New Year’s Day, 1992
THIS MORNING I WAKE in my garret at Chetwynd-Pitt’s, knowing that the phone in the lounge, two floors down, will ring in sixty seconds and that the caller will be my father, with bad news. Obviously it won’t; obviously it’s the dregs of a dream—otherwise I’d have powers of precognition, which I don’t. Obviously. What if Dad’s calling about Penhaligon? What if Penhaligon blabbed in his suicide note, and an officer from Truro has spoken to Dad? Obviously this is postcocaine paranoia, but just in case, just in case, I get up, slip into the Turkish dressing gown, and go down to the sunken lounge where the phone sits silent, and will stay silent, obviously. Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way dribbles out of Chetwynd-Pitt’s room, no doubt to beef up his wigga credentials. The lounge is empty of bodies but full of debris: wineglasses, ashtrays, food wrappers, and a pair of silk boxer shorts over the Boer War rifle. When I got home last night, the Three Musketeers and their backing singers were frolicky and high, so I went straight to bed.
Perching on the back of the sofa, I watch the phone.
09:36, says the clock. 08:36 in the U.K.
Dad’s peering over his glasses at the number I left.
+36 for Switzerland; the area code; the chalet’s number …
Yes, I’ll say, Jonny did play cards from time to time.
Just a bunch of friends. Relaxation, after a long week.
Absolute tops was fifty pounds a sitting, though. Beer money.
How much? Thousands? I’ll laugh, once, in disbelief.
That’s not relaxation, Dad. That’s lunacy. I mean …
He must have fallen in with another bunch altogether.
09:37. The molded plastic phone sits innocuously.
If it doesn’t ring by 09:40, I’ve been scaring myself …
09:45 AND ALL’S well. Thank Christ. I’ll lay off the cocaine for a while—maybe longer. Didn’t the Yeti warn me about paranoia? An orange-juice breakfast and a vigorous ski from Pointe les Hlistes will flush last night’s toxins away, so—
The phone rings. I grab it. “Dad?”
“Morning … Hugo? Is that you?”
Damn it, it is Dad. “Dad! How are you?”
“A bit startled. How the Dickens did you know it was me?”
Good question. “There’s a display on Rufus’s phone,” I lie. “So, uh, Happy New Year. Is everything okay?”
“Happy New Year to you too, Hugo. Can we talk?”
I notice Dad’s subdued tone. Something’s up. “Fire away.”
“Well. The damnedest thing happened yesterday. I was watching the business news at lunch when I had a phone call from a police detective—a lady detective, no less—at Scotland Yard.”
“Good God.” Think think think, but nothing joins up.
“One Superintendent Sheila Young from the Art and Antiques Recovery Division. I had no idea such a thing existed, but apparently if Monet’s Water Lilies gets stolen, say, it’s their job to get it back.”
Either Bernard Kriebel’s shopped me or someone’s shopped Kriebel. “A fascinating job, I guess. But why phone you?”
“Well, actually, Hugo, she wanted a word with you.”
“What about? I certainly haven’t nicked a Monet.”
A worried little laugh. “She wouldn’t actually say. I explained you’re in Switzerland, and she said she’d appreciate your calling her when you get back. ‘To assist in an ongoing inquiry.’ ”
“And you’re sure this wasn’t some idiot’s idea of a practical joke?”
“She sounded real. There was a busy office in the background.”
“Then I’ll call Detective Sheila Young the moment I’m home. Some manuscript got nicked from Humber Library, I wonder? They have a few. Or … nope, I’m clueless, but I’m itching with curiosity.”
“Super. I—I must admit, I didn’t tell your mother.”
“Tactful, but feel free to tell her. Hey, if I end up in Wormwood Scrubs, she can do the ‘Free Hugo’ campaign.”
Dad’s laugh is brighter. “I’ll be there, with my placard.”
“Splendiferous. So, apart from Interpol hounding you about your criminal-mastermind son, is everything else okay?”
“Pretty much. I’m back to work on the third, and Mum’s rushed off her feet at the theater, but that’s panto season for you. You’re quite sure you don’t need a lift from the airport when you get home?”
“Thanks, Dad, but the Fitzsimmonses’ driver is dropping me off. See you in eight days or so, when our mystery will be resolved.”
I GO UPSTAIRS with scenarios flashing by at twenty-four frames a second: The brigadier’s died and a legal executor is asking, “What valuable stamps?”; Nurse Purvis is asked about the brigadier’s visitors; Kriebel points the finger at Marcus Anyder; CCTV footage gets reviewed; I’m identified; I conduct a taped interview with Sheila Young; I deny her accusations, but Kriebel appears from behind a one-way mirror—“It’s him.” Formal charges; bail denied, expulsion from Cambridge, four years for theft and fraud, two suspended; if it’s a quiet news day I’ll make the national papers—OLD RICHMONDIAN STEALS STROKE VICTIM’S FORTUNE; out in eighteen months for good behavior, with a criminal record. The only profession open to me will be wheel clamping.
In my garret, I wipe a clear bit on the misted-up window. Snowy roofs, H?tel Le Sud, sheer peaks. No snow’s falling yet, but the granite sky is full of oaths. January 1.
A compass needle is turning. I feel it.
Pointing to prison? Or somewhere else?
Madam Constantin doesn’t choose people at random.
I hope. Hard rabbitty thumps from below: Quinn.
He comes soon, like a disappointed brontosaurus.
Detective Sheila Young isn’t a trap; she’s a catalyst.
Pack a bag, my instinct says. Be ready. Wait.
I obey, then find my place in The Magic Mountain.
THE CHALET OF Sin is astir. I hear Fitzsimmons on the first landing below: “I’ll have a quick shower …” The boiler wakes, the pipes growl, and the shower spatters; women are speaking an African language; earthy laughter; Chetwynd-Pitt booms, “Good morning, Oliver Quinn! Tell me that wasn’t what the doctor ordered!” One of the women—Shandy?—asks, “Rufus, honey, I call our agent, so he know we are okay?” Footsteps go down to the sunken lounge; in the kitchen, the radio leaks that song “One Night in Bangkok”; Fitzsimmons comes out of the shower; male muttering on the landing: “The scholarship boy’s still up in his holding pen … On the phone earlier … If he wants to sulk, let him sulk …” I’m half tempted to yell down, “I’m not bloody sulking, I’m really happy that you all got your rocks off!” but why should I spend my energy on rectifying their assumption? Someone whistles; the kettle’s boiling; then I hear a half-falsetto half-croak half-shout: “You are shitting me!”
I give my full attention. A quiet few seconds … For the second time on this oddest of mornings I experience an inexplicable certitude that something’s about to happen. As if it’s scripted. For the second time, I obey my instinct, close The Magic Mountain, and stow it in my backpack. One of the singers is talking fast and low so I can’t make out what she’s saying, but it prompts a thud-thud-thud up the stairs to the landing, where Chetwynd-Pitt blurts out, “A thousand dollars! They want a thousand fucking dollars! Each!”
Drop, drop, drop, go the pennies. Or dollars. Like the best songs, you can’t see the next line coming, but once it’s sung, how else could it have gone? Fitzsimmons: “They’ve got to be fucking joking.”
Chetwynd-Pitt: “They’re very very not fucking joking.”
Quinn: “But they … they didn’t say they were hookers!”
Chetwynd-Pitt: “They don’t even look like hookers.”
Fitzsimmons: “I don’t have a thousand dollars. Not here!”
Quinn: “Me neither, and if I did, why should I just hand it over?”
Tempting as it is to emerge from my room, stroll on down with a cheery “Would you Romeos like your eggs scrambled or fried?,” Shandy’s call to her “agent” is a klaxon with flashing lights blaring out the word pimp, pimp, pimp. Some would say it’s merely a fluke that I have a new pair of Timberland boots in my room, still in their box, but “fluke” is a lazy word.
Chetwynd-Pitt: “This is extortion. I say, fuck ’em.”
Fitzsimmons: “I agree. They’ve seen we have money, and they’re thinking, How do we get a slice of this?”
Quinn: “But, I mean, if we say no, I mean, won’t they—”
Chetwynd-Pitt: “Club us to death with tampons and lipsticks? No, we establish that piss off means piss off, that this is Europe, not Mombasa or whereverthefuck, and they’ll get the idea. Who’ll the Swiss cops side with? Us, or a trio of sub-Saharan rent-a-gashes?”
I wince. From the Bank of Floorboards I withdraw my assets and redeposit the wedge of banknotes in my passport bag. This I secure inside my ski jacket, contemplating that, while the wealthy are no more likely to be born stupid than the poor, a wealthy upbringing compounds stupidity while a hardscrabble childhood dilutes it, if only for Darwinian reasons. This is why the elite need a prophylactic barrier of shitty state schools, to prevent clever kids from working-class post codes ousting them from the Enclave of Privilege. Angry voices, British and African, are jostling down below. From the street outside I hear a beep. I look through my window and see a gray Hyundai with a skullcap of snow, crawling thisaway with ill intent. It stops, of course, at the mouth of Chateau Chetwynd-Pitt, blocking the drive. Out step two burly guys in sheepskin jackets. Then Candy, Shandy, or Mandy appears, beckoning them in …
THE FRACAS IN the lounge falls silent. “You, whoever you are,” shouts Rufus Chetwynd-Pitt, “get off my property now or I call the police!”
Camp-Psycho-German with a nasal voice: “You ate in a fancy restaurant, boys. Now it is the time to pay the bill.”
Chetwynd-Pitt: “They never said they were hookers!”
Camp-Psycho-German: “You did not say you are crafted of penis yogurt, yet you are. You are Rufus, I believe.”
“None of your fucking business what my—”
“Disrespectful language is unbusinesslike, Rufus.”
“Get—out—now!”
“Unfortunately, you owe three thousand dollars.”
Chetwynd-Pitt: “Really? Let’s see what the police—”
That must be the TV expiring in a tinkly boom. The bookcase slams on the stone wall? Smash, clang, wallop: glassware, crockery, pictures, mirrors; surely Henry Kissinger won’t escape unscathed. And there’s Chetwynd-Pitt shrieking, “My hand, my f’ck’n’ hand!”
An inaudible answer to an inaudible question.
Camp-Psycho-German: “I CANNOT HEAR YOU, RUFUS!”
“We’ll pay,” whinnies Chetwynd-Pitt, “we’ll pay …”
“Certainly. However, you obliged Shandy to call us, so the price is higher. This is a ‘call-out fee’ in English, I think. In business, we must cover costs. You. Yes, you. What is your name?”
“O-O-Olly,” says Olly Quinn.
“My second wife owned a Chihuahua named Olly. It bit me. I threw it down a … Scheiss, what is it, for an elevator to go up, to go down? The big hole. Olly—I am asking you the English word.”
“A … an elevator shaft?”
“Precisely. I threw Olly into the elevator shaft. So, Olly, you will not bite me. Correct? So. You will now gather your monies.”
Quinn says, “My—my—my what?”
“Monies. Funds. Assets. Yours, Rufus’s, your friend’s. If there is enough to pay our call-out fee, we leave you to your Happy New Year. If not, we do some lateral thinking about how you pay your debts.”
One of the women speaks, and more mumbling. A few seconds later Camp-Psycho-German calls up the stairway. “Beatle Number Four! Join us. You will not be hurt, if you do no heroic actions.”
Soundlessly, I open the window—it’s cold!—and swing my legs over the window ledge. A Hitchcock Vertigo moment: Alpine roofs you’re planning to slide down look suddenly much steeper than Alpine roofs admired from below. Although the angle of Chetwynd-Pitt’s chalet becomes shallower over the kitchen, there’s a real risk that in fifteen seconds I’ll be the screaming owner of two broken legs.
“Lamb?” It’s Fitzsimmons, up on the stairway. “That money you won off Rufus … He needs it. They have knives, Hugo. Hugo?”
I lower myself onto the tiles, gripping the windowsill.
Five, four, three, two, one …