy,' he said. 'About the woman Deirdre. There's nothing, I'm afraid. She slammed out two nights ago and got into a car. There were two chaps in it. That's why the doorman noticed, her being what she is.'
'A Jag?' I said, thinking of the wreck up on the ridge beyond Burford.
'I don't know, old boy,' he said. 'I don't know what that kind do for their kicks, how would I? Perhaps she was off on a jag, perhaps not. Come to think of it, old boy, where would she go on a bender?
Female homosexuality is one of the topics on which a British public schoolboy can let himself go. Greene chortled to himself for a while. 'I've got it, old boy,' he said. 'Listen to this.'
'For God's sake,' I said, 'tell it to Muir. I mean a Jaguar, you dirty-minded tuck-box. Two-point-four. Three-point-four. E-type.'
'Ah,' he said. 'The motor-car. I see, old boy. I thought you meant a toot. No, they didn't say.' I put down the telephone.
I stood at the crossroads and savoured the morning. It is a long, long time from May to December and it should stop when we reach September. The days dwindle down to too flaming few and there is a touch of age and wisdom on the land. So I savoured the air and surveyed the village.
It changes little and I knew it well. Across the valleys, the sun was smoking out the last tatters of mist from the hollows. A tractor chugged behind the trees. In the deep valley bottom, Miss Trowbridge's old mare kicked up her heels at a sudden screech from the sawmill.
Old Howkins's compost heap was just as big as it used to be and Clutterbuck's farmhouse was still crambling the way it had crumbled for four hundred years. But no breakfast smoke rose from its tilted chimneys. In the centre of the field stood an ugly wooden pole sprouting insulators and cable. Clutterbuck had electricity now, I saw, and perhaps even a milking machine.
I sighed. From the hedges I plucked a handful of snow-berries to kick ahead of me as I walked around the village and back to Kiki. The road I took was hardly an armspan wide and built for horses. The stone walls of the cottages, where they jutted into the roadway, were scarred with the marks of lorries.
In ten minutes I had beaten the bounds and I was standing knee-deep in chickens at Mrs Twissle's back-door. She asked me in, poured me a cup of tea and went on taking the curlers from her thick brown hair.
'I heard a car last night,' she said. 'And I thought it must be you. Well, either you or the new chap down in the canal cottage.'
'Did I wake you up?' I said.
'No,' she said. 'Me and Fred were still awake.'
'Fred?' I said.
'Yes,' she said. 'You won't have met him, will you? 'He's 132
from down the valley, been living with his married sister since his mam died, and made to sleep in the cowshed. He says he'd rather sleep with me, I don't snore too strong. Her laughter screamed around the room, out of the window and up into the sunshine.
Then she filled a box with huge vegetables from her garden and said she would get me bread from the baker and milk from the milkman. 'And I'll get Fred to do you a bird when he gets back,' she said. 'Who have you got down there?'
'Just a friend,' I said.
'Ah,' she said. 'I know it wasn't that secretary of yours this time. She telephoned yesterday, looking for you. Been off on one of your outings, have you?'
'You didn't tell her I was here, did you?' I said.
'Of course I didn't,' she said. 'Anyway, you weren't, not when she phoned.'
'No,' I said. 'And I'm still not. If she calls again, say you haven't seen me.'
'Of course,' she said.
'And that goes for anyone else, too,' I said.
'Don't worry,' she said. 'I'm having plenty of practice lately.'
'What do you mean?' I said. 'Who else has been after me?'
'Not you,' she said. 'Fred. His married sister rings up ten times a day. Everything's in his name, you see.'
So I walked back home. Kiki had done the dishes and made the beds.
'Did you have a restless night?' she said. 'Your bed was all in pieces.'
I made some coffee and we sat outside the back door, peeling a mountain of Mrs Twissle's beans. Then Mrs Twissle came around herself, with the bird, a fat, plucked, warm chicken. She appreciated Kiki, winked at me and went. Kiki looked at the chicken dubiously.
'Don't worry,' I said. 'Let it cook itself.' I set the dash-board of my cooker, stuffed the bird into the oven and switched on. 'Come on,' I said. 'I'll drive you around the pubs.'
She looked at my watch. It was half-past ten. 'It's a bit early for cocktails,' she said.
'Not cocktails,' I said. 'Beer.'
It was not too early. As a matter of fact, it was a little late. In Gloucestershire the pubs open at ten o'clock every morning and they sell beer worth drinking under signs worth looking at. I took her on a tour of all my favourite pictures. There is a sort of Holbein in Woodchester and a sort of Munnings on
Aston Down. The British Oak at the bottom of Butter Row is fat and green and juicily painted and a Union Jack waves from its highest branch. The Royal Oak in Painswick is equally green and juicy and King Charles's crown lies on the grass beneath it, on a map of the road to Edgehill.
The Lamb in Stroud is fat, white and woolly, knee-deep in red clover and yellow primroses, and the Ram of Bussage stands high and haughty above the silver gleam of the distant Severn. We finished at the sign of the Ragged Cot, on which is a painting of the Ragged Cot and its sign on which is a painting of the Ragged Cot and its sign.
'One day,' I said, T am going to climb up there and count how introspective a painter of pub signs can get.'
'I want another glass of beer,' said Kiki happily.
'Are you quite sure?' I said, for we had drunk the artist's health beneath each of his greatest works.
'Yes,' she said. 'I've never drunk beer like this. I like it.' So she sat in the garden drinking beer while I walked along the road to the telephone. There was nothing at all to report but Byron was no happier for that.
'I've been onto the goddamned boss of yours again,' he said, 'and he keeps telling me not to worry.'
'That's right,' I said. 'Everything's fine. You can have the girl when you want her.'
'We'll want her on Friday,' he said.
'All right,' I said. 'Until then, don't worry.'
'But I have to worry,' he screamed. 'That's what I'm paid for. And I don't know where you are and nobody will tell me and Mrs Fairchild wants to know.'
'We're somewhere in England,' I said. 'Tell her that.'
'You can't have heard me, Brock,' he said. T said Mrs Fairchild wants to know where you are.'
'Look,' I said, 'I've found the girl and she's safe. We're out of circulation and having a pleasant quiet time. That's what the old biddy wanted and that's what she's getting. Leave it at that.' I belched a little. We had been drinking too much beer.
'You're drunk, Brock,' he shouted. 'I don't trust you goddamned limeys. I don't trust you.' So I unscrambled, walked back to the Ragged Cot, loaded her into the car and drove her home to eat burned chicken and green beans.
Then we went into the garden and laid ourselves out in the sun, to wear away all the beer. The tractor still sounded over the rim of the hill, chugging the afternoon away.
'What about you?' said Kiki a long while later.
'Huh?' I said. I had been almost asleep. 'Tell me about you,' she said.
'There's nothing to tell,' I said. 'I'm just what I appear to be, I'm afraid. No more and no less.'
'You must be more than that,' she said. 'What makes you tick? Besides hitting people, I mean. The only times I have seen you animated were when you knocked down poor Bugsie in London and again last night when you laid out that Satan Smith.'
'That's right,' I said. 'Just doing my job.' 'Well,' she said. 'What else do you believe in, beside doing your job?'
'Nothing,' I said. 'Life's too short.'
'Well, why are you taking care of me like this?' she said. 'It's a job,' I said.
'But you must care a bit,' she said.
T do,' I said. 'I care a lot. If I don't, that fat bastard in Addison Road will throw me to the Indians.'
'Is that all?' she said, punching the grass with her fist. 'Don't you care about anything at all?'
'Yes,' I said, to shut her up. 'I care about black men.'
'Ah,' she said. She nodded approvingly.
'Yes,' I said. 'Who do they think they are?'
'What?' she said, shocked.
'Coming over here,' I said, 'taking our fares and sweeping our streets. It was us who invented the double-glazed windows and the electric blankets, not them. Who do they think they are?'
'What?' she said, sitting up.
'They've had it too good too long,' I said. 'All they ever had to do was to lie on their backs in the sun. When they fancied a bit of fish, all they had to do was to fling a line in the river and it came up covered in haddock. If they wanted a bit of meat they just had to stick their spears into the bush. If they fancied a bird they just banged the drum.'
'What?' she said, going red in the face.
'Apart from that,' I said, 'they've spent a million years lying on their backs in the sun underneath the coconut tree, waiting for bananas to drop into their mouths. What could be more stupid than that?'
She was breathing hard now, and getting redder.
"They're cunning, though,' I said. 'We have to admit that they're cunning. That's why we British could never let the sun set on them. You can't see them in the dark. They would be crawling up your drainpipe, claiming their share of the coconuts before you could say Rudyard Kipling.'
'Say that again,' she said. She was standing up now, and quivering with rage.
'Rudyard Kipling,' I said. 'That limping lump of brickdust Rudyard Kipling. Though we caned them and we raped them, by the living God we draped them. Which accounts for the rise of the Lancashire cotton industry.'
'You're sending me up, you bastard,' she said. It made her angrier still. She aimed a kick at me but I caught her tiny foot and tumbled her over on top of me.
'There are things you shouldn't joke about,' she said. I put my arms around her and clucked my apologies. She accepted it and settled against my side. So I remembered my place, got up and pulled her to her feet.
'Come on,' I said. 'Everything stops for tea.'
She stamped her foot. 'For God's sake, Brock,' she said. 'What's wrong with you?'
I knew what was wrong with me. The fat man was wrong with me. He was less than a hundred miles away. But a cup of strong tea calmed my feelings and I got Kiki to do a little overdue weeding in my artichocke bed while I tried to mow the plantains and creeping buttercups off my lawn.
The long golden afternoon passed. Then Kiki set the table for another meal. I looked at the burned chicken. Then I opened a tin of pilchards and a bottle of hock. Then I opened another bottle and by the time we had cleared up the sun was low in the sky. I sat Kiki in my armchair by the window to wait for my favourite spectacle, the moment before the sun drops under the ridge, when it sets a golden halo around the big oak tree in Clutterbuck's field.
The echo of a breeze came through the open window and riffled a thread of Kiki's hair. She sighed, and in a companionable silence, we listened to the tiny evening sounds of the countryside. Then there was a crashing. Two wood pigeons broke out of Clutterbuck's oak, followed by the black-and-white flash of a magpie. Kiki jumped.
T thought the birds settled with the sun,' she said.
'They do,' I said. 'Something startled them. A sound from the village. Or a squirrel in the tree.'
'It's a bloody big squirrel,' said Kiki. T can see it. It's life-sized.'
'Most of them are,' I said. 'Even the little ones.' 'No,' she said. T mean it's big. Like a man.'
'Nonsense,' I said. I looked. The sun had moved behind the tree and was glowing through the leaves. A nervous dolly could imagine, I supposed, a shape in the cleft of the branches.
'Nonsense,' I said again. 'Old Howkins is the only peeper in the village. And he's too old to get up there.'
'Satan Smith,' said Kiki. 'Could he have got after us?'
'Not a chance,' I said. 'Relax and look at the sunset.'
For another few seconds, the sun painted the oak tree with its last light. Then it winked out over the far ridge and my spectacle was over. But I relished it less than usual. Kiki's unrest was affecting me. I could see the hump in the cleft of the tree and I even thought I saw it move, in the last split second of light. But I shrugged it off.
'Look,' I said. 'Nobody knows about this place. Nobody at all.'
'Nobody?' she said. That's what I thought about the White House. But you found it. And so did Satan Smith. Are you sure about this place?'
'Absolutely,' I said. 'Nobody can reach me here, except my secretary.'
'Ah,' she said.
'Don't be silly,' I said. 'What would she be doing up a bloody tree?'
'I don't know,' she said. 'I don't know what relationship you have with her. All the same, I don't like it.'
'Grah,' I said. But I remembered that my secretary had telephoned to Mrs Twissle. It must have been about advertising, I thought. It couldn't have been important.
'AH right,' I said. 'If you feel like that, we'll put up the barricades.'
Then I sipped my hock wondering what I had in the way of barricades. The walls were all four feet thick. But the doors were not. There was a man down the valley who is said to have trained his bees to sting foreigners, but this was the wrong time of the year for bees. They were all forty miles away now, following the clover and the westering sun.
'What barricades?' said Kiki.
'We will use,' I said, 'the magic of science.' I had remembered the chemistry lessons I had tried to give to Mrs Twissle's eldest boy. I took a light into the old stone larder and felt carefully around the highest shelf. Then I carefully carried a jam jar back and set it carefully in the middle of the table.
'What's that?' said Kiki. 'That's brown sludge, not barricades.' She went to pick it up. I knocked her hand away.
'Careful,' I said. T was giving a chemistry lesson to Mrs Twissle's eldest. Look.'
I took a knife and very carefully picked out a minute crumb of the dry brown sludge. I laid it on the stone of the hearth, stepped back and tapped it with the poker. It exploded with a fine brisk bang.
'Take your finger off, that would,' I said. 'Marvellous, isn't it? And you know what it is?'
'No,' said Kiki. 'What is it?'
'Nothing more or less,' I said proudly, 'than iodine and ammonia. You just mix it and let it dry. A useful thing to know, that is.'
And you were teaching kids how to make it?' said Kiki. 'They might have killed themselves.'
'Mrs Twissle wouldn't mind,' I said. 'She's got lots.'
Kiki snorted. 'And anyway,' she said, 'what use is that going to be?'
'You just watch,' I said. I set about separating the sludge into crumbs. After ten slow minutes I had scarred the table in three places, but I had enough minute bangers to booby-trap the garden path and all the ground beneath each of the windows. I took them outside and placed them carefully around the house.
'There,' I said. 'You can sleep easy now. If anyone comes sniffing around, we can lie in bed and listen to them blowing off their toes.'
'But what if it's that nice Mrs Twissle?' she said.
'She won't be around at this time of night,' I said. 'And if she is, she'll take the hint.'
Kiki stretched and yawned. 'Can I have a bath?' she said.
'Of course,' I said. I ran it for her and she sang in it for me. Then she opened the door and thrust her long smooth arm at me.
'Hand me that vest of yours, will you?' she said.
'Jesus,' I said. 'Don't let's start all that again. I beg you.'
'On your knees, then,' she said, coming out of the bathroom.
Nothing much happened that night, however. Nothing, I thought, that I need report to the fat man or to Kelly Byron. Half the tearaways in the west country might have blown their toes off down in the garden but we heard nothing at all, and I woke up as bright as the sky and singing like one of Clutterbuck's cows. I made the breakfast, shook Kiki awake and poured her coffee into an astrological mug marked Virgo.
'Hurry up,' I said. 'We're going for a walk in the valley.'
I went to the door and breathed deep. I bounced down the path and stopped to shout at her. And as she appeared at last in the doorway someone took a shot at me. I dived into my artichoke patch and yelled at her to take cover. The silly girl was standing in the doorway laughing at me.
'Get out of sight, you silly bitch,' I shouted. 'Someone's taking a shot at us.'
She went on laughing.
'You bloody fool,' she said. 'It's you. You're storming your own barricades.' And I picked myself up remembering my booby-traps. I dusted myself down and started all over again.
'We're still going for a walk in the valley,' I said. She leaped across the path onto the grass and then over the wall into the lane. I did the same, grumbling. I would have to go around the bloody house with a garden roller, exploding all the bangers I had scattered. When I reached her, she stretched up to kiss me.
'I like you when you're sheepish,' she said. 'Make some more mistakes for me.'
'Not here,' I said. 'Someone might see.' But there was no one to see, no one at all. Then we struck off across the field and down into the valley bottom. I showed Kiki the badger run and the place where the wild strawberries grow. She petted Miss Trowbridge's old sagging mare and sniffed the raw wood in the sawmill. We picked up a handful of fat blackberries.
Then we set off up the valley along the dry canal and away 139
from the world. The green slopes narrowed above us and the trees closed in to a green darkness, sliced now and then by thin shafts of morning sun. We walked for an hour. Then we stopped and the silence filled itself with little country noises.
We heard the scuttle of small animals in the bushes, all sounding bigger than they were, the tiny slither of a green lizard or a grass snake or even an adder, the bigger noise of a wandering hare or a fox. We heard the peevish call of a late wryneck looking for fellow-travellers, and the Spanish chatter of the tits was in every bush. From high over our heads came the occasional crash as pigeons broke out of the trees into the sunshine.
Kiki found a log upholstered in green moss, and she was sitting like some swinging Titania, her hair glinting in a slice of sunshine, her skin glowing in the cool green light.
'It's like we're the only people in the world,' she said.
'We're not alone,' I said. I pointed into the depths of the wood beside me. "There's a witch lives in there.'
'Have you seen her?' she said.
'No,' I said. 'But I came here in the spring with some of Mrs Twissle's children. We left food for her.' 'What does she eat?' said Kiki.
'Always the same thing,' I said. 'Treacle tart and Coco-Cola.' 'Nonsense,' she said.
'It's true,' I said. 'The kids came back later and it was all gone.'
'Don't be silly,' she said. "They're having you on. They ate it themselves.'
'I prefer to believe otherwise,' I said.
'Well, all right,' she said. 'Let's go and see.'
'Not now,' I said. 'We'd have to cross a patch of wild garlic' I settled down on the dry rustling floor of the wood, my back against her log, listening to the trickle of water, a tiny stream that was a rushing torrent in the spring rains.
'If I lived here,' said Kiki, 'I would stay here. But you spend most of your life in London.'
'I have my job to do,' I said.
'You mean like looking after me?' she said. 'But surely someone else could do jobs like that?'
T mean advertising,' I said. 'This other is just part-time. But advertising is vital.'
'Nonsense,' she said. 'Business would survive without you.'
'Not business,' I said. 'Civilisation.'
'What?' she said.
'Civilisation,' I said. "That which sets us apart from the Trobrianders.' 'Who the hell are they?' she said. 'A primitive society,' I said. 'So?' she said.
'Well,' I said. 'We are civilised. We know what to do, where to go, what to eat and how to eat it. The Trobriander has to stay where he is and take what he can get if he can get it'
'So?' she said.
'Our know-how comes from advertising,' I said. 'Advertising tells us what to do. It even tells why. Player's please, Guinness is good for you, happiness is egg-shaped. It helps you work, rest and play.'
'But look here,' she said.
'No,' I said. 'You listen to me. Without advertising, civilisation would crumble. You wouldn't know what to ask for.' 'You bloody fool,' she said.
'First,' I said, 'you would run out of petrol. Then you would run out of food. You would starve to death in a dirty vest' 'I beg your pardon?' she said.
'It's true,' I said. 'How would you know what washes whitest?'
'You're sending me up again,' she said ominously. She rolled me into a prickly bush. When I got up she was almost out of sight in the dim green wood and I hurried after her. 'Can't you ever be serious?' she said.
'What about?' I said. 'What is there to be serious about?'
'Me,' she said.
'You?' I said. 'I'd be a right bloody fool to get serious about you.' 'Why?' she said. 'You're too rich,' I said. 'Grah,' she said.
'And anyway,' I said, 'you're just about to be married, for God's sake.'
She walked on through the green tunnel of the valley in silence. After a while she spoke.
'Yes,' she said, thoughtfully, as though she had forgotten. 'I suppose I am.'
'You don't sound so sure,' I said.
'No,' she said.
'If you don't,' I said, 'Mrs Fairchild will flip her lid. She's in deadly earnest I would say.'
'I know,' she said. 'So is my father, I think.'
'What about you?' I said. 'You can't like that bloke.'
'Junior, you mean?' she said." 'I thought I did. I know he's weak, but he seemed pleasant enough. And on my circuit, you learn not to expect very much anyway.'
'So what's giving you second thoughts?' I said.
'You, I suppose,' she said doubtfully. 'But you can take that stupid grin off your face.'
I tried hard but the grin stayed there. Kiki was walking ahead, talking as much to herself as to me.
'It's not what you think,' she was saying. T don't think it is, anyway. It's just that you don't seem to be looking for an edge all the time. Every man I've met for years and years is on the make, one way or another.'
"That shouldn't surprise you,' I said. 'You're well worth making.'
'I know,' she said. 'And that's what I mean. You couldn't care less.'
'You don't understand,' I said. 'It's Jerusalem I talk about, but it's you I'm dreaming of, baby.'
She snorted. 'See?' she said. Then she jumped into my arms. 'What was that?'
'It was a voice from above,' I said.
'What did it say?' she said.
'It said for us to stand quite still and listen,' I said. 'Who is it?' she said. 'Satan Smith,' I said.
I looked around. We were deep in the narrowing neck of the valley. The dry canal bed had long since turned off and into an old crumbling tunnel and now we were facing the steep blank end of a fold in the hills. From here, the path ran up ahead of us and out of the trees onto the bare top of Juniper Hill, and we were out of reach of people.
This particular piece of land was too remote even to farm. My own village was the nearest one, five miles behind us. There was a road up above us, but it was a mile or so away.
Satan Smith's voice sounded again, still polite and gentle. 'I hope you heard me, look,' he was saying. 'We don't want no mishap this time, do we? So you just do what I say, Mr Brock, and make sure the lady does too.'
His voice came from high up the slope, above the trees over our right shoulders. I could not see him and he could not see us. But he knew exactly where we were. I looked back down the valley behind us.
'I've a man down there behind you, haven't I?' he shouted, 'So I hope you're not thinking about going back.' He raised his voice higher. 'Just let the gentleman know you are there, Willy, will you?'
'I'm here, all right, Mr Smith,' shouted a voice behind me. I judged it to be about a hundred yards away. But the trees may have muffled the voice, I thought, and the man may be nearer. There was no future in going back. And none in hanging around.
'What shall we do?' Kiki was whispering.
'Straight up the slope to our left,' I whispered. 'Now.'
I pushed her off and we crashed up through the trees. It was hard going, and after the first few yards we were both puffing like steam engines, scrambling up the steep side of the hill, tripping over roots, bursting through the trees, hauling ourselves upwards on whippy young saplings. Our faces were slashed by twigs and our eyes were filling with leaf dust.
Behind me, I heard the vague sound of Satan Smith calling out instructions. But we were making too much noise of our own to hear what he was saying.
After about fifty yards, though, I felt as heavy as Ben Navis. And Kiki was breathing like a sherpa. I pushed her into the shelter of a thick tree trunk, where she would be shielded from any shots from below. I could hear Willy whoever he was, crashing up the valley bottom, and the sound of Satan Smith coming down the opposite slope. Then I caught a quick glimpse of him through the trees, swinging down the other side on his massive crutch.
'I forgot to tell you, Mr Brock, sir,' he called across as he descended, 'that I have another man up there above you, haven't I?'
At the same moment, Kiki screeched a warning screech and I turned up the slope. The third man was rearing out of a bush and pushing himself off down at us. Then he was thundering headlong at Kiki like a rogue elephant, almost out of control on the steep slope. I pushed Kiki hard out of his path into a bush and dived after her. But I caught my foot in a root and fell short. And the crashing shape was on to me.
So I tucked myself in like Wilfred Wooller stopping the All Blacks and rolled my back towards him. He cannoned into me knee-high, took off as from a launching pad and flew headfirst into the thick trunk of the beech tree ahead of him. The tree shook, he slid peacefully to the ground. Three copper-coloured leaves floated onto his head and I picked up Kiki and pushed off again up the slope and away.
As we got higher, the sunshine began to trickle through the trees and the bushes grew thicker. The going was even harder until at last we hit a narrow open path, first made, perhaps by the badgers, and then consolidated by Miss Trowbridge on her slow morning canters. The path wound along the side of the slope and on the flat springy, hoof-stamped turf we were able to run fast and silently.
In a few breathless minutes we were a long way from where I hoped they thought we were. We stopped and listened. From behind us came the sounds of voices, as Satan Smith and Willy beat their way up the slope.
'Back down into the bottom,' I whispered. 'They'll hit the path soon.'
On my own, perhaps, I could have got down silently. But then, I thought, if I was on my own I would never have been there in the first place. Kiki was making more noise than a
flock of girl Guides and labouring still. She needed a rest. Halfway down again, I saw a falling tree had torn a hole in the ground and its spreading roots made a sort of tiny cave. I bundled us into it.
There was silence now. Smith must have reached the pathway. They were listening too. I held Kiki close in the tiny earthy hole. She was less frightened than I thought and calmed herself quickly. Then a rustle sounded beside our heads. We froze and stopped breathing. But two small eyes regarded us for a second and we relaxed. It was a squirrel. It looked at us hard, bared its teeth into a sort of grin and went about its business. Kiki giggled silently.
'He smokes too much,' she whispered. 'He has brown teeth.'
"They all do,' I whispered.
'Not Squirrel Nutkin,' she whispered.
I wondered how she knew. Nobody knows if Beatrix Potter herself knew that squirrels have brown teeth. She always drew Nutkin with his mouth closed. But there were more important things to wonder about. Like why I didn't have a gun.
'What are we going to do?' she said.
T don't know,' I said. 'There were only three, I think, and one is out of action, I hope. I wish I had a gun.' Then I remembered. 'You had a gun yesterday.'
She wriggled around in the hole and pulled a tiny pistol from her pocket. I took it gratefully. Then Smith's gentle voice floated down from the path above us.
'They've gone to earth somewhere, look, Willy, he said. I've half a mind to think they've gone back the other way just to fool us. I'll go up that way, look, and you go down this way. You got that shot-gun loaded, have you?'
'Yes, Mr Smith,' said Willy.
'Right, then,' said Satan Smith. 'If you see them, you shoot low. We don't want to kill them, do we?'
T suppose not, Mr Smith,' said Willy.
'And if you hear them, Willy,' said Smith, 'just you let off a barrel to tell me.'
'Yes, Mr Smith,' said Willy. And in a moment all was silence again. Satan Smith had moved away as fast and as silently on his great crutch as a hunting fox. I pressed down my hands to lift my head an inch above the rim of our hole, and I twisted my neck to look up the slope. Through the bushes above me, I could see Willy's feet, and, a little higher, the two black holes of the barrels of a shot-gun pointing straight at me. I lowered myself again fast.
rro-io 145
I thought for a second or two but there was really no choice. We could have sat and cuddled until nightfall, I suppose. Or we could do something sooner, while Satan Smith was still ranging the far end of the valley. I pressed my lips to Kiki's ear and spoke as silently as I could.
'When Willy goes past,' I said. 'You nip down to the bottom of the slope.'
She put her lips to my ear. 'What about you?' she said.
I kissed her ear. 'I'm going down fancy,' I said. I picked a lump of earth from the side of our hole and chucked it hard down below me. Willy fired off one barrel into the air and charged down towards the sound. I let him get past, then I leaped onto his back and rode him, piggy-back, all the way down. My weight forbade him to stop and he careered headlong forwards and downward, bucking like a bronco and giving me a rough ride.
When we reached the bottom, I did a smart forward roll over his head that spreadeagled him into the fallen leaves. Then I rolled over and onto my feet, ready as Roy Rogers ever was to see to my mount before I took care of myself. But there was no need. Willy had seen to himself. He had given himself the left barrel in the right leg and he was squealing and bleeding like a Gloucester Blackspot. I walked over, picked up his shotgun and showed him the safety-catch.
'I hope you'll remember next time,' I said, and tapped his temple with the hard end. Then Kiki reached the bottom and I herded her back down the valley.
'That was very neat,' she said as we jogged along the track.
'Well,' I said, 'we're down to evens now. There's just one of them left, I hope.'
'Willy?' called Satan Smith from above. 'Have you got them Willy?'
'The nastiest one,' said Kiki. She shuddered and I jogged her along a little faster. There was a good chance of getting her back to civilisation now, I thought. Then I could park her safely and come back unencumbered and deal with Satan Smith. Soon the valley opened up again and the dry canal came out of its tunnel to join us. I jumped down onto the cropped turf of its bed and handed Kiki down after me. We jogged on for a few minutes.
'Cheer up,' I said. 'We're on the last lap now and we can slow down. He's probably still back there looking for Willy.'
'Ah,' said Satan Smith. 'That's where you're wrong, look.
I'm not back there at all, am I? I'm down here, aren't I?'
'He is, isn't he?' I said to Kiki as I stepped in front of her and looked up at the big smiling yokel, standing as still as an oak tree on the bank above us. He leaned forward and placed the rubber end of his crutch down on the turf in front of me. Then he swung himself down to land poised and light on his one big foot.
'Well, Mr Brock,' he said. 'Here we are, eh? We've had quite enough delay, haven't we?'
'Get over to the side there,' I said to Kiki without taking my eyes off the big man in front of me. 'If he has a pistol, he can only take one of us. And then, the first chance you get, take off.'
'Bless you, sir,' said Satan Smith, 'I've got no pistol. I don't ever use a pistol, indeed I don't. I never use a thing like that.'
'Well,' I said, T do.' I pulled Kiki's tiny gun from my pocket and levelled it at him.
T never use the things,' said Smith, 'and what's more, I never take notice of them.' He swung suddenly forward on his crutch. I jumped back, took aim and squeezed the trigger. There was a little metallic click, the top of the pistol flew up and a tiny flame flickered in my hand. It was a bloody cigarette lighter. I cursed and threw it away.
I stepped to the right and Smith swung around to face me. I was watching his right hand, waiting for it to take the quarter-staff that was clipped to his great black crutch. Then his hand moved and I jumped back again, out of range.
But his hand went calmly to his chest. He slowly and casually unbuttoned his shirt and slipped his hand inside as though to scratch himself. Black curling springs of hair showed against tiie flannel and he was whispering a sort of cooing, burring song, eerie in the silence of the valley.
'Bless you, sir,' he said again. 'I don't ever need a pistol. And he drew his hand from his shirt and threw something at me, something that twisted and spat as it flew through the air towards my face. I flung my hands up too late. Sharp claws raked down over my forehead and onto my cheeks.
It was then, while blood was blinding my eyes, that Smith hefted his thick black quarter-staff. He slashed me to the ground. I shook the blood from my eyes and looked up. He was standing over me, smiling and silent. The yellow-white ferret that he had thrown into my face was snaking up over his massive body and as I watched, it slithered back inside his shirt to curl against the warmth of his flesh.
'There, you see, Mr Brock,' he was saying. 'It wasn't no use, now, was it?' he hefted his black rod again. T would dearly like to take you slowly, sir, for I have always tried to settle my obligations, see. But we don't have the time, more's the pity.'
He raised the thick black rod high above his head and brought it down with a crash that would have spilled my brains over the grass. But I had twisted away.
The force of the blow took him forward and his crutch had moved ahead to balance him above me. But it gave me time to crawl shakily to my feet. I circled around the man, keeping outside the long reach of his staff, which pointed steadily at me wherever I moved. It was a sort of stalemate and one of us had to break it.
So I took off across the canal bed, away from him, in a running leap that landed me on the high bank opposite. I stepped back across the towpath and took a running, racing dive back again into the big menacing shape beneath me. I smashed down into Smith like a sparrow into a tank-transporter, but at least we went down in the right order and he lay beneath me for a moment, shaking his head clear.
Then he was coming round again. There was a big stone beside my hand, fallen from the wall of the canal. I picked it up, to smash it into his rocky head and wondering which would crumble first. But a voice above stopped me. It was a new voice, mild and scholarly.
'Peace, my sons,' it said. 'Stop, I beg of you. Such violence will surely solve nothing. You are men, are you not? Or are you beasts of the field?'
The blood was still dripping into my eyes. I looked up through it and saw two monks above me on the towpath, tall and slender and sedate. I shook the blood from my eyes and looked again. They were still there. Their robes were black and fell in graceful folds to their feet.
I should have been surprised, I suppose, to find the church rearing its gentle head so far from the beaten track. But religion is not what it used to be. It has come right out into the open. It plays cricket now and drinks pink gins in the public bar. It clocks the ton down the Purley Way and plugs its heavenly strings into every socket in the land and I was as glad to welcome it, down there under the steep autumn slopes, as Demetrius in the jaws of his lion.
The two gentle fathers were regarding me more in sadness than in anger and there was an odious odour of compassion about them.
'Lay aside that stone, my son,' said one of them.
'And with it,' said the other, 'your anger.'
I looked at the stone in my hand, still raised high to smash Satan Smith into a bloody pulp. Then I looked down at Satan Smith. Then up at the monks. I shrugged. It's been the same, I thought, since Becket.
'I suppose you're right,' I said. I threw the stone away and rose to my feet, kicking Smith's crutch out of his reach as I did so. Kiki ran towards me.
'Your poor face,' she said and took my handkerchief from my pocket to dab at the scratches. 'We must wash these soon.' She shuddered. 'That vile little creature. What was it?'
'A ferret, my dear,' said one of the monks. 'One of God's creatures.'
'But evilly used, I fear,' said the other.
'Ah, the violence,' said the first.'
'The violence of the world,' said the second.
I was keeping one eye firmly on Smith. But he was strangely relaxed. Perhaps, I thought, the bastard is religious. Then the monks vaulted down to our level. One came towards me, the other to kneel beside Smith. He spoke quiet words to him.
'Keep away,' I said. 'That man is dangerous.'
'Yes, my son,' said the monk. 'We saw the violence in the man. But he is calmer now. I shall give him his crutch and he must now be off about his business.' He walked to pick up the great rod of ebony and I started after him to stop him. But the other monk laid a gentle hand upon my shoulder.
'Let Father Paul send the evil fellow away,' he said. 'He will cause you no more trouble, my son. Believe me.'
I was not so sure, but it did seem that Father Paul's words, whatever they were, had cowed the great murderous yokel. He heaved himself to his foot. He stood looking at me for a moment, and I tensed again. But without a word, he turned and went, away and down the valley.
'There,' said Father Paul. T think we are well rid of the fellow. The curse of violence is surely in his soul.'
'Ah, the violence,' said the other monk.
'But I have some questions for him,' I said and started off. The monk's gentle hand restrained me again.
'Not now, my son,' said Father Paul. 'Tempers must cool. We must take you and tend your wounds.' His hand was surprisingly strong. I tried in vain to shake it off.
'No need to trouble you, father,' I said. 'I live very near.' I took Kiki's arm. But when we set off down the valley, the two black-robed fathers were still with us.
'We will walk with you, my children,' said Father Paul. 'Your scratches are ugly scratches and Father William's hands are skilled and gentle hands.'
T don't want to put you out,' I said again. But Father Paul held up his hand.
T insist,' he said.
'It is our duty,' said Father William.
'As a matter of fact,' I said, eager to get rid of them, park Kiki and finish my business with Smith, 'there are others in more urgent need of your help.' I waved my arm up the valley.
'Oh?' said Father Paul.
'And they are friends of yours?' said Father William. 'We must all go to them at once.'
'Not friends,' I said. 'Far from it.' I nodded in the direction Satan Smith had taken. 'They are friends of his.' The monks held their hands high in sedate horror. But I didn't want them to think that I had been rampaging through the valley lil Sampson on a toot. 'One of them cracked his skull on a tre< I said, 'with very little help from me, and the other has sh himself in the leg.'
'Ah,' said Father Paul, "The terrible violence of life.'
'In these green and pleasant pastures,' said Father Williar
'Quite,' I said. 'But they need your help.'
'No,' said Father William firmly. 'We will let them lie. Th« are evil men, from what you say. And though it seems hard 1 you, Mr Brock, we must harden our hearts.'
'For the world, too,' said Father Paul, 'is a hard and hear less place.'
'And we are not bottomless springs of compassion,' sai Father William.
'Merely vessels,' said Father Paul, 'of finite capacity.'
'What we have,' said Father William, 'we must ration.'
'And you, Mr Brock,' said Father Paul, 'are more deservir in our eyes than these violent men who have attacked you.'
Kiki was nudging me hard.
'How do you know my name?' I said.
'We watched you in your tribulation,' said Father Williarj 'for some little time before we intervened.'
'And we heard when your adversary addressed you b name, Mr Brock,' said Father Paul.
'Oh,' I said. 'I see.' And we walked on in silence. The su was high now, washing the air with silver light. Father Pai breathed with quiet excitement.
'The beauty of the world,' he said.
'And the joy,' said Father William, 'the joy of living in i Are you not glad to be alive, my children?'
'Sometimes,' I said, licking my scratches. 'Are you froi Prinknash Abbey?'
'No,' said Father Paul. 'We are strangers to this lovely place
'We are walking,' said Father William. 'Walking through th beautiful places of England.'
'Ah,' I said. We reached the sawmill and the fathers clucke with quiet pleasure as Miss Trowbridge's mare nuzzled up t Kiki. Then we climbed up and reached home, and whi] Father William dabbed me with Dettol with neither more nc less skill than I would have used myself, Kiki clattered aroun the kitchen, making coffee.
Father William took his cup politely. Father Paul eyed tb whisky bottle on the windowsill.
'Perhaps,' I said, doubtfully, 'you would prefer whisky?'
'We would, my son,' said Father Paul.
'If there is no brandy,' said Father William.
'There is no brandy,' I said.
'So be it,' said Father William, folding his hands upon his black-robed lap.
So I poured and we drank. Father Paul admired the honey-coloured stones of my walls and the time-blackened beams of my ceiling. Father William admired the amber glow of the whisky against the high sun and then, unless I was mistaken, the careless length of Kiki's legs.
'Perhaps you are visiting Prinknash Abbey?' I asked politely.
'Alas no, my son,' said Father Paul. 'That is not our pleasure.' He returned to his silent contemplation of my ancient pad.
'Nor yet, alas,' said Father William, 'is it our privilege.' He raised his eyes upwards and allowed them to settle sedately where Kiki's pneumatic bosom swelled the wool of her jumper.
'Oh,' I said, wondering how to keep the ball rolling until they decided to go. Monks are not quite like us, and difficult to talk to. They are celibate, healthy as horses and they live on fixed incomes. No woman trouble to discuss, no operations, no income tax problems. They do not watch television, I suppose, and they have discussed the weather at source. And that leaves only God.
I sipped my drink and tried to set my thoughts in order. If God was ever there in the first place, I thought, He is long since on His way, pointing His sharp, aerodynamic nose towards Far Centauri. And religion, now, is no more than a dose of spiritual Sanatogen, 95% dried milk, 5% glycerophosphates. So there is no reasonable reason, I thought, why we may not covet our neighbour's ox as well as his ass and his daughter and her fatted calves.
And anyway, I thought, according to my reading, the universe was created not by God, but by hot mud and little walking fishes. So I guarded my tongue.
A fat late bee buzzed loudly against the window pane. Out on the bird table in the garden a greasy bloody starling chased two pretty tits away from the bacon. Father Paul drained his glass and Father William sighed appreciatively. Father Paul placed his glass carefully on the table. Father William slapped his down loudly.
'Another drink before you go?' I said. It was the least I could do.
'You are kind, my son,' said Father Paul.
'A delightful blend,' said Father William.
I started to heave myself from my chair. But Father Paul raised his slender hand. 'Be seated, I pray,' he said. 'Rest yourself, my son, and allow Father William the pleasure of serving you.'
'A token of return for your generous hospitality,' said Father William, rising quickly to collect our glasses. He laid them on the window sill, took the bottle and poured carefully. Then he stood for a moment, a tall black shadow against the light, gazing out across the field at Clutterbuck's oak tree.
'This is indeed a place of beauty,' he said. 'I sometimes think that there could never be a poem as lovely as a tree.'
Father Paul joined him at the window. The two tall figures stood there admiring the view and obscuring for Kiki and me the tree, the field, the sky and the sunshine.
'Ah,' said Father Paul. 'A tree by any other name.'
'Upon whose breast the snow has lain,' said Father William.
'A nest of robins in her hair,' said Father Paul.
The bloody fools, I thought. "They're not robins,' I said. 'They're magpies in that tree.'
'Ah,' said Father William. "The herald of spring.'
'You're thinking of cuckoos,' I said.
'Not an admirable bird,' said Father Paul. He tore himself away from Clutterbuck's immemorial oak, fiddled with the glasses and brought me mine, brimming with my pale old whisky. Father William took Kiki's and spent a long time handing it to her. We drank. It was a stiffer drink than I would have poured but I knocked it back, hoping that the fathers would soon be on their way.
'Where are you heading for?' I said, settling back in my chair.
'Our plans, my son, are fluid,' said Father Paul, speaking so quietly that I could hardly hear him.
'They depend on many things,' said Father William, equally dimly.
I stretched my legs and sank deeper into my chair. Across the room, Kiki's glass thumped onto the carpet. Father Paul said something.
'What was that you said?' I said, sinking deeper still.
Father William was standing above me, saying something that I could not hear. But his bright smile and his black robe were too loud for me. I closed my eyes.
I opened my eyes, stretched myself on the hard wooden floor and closed my eyes again. I yawned wide and winced. It hurt my face to yawn. I felt scratches on my face, and remembered. I opened my eyes again.
The room was dim, lit only by a small square in the thick wall high over my head. But when I got to my feet my head bumped painfully on the ceiling. The roof sloped steeply. Then I panicked. There was no door to the room.
I sat down again and took it slowly. I called out for Kiki. But she did not reply. I crossed to the window and tried it. It was too high to show anything but sky and too small to take my body. I sat on a crate. Then I walked across the room and a part of the floor creaked beneath my feet. I looked" down and saw the square of a trap-door. I looked at the crate again and read my name.
It was addressed to me and it was filled with books. The room then suddenly became familiar. I was in my own attic. The trap, I remembered, was latched from below, and I thumped it hard, but the latch was too strong. If I jumped on it, my weight would break it open. But I didn't do that. The long drop would break me too, for the trap was directly above my steep curving stairs.
I examined the room, perhaps for the first time since I had lived in the cottage. It was just an attic, there was some junk. But it was ordinary junk, no crowbars or jemmies or gelignite, just books and boxes and a hamper of old linen. The massive roof beams sprouted out of the wall and up to their apex, and a smaller beam strutted them apart. I saw that this strut crossed the room right above the trap. I leaped up and dangled, but my feet barely reached the floor and I was unable to bring my weight low enough to batter the trap-door open.
So I found a sheet in the linen basket and hung myself. I twisted it into a rope, looped it around the strut, tested its strength, climbed up on to the strut, took a firm grip on the sheet and let my self drop. The trap burst open and the extra length of the sheet took me through. For a moment I was dangling above my neck-breaking stairs. Then I swung onto the jagged edge of the hole I had made and down onto the landing. I leaped downstairs.
But the place was empty. No Kiki Kondor. No Father Paul. No Father William. I ran to the door and down the path and into the road. My car was gone from its place in the cow-parsley. I ran up the hill to Mrs Twissle.
'Hullo,' she said. 'Back, are you? I didn't hear your motor. Run out of petrol again, I suppose?'
'No,' I said. 'When did you hear me drive away?'
'Three or four hours ago. Open that, will you?' she said, giving me a cider-flagon with a tight stopper. 'What are you doing about food tonight? By the look of that chicken down there, I think you ought to eat up here. You're welcome, and your lady-friend, of course. And those two chaps you had in the car. Monks, are they, or something?' She took the flagon and poured it into a saucepan. A big slab of griskin was swimming there, in onions and carrots.
'I'm not hungry,' I said. 'What's the time?'
'It's hardly three,' she said. 'Plenty of time to work up an appetite yet. Griskin needs a good four hours in the pot, I always say. And you'd better ring that secretary of yours. She's been on again, look.'
'Jesus,' I said. I had been in the attic for hours. I wondered where Kiki was now. I walked back home and put my head in my hands. This, I was thinking, is my lot. I've lost the bleeding girl for good this time, and to a pair of smooth-talking God-watchers. Then I heard the creak of the garden gate.
I leaped to my feet with the wild idea that it was Kiki come back to me. I don't know where I thought she might have been. Perhaps she had been finding Father Paul another tree as as lovely as a poem, I thought. Perhaps she had been rolling in the clover with Father William. No, I thought, she couldn't have. The clover's over.
But big slow footsteps came up the path, too heavy for Kiki. I nipped behind the door just as a big fist thumped on it. I did not answer and the footsteps walked slowly around the house, pausing at the windows. Then they returned to the door. I watched the latch lifting. The door creaked open.
'Are you there?' said a deep voice with a west-country burr in it. 'Is anyone there?'
A big brown hand came round the door.
'Yes, you bastard,' I said, and grabbing the wrist, I pulled a large copper into my tiny porch. I dropped the hand in horror for I do not like touching the Law. You never know where it has been.
'Here, here, here,' he said, 'that's enough of that, if you don't mind, sir.' 'Yes, officer,' I said.
'Sergeant, if you please, sir,' he said. 'Sergeant Hook of the Cirencester Force. Now, sir, you'll be Mr Brock, I take it?'
'Not for very much longer, I won't,' I said. Besides the fat man, I remembered, there was the old biddy and her Red bloody Indian, waiting in London to hear how I lost Kiki Kondor.
'I'll have to trouble you to answer a few questions, sir,' said Sergeant Hook, taking out a pencil and licking his notebook. 'They concern your movements.'
'Why?' I said.
'Why, sir?' he said. 'Why, because I am in the process of making enquiries as to your movements.'
'Well shove off,' I said, 'and make your bloody enquiries elsewhere.'
'That kind of talk will do you no good at all, sir,' he said. 'Perhaps if I mention the name of Superintendent Groon of the Special Branch, you will feel more inclined to co-operate.'
'Well,' I said. 'Mention it.'
'Very well, sir,' he said. 'If you wish to do things more formally. Following certain information laid by two reverend gentlemen, my two superiors have been in contact with Scotland Yard. Superintendent Groon, whose name I now mention, as requested, wishes to be informed of your movements.'
'Did he tell you to charge me with anything?' I said.
'No sir,' said Sergeant Hook. 'Nothing like that at all. Just a matter of routine. The Super is anxious to know where he might reach you if necessary and has asked me to ascertain your future whereabouts.'
'You'd better consult Lord Luck,' I said gloomily.
'Very well, sir,' he said, writing the name in large wet letters. 'And the gentleman's address?'
'Next door to William Hickey,' I said. 'Look under Scorpio.'
'Sir?' he said.
'My stars,' I said. 'In the Daily Express. Take no notice of the Mirror.' But in the end, a country copper will always wear you down and, in fact, after I made up some answers for his questions and chopped him off a few heads of my globe artichokes, Sergeant Hook became quite human and took off his helmet. He even had hair. And he was easier to talk to than the fathers. He had a whining wife, a grumbling appendix and a thieving tax collector.
Since my problem had no solution and I was done for, I was grateful for his gossip. We remembered Marshal Dillon and Gilbert Harding and Richard Dimbleby and then we embarked upon the weather. The nights were drawing in, said Sergeant Hook. Before we knew where we were, winter would be upon us, and with it would come more work for the policemen. The motor accidents were starting already, he said.
'Yes,' I said, 'I saw a nasty pile-up a couple of nights ago.'
'Where, sir?' he said.
'Oh, I don't know,' I said. 'Over Burford way. Up on the ridge above a little place called Bag o'Nails, if you know it'
'Ah,' he said. He nodded. He replaced his helmet on his head. 'Now that's very interesting, sir. A happy coincidence, I might say.' He pulled out his notebook again and thumbed slowly through it. 'Ah, here we are. Abandoned Jaguar.' He looked at me. 'Would that be the car, sir?'
I nodded and he brightened.
'Well, sir,' he said. 'You may be able to help me here.' 'I'm afraid not, sergeant,' I said. 'I simply saw the car as I drove past.'
'A pity,' he said. "That car is one of our little mysteries, you might say. We found no trace of the driver. And it looked as though it had been rammed by a tank.'
'Surely,' I said, 'it's easy enough to check the registration?'
'Well, sir,' he said, 'it's not so easy as it was, now they've micronised their bleeding records, begging your pardon. But, of course, we did check. First thing we thought of, as a matter of fact. And the owner, would you believe it, didn't even know the car had been stolen.'
'Who was the owner?' I said. 'Just out of curiosity.'
'Ah,' he said. 'I'm not at liberty to divulge official information, Mr Brock, sir, as you must know, being such a friend of Superintendent Groon.'
'Aw, come on, sarge,' I said.
'Now, now, now, sir,' he said. 'You would be the first to complain, would you not, if I was to divulge to all and sundry hereabouts as how the Special Branch is keeping a sharp eye on your whereabouts, would you not?'
'That I would,' I said.
'Well there you are then, sir,' he said He closed his notebook, stowed it away, buttoned his tunic, collected his artichokes and took his leave.
But a large part of an advertising man's life is spent in other people's offices. I can read my boss's classical scribble upside-down at ten paces and the sergeant's slow wet script had been child's play. The Jaguar's registration number was ACD 767C. I had bought my own Volvo in Worthing and I knew this to be a Sussex number. And its careless owner was called Major Nuttley, to be found, I hoped, at the Central Garage, Brighton.
A watched Sergeant Hook up the path and away, then I poured myself a stiff afternoon whisky and sat down to think. This, I thought, is recap time. I looked at my watch. It was Thursday. I had started out on Monday without a care.in the world, following Kiki Kondor's famous bottom around the sunny west end of London. Since then, I had been big-dealed in Grosvenor Square, framed in the Fulbright Tower, beaten up by Groon's gorillas, manhandled back onto the job by the fat man, ambushed by Satan Smith and drugged by two wolves in monk's clothing.
I had lost the girl, found her and lost her again, and all I notched up on my side of the account was a fistful of bruised knuckles and Major Nuttley's smashed-up motor-car. I wondered where it had been stolen from. Brighton, I supposed. Perhaps it hadn't been stolen. I sipped my drink.
Then I remembered listening in the dark up on the ridge. A good four hours' driving, the man had said. I went to get my map from the car and remembered that Father William had driven away in it. Back to Brighton, I wondered?
Yes, I thought, why not Brighton? I reconstructed the road map in my head and imagined a line from here to Newbury. I continued it to Selborne in Hampshire. Then I projected it, all the way to Brighton. It was a fairly straight line. It took about four hours, I reckoned. And it was across country.
I drank one more drink for the road and then, since I might not be driving for I had no car, I drank another. Then I walked up to Mrs Twissle.
'You're too early,' she said. 'I told you that griskin needs a good four hours.'
T have to go away,' I said. 'Do you think I can hire a car in the village?'
'No,' she said. 'But the bus'll be here in about an hour.' 'It's urgent,' I said.
P
'All right,' she said. She took a key from a hook on the dresser. 'Here you are. But for God's sake drive carefully.' I took the key. 'Fred's?' I said.
'No,' she said. 'It belongs to that new chap in the canal cottage. Mr Granville, he calls himself. He leaves the key so Fred can move the car to get the tractor out.'
'Will he mind?' I said.
'I don't know,' she said. 'He's in Majorcfc. Isle of Love, he calls it.' She snorted. 'Dirty old badger.'
'Mrs Twissle,' I said, putting my arms around her, as far as I could reach, and kissing her soft red lips.
'Call me Dorcas,' she said.
I went to the shed behind the house and backed Mr Granville's car into the lane. Mrs Twissle called me back.
'Hadn't you better call that secretary of yours?' she said. 'She's been on twice more and she sounds anxious. Is she sweet on you, or something?'
'No,' I said. 'Not any more.' I dialled the office.
'Where the hell are you?' said my secretary. 'I've been telephoning everywhere. Practically everyone in London is after you.'
'Who?' I said.
'Poulton, for one,' she said. 'He's walking around the office firing people.' 'Why?' I said.
'Unilever have launched a foaming cleanser,' she said. 'And nobody told him. He's just fired me, as a matter of fact' 'Ignore him,' I said. 'Who else?' 'Everybody,' she said. 'Everybody?' I said.
'Almost everybody,' she said. 'Well, two others, that's all, but they sounded like everybody. That smooth friend of yours keeps ringing, the one with the curly bowler and the manicured hands. He says your uncle wants you, life and death. Which uncle is that?'
'Oh,' I said. 'It's a fat one you won't know about. Who else?'
'Some angry American,' she said. 'He keeps crashing in here as well as telephoning and shouting at me. I suppose they call it hustle. I call it sheer bloody impertinence.'
'What does he say?' I said, but at the other end of the line all I could hear was a jabber of muffled talk.
'Are you there?' I said. 'Are you there?'
After a few clicks and bumps, the telephone talked to me
again. 'Is that you?' it screamed. 'Is that you, Brock, you goddamned limey fink?'
'Get out of my office, Byron,' I said coldly.
'Scramble, man, scramble,' he shouted. So I pulled out my little black bits again and scrambled. Then I listened as he did likewise. Then he started shouting again. 'Right, man, but don't say a word until I've got rid of your goddamned girl' The sounds of altercation ran down the wire from London, a door slammed dimly and there was silence.
'If you've harmed a hair of that girl's head,' I said.
'Shuddup and listen, you fink,' said Byron. 'That's what I'm about to say to you. You know you're due back here with the girl tomorrow?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I'll try to get there.'
'You'll try?' screamed Byron. 'You'll try? You'll goddamned do better than goddamned try, Brock. I've had my goddamned doubts about you from the goddamned start and now, I can tell you, Mrs Goddamned I mean Mrs Fairchild is not happy. Do you know she's back and wants to see you? Do you know I've been trying to reach you all day? Do you know those limey faggots wouldn't help me, nor that fat schnook neither?'
'Have a care,' I said. 'I've been playing it close to the chest, that's all.'
He could understand that, and he sounded a little mollified. 'Yeah, yeah,' he said. 'But Jesus K. Reist, man, don't you know, even your goddamned secretary didn't know where you were. That's no way to do business, boy.'
'Just so long as it gets done,' I said, crossing my fingers and wanting to go.
'Yeah,' he said, pleading now instead of screaming. 'So please, Brock, keep in touch, huh? If the girl's OK you got nothing to worry about.'
'No,' I said.
'Right,' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'I'll be hearing from you.' 'Yes,' I said. 'At midnight,' he said. 'I wish I knew,' I said and unscrambled. 'What was all that about? said Mrs Twissle. 'Are you in trouble?' 'Yes,' I said. 'And I need help.'
itg-ii 161
'Fred'll be back soon,' she said. 'He's not all that bright, but he's got a good pair of shoulders, I'll grant him that'
I shook my head. I needed more than a good pair of shoulders. I thumbed through my list of help in time of trouble. But the sky is so big and my list was so small. The fat man was out, of course, he only helps himself. So were his lads, they only help him. Byron, of course, was out. Running Red Bull was more the type, I imagined, but I hoped he was out too.
My secretary was out. She packs a pretty punch, I remembered, but she always compensates too soon, and that left a pocketful of friends, sweethearts and wives. And Provis. I remembered Provis, the fat man's man in Cardiff. Nothing ever happens in Cardiff. He would be free and he might oblige.
'Can I use your telephone again, Mrs Twissle?' I said.
'Of course you can,' she said. 'And I told you, call me Dorcas. Until Fred gets home anyway.'
I dialled Provis in Tiger Bay. 'Need a hand?' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'I could use a little action,' he said. 'Nothing ever happens here. Where are you?'
'I'm in Gloucestershire,' I said.
'Give me an hour and a half,' he said.
'I'm going to Brighton,' I said. 'I think.'
'Right,' he said. 'If you're starting now, I'll see you in the little pub in Selborne.
I looked at my watch. Half-past three. Then I looked through the window at Mr Granville's car. It was a glossed-up boorjoy chariot, a Humber Sceptre and nobody's bomb. But it was fairly new and I reckoned it might give me ninety on a straight. And Provis was seventy miles or more west of me.
'What are you driving?' I said.
'Same old Riley,' he said. 'It suits me fine.'
I remembered it. A near-vintage model by now, I supposed, thirty years old, or more, with a fabric body. 'Don't be silly,' I said. 'I'll be in Brighton by the time you're in Selborne. I'll nose around a bit. Then I'll meet you in the Star and Garter as soon after eight as you can manage.'
'Suit yourself,' he said. 'I've done a spot of work on the old Riley since last year, mind you. And I think you're forgetting the new bridge over the river. But have it your own way.'
I said goodbye to Mrs Twissle and took off, up over the ridge onto the Cirencester road. The steering-wheel was covered in plastic fur, the dashboard was as styled as a
Caravelle, there was a box of After Eight in the glove-box and a Good Food Guide on the back seat. But the tank was full and the motor sang like a bird.
I wished, as I drove, that I felt like singing with it, so I switched on the radio. But Mrs Dale was in trouble too. It was going to be a long, lonely drive.
I drove into the rain outside Swindon. I spent ten miles behind an unhappy Aberdeen Angus in a cattle-truck. And up on the windy Berkshire downs, I got into the middle of an army convoy and almost killed myself getting out again.
Then, up in the mists above Basingstoke, something whistled past me flying tattered flags of fabric. It was five thousand poundsworth of Italian death, of course. Its velocity told me that. But for one silly moment in the murk, it looked like a very old Riley.
And strangely enough, when I slowed down to dip into Seiborne, there was, in fact, an old Riley Kestrel parked outside the pub. I noted this coincidence in my mind. It would amuse Provis.
Visit Brighton at the height of the season and you are up to your nostrils in atmosphere. But by the middle of September, the sea mist is beginning to clean the cooking fat out of the air. The little roasting chickens are still rotating in every shop window but the hot dogs are no longer as hot as they were. The chirruping French birds have flown south, our own British mysteries have hitched back to London and the slender Sussex fairies are coming out of the cracks again, all dolled up in new drip-dry winter plumage.
When I finally rolled over the South Downs, it was dusk and the Pavilion was already glowing in its green floodlight, like a phosphorescent wedding cake. I parked Mr Granville's car along the front and walked back past the windy Palace Pier and the dark waxworks to the Star and Garter.
In the bar the piano was silent, so were the solitary drinkers spaced along the curve of the bar. I bought a drink and wondered how long Provis would take. I looked at my watch. It was not yet eight o'clock. I had made fair time and as I sipped my drink I sniggered at the Welshman's presumption. He is big and he is fast, but an old Riley is an old Riley. It was going to be a long wait, I reckoned.
'You took your time, Brock,' said Provis behind me. I looked around, then up. Provis is still the biggest man I have ever seen. He was still a big dresser too. His heavy silk shirt dazzled as white as toothpaste against his acres of dull black featherweight poplin.
'Have you just got here?' I said.
He shrugged. 'A half-hour,' he said. 'Maybe longer. Bring your drink over.' He took me to a dark corner and sat me beneath a photograph of Max Miller.
'How did you get here?' I said. 'You couldn't have driven.' There is an airfield, I remembered, at Shoreham. He must have hired an aeroplane.
T told you,' he said. 'You're forgetting the new bridge. It saves forty miles of bad road. I looked out for you on the way but I only passed one Volvo. They're less popular than they were.'
I decided not to tell him about the old Riley I had seen at Seiborne. T was driving a Humber,' I said.
He nodded. 'Never mind,' he said. 'Tell me all about it.'
"There's very little to tell,' I said. T was following Kiki Kondor, the sweet-life girl.'
He nodded. T can understand that,' he said.
'She shook me off and faded,' I said. 'And the fat man was cross.'
He nodded again. T can understand that, too,' he said.
"Then I found her again,' I said, 'and I let her get snatched.' I told him about Satan Smith and Father Paul and Father William.
'Well,' he said calmly, 'you seem to have cocked it up all round.' I nodded this time.
'So what are we doing in Brighton?' he said.
'Just following our nose,' I said. 'The only glimmer in the whole bloody business is the motor-car I smashed up the other night. It was to take the girl away somewhere. I think it was to bring her here. Anyway, it was a Jaguar and it belongs to a Major Nuttley who lives here.'
'Right,' said Provis. He drank his drink and stood up. Then he sat down again while I got the telephone book and looked for Nuttley. There were five of them and there were three Central Garages, too. I got myself some change from the bar and went into the telephone box. The first Nuttley was engaged and the second had been disconnected and the other three just let the telephone go on ringing. But one of the garages was more helpful.
'The Major?' it said. 'Hang on a tick, mate.' Then it said, 'No, mate. You just missed him.' 'Where could I reach him?' I said.
'Oh, I don't know,' said the Central Garage. 'He could be anywhere. What's the time?' 'Just after eight,' I said.
'Too early for the Barrington,' said the Central Garage. 'And the Sylvester, I expect. I don't know about the Funny-bone, though.'
T do,' I said. 'It borders on the humerus.'
'What's that, mate?' he said.
'An old atomical joke,' I said, blushing. 'Ah,' he said. 'A bleeding joker, eh? The bleeding major'll be bleeding glad to see you, mate.' 'He likes a joke, does he?' I said.
'Oh, yes,' said the Central Garage. 'He likes a joke all right. That's why we enjoy working for him. He's a lot of laughs, he is. So you go up the Funnybone and join in. Goodnight, mate.'
'Wait a minute,' I said. 'Where is it?'
'What?' he said.
"The Funnybone,' I said. 'I don't know where it is.'
'Yes, you do,' he said. 'It borders on the humerus.'
The telephone clicked. But the man behind the bar told me. The Funnybone was a drinking club a little way up the front towards Black Rock, past the Rattigan Line. I asked him what was the Rattigan Line. He said it was where Terence Rattigan lived, of course. I said why. He said that the houses to the east of the Rattigan Line cost much more than the houses to the west. I asked him who cared. He said that estate agents cared. Rattigan had been moving west for years, but they were afraid he might move east again.
I left him talking about property values and went back to Provis to winkle him away from three ladylike chaps with flannel hands and dreaming eyes. I led him out into the wet Brighton breeze. Across the road, a sort of sputnik made of fairy lights was orbiting jerkily around its pole, and more fairy lights in strings were drooping from lamp to lamp westwards all the way to Hove. Then there was darkness.
But we walked eastwards to the Funnybone. From deep within the Aquarium came the desolate barking of hungry sea-lions. And for a moment I imagined that I could hear the grinding of a hundred teeth. There are piranha fish in Brighton Aquarium.
'There's this old American biddy,' I said, 'with this deep voice.'
'Like Alice Faye?' said Provis. 'No,' I said. 'Like Paul Robeson.'
He said he knew the sort of old biddy I meant and perhaps he did. His past is as unlikely as my future.
'She has this Red Indian,' I said, 'who is about to scalp me if we don't find Kiki Kondor by tomorrow.'
'Oh?' he said with interest. 'A real Red Indian?'
'No,' I said. 'Seven-eighths Apache.'
'He won't just scalp you, then,' said Provis. 'He's much more likely to skin you alive.'
'Yes,' I said. 'So I was told.'
'Of course,' said Provis, 'you're one of these hairy, half-ape types. Even your pure Apache wouldn't know where to stop, heh-heh-heh.'
'Heh-heh-heh,' I said. We padded up the lonely sea-front road. There may have been a moon behind the mist. It may have been laying a golden path across the water to paradise or somewhere. There may have been girls down there on the damp sharp pebbles, and fumbling boys and giant crabs and cold night fishermen. But beyond the drooping loops of fairy fights there was nothing. Just the whisper of the shifting of the black solid sea.
"This American biddy,' said Provis. 'What's her interest?'
'The lot,' I said. 'From the oil in the ground to the planes in the air. She runs the big half of the world.'
'No,' said Provis. T mean what's her interest in the girl?'
'Ah,' I said. 'The old biddy is big-dealing the whole free world and she needs a grandson to inherit it and all that's in it.'
'They all do,' said Provis. He nodded wisely. 'She has this nothing-type son,' I said, 'and she needs Kiki to goose up the lineage.' 'What's she like?' said Provis.
'What does she sound like?' I said. 'She's a tiny silver-haired dolly with a heart of reinforced granite. A fragile alligator with gold-plated, sword-edged teeth. A little old sweetheart with Cyclon B in her smelling-bottle.'
'Don't shout,' said Provis. T meant the Kondor girl.'
'She's a miracle,' I said. 'She walks like swans in aspic. She whispers like the breeze. And she glows, Provis. Have you ever seen the sun rise over Amalfi?'
'Ugh,' said Provis. T thought you'd say that.'
'There's the Funnybone,' I said. We must have reached the Rattigan Line, for the houses that faced us were more expensive looking now and theatrical cars were parked before them. And most of them were for sale. The Funnybone was a house in the architectural centre of a Regency terrace. It was discreetly curtained but its door was open and we walked in. Rhubarb floated down the wide carpeted stairway, between flocked walls. Upstairs was a large room with magnificent views of the black, invisible sea. The room was almost empty, just a few Brighton bruisers draped over the bar listening to the musak. But behind the rosy little bar was a girl with breasts like
Zeppelins. I asked her for whiskies and she pondered my request
'Are you a member, sir?' she said. 'No,' I said.
'Well,' she said, frowning, 'I don't know.'
'I'm looking for Major Nuttley,' I said.
'Why didn't you say?' she said. 'I thought you were coppers. Teacher's, is it? Or Bell's?'
'Yes, please,' I said 'Is the major here?'
'He's about, I expect,' she said. The Zeppelins swept the room. They pointed at Provis and quivered to rest. Provis was standing against the bar like a mooring-mast. She leaned towards him. 'Will your friend have the same?' she said. 'Or something special?'
'Yes please,' I said. 'What about the major?'
T told you. He's around,' she said. 'You haven't been in before, have you?'
'No,' said Provis.
'I thought I hadn't seen you,' she said. 'For Christ's sake,' I said. 'The major.' 'Oh, he's over there,' she said without looking. 'On the fruit machine.'
Majoe nuttley was in the far corner of the room standing at attention, chest out, belly in, back like a ramrod. He was facing a fruit machine and he had the great glittering, chattering, googly-eyed monster cornered. He was feeding it with sixpences and operating it with fierce precision. I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Major Nuttley?' I said.
'Keep silence, sir,' he snapped, i have the beggar on the run.' His voice crackled with command and I waited quietly while he sent a whole regiment of coins into the jaws of the enemy. Not one returned, but he was a brave loser. He upped his chin, stiffened his lip, turned briskly to the right and looked me up and down.
'Bad luck,' I said.
'No such thing as luck in a properly conducted operation,' he snapped. 'There are tactics, sir. And there is strategy.' He slapped the seam of his trouser-leg as though with a baton. He cleared his throat. 'It will be my day tomorrow, I fancy.'
'That's the way it goes,' I said. 'You lose the battle and you win the war.'
His eyes lit up. 'Ah,' he snapped. 'You are a student of von Clausewicz. I was misled, I am afraid, by your mufti. Never know where you are nowadays. All types of chaps in all types of confounded mufti. Taking a spot of leave, eh? May I have your regiment, sir?'
'Nothing like that,' I said. 'But I was in the Navy during the war.'
'Well, what do you want, man, what do you want?' he snapped. 'Out with it, now. On the double.'
'A Jaguar,' I said. 'I'm enquiring about a motor-car.'
'If you want a motor-car,' he snapped, 'you must see my number two. He deals with all my staffwork. He made a smart about-turn and walked briskly away from me. I put my hand on his shoulder. He stopped, turned and barked.
'Unhand me, sir,' he said. 'Confound your damned impertinence.'
'I don't want to hire a car,' I said. 'I simply want to ask you about your Jaguar.'
'Jaguar?' he said. 'Good God, man, I've a dozen damned Jaguars. Deal with my number two.'
'Well,' I said. 'I'm talking about one of them. The one that was smashed up in Oxfordshire the other night.'
'You are, are you?' he said. His chin went up another notch and his brow beetled down to meet it.
'I'd like to speak to the driver,' I said.
'You would, would you?' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'What's your name?' he snapped. 'Brock,' I said.
'Are you a confounded policeman?' he said. "The confounded place is infested with confounded policemen.' 'No,' I said.
He regarded me for a while. He clasped his hands behind his back, looked at the carpet and rocked several times from his heels to his toes and back. I waited. Finally he came to his decision, notched up his chin again and snapped his eyes at me.
'Request denied,' he said. 'March the man away.'
'Look here,' I said.
'Silence,' he snapped. 'March the man away.'
'You heard the major,' said a rough Brighton voice behind my shoulders and my elbows, my feet left the floor and before I knew what was happening I was being carried briskly across the room. My handlers talked as they moved.
'Got to hand it to the old major,' said one. 'He's a scream.'
'He's a bleeding nut-case if you ask me,' said the other. 'Still, he's very generous.'
By then we were out of the door into the corridor. I pulled myself together. I straightened my arms and when my feet touched the ground I dug sharply backwards with both elbows, deep into two soft Brighton bellies. Two brandy breezes hit the back of my neck and it turned to see the open mouths of two of the bruisers from the bar. I knocked their heads together and walked back into the room. Provis, I noticed was still at the bar, talking quietly. The zeppelin-breasted barmaid was still nuzzling across the bar and they were both engrossed in whatever he was telling her.
But the major saw me coming back. He popped his eyes in outrage, snarled a snarl, took a tiny silver whistle from his pocket and blew it. Then he took a deep breath and bellowed like a parade ground.
'Parker, Ward, Pudney,' he rapped. 'Get that man. Jump to it, lads.' The three remaining Brighton bruisers peeled themselves away from the bar, snapped upright and looked about them.
'On the double, now,' cried the major.
As they advanced, I wondered if the major really was a major, or if all the bruisers in Brighton simply humoured him for extra drinks. Perhaps, I thought, it is even simpler than that. I am a stranger in town. Perhaps Brighton lads all stick together, even the nutcases, like Corsicans and boilermakers. Then the spearhead of the attack reached me. It was more of a bullet-head, in fact, with a fist like a block of dirty wood, which I ducked, and a noseful of enlarged pores, which I smashed, and a bellyful of eggstains, which I kicked.
Then I lowered my head and charged the next one into the wall. I lifted him up by his greasy leather lapels, preparing to nut him. But then the third jumped on my back. So I pulled down on the arms which were scrabbling for my throat, doubled myself sharply forward and let the two bruisers nut each other. Their heads met with a click like ivory and they slid to the floor.
I dusted my hands and straightened my tie and it was all for nothing at all. Major Nuttley was marching briskly towards me. He was almost upon me. He held a brandy bottle at the ready and there was no time to duck it. He swung, the bottle flashed above me like a falling star. And like a falling star it fell, upon my head.
'Confounded impertinence,' I heard the major muttering as the lights went out. Then, of course, it was dark.
I was a black crumb of slag floating in a mug of dark stout, a ball of black velvet in a dark room, a switched-off star in a blind free-fall. Perhaps it was lasting for years, perhaps for ever.
In fact, it was just a couple of long minutes. Then there was light. Not much light, just a vague pink glow, like light seen through the blood of a closed eyelid. And there was a voice speaking above me, soft and deep and calm and gentle. And it was filled with knowledge and wisdom.
'In the beginning,' it was saying, 'there was only man. He hunted hairy elephants and he drew bull on the walls of his lonely cave. He was happy. And then came woman. She had blue eyes and long hair that shone like Japanese silk. And beneath it was hidden a whole packet of charms.'
'Oooh,' said another voice in the dim pink glow. 'What did she do?'
'She showed a peep of herself,' said the deep, quiet voice above me. 'And man was excited. He ran out of his cave and lit a fire for her and grilled a jumbo steak and built her a house of banana leaves. Then she stood in the door and let the fire-fight shine through her long tresses and he planted a garden for her and he worked in it until he could work no longer.'
'Oooh,' said the other voice again. 'Poor fellow.'
'Yes,' said the deep voice. 'He worked himself into the ground for her. Then he was so tired that he put out the light and lived in the dark for ages.'
'And what happened then?' said the other voice.
'She just showed him a little more of her hidden charms,' said the deep voice. 'Ankles as delicate as porcelain and calves that curved like art. His desire was reborn. He sang songs for her and painted pictures for her and invented the compass and sailed to the ends of the world.'
'Oooh.'
'Then she showed him a little more. He went mad with desire and brought her ivory and slaves and cigarettes. He built railways and fought wars for her, and ran up and down a thin red line killing fuzzie-wuzzies and yellow Chinamen and bearded Boers and bloody Germans. He gave her diamonds and caviare and the vote.'
'Provis,' I said, coming out of my pink haze into the quiet bar of the Funnybone. The Funnybone was a club, I remembered, in Brighton. Above the Rattigan Line.
'Ah,' said Provis above me. 'Feeling better now?'
'What happened then?' said the girl with the zeppelin breasts.
'Major Nuttley hit me with a bottle,' I said. 'She showed him a little more of her charms, of course,' said Provis, 'and this time she shook them.' 'Boop-boop-a-doop,' I said. 'Did he like that?' said the girl.
'Look here,' I said. 'What about Nuttley?' I was lying in an armchair, I saw, near the bar. There was a cushion under my head and my feet were propped on another chair.
'He went mad,' said Provis, 'mad with desire. He built machines to make clothes for her, he gave her beach pyjamas and holidays with pay and perfumes and the skins of unborn lambs. He took photographs of her, out of focus.'
'Who?' I said. 'Nuttley?'
'No,' said Provis. 'Man. I'm telling Nadia the story of man.' 'What happened then?' said Nadia.
'Can't you guess?' said Provis. 'She finally showed him all her charms.' 'Oooh,' said Nadia. She giggled. 'And what happened then?' I said.
'He split the hydrogen atom and prepared to blow the bitch up,' said Provis. He turned to me. 'Hurry it up, man,' he said. 'We're not here on holiday, you know.'
'Where do you think Nuttley went?' I said.
'He's over there,' said Provis. He jerked one large thumb over his shoulder. I looked. Major Nuttley was standing, red-faced and motionless where I had first seen him, before the fruit machine. I picked a heavy ashtray from the table and walked over to him. Then I put the ashtray down. His thumbs, I saw, were tied together behind his back with a strong thread. And his regimental necktie was caught up in the machine's handle. I tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He did not move.
I grasped his shoulder more firmly. He spluttered an incomprehensible warning.
'Be careful,' said Provis mildly from the bar, 'unless you especially want to strangle him.'
I looked closer then, and saw that the major was tethered to the machine by his neck. His shirt had been opened and a curiously complicated knot had been made in his necktie, a knot which was pressed against his throat and tightened with every movement. I pulled him an experimental inch back towards me. His face changed colour and glowed a deep, disgusting purple. I stopped pulling and his face faded slowly back to regimental scarlet.
'He can talk,' said Provis from the bar, 'if he takes it slowly.'
'Tell me another story, will you?' said Nadia and Provis turned back to her. I turned to the major.
'Now,' I said, 'about that Jaguar.'
'Yes,' said the major almost silently, trying to speak without movement of the larynx. 'It was one of mine.' 'Were you driving it?' I said. 'No,' he whispered. 'Who was?' I said. 'I don't know,' he said.
I twanged his taut necktie and he faded into purple again. Then I waited while he recovered.
'You don't understand,' he said finally. 'I really don't know.'
I twanged his necktie again and waited.
'Really,' said Provis from the bar, 'there's no need for that, Brock. The chap wants to co-operate if you'll just let him.'
'Yes,' the major whispered. 'I'm only too happy to answer your questions. But I don't know. It was one of the cars I keep for the brothers. That's all I can tell you.'
'It's not enough,' I said. 'What brothers? The Marx Brothers? Moss Brothers? Mike and Bernie Winters?'
I prepared to twang again. But further pressure was not needed. He was ready to speak. I could see that he wished he knew.
'Not brothers like that,' he said. 'Brethren. The Brethren, I mean.'
'What bloody brethren?' I said.
'Monks,' he said. 'Some sort of monks.'
'Ah,' I said. I slipped the knot on his necktie and propped him where he could breathe properly, against the wall. 'That's what I want to hear about. Now talk.'
'Certainly,' he babbled. 'But I know almost nothing about them. Nobody does. They're up on the downs above Rotting-dean. I'm not a religious man. They do business with' me, that's all, that's all, I swear it. They took that big Jag of mine and told me to tell the policemen it had been stolen. They compensated me so I did and that's all I know.'
'Do you have a car outside?' I said.
He nodded, eager to help. 'A blue Rover.'
'Give me the keys,' I said.
He fished around in his pocket and handed me an ignition key. I took my hand away from his throat and he slid gratefully down the wall onto the carpet. He lay there breathing heavily for a moment while I considered what to do with him. Then he climbed shakily to his feet and I watched him. He was returning to normal. The starch came back into his frame. His shoulders squared again. His brow began to beetle and his eye brightened and sparked.
But there was a difference. Major Nuttley was every inch a soldier. He had, as it were, surrendered his sword and he had, as it were, transferred his allegiance. This, I suppose, is what makes soldiers different from other people. They will follow whoever is leading.
'At ease,' I said. I walked back to Provis. 'What did you do to the major while I was out? He's different.'
Provis turned from Nadia. T took him by the hand,' he said, 'and walked him through the valley of the shadow of death.'
'Well,' I said. 'It worked a treat.'
'It always does,' said Provis and turned back to Nadia.
'You aren't half rough,' she said, gleaming. I called the major over.
'Up above Rottingdean, you say?' I said.
The major nodded briskly. 'That is correct,' he snapped. 'Damned great modernistic edifice. You can't miss it. No confounded windows.'
'What do they do there?' I said.
'Can't help you there, I'm afraid,' snapped the major. 'All sorts of talk, of course, but no facts. Can't mount a party on surmise. As a student of von Clausewicz, I'm sure you'll agree.'
'Of course,' I said. 'Just one more thing, however.'
'At your service,' said the major.
'It's the question of security,' I said.
T understand,' he snapped. 'Of course. Radio silence, eh?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Radio silence until further orders.'
By the time Provis had got away from Nadia, I was out in the Rover. It was pointing east and as we drove away, Nadia came to the door and waved her hands and her breasts. There was a tear in her eye. Then the mist obscured her and we were rolling out of Brighton onto the wet white cliff, past Roedean School and into Rottingdean. I turned up through the village and soon we were climbing high, up through rows of new houses, past bread factories into the bald South Downs.
The streetlights stopped, the road narrowed and the mist thickened. I turned on my foglight and soldiered on. Then the cats'-eyes went out. I had missed a bend in the road and was bumping through a gate and along a track. I cursed and braked, ready to reverse.
'Hang on,' said Provis.
We looked ahead. In the swirl of the mist ahead we made out the curved shape of a high wall, more solid and more settled than the swirling darkness around us. I switched off the rights and rolled the Rover off the track onto grass. We got out and walked on the wet grass. A hundred yards ahead we came to the wall. It was more than a wall. It was a building, Nuttley's confounded modernistic edifice, curving away windowless into the blind night.
We followed the wall around. Although it was dark, the swirling of the mist brought starlight in snatches. The wall was high, perhaps two storeys high. We came to a door, a big curved porch where the track on which we were walking widened into a turning circle. A motor gleamed dimly opposite us. We walked over. It was my old Volvo.
'Well,' I said. 'We're here. After you, Provis.'
'No,' said Provis. 'After you, Brock.'
We looked about us. Up there on the cold top of the downs, there was no sound but the groan of the wind from the sea, and no movement but the swirl of the wet white mist. We looked at the building before us. We saw no spark of light ahead. The smooth walls were unbroken by windows and curved away from us into the night like a small blind Albert Hall.
Facing us, however, across the circle of gravel was a dark recess that must have held a door. I started towards it.
'Before we go,' said Provis, 'I think you should tell me what we expect to find in there.'
'I've already told you,' I said. 'We expect to find Kiki Kondor.'
'Just why,' he said comfortably, 'do we expect to find her in there?'
'Largely,' I said, 'because we bloody well have to. Kelly Byron thinks I have her safe and he'll be wanting her back tomorrow. And if she isn't inside, Provis, I'm scalped.'
'All right,' he said. 'We'll take a look. But what else do we expect in there?'
'That's an irrelevant question,' I said. 'All we want is Kiki.'
'Suit yourself,' he said. 'I just like to know, that's all,'
'Well, I can't help,' I said. 'We should find those two bloody monks and their mates. We might even find Satan Smith, if they haven't disposed of him. And Swenson. We should find Swenson, of course.'
'You told me about the monks and Smith,' said Provis. 'But who's this Swenson?'
'Oh,' I said. 'He's a sort of poet and he's involved in all this.' I remembered. 'One of his gorillas has an office in London and I found a Brighton number there. And Greene told me that Swenson has a temple somewhere. This is obviously it'
hg-12 177
'That makes sense, I suppose,' said Provis. 'Now tell me why a poet needs to kidnap a girl like Kiki Kondor?'
'Oh,' I said. 'He's not just a poet. He's some kookie sort of business consultant on the side. So far as I can see he sorts through the tycoons until he finds the ones with the soft centres, then he preaches himself into the boardroom and cleans up. Come on.' I set off across the gravel to the dark front door. But it was solid as well as dark and firmly locked besides. Se we walked into the mist and followed the curve of the building, walking in a wet silent circle on the springing turf of the downs.
Halfway around, I stopped on the brink of three shallow steps. I felt my way down them to a door, smaller than the other, but equally firmly closed. I put my ear to the woodwork and listened. I heard only silence. I took out my penknife and looked at it. It had seventeen kinds of blade but it was an advertising giveaway and they were all broken except the swizzle stick.
'Try this,' said Provis behind me. He handed me a slender steel bar. I took the jemmy gratefully, slid it between the door and the frame, leaned on it and pushed the door timidly open. Then we were inside, in a dark room in a blind building. Provis pushed the door behind him and closed out the sound of the wind and in the silence I stood still and opened my mind to the ambience. But my intuition was not working, or Kiki was not radiating and we were still in a dark room in a blind building. Or else, I thought desperately, she was not there at all. Then Provis flicked a lighter.
The room was an empty room, curling with pipes. The outer wall curved in the segment of a circle and so did the inner wall and the door which was set into it. It was not locked and we eased it open and listened to the silence beyond. Then we slid out into a dim carpeted corridor which curved away in both directions.
'I've been thinking,' whispered Provis.
'Maybe,' I said.
"This poet,' he said. 'He's a business consultant, you say?' 'That's right,' I said, looking carefully up and down the dim corridor.
'Well,' said Provis. 'Tell me why a business consultant needs to kidnap a girl like Kiki Kondor.'
I ducked back into the dark room so as to talk more freely. 'How the hell should I know? I said. 'Because she's a business girl, I suppose. All I want to do is to get her out of here, if she's in here.' I crossed my fingers and touched the wooden door for luck. 'I don't give a blind bloody damn about the rest of the stuff. The fat man can sort it out. Or that bastard Groon.' 'Who's Groon?' said Provis.
'Special Branch,' I said. 'He thinks I killed Kiki Kondor the other day.'
'Did you?' said Provis.
'No,' I said. 'It was a girl called Julie.'
'You killed a girl called Julie and the Special Branch are on your tail?'
'No,' I said. T did not.'
'Don't get worked up,' said Provis mildly. 'I was just asking.'
'Well, don't ask damfool questions,' I said. 'You're here to help save me from a bloody scalping.'
I started out of the door again and this time he followed me into the dim curving corridor. It was weakly lit and lamps were sparsely spaced, making deep pools of shadow between the patches of weak yellow light. The inner curve of the wall was blank. But along the outer curve were doors, spaced as regularly as the doors in a hotel corridor. We slid along the outer wall, from the recess of one door to the recess of the next.
'Someone's coming,' said Provis. There was no sound of footsteps, but away round the bend, a patch of shadow was moving along the wall towards us. We pressed into a shadowed doorway and stopped breathing. Soon the shadow became a figure beneath the light of a lamp. It was a monkish figure, draped, like Father Paul, in a hairy robe. He passed us without a glance, head down and padding silently along the carpet.
I jerked my head and we followed, sliding from shade to shade after him, ready to freeze if he paused or turned. Then he stopped at a door. He pressed a button and we watched from the limit of the bend in the corridor. He waited, the door buzzed open and a shaft of bright light hit him, but I did not see his face for it was buried deep in the cowl of his robe.
Through the open door came the familiar clatter of business machines, the clatter of keyboards and the whine of electronics. Then the door buzzed shut and cut off the noise. Provis shrugged, and so did I. We had to do something, or we would be flitting around this creepy, carpeted circle forever. I turned to the door in whose shadow we were hiding. It was smooth and solid and in its centre was a metal circle, the lid of a judas window. I swivelled it aside. The room was dark and empty. But the door was locked.
So we slid along the corridor from door to door. They were all dark and they were all locked. Then I peeped into a room which was brightly lit. I blinked, looked and dropped the lid silently into place. Then I slid back to Provis.
'What's in there?' he said.
'It's Father bloody Paul, the creeping Jesus who snatched Kiki,' I said happily. 'And by the grace of God he's in a bloody trance.' I had seen the long, lily-white shape of the monk lying unclothed on a bed, staring with wide, glazed eyes at the ceiling.
'Come on, then,' said Provis. He slipped along the empty corridor, tried the door, took his jemmy back from my offering hand and slipped into the little room. I followed and closed the door behind me. When I turned, he was doing something sudden to Father Paul.
'Black that peephole,' he said. I looked around the room. Father Paul's underclothes were lying at the foot of the bed. I picked his pretty silk vest between my thumb and forefinger, but it was fragile and perfumed and as transparent as a pair of Shaftesbury Avenue panties. Then I saw a box of Kleenex. I took a handful of tissues, licked them wet and pasted them one by one flat on the glass of the door, covering the Judas window and hiding us from prying eyes outside. Provis had shovelled Father Paul under the bed. We relaxed.
'What did you do to him?' I said.
'Nothing much,' said Provis. 'He was probably out for a while anyway.' He pointed to a shelf beside the bed, on which was a hypodermic syringe with all the old squalid makings.
I looked around the room, but there was nothing in it for us. It was just a bedroom furnished with austere comfort. The hairy black robe was lying crumpled on the floor and I picked it up. It was heavy. As I struggled into it a solid weight swung against my hip. I fumbled within the folds and found a stitched harness and a sort of holster. In the holster I felt the cold, welcome weight of a large pistol.
'Onward Christian soldiers,' I said, drawing the Luger out.
'Ha,' said Provis. 'That must be his battle-dress. Some bloody monk. What's the matter?'
I was weighing the Luger in my hand and thinking unpleasant thoughts.
'I told you that a girl was killed,' I said. Provis nodded. 'It was a nasty killing and I've just remembered something. One of these bastards did it.' I told him about the monk on the stairway in Park Lane. Then I got angry. I started to pull
Father Paul out from under the bed. I was about to slap him out of his coma.
'Let's see if we can wake the bastard,' I said. 'I wouldn't want him to suffer in his sleep.'
'Calm down,' said Provis, but I took no notice. I was working into a lather, remembering Julie Bateman and the nasty way she died. I was slapping the monk on both cheeks, trying to wake him when a great juddering boom filled the room. It froze us solid. The air jangled into silence. Then the noise crashed into our ears again.
This time I recognised it for what it was, the deep chime of a bell painfully distorted by amplification. I looked for the loud speaker and found it, high on the wall above the door. I reached up and faded the volume so that the bell jangled more faintly. Then we could hear ourselves speak again.
'What the hell is that?' said Provis. 'Vespers, do you think?'
I shrugged. I heard a hissing noise and looked around for it. It was coming from the floor at our feet, from Father Paul, lying where I had dropped him half-woken by my slaps and the great jangle of the bell. He was hissing a faint, glassy-eyed hiss and trying to rise. I bent to listen.
'What's he saying?' said Provis.
'It's the bell that's woken him,' I said. 'It's Swenson, he says, calling the Cyclic'
'What the hell is that?' said Provis, at the door.
'The Cyclic?' I said. 'I don't know. Some kind of meeting. I heard his gorilla invite some mug to it. And they were talking about it the other night when I smashed up their motor-car. Let's go and find out.'
'Kick him in the head,' said Provis, 'but do it quietly. There's movement outside.' He switched off the light and almost immediately a shaft of dimmer light sliced through the room. Provis had peeled the tissues from the peephole.
'Quick,' he said. 'They're on the move out there.' I crossed the room. Outside in the dim corridor, dark shadows were passing.
'Let me out,' I said. 'I'll tag on the end.' I straightened my hairy robe.
'Quiet,' said Provis, his eye still at the peephole. 'I might be able to join you. We have a visitor.' His great left arm flattened me against the wall out of the way, as a fist sounded on the door and a voice called respectfully. Then the door pushed open.
'Father Paul, sir?' said the voice. 'The Cyclic Bell is tolling, sir.'
Then the black shape walked into the room, straight into two of the biggest, stiffest fingers this side of Judgment Day. In ten seconds more, Provis had the new man stripped of his robe and was shrugging himself into it. Then he bent, a black shadow in the dark room, first over the newcomer, then over Father Paul. His fingers worked busily. Then he straightened up.
'That gives us three hours,' he said. 'That's as long as I can manage, unless you want to knock them off. Come on.'
We slipped into the corridor, empty now, and hurried ahead after the slow procession. Once outside the room, we were shaken again by the great chimes, which seemed to come from the deep centre of the building. But we hurried ahead. Then we froze into a pool of shadow, for we were in sight of the tail of the slow-moving crocodile. We watched it as it moved through an open door in the inner wall of the passage. As the procession passed into the light of the door, we saw that only a few of the men were robed as we were. The rest were merely hooded head and shoulders, revealing beneath their cowls the incongruous gleam of Savile Row serge with here and there a brighter flash of comfortable country tweed.
As the last figure disappeared, we raced for the door and tagged silently behind the end of the line. I was slinking back in the depth of my robe, and I eyed Provis as we paced slowly behind the men in front of us. It wasn't so bad. The man he had clobbered had been bigger than most, and the robe just about covered him. He was pacing slowly and reverently towards the centre of the jangling building looking like Friar Tuck's big brother. I stepped out after him, cuddling my cold Luger for comfort. I hoped that it was loaded.
Then we were through the second door. It buzzed behind us and we fumbled forward into a large, dim circular chamber. The hooded figures ahead of us were peeling off to the right and left, as drilled and as solemn as a Freemason's picnic, taking their places in a circle of wooden pews. Lead moths were beginning to flitter in my belly. If Kiki Kondor isn't here, I thought, we are wasting a hell of a lot of time.
We held ourselves back as long as we could, but it was time to take our places in the pews. I stepped back in what I hoped was a reverent, monkish courtesy to allow Provis ahead of me. So did he. I bowed him ahead of me. He bowed me ahead of him, and it all gave us a little more time to locate our places.
Luckily there were only two seats left, one to the right and one to the left of the big closed door. I took my place and did a kind of grace. Then I raised my head and waited for the bell to chime its last great chime.
In the silence that followed, a voice cut sharply through the chamber.
'Welcome, brothers,' it said. 'Welcome to the September Cyclic For the Novices among us, a special welcome. Your guiding brothers will have led you in meditation. Soon, now, the Godwatcher will speak. Then, after further meditation, private audience will take place.'
The silence afterwards went on and on and I looked around me. The circle of seats was sliced by a carpeted aisle from the door beside me to a larger space opposite where a rounded, raised platform was set against the curved wall. I tried to see the faces of the men around me but each was in the deep shadow of his cowl. My neighbour's hands fidgeted nervously. They were manicured hands, and upon one wrist was the sort of watch which tells all, from the time of day to next week's fat stock prices. Through the congregation some of the figures moved, and here and there sounded the nervous sound of coughing. Then, suddenly, there was a figure on the raised platform before us. It was robed like us, but the robe was bright and white and it gleamed in cunningly directed light. The figure raised its hands high, and as it did so, the cowl slipped back from the face.
It was Swenson. I knew what he was going to say. And he said it.
'Shiki fu i ku ku fu,' he said, 'shiki shiki soku ze ku ku soku ze shiki.'
Then there was silence again. I used it to try to solve the riddle of Swenson's magic appearance. He was standing in his white light on the little platform, the focus of the ring, the wall curving unbroken behind him. A nervous lady-like giggle broke the silence, but before I started to wonder if I had heard it before, Swenson spoke again.
'God watches blindly,' he said. There was a microphone hidden somewhere near him for the words buffeted loud and harsh around the walls of the chamber. The men in the ring raised their hooded heads and repeated his words, some speaking with loud confidence, others with ragged uncertainty, as though they were saying them for the first time.
'God watches blindly,' they said.
'And who watches God?' said Swenson.
'Man must watch God,' they said. 'Man is the God-watcher.'
'And I am Man,' said Swenson. T am the God watcher.' , And we went into a loony, head-spinning litany. I listened hard and rhubarbed my way through, trying to make any sort of sense of what I was hearing. It was a long, metaphysical gibberish about the whole suffering world and how it was all going on too long because God was blind to the evil and the money and the greed of it. And how we were overdue for liberation, out of the fouled human nest into what they called the vortex.
'In the vortex,' screamed Swenson, 'is emptiness for all.'
They went on like this for a long time. And there was an idiot sort of sense under it, I began to think, as they parroted and chanted into my ears and over my head. The sooner they all jump out into the vortex the better, it began to seem to me.
'Man spends bis money on useless pleasures,' screamed Swenson.
'For his life is filled with tensions,' they screamed in reply. I nodded to that too, remembering all the money I have spent on all the pleasures I have used. But, I thought, if I have used them they were not useless. And then again, I thought, what else do you do with your money. Good works?
'And God watches blindly,' said Swenson, screaming even louder now.
I nodded again. I hoped that He does. What sort of kick would He get, I thought, peering hard through that great keyhole in the sky, down at me and my useless, costly, hard-earned pleasures. We put Him up there, I thought, for bigger things than that.
And Swenson was deep in his act now.
'A deep, earthen voice,' he was saying, 'like the voice of a sunflower saying that man has castrated his father and put out his eyes and fouled the nest with blood and greed. And then I was shown the vortex.'
He raised his hands high.
'Emptiness,' he screamed.
'Emptiness,' they shouted.
'A coloured emptiness,' screamed Swenson. 'Coloured with the colours of bliss and substance.'
'The emptiness-coloured vortex,' they screamed. 'Undefiled by the artifacts and the cunning works of man.
"Those who eat the greed of man will find their karma in our vomit,' screamed Swenson. And it may have been the hysterical noise they were generating, or some simple trick of acoustics, or native gullibility or just my empty stomach, but it was all beginning to make some creepy sort of sense to me. I was quivering on the brink of conversion. To me, perhaps to anyone who worked in the big commercial rat-race, or on its fringes, this vortex sounded better than a health-farm. I thought about it through the noise. No traffic, no frozen codpieces, no expanded polystyrene, no organisation, no method, no sales, no promotion, no Iron Gap, no Dollar Curtain.
Give me the vortex, I was thinking, wherever it may be. But then Swenson went into the rest of his act and spoiled it for me with a load of Oriental nonsense. His flock sat there breathing hard and making the holy sound om, and that was where they lost me. If you were to take everything I don't know about Zen and weave it all into a carpet of fiendish design, you could lay upon it all the gurus in the world end to end and four abreast.
Then, when they were all foaming at the mouth with fake mystical uplift, it all ended. The lights went out. When they glowed again, Swenson was gone, magically gone, back through the wall behind him. But by now, I had noticed the hairline of a crack in the figured walnut behind him. We all sat silently for a while. Then a hooded figure from across the circle rose to his feet. He made a sign in the air.
'Thus ends the September Cyclic,' he droned. "The Novitiate Will now withdraw. Those who are chosen for October action will receive details of the Godwatcher's advice from his guiding brothers.'
The flock rose and began to shuffle towards the door beside me. I looked at my watch. We had been in metaphysical orgy for forty gibbering minutes. I noticed that the three robed figures nearest the platform were still seated. Provis, across the aisle from me had seen this too. He was standing by the door ushering the file through as though by duty. So I did the same, watching him across the hooded heads between us.
He inclined his head, nodding minutely towards a battery of light-switches at his elbow. I nodded back and, as the last monk or novice or lamb for the slaughter passed between us, his arm moved upwards, knocking off the switches and plunging the chamber into black darkness. I dived behind the circle of pews behind me as the door buzzed and clunked solidly shut.
There were oaths from the three men still in the room, then the lights came on again. But by then I was deep in the shadow of the high wooden backs of the pews. I could just make out the shape of Provis too, in another pool of shadow across the aisle. Then I settled down on my heels and waited, expecting to hear more of the same claptrap that I had been hearing, and also, I realised, beginning to doubt myself.
I was beginning to be very much afraid that I was wrong, that Swenson was nothing more than I had told Frimsie three long days before, just another mystical creep, a goldbrick boy with frills, a hairy, quacking by-blow by Krishna-Krishni out of one of Jehovah's absconding witnesses.
But I put this defeatist thinking behind me. It was too late for such thoughts. Kiki Kondor had to be there. I even started to get angry to cover up my doubts. Brighton in damp September is for the sweepers. If I had dragged all the way south for nothing more than a lungful of Sussex mist and a bellyful of oriental gibberish, somebody would have to suffer. The trouble was, I thought, that it might be me.
Then I stopped thinking metaphysical thoughts. Across the room I heard the electrical buzzing of a door. It was not the door behind me, so I guessed that it was Swenson's magic wall. And I was right, for I heard him speak. His voice was different now, more business-like and without the edge of hysteria that he had worked up for his flock.
'Christ,' he said. 'It's getting harder and harder to work them up.'
'Don't worry,' said the voice which had dismissed the flock from the chamber. 'This is a particularly wooden batch. Nothing of much importance in it either. Just Kramer's mug from the city and I was watching him. I think we have him hooked
again.'
'Good,' said Swenson. 'What about Kramer? What the hell was he doing down there, eh? What happened exactly?'
T can tell you that,' growled a voice that I knew. It was Father William's voice, less reverent than before. 'He ran up against that bastard Brock.'
'Brock?' said Swenson. 'Ah, you mean that ape from the Fulbright Tower. I thought we had warned him off. What was Kramer playing at?'
'Oh,' said Father William. 'He wasn't after Brock. The bastard just turned up.'
'Well,' said Swenson, 'what the hell was Kramer playing at?'
I wondered too. If Swenson hadn't sent Kramer after me, and Father William for that matter, I began to wonder who had. But Father William was still talking.
'For God's sake, Swenson,' he was saying, 'it was no game. We had the devil of a time down in the country.'
'Later, Willy,' said Swenson. 'I have to get on with the private sessions. It'll be a waste of time, apart from those two faggots. There's a little mileage there, I hope.'
'Where did you pick them up?'
'Newman introduced them,' said Swenson.
'God bless Junior,' said the third voice.
Swenson laughed. 'Yes,' he said, 'he's a useful tool. The faggot's name is Frimleigh and we want a line to his daddy. So roll him over will you? Give him the works.'
'I'll take him on, if you like,' said Father William. T might enjoy it'
'No,' said Swenson. 'You watch yourself, Willy. I think you've done more than enough this week.' 'What do you mean?'
T mean that cock-up on Monday night. Where have you been since then, anyway?"
'You know perfectly well,' growled Father William.
T don't,' said Swenson. 'And on second thoughts, I don't want to know. Just keep your kinky hands off those faggots.
They may be useful and I don't want them scared away. Leave them to Paul. He has a way with them. Where is he? Shouldn't he be here?'
'Yes,' said Willy. 'But he's taking a trip.'
'Christ,' said Swenson. 'Can't you keep him off the stuff?'
'Have you got everything?' said the third voice. 'AH you need?'
'Yes,' said Swenson. 'Newman did his stuff very well. And the woman, of course. The Kondor girl might have helped a bit, but it's too late to bother now.'
•Well, good luck.'
'No need for luck,' said Swenson. 'The old man Kondor will squawk, of course, and so will the old cow. But we're in, I think, green and solid all the way. Now don't forget, Willy, hands off the queers and keep your eye on Paul. I'm losing patience. First Kramer then you and Paul. What's the matter with you all?'
'We were only doing what you told her to do,' said Father William.
'Well, do it properly,' said Swenson. 'Now, how's the rest of the business? We mustn't count our chickens.'
But I had stopped listening. The little lead butterflies were flittering again in my belly. What Swenson had said about Kiki meant one of two things. Either she was not there and I was flogging a dead horse. Or she was now dead and I was done for.
My shoulders slumped and I tried to work something out of the rest of the chatter. But there was nothing to help me. Swenson and his metaphysics was one big racket, that was obvious. But I had known that from the start. He was fiddling with the Fairchild business or the Kondor business or both. I had also known that. Newman was involved. And I had known that too. But I was no nearer Kiki Kondor. And the way Swenson had brushed my name aside had me worried as well as pricked.
The voice from across the room was twittering on through my panicking thoughts like a tickertape, rattling out the sort of financial jargon which made as little sense to me as the oriental claptrap of Swenson's act. It all sounded like a special feature from the Economist, a jungle of prices and moves and percentages and voting shares and God knows what else. Every few minutes Swenson grunted approval and after a while he wrapped it all up.
I heard a buzzing and I stuck my neck out, cautiously 188 around the side of the big wooden pew. Swenson was stepping back through the wall into a room behind it. I ducked back quickly and waited for the buzzing to stop. Then I heard the wall clunk together again and there was silence.
I waited. Then I called across the empty room to Provis. 'Well,' I said. 'What do you make of all that?'
'I make it a wild bloody goose chase,' said Provis quietly, back across the empty room. 'Seebie would be interested, but it's no use to us.'
But the room was not so bloody empty as all that. Only Swenson had gone through the wall. His hairy-skirted colleagues had been walking quietly back up the aisle towards us, and as we stood up to take stock of ourselves, they reached us.
We looked at them. They looked at us. Then we transferred our attention to the three little black eyes lower down, glinting into our bellies from the shadow of their wide hairy sleeves.
'Emptiness,' I said with no hope at all.
'Emptiness is all,' said Provis likewise.
Father William stepped forward and knocked the cowl away from my face. 'Ah, my son,' he said happily. 'We meet again so soon. So delightfully soon.'
Then the wall buzzed again.
'What is it?' said Swenson from the opening. 'What's the trouble now?'
'No trouble,' said Father William comfortably. 'No trouble at all. Just a visitor. Two visitors in fact and you may remember one of them. His name is Brock.'
'Brock?' said Swenson. 'What the holy hell is he doing here?'
'I don't know,' said Father William. 'But I feel sure that he will tell us.' He waved us across the room towards Swenson.
The wall buzzed behind us and we were all in Swenson's room, all teak and red executive leather. Father William's big Luger poked me across the carpet towards a table. Swenson was seated by now, at ease and reaching for the whisky bottle before him. He looked up at me and I saw that the surprise in his eyes was disconcertingly genuine. Then he poured his drink and sipped a leisurely sip. Then he eyed Provis, then sipped again. After a while he spoke.
'Who's this?' he said to me.
'A friend,' I said.
He nodded slowly. 'I see,' he said. Then he looked at Provis again and shrugged. 'He should have chosen his friends more carefully.'
'That's what I tell all my friends,' I said. Father William's gun slashed painfully into my side. Swenson clinked his glass onto the table and stood up.
'Now,' he said. 'You had better tell me just what in the name of Jesus you are doing here.'
'You know that,' I said, 'you hairy great slug.' Father William's gun slashed again and I winced. Swenson shook his head.
'I don't know what you're doing here,' he said, 'but I shall find out, of course. I last saw you at a party in Park Lane. I told you then to keep out of my business. Now I find you here. I want to know why.'
'I want the girl,' I said.
'Girl?' said Swenson. 'What girl? What are you talking about?' Once again the light of surprise in his eyes disconcerted me.
'Stop playing games,' I said, working hard to boost my dwindling conviction. 'The Kondor girl.'
He laughed. 'You're talking nonsense, Brock, as you must know. What would I be doing with that piece of fancy greenstuff?' Then his eyes gleamed harder. He stepped forward around the table and thrust his face towards mine. His breath smelled of malt whisky. "Right,' he murmured. 'Now let's stop bandying words shall we? What are you doing here? Who sent you?' A sudden thought struck him and he stretched out a large white hand to gather a fistful of my chest. 'Was it the Fairchild woman? Are you working for her?'
I pulled myself away from him. 'I've told you what I want,' I said. T want the girl. And one way or another, I'll get her.' Father William had moved behind me and an exquisite pain flashed through my left arm. Swenson continued to look at me for long, unprepossessing seconds. Then he walked back around the table to his chair. 'Not yet, Willy,' he said. 'Not yet. Let him speak.'
'I've nothing more to say,' I said. 'I'm here for the Kondor girl.'
Swenson picked up the bottle and weighed it in his hand. I tensed to avoid the blow, but he was thinking. Then he decided.
'Take him away,' he said. 'And the man-mountain. If old mother Fairchild sent them, it means she's onto us and I want to know. Get some sense out of them whatever way you like. Then let me know.' He switched off interest and began to pour more whisky.
All that time, Provis had been standing silently beside me, his vast shoulders drooping like a mountain in mourning. Now he grunted. I jumped back and watched him move. He moved the way I had seen him move once before, as light as a whisper and as fast as a flame. With a hand as big as an axehead, he chopped Father William back into my waiting arms, stretched out for the smaller of the two remaining monks and used him to club the third man onto the carpet. He rolled the two still bodies neatly against the wall. Then he collected the scattered pistols and in no more than ten seconds, while Swenson was still pouring his whisky, he had taken charge. The boot was suddenly on another, cleaner foot. I frog-marched Father William across the floor, tethered him with the girdle of his robe and propped him against the wall. Then I walked back to the table.
'Now,' I said, 'Give it to us quick.'
But Swenson was doing a very creditable cool and I felt a one-per-cent surge of respect for him. He had hitched his dropping jaw and continued to pour his drink. Then he looked up at me. 'Kiss off,' he said. He sipped his drink almost as rteadfly as before. T told you, the girl's not here. Whatever it is you're after, get on with it. It will do you no good, but get on with it. You won't get out of here, Brock. And you won't find the girl here.'
He sneered. I grabbed his throat in a panic. 'You've killed her,' I snarled. 'Is that what you're saying? Is that what you're telling me, you bastard?'
I think I was killing him. But Provis pulled me away and Swenson rolled to the floor, stroking his throat and choking the air back into his lungs. I stepped towards him again.
'No,' he said, less cool at last. 'If you're talking about last Monday, it wasn't the Kondor girl in the penthouse. It was someone else. It was a mistake, an accident.'
I growled.
'No,' said Provis. 'Let him speak.'
AH right,' I said. 'Talk. Answer the answers, Swenson. You had your man tailing me all over London. You had me chased into the country. You had your one-legged yokel try to take the girl and when that didn't work you sent your creeping Jesus down after us.'
Swenson crawled to his feet and looked at Father William. 'What is he talking about?' he said.
But I had no time to waste. I picked him up and slammed him against the wall. He looked into my eyes and started to talk.
T don't know about all that,' he said. 'Kramer tailed you in London. That's true. But that's all. The rest doesn't make sense.'
I put on a little more pressure. 'Why,' I snarled, 'why did Kramer tail me?'
'I thought you were on the Fairchild's tail and I wanted you off it,' he gasped. 'I told you that.'
'Yes,' I said. 'Now tell me where the girl is.'
T don't know,' he said. 'Why should I know? I don't want her, I have Sonny Fairchild and I have my own line through to old man Kondor. I admit I tried to get the girl. But I haven't seen her. That girl in the Fulbright, that was another girl entirely. Willie lost control, that's all. He coshed you while he was looking for Newman, then he couldn't keep his hands off the girl. I don't even know who she was.'
I skshed him with my gun, but his piggy eyes never wavered. They koked at me steadily out of his bruised and bloodied face.
'I've told you the truth, Brock,' he said. 'And now I'll tell you some more. I'm going to kill you.
'Ah, wrap it up,' I said, and threw him to the ground.
'I think he's telling the truth, too,' said Provis mildly. 'I told you. We're riding a red herring. The girl is somewhere else.'
'No,' I said. 'His creeps were after me down in the country. This bastard here is one.' I poked Father William with my gun. Then I realised what Swenson had said. Father William had coshed me, killed Julie Bateman and put Groon onto me. I stood over him and made my fists a club above his head. But Father William looked into my eyes and broke.
'It was Swenson,' he said. 'Swenson told us to bring the girl back. He put Smith onto it and he sent us down to fetch her.'
'Smith?' said Swenson behind me. 'You're raving. Who's Smith? Sent you where?'
'You did,' said Father William. 'You told the woman. She took Paul and me with her. And Kramer.'
I turned to Swenson. Swenson still held my gaze. He even shrugged. 'He's raving,' he said. 'He's raving to save his skin. He thinks that's what you want to hear. But you have to face facts. Your little hotpants doesn't want you. Or somebody quite else has snatched her. Now get out of here while you can.'
For me, it was a checkmate. Father William was telling the truth. I knew he was telling the truth. But Swenson believed what fie was saying. I wondered about the woman.
'Wfiat woman?' I way saying when the talkbox buzzed on the desk. I reached across and flipped the key. Then I pressed my gun hard into the side of Swenson's head. He grunted.
'Look here, guru,' said the box, 'you just have to do something. I knew the voice. It was Newman's inadequate tenor, pitched high with spite and fury. It spluttered on. 'That bitch has to go. You have to get her away from here. I've been useful to you, guru, and I want to be useful again. But I won't while you have any dealings with that unnatural cow.' The voice spluttered on and on.
'Deirdre,' I was muttering. 'He's talking about Deirdre.'
'Who's Deirdre?' said Provis with a mild interest in his deep voice, but I flipped the box off for a moment. I screwed the gun hard into Swenson's head.
'Tell him to come in here,' I said. I flipped the box on again.
'Come up to my room, will you, Junior?' said Swenson.
'I certainly will,' said Newman.
I flipped the box off again. 'Quick,' I said. 'Before he comes tell me what the dyke is doing in all this.'
Swenson gazed steadily at me. 'Nothing that should interest you,' he said. 'She's my contact with the Kondor interest. I don't know what you are, Brock, whether you're official or some kind of private snooper. But whatever you are, you'll find nothing you can use here. You can have Willy there and give him the works. But leave my business alone.'
'Business?' I said. Then the door buzzed. The wall slowly slid apart and Newman rushed through, spluttering his indignation all over the carpet. I stepped in front of him.
'Right,' I said. 'We're in a hurry, Junior. Where's the butch?'
He stood looking at me, his mouth opening and closing like a bloodshot goldfish, and I had no time to waste. It was all beginning to figure, I hoped. His feet left the floor and he somersaulted onto his inadequate chin. I asked him once more and this time he told me. Then we laid him along the wall with the others, led Swenson over to join them and tethered all their hands painfully to all their feet.
'All right,' sighed Provis. 'Let's try again. But I think the flab is right. It's just a big red herring. Who is this Deirdre, eh?'
'No, it's not,' I said. 'I think. Deirdre is a butch bitch who is a sort of business aide to Kiki Kondor. She is also in love with the girl. She knew about me and she knew about Kiki's house in the country, and she hated the whole Fairchild deal.' I prodded Newman with my foot. 'In fact, the only natural thing about her is that she threw up at the thought of Kiki marrying this creeping buttercup. It's obviously flipped her and she joined up with Swenson. Whatever the deal is, she's trying to wreck it.' I kicked Swenson. Is that right, guru?' I said.
Swenson was lying still, looking up at me from the carpet. His little eyes were gleaming with something like amusement. He was keeping his cool again, and under the sneer was a colder glow, of deep patient freezing hate.
'That's right, Brock,' he said. 'So have fun while you can. You don't have much longer.'
'Kiss off,' I said. Provis had buzzed the wall open and we walked through into the round chamber. Then we walked up the aisle and out into the corridor beyond.
The whole place was empty and still again. As we walked along the dim curving passage, we heard the murmur of voices from behind the blank doors, the sound, I supposed, of the gullibles in meditation with their guiding brothers, indoctrinating themselves headlong into the empty-coloured vortex. I wondered what it was about to cost them. But I shrugged it off. It was none of my business. All I wanted was Kiki Kondor. The Godwatcher could watch whatever paid him best so long as he kept his beady eyes off Kiki.
All the same, I thought, Swenson has a good thing going. And he was operating it on sound marketing principles as operated by successful salesmen all through history, from Peter and Paul to Proctor and Gamble. All you have to do for the jackpot is to take a basic human need, prune it down, chew it up, repackage it, add a dash of image and blow it down the pipeline. Swenson had taken religion, chopped off the dead wood, minced the rest into double-think claptrap and it was selling like ball-point pens. It was all at least as moral as toothpaste and as far as I could see, Father William apart, at least as honest too.
Then we found the stairs. We slid silently down, ready for trouble, but all we found was another empty curving passageway. I listened at doors and heard nothing. Then Provis touched my shoulder. He had ranged ahead and around the bend and I followed him back to see a slice of yellow light from under the door of a distant room. When we reached it, I laid my ear against the wood and heard, at last, Kiki's voice. It stopped me cold.
It was no more than a few long hours, in fact, since she had flopped in my cottage after Father Paul's sleeping draught. But it seemed like years and the sharp, sweet sound of her voice worked on me like benzedrine. I tried the door. It was locked. I stepped back to charge it down. Then I stopped again for another voice was talking now. It was Deirdre, the dyke, and as I listened it was like slugs on my skin. The voice was hissing out filth, spitting out a slime of obscenity. It was an eerie sound, compounded of female malice and male, bursting lust and I froze in horror.
Then the voice changed as the woman controlled herself, first into a pleading whine, then into bragging, snarling threats.
'I'll go on from here and ruin you and your precious father,' she was saying. 'This will be just the first step.'
'But why?' I heard Kiki saying. 'Why?'
There was an edge of fear in her voice that unfroze me. I opened the door and went in fast. Kiki was flat against the far wall, straining away as though the bare room were filled with spiders. And Deirdre stood before her slim and tight and quivering, hands clawed out towards the girl's terrified face. She did not look round as I burst open the door. She spat two words over her shoulder at me.
'No,' I said. She turned then, at the sound of my voice, and I saw her face. The skin was drawn back over the high bones of her cheeks, taut and yellow and greased with sweat. Her eyes were black animal pinpoints, burning between slitted lids.
'Brock,' said Kiki behind her. 'Get her away from me. Get her away.'
'Relax,' I said, watching Deirdre.
'Be careful, Brock,' said Kiki. 'She's insane.'
That was no news and it was bad news. Deirdre was circling the room now, her hands stiffened into chopping edges, her breath hissing gently through her white, tight lips. I was in for a rumble. I felt the large presence of Provis behind me, radiating a benevolent interest. But it was cold comfort. This was my fight. I kept my eyes on the dyke, looking for a chance to stick my finger in it.
'There,' I said to Provis as we circled warily. T told you it wasn't a red herring.'
'You were right,' he said. 'I must say, though, I had the feeling he was telling the truth.'
'Who?' said Kiki from across the room. I was some time answering, for most of my attention was on Deirdre. She was circling and hissing in earnest now.
'Swenson,' I said at last.
'Swenson?' said Kiki.
Deirdre flicked herself towards me, her flat hands stretched out in front of her. I leaped back, chopping vainly at her wrist as I did so,
'Yes,' I said. 'Swenson. He's upstairs now. With your bloody betrothed.' I leaped at Deirdre and chopped, for it was my turn. But I chopped only air. She was at least as fast as me.
With the tiny part of my consciouness that I could spare from the dangerous snake-eyed woman in front of me, I could feel Kiki registering bewilderment. So Swenson had been telling the truth. I swayed back from Deirdre's flickering reach.
'This cow,' I said, 'has joined up with Swenson and Junior and they're pulling something on you and your father.'
Deirdre's eyes gleamed hotter and her hissing shaped itself into words. 'The Fairchilds will roast in hell,' she was saying. 'And Swenson when I have used him. And you, too, Brock.'
'Ah,' said Satan Smith from the door. 'So it's Mr Bloody Brock again, is it, miss? I was hoping for an opportunity, look.'
'Leave him to me, Smith,' hissed Deirdre. 'Take the other one.' She leaped forward again like a drooling yellow snake.
'Watch the bastard,' I gasped to Provis as I jumped. 'He's got a bloody ferret up his jumper.' Then there was no more time for small-talk. The dyke was in deadly, lunatic earnest now. My last words to Provis, in fact, cost me dear. Before I restored the distance between us, the dyke's sharp-shod foot had flicked into my instep and I have limped ever since.
Then she was into me again, her right palm chopping my heart and darkening the room about me, her left hand clawing for my eyes. I heaved the oxygen into my labouring lungs and palmed her off. But her leg was between mine and as I forced her back, her foot hooked my ankle. Then I was on the ground and she was standing above me, her foot stamping down a: -;• groin. I rolled and her heel ground into the flesh of my hip. My arm clamped onto her leg and the same movement which brought me to my feet also brought her down.
But when all is said and done, she was a woman. A woman addled with unnatural passions and as fit as a fiddle and as strong as a horse, but nevertheless a woman. And a karate woman too. Judo is push-pull fighting and karate is a straight line science. Aikido, however, is circular. And as she rolled onto her feet and came in again, I tried desperately to think round.
The blow to my heart was still dimming my sight as she came in hissing for a kill. Her right arm chopped in towards my left temple. I jumped in close, blocked her with my left forearm, slipped my right arm under her elbow, clasped my hands and locked her killing arm. Then I pressed hard. She screamed. I pressed harder. She fainted.
I let her crumple to the floor and Kiki flew towards me. She was trembling and she fitted into my arms like a jelly into a mould. I stood heaving for a moment and tasting the fragrance of her hair. Then, when I was breathing properly I remembered Provis and Satan Smith. I raised my head and looked.
They were standing stock still, locked in giant combat, like haughty monarchs of the Scottish mist. Smith's great black crutch was lying on the floor and across the face of Provis was rising a great purple weal. The cords of his neck were standing out like steel hawsers but his eyes were as calm and as blue as the mild summer sea. As I watched, his massive chest heaved once, he seemed to hold his breath, then his arms, entwined in Satan Smith's, slowly straightened. Then a grunt. Then hands above his head and brought them down like a hammer.
He looked up from Smith's sleeping bulk. He nodded with approval. 'A big bloke that,' he said. There was a twittering from the corner of the room and the ferret snaked across the floor and slithered into the yokel's shirt. Provis picked up the great black crutch and smashed it into the side of the door. The door frame splintered and after several more cracks, so did the crutch. 'Nice bit of timber,' said Provis. Then the talkbox crackled high on the wall and Swenson's voice boomed around the room.
'You've had your fun now, Brock, wherever you are,' he was saying. 'Now it's our turn.'
'That's Swenson's voice,' said Kiki.
'You're darn tooting,' I said. "This is his place. I told you. Deirdre was working with him.'
T didn't know,' said Kiki. T thought there was nobody here but her and that terrible man.'
'Come on,' said Provis, 'there's a lot of them. You've got your girl so let's get out of here.' I took Kiki's hand and led her up the stairs and along the corridor, looking for the room that would lead us onto the downs and away. Provis was ahead of me and I ran headlong and head down, pulling Kiki behind me.
There was a growl ahead of me and I looked up. Father William was blocking the passage and fumbling in his robe for his gun. There was no more time to do it fancy so I put my head down again and kept on running, straight into his long thin belly. Kiki leaped over him and raced after Provis, but I paused to pick up the monk and throw him over my shoulder. Then I panted after them. He was thin but he was heavy. When I caught them, they were waiting beside an open door and as I staggered through, they slammed it behind me.
'What the hell is he for?' said Provis. 'If you want a souvenir, for Christ's sake, I'll get you a stick of Brighton rock.'
'No,' I said. 'I want him.' I wanted to give Father William to Groon. I had a nasty suspicion that this was about all we were going to get out of Swenson's whole operation. I heard the hue and cry behind the door. If, I thought, we're going to get anything out of it at all. I dropped Father William onto the floor and felt around for bolts. I found two and slipped them.
Then a cold gasp of Sussex mist hit my face. Provis had found the right room and he had found the little back door. In another second we were out, on the dark wet grass, running after our noses into the mist. But Father William was growing heavier by the second and after Deirdre's punishment, my legs were jelling. Then they seized up completely. I rolled over and over and down, losing my burden and coming to rest in thick wet grass. A second later Kiki and Provis slid into the dark hollow beside me.
Father William croaked. Then as his breath returned, he bleated. I crawled over to him and coshed him with my balled fist and we were in a still, damp silence, almost invisible from each other in the long wet grass of a deep wet hollow on the high wet downs.
'What are we going to do now?' said Kiki into the swirling silence. I put my hand gently over her hps. The mist was hiding us but perhaps it was also muffling the sounds of our hunters. We sat in silence. Then a black shape thumped out of the mist above us, hairy skirts flying, hairy chest heaving. We stopped breathing. After him, we could hear the approaching sounds of pursuit. And in the mist we could see the dim yellow swing of lanterns. Swenson had his whole flock on the job.
I hugged Kiki to the ground. Provis had already laid himself out on the softer, drier shape of Father William, and above us and around us voices were calling out of the fog. I heard Swenson's sharp growl and Newman's high-pitched buzz and we lay there growing colder and damper and stiffer while the big black shapes blundered about on the grass above.
It seemed only a matter of time before they blundered into us, but then there was a shout from below, further down the slope where one of the searchers heard a movement, a fox or a sheep or even, perhaps, a pair of Brighton lovers without the price of a warm back seat in the Curzon. The hunt moved on, cursing, and in a moment, the only noise around us was the creak of Father William's suffering body as Provis eased his great lounging limbs upon it.
'Do you think they've gone for good?' said Kiki into my ear.
'I hope so,' I said.
'Well, go on then,' she said. 'Put your ear to the ground,' 'Huh?' I said.
'She means like they do in the westerns,' called Provis.
'Oh,' I said. 'All right.' I crawled up to the lip of the hollow and laid my ear on the wet grass. But all I heard was a harsh whisper. I raised my head and shook the water from my ear. Provis was a black shadow beside me and his whisper cut the damp air like an old, used razor-blade.
'Get right up there,' he was saying, 'and throw a cordon around the bloody place. I'm taking no chances. But don't make a move till I whistle.'
I nodded in the darkness. He wants me to go back up there, I thought. And surround the place. On my own. What in hell does he think I am, I thought. A self-generating bloody amoeba?
But it was not Provis up there beside me on the cold wet lip of the hollow in the downs. And whoever it was, it was not speaking to me, for another voice grunted in reply and I froze as many figures moved ponderously past me, heading for the building on the slope above. I saw buttons gleaming dimly in the silent mist, I heard a word or two of whispered command. Then they were gone.
But the black shape beside me remained. Then it crouched up onto its feet and moved cautiously ahead, straight into my arms. I hooked my elbow around its throat and fell backwards down the slope into the hollow behind me, dragging the man with me and twisting as we fell, so that I landed on top of his wiry, whipping body.
'What's this?' whispered Provis, as we thumped onto the dark grass beside him. 'We don't want any more of the bastards down here.'
'Be quiet,' I said. 'There's a whole bleeding army up there.' The man beneath me was trying to grunt. I bore down on him and tightened my grip on his throat.
'More of Swenson's chaps, you mean?' said Provis.
'No,' I said. 'God knows who this lot are. But they're surrounding the place.'
'What's happening?' said Kiki. Perhaps she had dozed off.
T wish I knew,' I said. 'If it were believable, I would say they were coppers. They were certainly wearing uniforms.'
'Salvation Army, maybe?' said Provis.
'Don't be so bloody silly,' I said. The man beneath me was still trying to talk. I turned and raised my arm to silence him. Then the breeze from the sea blew a gap in the mist and the starlight showed his face. I felt my jaw drop like an incredulous stone. My hand paused of its own accord in mid-air and my muscles relaxed in surprise.
Superintendent Groon whipped his body out from under me, coughed air back into his lungs, put a whistle to his lips and blew a long shrill blast. Immediately, in the darkness above us, uproar commenced, the rough unmistakable uproar of policemen in the mass, the barking of inspectors, the bellowing of sergeants and the low, bubbling, chop-licking drool of the men with the truncheons.
And an instant later, Groon blew three short blasts on his whistle and our little dark hollow was filled with the big boots, the hot breath, the long arms and the hard hands of the Law. There were six of them and they fell like angels from above, two onto Provis, two onto Kiki and two onto me. Father William slept silently on.
Then a light clicked on and dazzled my eyes. Groon's harsh whisper came out of it.
'Brock, by all that's holy,' he said. 'John Brock, the lad with the line to the top. Well, let's see if your friends can get you out of this one.'
'Get me out of what?' I said. 'What the hell are you doing here anyway, Groon?'
'Certainly not looking for you, dear boy,' he said. 'You're what they call a present from the seaside.' The beam moved away from my face. It slid first over Provis and the two big specials who were sitting on him. Then it moved more slowly over Kiki's long body, stretched between two more coppers. Then the bright beam moved back to me.
'Up to your little games again, eh?' he whispered. 'I told your fancy friends they would regret turning you loose.' He waved his men away from Kiki and lifted her gently to her feet. He dusted her down, brushing the beads of water from her clothes. 'Don't be afraid now, my dear,' he whispered. 'You're safe.'
T don't know who the hell you are,' said Kiki. 'But I'll thank you to take your hands off me.'
"There now, my dear,' said Groon, putting a sickening paternal whine into his whisper, 'you've been through a bad time, I know, but it's all over now. Relax. Don't think about it any more. We'll deal with this maniac'
'For Christ's sake,' said Kiki. Then Provis stood up. He must have been getting bored. Groon's two big bruisers bounced off him like big, ugly balloons and by the time they hit the ground Provis was up and above them. He put a foot into each of their big, ugly faces and deflated them. Then he stepped towards me, picked the next pair off my back, knocked their heads together and let them fall to the ground.
As I was climbing to my feet, the third pair rushed us. I squared up.
'I'm wet,' said Provis, stretching out his great paws, 'and I'm bored. Allow me, Brock. You look after the little one.' The two specials ran straight into his arms and he squeezed them together until something seemed to give. Then he dropped them and looked at Groon.
'And who's this, Brock?' he said. 'He seems to know you.'
'His name's Groon,' I said. 'Special Branch.'
'Ah,' said Provis. "That accounts for it, I suppose. Take his whistle away before he brings some more of them down.' But Groon was sitting there on the grass in the glow of the fallen lamp, looking at Provis, then at the six sleeping coppers, then at Provis.
'Well,' I said. T asked you a question, Groon. What the hell are you doing here? You can't be chasing me, not with that bloody army. You must be after Swenson.'
'How did you know?' said Groon.
'I just hope you have a warrant,' I said. 'On second thoughts I hope you don't. With the sort of friends he seems to have, they'll crucify you, Superintendent.'
'Huh?' whispered Groon.
I fumbled around in the dark for Father William, found him and dragged him into the light. 'There you are,' I said. 'Perhaps this will help.'
'What's this?' said Groon.
'It's something you should have found days ago,' I said. 'While your gorillas were beating me up, in fact. Its name is Father William and it coshed me in the Fulbright Tower, the way I told you. Then it killed the girl. Now, Groon. let's hear from you. What are you actually doing, creeping around with all these coppers and catching your death of cold? Why aren't you keeping death off the roads?'
'I say, old boy,' said Greene out of the swirling mists above us. 'Can't we leave the explanations for later, there's a good chap. It's getting damned chilly out here, what?'
He swayed down into the glow of the lamp, Muir swaying behind him like an elegant, curly-brimmed shadow.
'And what the hell are you doing here, too?' I said.
'I've been waiting up there, old man,' he said. 'When I heard your voice, I knew there was going to be some rough stuff and you know how much I hate it. So I've been waiting.'
I gave up. Kiki was wet and shivering now, so I slipped a jacket from the shoulders of one of the sleeping coppers and wrapped her up while Groon made a show of taking charge. He got his men back onto their feet and we all climbed back up the slope towards Swenson's roundhouse. Provis slung Father William over his shoulder and I put my arm round Kiki. She quivered and I held her tighter.
'What you need,' I said, 'is a large glass of Swenson's whisky.'
'Allow me,' said Greene beside me, offering a flat silver flask.
'If it's the fat man's Calvados,' I said, 'you can keep it.'
'As you wish, old man,' he said. 'I don't care for it myself, as a matter of fact, but beggars can't be choosers, eh?'
'What you can do,' I said, 'is to tell me just what you're all doing down here.'
'Oh,' said Greene. 'We're doing nothing really, Muir and I. It's Groon's show, of course. Muir and I are just observing. Nothing to do with us at all, this Swenson caper, but since you put him onto it, Seebie thought we ought to be along.'
'Yes,' said Muir behind him. 'It's Groon's party. And a very nice piece of staffwork, I must say. It's a real round-up, like the old days.'
'Yes,' said Greene. 'You have to hand it to the specials. But if you ask me, old man, this isn't what Seebie had in mind at all. More of a quiet swoop, I would have thought.'
'Me too,' I said. So why did he bring the bloody troops?'
'You know the Special Branch, old boy,' said Greene.
'Megalobloodymaniacs,' said Muir.
I nodded. Then I shook my head. Then I shrugged. We were nearing the building now and it was lit up like the Albert Hall, glowing in the headlights of many cars. And the whole place was crawling with coppers, almost enough to unscramble Hyde Park Corner. They were filing in and out of the big front door, proceeding towards their shiny black vans in an orderly manner and loading them up with an assortment of protesting worshippers.
'Kiki, darling,' squealed a desperate voice as we squelched into the light. We all looked round. It was Frimsie, ruffled and gleaming between two beefy young coppers. I realised then that his was the familiar giggle I had heard before Swenson's sermon earlier on. He saw me too. 'Johnny darling,' he squealed, 'oh, Johnny, thank Heaven you're here. Please help, will you. These boys are so rough.'
'It's all right,' I said to the young coppers. 'You can let this one go.' But they strengthend their grips on Frimsie's elegant arms.
'Righto, you chaps,' said Greene, waving the fat man's little tin tag that should get us anything from a Cup Final ticket to a Polaris missile. Then Groon had a go. 'Release the fellow,' he whispered, flipping his warrant card.
But coppers are coppers, and coppers in uniform are even more so. They looked us up and down and proceeded stolidly towards their big black van and Frimsie's squeals grew shriller. Then Provis stepped forward. He unslung Father William from his shoulder and handed him to the policemen.
'You look after this one,' he said mildly. 'I'll take care of the little chap.'
'Ooooh,' said Frimsie.
The policemen looked Provis up and down. Then they looked at each other and did as they were told and we all went inside out of the cold.
'Please,' Frimsie was saying to Provis. 'Please help me find my friend Bubsie. You'll like Bubsie. It's my fault. I should never have brought him here. I'm terribly afraid for him, he's so sensitive, you see.'
'We'll see what we can do,' said Provis. 'What does he look like?'
'He's tall,' said Frimsie. 'He's tall and lovely.'
Then we were inside the roundhouse. A big, ugly Special came up to Groon.
"They're all away now, sir,' he said. 'It was just the ones in the long hairy robes that gave the trouble. The rest of them just squealed and spluttered.' He looked at me. 'Ah, sir, found another of them, did you?'
I had forgotten that I was still wearing Father Paul's fancy dress. But Groon waved the man away.
'Leave him for the moment,' he whispered. 'He has some talking to do.'
'On the contrary,' I said. 'I have some listening to do.' I led them all around the curving passage and through the big empty council chamber.
'Creepy sort of place,' said Greene, looking around. 'Puts me in mind of the jolly old freemasons, what? I must say, Brock, we have to hand it to you advertising chappies. Amazing intuition you must have, absolutely amazing.'
'Huh?' I said.
'Yes,' he said. 'You were onto this chap Swenson right from the start, weren't you? Even Seebie said he was all right, but you pressed on regardless.'
'Yes,' I said. 'And you said you couldn't keep pestering dear old Seebie. '
'I know,' said Greene. 'It just goes to show, my dear fellow. We should take more notice of your wild hunches. Swenson was the villian all the time. You really are a bloody miracle, Brock.'
'But he wasn't,' I said. 'Swenson's a villain, all right. But he wasn't my particular villain. It wasn't Swenson who snatched Miss Kondor. It was someone quite else.'
Kiki shivered beside me and I led her through the wall to Swenson's whisky. They all followed. Greene's brow was crinkled.
'But look here, old boy,'*he said. 'You started it all oft.'
'You asked me to check Swenson,' said Muir. 'You asked me yourself, man.'
"Then Seebie got to thinking,' said Greene. 'He got his boys to dig a little deeper and he found that Swenson had been causing all kinds of trouble in half the boardrooms in London.'
'The man is fly,' said Muir, 'a fly in the heart of the rose of British industry. That's what Seebie says.'
T could have told him that,' I said.
'No, old boy,' said Greene.
'You know Seebie,' said Muir. 'Nobody can tell him anything.'
I looked at Groon. He was scratching his cheek and whispering to himself.
'It's possible, of course,' I said, 'that Seebie knows what he's doing. But it's a lot more likely, I hope, that Whispering Fred over there has balled himself up. You can't arrest a man for running down a business. If you could, you'd have half of the busy British ratrace behind bars and most of the bloody farmers as well.'
'And the bloody Jockey Club,' said Muir with feeling.
'Yes,' I said. T can see why Seebie sent Groon down here to nose around. But he can't have meant the riot squad too.'
'Tell us about Swenson,' said Greene.
'He must have done something,' said Groon in a harsh and pleading whisper.
'He's done plenty,' I said. 'But there's nothing in it for you, I hope. It's a Fraud Squad job, if it's anything at all.'
'What goes on, old boy?' said Greene.
'He's worked up a spiritual howl about the end of the world and the greed of the people,' I said. 'And he feeds it to weak spots. So far as I can see, he fills them up with metaphysical claptrap and then, when they're brainwashed to his thinking, he puts them to work back at the office.'
'According to Seebie,' said Muir, 'he's making it pay more than handsomely.'
"There's no crime in that,' I said.
'You sound as though you're defending him,' said Kiki. 'And you can't be.'
'Not really,' I said. 'I'm just hoping Groon has balled it all up. But why not? British business runs on faith anyway. We're not consumer-units yet, you know. We still go into shops on this side of the Atlantic, not into empatheticalfy predelineated dollar-oriented event loops. When we buy a tin of catfood we are performing a simple act of faith.'
'Speak for yourself,' said Greene. T believe in marrow-bone jelly myself.'
'Anyway,' I said, 'where is Swenson now.'
'He'll be at the Station,' said Groon.
'Swenson?' said the big ugly sergeant. 'Is he a flabby pasty-faced bloke with a lot of hair?' 'That's him,' I said. 'He got away,' said the sergeant. 'Charming,' I said.
'But we got the rest of them,' said the sergeant.
'Well, it shouldn't matter to you, Brock,' said Greene. 'You said you weren't after him anyway. Incidentally, who were you after?'
'Deirdre,' I said.
'Deirdre?' said Greene.
'Yes,' I said. 'You may remember. When I asked for a check on Swenson, I also asked for one on Deirdre.'
T thought the name was familiar,' said Greene. T remember now. There was nothing there, was there? Never mind, Brock. Many a slip, what?'
'Well,' I said, wrapping a protective arm around Kiki, 'it was nearly one slip too many. Deirdre was involved with Sv/enson all right. But she was using his kinkier goons on her own account, to settle a private score with Miss Kondor.'
Kiki shuddered with memory. 'Don't let's talk about her,' she said.
'You can forget the whole thing now, ducky,' I said. 'At least Groon's got her safely locked up.' I looked at Groon. T suppose you really have got her?'
Groon looked at his sergeant. The sergeant flicked his notebook.
'Would that be a big, one-legged character with a ferret up his jumper?' he said efficiently. 'No,' I said. 'It would not.'
'Ah,' he said, flicking further. 'Well, in that case, it would have to be a thin woman in a chalk-striped suit.' 'That's Deirdre,' I said.
'Gave us a lot of trouble, she did,' said the sergeant. 'But don't you worry. We got her into the van and I told the boys to hand her straight over to the women's branch when they got her to the nick.'
'She'll love that,' I said. Then Provis came in with Frimsie.
'If you've wrapped it all up now,' he said, 'I was thinking of taking Frimsie along to the Funnybone.'
'I'll join you there,' I said. 'Did you find Bubsie?'
'In the nick of time, Johnny,' said Frimsie. 'In the very nick of time, thanks to your friend. We've tucked him up in the back of your car.'
'Nuttley's car,' said Provis. 'Your own is outside.' I nodded and led Kiki out after them. Most of the traffic had gone now, just a couple of cars left, with bored chilled drivers, waiting for Groon and Greene and Muir. My old Volvo was waiting across the gravel where we had seen it two action-packed hours before. On the grass Kiki stopped, stretched up and kissed me lightly.
'That's to be going on with,' she said. 'Now you must find me a room and a bath and a bottle. Then I can think about thanking you properly.'
'It was nothing,' I murmured. The breeze was blowing sharper now, and swirling the white mist about us. But I could feel the stars shining. She kissed me again and the stars shone brighter. But it was not her kiss which lit the whole world bright. It was the beam of headlights. Away up the grass track, a car was rocking along towards us, lighting us up like beacons and accelerating as it came.
Jesus, I thought, it's all starting again. I took Kiki's hand and pulled her away fast, out of the light. All I wanted now was to give her what she wanted, sign myself off and get very drunk with Provis. But the driver had seen us. The car slid to a spinning stop on the gravel, the door slammed open, and a figure blundered back at us.
'This goddamned limey smog,' it was screaming. 'Who was that there? I saw you, Brock. It was you, Brock, you goddamned schmuck.'
'Mind your language,' I said.
'Ah,' it screamed. 'It is you. Where are you, Brock, where are you? Jesus K. Reist, we picked ourselves a doggy one.'
He loomed out of the mist at us. 'Miss Kondor,' I said. 'Meet Mr Byron.'
Kiki stepped forward out of the murk. She looked him up and down.
But Byron was all for hustle. 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,' he said. 'We don't have time for the chat-chat, Brock. Mrs Fairchild is waiting to see the doll. Let's go, huh?'
'Mrs Fairchild can wait,' said Kiki.
'Yes,' I said. 'The old biddy can wait.'
rrc-14 209
'Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy,' he said, shaking his head in wonderment. 'You just don't give up, do you?'
'No,' I said. 'Miss Kondor is with me. Run along and tell the old biddy to stuff that up her oil well and pump it.'
But a big black silent shadow had detached itself from Byron's car and slid across to my side. The shadow grunted, and ground a small hard shape to my side. It could have been an umbrella, of course, or a cigarette holder or the key to the London Bunny Club. But it could also have been a pistol. The shadow could have been just another Brighton copper. But it could also have been Running Red Bull. After all, it was reunion day up there on the wet hills above the black sea. We only needed the fat man and Mrs Twissle to make it a full house. So I shrugged and waved Kiki into the car. Byron hustled her across the wide bench seat.
'Where are you taking her?' I said.
He paused, half into the driving seat and looked at me. 'Mrs Fairchild,' he said, 'is waiting. Just leave it, huh? Goodnight, we'll be in touch.' He slid behind the wheel and roared the motor. Then he looked out of the window at me. 'And if I never see you again, boy, like I'm that lucky, do something for me, huh?'
'What's that?' I said.
'Drop dead,' he said. He spun the wheel. As he turned, the dark shadow beside me slid silently into the back seat, and in thirty seconds they were no more than a dim red dot and a dying whine in the distance. Kiki Kondor was with them, and it was all over.
I stood there, alone in the wet darkness, thinking hard about America. Some of my best friends, I thought, are Americans. Then there is Big John Wayne and little Mitzi Gaynor and the Katzenjammer kids of my youth. There is Judy Garland and Fig Newton and Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
But there is also Kelly Byron, I thought. I know that one schmucky swallow doesn't have to spoil the barrel. But I stood there, battling for a sense of proportion and fighting the feeling that a whole ethos was in danger of crumbling.
Back in the Funnybone, Major Nuttley clicked his heels. 'Everything in order?' he snapped.
T suppose it is,' I said, sipping a large, raw whisky. I had been to the police station to make sure that Deirdre and Father William were properly locked up, and I had then spent a pleasant half-hour in the communications room listening to Groon on the hot end of the hot line from London. He kept producing Father William like a dog-eared trump card, but it seemed that one kinky homicide was not enough to justify a full-scale commando raid on a harmless gathering of influential cranks, whose solicitors were busy burying Seebie and his bosses in a mountain of writs.
I had also been given the pleasure of visiting Newman in his cell and for one of the fat man's five-pound notes, the sergeant had left us alone for a few sweet moments. I relished my aching kunckles and looked around the bar of the Funnybone. Greene and Muir were there, draping themselves elegantly around their third brandies and Frimsie was there, hissing across the table at Bubsie and waving an excited Campari in the air. They both looked adoringly at Provis. So did I. He was leaning on the bar.
'I suppose it's all right,' Nadia was saying. 'They're not members, any of them, but if they're friends of yours, I don't mind.' Her soft zeppelin breasts nuzzled gently across the bar and Provis started to tell her another story. Major Nuttley was still standing at attention beside me.
'I suppose it is,' I said again.
'Good show,' he said. 'At your service, of course, any further business. Mopping-up operations, recce, staffwork, things of that kind.'
'Not just now,' I said. 'I'm going to get drunk.'
'Ah,' snapped the major. 'Can't help you there, I'm afraid. Some things a man must do alone, what?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Dismiss.'
The major turned smartly about and marched briskly to the fruit machine. I drank my drink and took my empty glass to the bar. But Nadia was still nuzzling Provis. So I tip-toed behind her and took a bottle of Teacher's from the shelf and went back to my lonely corner. I looked out of the window. The mist had cleared now but there was nothing to see anyway, just wet sharp pebbles and the cold black sea.
Then the telephone rang. Nobody moved. It rang again and I answered it.
'Brock?' it said.
'Yes,' I said.
'Scramble, man, scramble,' it said.
I took a gulp of whisky, a deep breath and a firm grip on the telephone. 'Look,' I said. 'I thought I was shot of you, you crepidarian, lickspittling, bleeding pickthank.'
'All right, all right,' said Byron. 'The cops told me where you were. But don't bug me. And talk English, you goddamned fink. Now get on down here. Mrs Fairchild wants you right now.'
'Where?' I said.
'Didn't I say don't bug me, Brock?' he said. 'What's it to you where? You just get here. That limey hp is going to finish you, man. Right?'
'Right,' I said. It had occurred to me that Kiki would be there, wherever it was. I deserved ten minutes more, to say goodbye and to wish her whatever I could wish her for her long life ahead with Junior. I relished my aching knuckles again.
'That's better,' Byron was saying. 'Now try to keep your tiny limey mind on the job this time. I'll give it to you slow. Right?'
'Right,' I said.
'Get in your heap. Right?'
'Right,' I said.
'Point it due west. Right?'
'Right,' I said.
'Then all you got to do is drive straight ahead. Right?' 'Check,' I said.
'What do you mean, check?' he said. 'Right,' I said.
'Right,' he said. 'Then you go up to Room 504. Mrs Fairchild is waiting there. Do you think you can make it?'
'I think so,' I said. 'If you tell me where you're speaking from.'
'I said don't bug me, man,' he screamed. 'Now get on down here and no more goddamned lip. Even you can't miss this mausoleum. It's the one with the warm beer and the cold soup.'
So I got into my heap and pointed it west and rolled along the dark wet seafront. I knew the place he meant. It was a big, frilly Edwardian pile that specialised in visiting firemen and couples called Smith. Although Byron had given me no instructions about stopping the car, I did so.
Inside, I padded along the greasy carpet of the foyer. The night porter opened his eyes and looked at me, the lift gates clanged behind me, I wound my way up to the fifth floor and asked for Room 504.
'Oooh,' said the fat chambermaid in dirty curlers. 'That's the Bridal Suite, isn't it?' My heart sank. The old biddy was wasting no time. The maid's sniggering eyes followed me along the corridor, all the way to the door of Kiki Kondor's bloody Bridal bloody Suite.
I opened the door and went inside. It was a parlour filled with curly furniture, balding fading plush and the musty memory of a thousand dirty weekends. There were many mirrors and through an open door I saw a slice of bedroom with many more, enough to turn one simpering bride into a fly-blown harem at no extra cost in blood, toil or tears.
At first sight the parlour was empty. My multiplied image stared at me from each speckled glass. Then, in one of them. I saw another face staring too, fragile, wrinkled and framed in silver hair. She was sitting by the popping gas-fire and hidden from my view by the fat back of her chair.
But her voice reached me. It probably reached the night porter too. 'Sit down, Mr Brock,' she boomed in her virile, all-American buffalo bellow.
I sat down beside her. There was a little curly table between us, holding Old Grandad. She poured one drink and sipped it. I waited.
'Well?' she said.
I looked at the bottle.
'It's been all very untidy, young man,' she said. I shrugged.
'You flung it up against the wall, Mr Brock,' she said, 'and it certainly trickled, eh?'
I shrugged again. 'I wouldn't say that, Mrs Fairchild,' I said. 213
/
'You have the girl. She's undamaged, I think. I admit that 1 lost her after I found her. But it's Friday now and you have her.' A thought struck me. 'You do have her, don't you?'
'Oh yes,' she said. T do have her. And I'm not really blaming you. It was all very untidy, but it wasn't altogether your doing, I suppose. I'm not blaming you, Mr Brock.'
T should hope not,' I said. 'You can look a bit nearer home.'
'Junior, you mean?' she said, sipping her whisky. 'Yes. He's been very naughty. But you can forget about him now. He's on his way to Texas.'
I rubbed my aching knuckles and smiled. 'He's not, you know,' I said. 'He's in the nick.'
'He was,' she said mildly, 'and there was no call for that. Still, young man, I suppose you saved Running Red Bull the trouble.'
'You mean your Apache?' I said.
'He's only seven-eighths Apache,' said the old biddy. 'But yes. Byron winkled the young fool out and I've given him to Red Bull.'
Christ, I thought aghast. The dainty old shrike is sending her own son off for scalping. This must be how they won the west.
'Ugh,' I said. 'Talk about matriarchal societies.'
'Watch that goddamned lip, Brock,' said Byron. 'Mrs Fairchild isn't one of them.' He must have entered the room on his rubbery knees, unless he had been lying at the old biddy's feet all the time.
'It strikes me, Mr Brock,' boomed Mrs Fairchild, 'that you yourself might have profited from a firmer hand in your own youth.'
'That may be so,' I said, thinking back over the long years. My mother had tried to beat a few of the basics into me, I suppose, and she had a fairly heavy hand with the Yorkshire pudding. But she was never so dedicated to motherhood as to have me stitched into a fresh buffalo-hide and left to dry in the hot Texas sun.
'And neither am I, young man,' said the old biddy. 'I've simply sent him out of harm's way. A few months on the reservation with Red Bull might pump a little essence into him, perhaps.'
'Perhaps,' I said, doubting it. 'Just what was he up to, anyway?'
Her wrinkled head snapped out of her wrinkled neck. 'He was wrecking my deal,' she snapped. 'That's what he was up to. He's being going behind my back and meddling in my business, Mr Brock.' The reckless fool,' I said.
She nodded. 'Yes,' she said. 'But he won't do it again.' She sipped her Old Grandad comfortably. I shuddered, even for Newman.
'But I mustn't be too hard on him,' she said. 'He's weak rather than wicked. Like all the Fairchild men. And it was Swenson who was wrecking the deal, of course. Swenson and the woman.'
'Kiki Kondor, you mean?' I said.
'No,' she said. The other one.'
'Deirdre?' I said.
"That's the one,' she said. 'We never knew just how close she was to old Kondor. Or the lengths to which she would go to wreck the merger.'
'You mean the marriage,' I said.
Her wrinkled face wrinkled even deeper, in disgust. 'Yes,' she said. 'Anway, what with her and Junior's meddling, Swenson got himself firmly in the middle.'
I'm sorry for him,' I said. 'Will it cost you?'
'Will it cost her?' said Byron from the shadows. He snorted. 'Man, will it cost her? Listen, Brock. That hairy fink can take Mrs Fairchild for five per cent of one per cent of the whole goddamned deal.'
'Well,' I said. 'That's not so bad then, is it?'
'Eeek,' said Byron. 'What are you man, some kind of recluse? Don't you know nothing at all? See what I mean about these goddamned limeys, Mrs Fairchild? No goddamned dollar sense. Eek.'
'Why?' I said. 'Was the deal a big one?'
'A big one?' said Byron, considering. 'Was it a big one? Oh no, boy. Not a big one. Not big. As deals go, it was just a teensy-weensy squidget of a deal. Oh no, I wouldn't call it big. Well, not global' His voice changed. 'Listen, you fink, and Til spell it out. Mrs Fairchild is going into central heating.'
'Big deal,' I said, after a while. I was disappointed. The least I had expected, I supposed, was the sterilisation of the Rhine. Or a chain of beefburger bars from the Bay of Biscay to the Adriatic Sea, or the automation of the Alps with quick-frozen edelweiss and stereophonic glockenspiels for all.
'AH that comes later, young man,' boomed the old biddy. "The first step is central heating. We're turning the whole of Kondor's production line over to it and we'll have the continent piped up within a year.'
'Well,' I said, 'It's one way to sell a barrel of oil, I suppose.'
'It's not just that, young man,' she said.
'Goddamned money-mad limeys,' said Byron.
'No,' said the old biddy. 'It's more than money. It's the first step in the civilisation of a continent. We'll make Americans of you yet, Mr Brock.'
She was talking nonsense, of course, for all the big New Jersey boom. The American secret, I knew, lies behind us, out in the wide open spaces and the starry skies above, in the log cabins and the gila monsters and the barn dances and the silver cities and the black hills. In Billy the Kid and Randolph Scott and the man from the Alamo.
But perhaps I am wrong, I thought. Perhaps the old biddy was right. Perhaps the American secret is cosier than that. And there is nothing cosier than central heating, I thought. Central heating means shirtsleeves in December and smooth white warm skin. It means open doors and baby dolls and bare feet and freedom to move. Professor Kinsey would have filled no more than twenty pages from the ice-cold bedrooms of Europe.
And then again, I thought, it is a warm house that needs an ice-box and all that goes with it, like Coca Cola and pink ice-cream, frozen beans and scotch on the rocks.
I nodded. The American secret, I saw, flows through smallbore pipes.
'So there we are, young man,' she said, raising her glass. 'We'll make Americans of you yet.'
I reached forward to fill a glass to toast her Machiavellian cunning, but she stopped me. I shrugged. I could do without it.
'Just for the record,' I said, 'what are you doing about Swenson?
'I'm putting him on the payroll,' she said. 'What else? Underneath all that quackery, there's a very sharp brain.'
'Well,' I said. 'At least you'll get back your five per cent of one per cent, I suppose.'
'It's not only that,' she said. T find his poetry very moving.' She poured more of the drink that she would not share with me. 'Very moving indeed.'
Ha, I thought. Give her a few months and a sermon or two and she'll be out in the emptiness-coloured vortex with the rest of them. And Swenson will inherit the centrally-heated earth and all the oil in it. I shrugged. If that's what he wants, I thought.
I stood there, not drinking Old Grandad, mourning Kiki Kondor and her bright hair and her soft skin and her long legs and her sharp sweet voice and what it might have said to me. But she was out of my reach, high in the unbreathed air, winging her way with Newman to the reservation. I wondered if it was true about Indian weddings.
'When's the wedding?' I said.
'Wedding?' she said. Unbelievably, she blushed. A faint, rosy heat glowed in the wrinkles of her face, like sunrise over Death Valley. 'There's no wedding. I like him, mind you, but I'm past that sort of thing now. And anyway, he hasn't asked me.'
"Who?' I said. 'Swenson?' 'Mind your goddamned lip, Brock,' said Byron behind me.
'Good God, no,' she said astonished. T thought you were talking about your chief.'
I was in shock for a moment, trying hard to imagine such a union. Then I gave up the task. It needed a kinkier mind than mine.
'I didn't mean you, Mrs Fairchild,' I said. 'I meant Junior.'
'Oh,' she said. 'That's off. I can't do a thing like that to a girl, not even for the sake of the business.'
'You're too soft-hearted, Mrs Fairchild,' I said.
'You're right there, Brock' said Byron. 'You're absolutely right for once, you goddamned fink.'
'That's enough, Byron,' said the old old biddy, just before I bashed him. 'Go and see if the car is waiting.'
Byron pulled out of his corner, accelerating across the carpet and through the door and disappeared down the straight stretch of corridor. Mrs Fairchild got to her feet and picked up the whisky bottle. Then she put it down again.
'I'll leave this,' she said. 'You might need it later.' She walked briskly to the door. Then she looked back at me. 'Well,' goodbye, young man.'
'Goodbye, Mrs Fairchild,' I said. 'I'm sorry that it didn't work out. But let's hope you get the grandson you deserve.'
'I think I will,' she said. 'He won't have Fairchild blood in him. But perhaps he'll be no worse for that.'
'I'll see you to your car,' I said.
'No, young man,' she said. 'You stay here. You're not quite finished yet. These things don't happen by magic, you know.' 'What things?' I said.
'What we were talking about,' she said. 'Grandsons.' Then 217 she was gone. I closed the door behind her and walked back to the bottle. I held it up to the light and admired the bright amber gleam in which I was about to drown myself. Then the telephone rang.
'What do you think you've been playing at?' said the fat man.
'Eh?' I said.
'Seebie's got the whole damned Street jumping,' he said.
'What do you mean?' I said. 'What's it to do with me?'
'This Swenson,' he said. 'Seebie's on the carpet.'
'Don't worry,' I said. 'Groon made a fool of himself but luckily Swenson got away.'
'That's right,' said the fat man. 'He got away to London and he's shouting his head off. And he's got a case. Apart from the kinky one and some woman, they're all in the clear.'
'Oh,' I said.
'Not only are they in the clear,' he said, 'but they read like the Daily Mail list of top management.' 'There must be something,' I said.
'No,' said the fat man. 'He's got a perfect right to preach the end of the world to anyone who'll listen.'
'Yes,' I said. 'But as far as I could see, he was helping it along.'
'And why shouldn't he?' snarled the fat man, 'With bloody fools like you around, we'd be better off in limbo. You shouldn't have done it.'
T didn't do it,' I said. 'It was Groon. All I wanted was the girl and I already had her.'
'Maybe so,' he said. 'And don't raise your voice to me. You've made a complete bloody mess of this job all along the line, Brock. Let's see if you can finish it with no more trouble. Goodnight.'
'What do you mean?' I said 'Finish it? It's finished.'
'You've seen Mrs Fairchild, haven't you?' he said.
'Yes,' I said.
'What was the last thing she said?' he said.
'Something about a grandson,' I said.
'Well, there you are, man,' he said. 'Get on with it. I should have thought it was right up your street.'
He slammed the telephone down in my ear. I picked up the bottle again. Then I picked up a tumbler and poured a carefully measured first dose. The fat man was babbling and I raised the glass to my lonely lips.
'Please, Brock,' said a sharp, sweet voice. 'Please not whisky. 218
Ring for oysters if you must. But please not whisky. It spoils things.'
I looked around. Except for my other speckled selves, staring from the mirrors on the walls, I was alone. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. Perhaps I had it bad. But the door to the bridal bedroom was still open and I crossed the faded carpet just in case I was not dreaming.
Then I put down my tumbler of whisky. I needed whisky no longer, nor oysters, nor fresh brown bread. I needed no odiferous lozenges of aphrodisiac ambergris, no cinnamon and cardomon seeds. Not the flesh of the partridge, not the eggs of ants and bees and woodlice, nor the white meat of the schinck to drink with sweet white wine. The simple sight of Kiki Kondor was more than enough.
The bed was big and soft and white and high, and her hair splashed gleaming across the pillow. The room was fragrant with her perfume and, as always, the air, where it touched her, seemed to crackle in a little nuclear dance.
T thought she would never go,' she said.
"The wedding's off,' I said.
'Of course,' she said.
I looked at her as at the Aurora Borealis. After a while she stretched her long arms high and arched her body in the bed.
'She was still booming away about grandsons,' I said, following a train of thought.
'Not grandsons,' she said. 'She's decided to settle for an heir.'
'Oh,' I said.
'She's quite a woman,' said Kiki. 'We had a long talk and we came to an understanding.' 'Oh,' I said.
'Well,' she said. 'Let's get on with it.'
So there she was. The old biddy had told me to finish the job. So had the fat man and I was beginning to see what they expected. And all I could do was just stand there, looking silly and feeling siller. I fought it, of course, but I could feel the fixed, silly grin on my face twisting into a bent, stupid scowl.
I wondered why. Outside the window, the wet salt mist had melted. The smell of seaweed drifted up from the beach. The moon had waxed and was laying a golden trail across the waning sea. I looked at Kiki again. She was no less desirable than before and now she was laid out on a plate for me. But my hands were refusing to unbuckle my belt and I wondered why. Up until that emasculating moment, I had always jumped headfirst at whatever anyone served up, from tennis balls to chocolate-coated grasshoppers. And life on a stud farm, I would have thought, is the only way to die.
But although the fat man throws my wild oats in my face at the drop of a hat, I am nobody's bloody stallion and when all is said and done, you don't buy the sausage; you buy the sizzle. My two big feet were slamming me out of the room and sadly I followed them.
Down in the hall, the night porter was sniggering in his sleep and outside in the night, I looked at my watch. The day was gone. Midnight, if I could see it, was looming up over the thick black sea. Away towards Dieppe, a light twinkled. Then another. There were ships out there, with drunken skippers and brawling bosuns and hairy-chested stokers chasing blue-eyed cabin boys up and down the focsles, brandishing golden rivets like holy grails.
And fifty miles behind me in the swinging city, my friends would be walking their dollies round and round the Saddle Room and lapping up the cannelloni and gulping down the hock.
But Brighton was on its watery knees. Up towards Norfolk Square there was a flutter in the shadows, a girl, or perhaps a boy, beating the last night bounds. Halfway up Preston Street, a Swedish amazon fed a jukebox and the loud sad sound pumped down to the sea like sewage. The lights turned red, then green, then red again, but no car passed. It was midnight in Brighton. I was nobody's bloody stallion and away on the dark empty end of the West Pier all the bumper cars were bumped. The hot dogs all were cold. All the likely lads were thumped and all the steamers rolled.
I switched off the doggerel before I was struck like it. There is more to Brighton than jellied eels and peppermint rock. There are telephones, and a number buzzed in my head. Its legs were as long as Kiki Kondor's and its hair was as bright.
So back beside the sleeping porter, I dialled it. She sizzled on the end of the line and I hopped into my car and drove east to Kemp Town. As I passed the Rattigan Line, I neighed.