Armadillo

Armadillo - William Boyd


Chapter 1

In these times of ours – and we don’t need to be precise about the exact date – but, anyway, very early in the year, a young man not much over thirty, tall – six feet plus an inch or two – with ink-dark hair and a serious-looking, fine-featured but pallid face, went to keep a business appointment and discovered a hanged man.
Lorimer Black stared aghast at Mr Dupree, his mind at once clamorous with shocked alarm and curiously inert – the warring symptoms of a form of mental panic, he supposed. Mr Dupree had hanged himself from a thinly lagged water pipe that crossed the ceiling in the little anteroom behind reception. A small set of aluminium folding steps lay on its side beneath his slightly splayed feet (his tan shoes needed a good clean, Lorimer noticed). Mr Dupree was simultaneously the first dead person he had encountered in his life, his first suicide and his first hanged man and Lorimer found this congruence of firsts deeply troubling.
His eyes travelled reluctantly upwards from Mr Dupree’s scuffed toecaps, pausing briefly at the groin area – where he could discern no sign of the fabled, impromptu erection of the hangee – and moved on up to his face. Mr Dupree’s head was hunched too far over and his expression was slumped and sleepy, like that worn by exhausted commuters who doze off in overheated railway carriages, propped upright by badly designed banquettes. If you had seen Mr Dupree snoozing opposite you on the 18.12 from Liverpool Street, his head canted over in that awkward position, you would have ached presciently for the stiff neck he was bound to experience on awakening.
Stiff neck. Cricked neck. Broken neck. Christ. Lorimer carefully placed his briefcase on the floor, stepped past Mr Dupree and moved quietly to the door at the end of the anteroom. He opened it and peered out over the devastated expanse of the factory. Through the blackened and carbonized joists and beams of the roof he could see the low, unrelieved pewter of the sky; the floor was still covered with the charred and melted naked bodies of a near-thousand plastic mannequins (976, according to the documentation, a consignment destined for a chain of stores in the USA). All that mangled and ruined ‘flesh’ provoked a shiver of ersatz disgust and horror (ersatz because they weren’t real; after all, he told himself, no pain had been suffered) but here and there was preserved a head of cartoon handsomeness, or a tanned girl smiling a smile of preposterous welcome. The unchanging good nature of their expressions lent a certain touching stoicism to the scene. And beyond, Lorimer knew from the report, lay the torched workshops, the design studios, the clay and plaster sculpture rooms, the moulding lines. The fire had been unusually fierce and typically thorough. Apparently, Mr Dupree had been insistent that nothing would be touched, not a melted model budged, until he received his money and, Lorimer could see, Mr Dupree’s word had been steadfast.
Lorimer exhaled and made little popping noises with his lips. ‘Hmmm’, he said out loud, then, ‘Jesus H. Christ’, then ‘Hmmm’ again. He realized his hands were shaking slightly, so he thrust them in his pockets. The phrase ‘a bad business’ began to repeat itself moronically, man-trically, in his head. He speculated vaguely and reluctantly about Hogg’s reaction to the Dupree suicide: Hogg had told him about ‘toppers’ before and Lorimer wondered what the procedure was…
He closed the door, worried for a second about fingerprints, and then thought: why would they dust for a suicide? It wasn’t until he was back in reception and reaching for the phone that another thought entered his mind that possibly, just possibly, it might not have been suicide after all.
The detective who came as the result of his call to the police, Detective Sergeant Rappaport, seemed not much older than Lorimer but called him ‘sir’ regularly, and a little needlessly, all the same. ‘Dennis P. Rappaport’ it had said on his ID.
‘You say you had an appointment with Mr Dupree, sir.’
‘Yes. It had been booked for over a week.’ Lorimer handed over his business card. ‘I was here promptly at 10.30.’
They were standing outside now, beneath the cursive red plastic sign that read ‘Osmond Dupree Display Mannequins est. 1957’. Police and other officials busied themselves with Mr Dupree’s mortal remains inside. A constable diligently wound fluttering striped tape around lamp-posts and railings, notionally sealing off the front of the factory and banning access to half a dozen cold, expressionless bystanders curiously looking on. Waiting for the body bag, Lorimer thought: charming. Detective Sergeant Rappaport carefully studied the business card and then performed a histrionic pouching mime.
‘May I, sir?’
‘By all means.’
From his leather jacket Rappaport produced a fat wallet and slipped Lorimer’s card inside.
‘Not your average beginning to your average sort of day, sir, I would imagine.’
‘No… Most distressing,’ Lorimer agreed, watchfully. Rappaport was a burly fellow, beefy and blond with cornflower-blue eyes, the sort of looks unsuitable in a detective, Lorimer thought, for some reason, thinking instead that Rappaport should have been a surfer or a tennis pro, or a waiter in a Los Angeles restaurant. Furthermore, Lorimer wasn’t sure if Rappaport’s deference was meant to unnerve, reassure or to be subversively ironic in some way. On balance he thought it was probably the last: Rappaport would have a chortle about its effect later in the mess or canteen or the pub or wherever it was the detectives gathered to natter and moan about their respective days.
‘Now we know where to find you, sir, we won’t trouble you any further. Thank you for your assistance, sir.’
More than ironic, the blatant overuse of ‘sir’, Lorimer thought, was clearly and deliberately patronizing, there was no doubt about that, but at the same time a conversational irritant, a covert sneer, impossible to protest against.
‘Can we run you back anywhere, sir?’
‘No thank you, Detective Rappaport, my car’s round the corner.’
‘The “t” is silent, sir. Rappapor. Old Norman name.’
Old Norman smug bastard, Lorimer thought, as he walked back to his Toyota in Bolton Place. But you wouldn’t be quite so pleased with yourself if you knew what I had in my briefcase, he reflected, cheering himself up somewhat as he turned into the square. The improved mood was transitory, however. As he unlocked his car door he felt a depression settle on him like a shawl, almost physically there, across his back and shoulders, as he considered Mr Dupree’s desperate, humble demise: what drove a man to tie a washing line to a water pipe, slip a noose around his neck and kick away the aluminium steps that supported him? It was the memory of his scuffed shoes hanging three feet off the ground that stayed with Lorimer rather than the grotesque loll of the head. That and the miserable January day – bleak and dull – and Bolton Place. Its naked plane trees with their Gulf War camouflage, the struggling, tarnished light, the cold – a wind had freshened – and the morning’s rain had left the sooty brick of the entirely acceptable Georgian houses almost charcoal-coloured. A child in a padded moss-green jacket tottered here and there on the central rectangle of lawn, vainly seeking distraction, first among the sodden cropped flowerbeds, then with a wily thrush, then scuffing up a few remaining dead leaves and flinging them aimlessly about. In a corner on a bench its nanny or child-minder or mother watched, smoking a cigarette and swigging something from a lurid can. City square, venerable buildings, a patch of tended green, an innocently happy toddler, a concerned supervising adult – in any other context these ingredients might have conspired to form a more joyous symbolism. But not today, Lorimer thought, not today.
He was pulling out of the square on to the main road when a taxi passed a little too close to the front of his car and he was forced to lurch abruptly to a stop. The wobbly diorama of Bolton Place slid along the taxi’s glossy black side and his oath caught in his throat as he saw the face framed in the rear window. This happened to him from time to time, occasionally several times in one week – he would see a face in a crowd, through a shop window, going down the escalator of the Underground as he went up, that was of such luminous, transfiguring beauty that it made him both want to shout in exultant surprise and weep with frustration. Who was it who said that ‘a face in the Tube can ruin an entire day’? It was the glance that did it, the glance with its swift, uncertain apprehension, its too hurried analysis of the optic phenomena available. His eyes rushed to judgement; they were too keen to see beauty. Whenever he had a chance for a second look the result was nearly always disappointing: the studied gaze was always a severer arbiter. And now, here, it had happened again – but this one, he thought, would survive sober reassessment. He swallowed; he recognized the authentic symptoms: the slight breathlessness, increased pulse, the sensation of a packed thoracic cavity. The girl’s wan, perfect, oval face – the woman’s face? – had been eager, hopeful, leaning forward to the window, long-necked and wide-eyed with pleasurable anticipation. It came and went so rapidly that the impression, he told himself, so as not to ruin his entire day, couldn’t fail to have been an idealized one. He shivered. Still, it had been a form of benign random compensation, erasing the image of Mr Dupree’s suspended scruffy shoes for a moment or two.
He turned right and headed for Archway. In his mirror he could see that the small crowd around Dupree’s Display Mannequins lingered on balefully. The girl’s taxi had become stuck behind the ambulance and he saw a policeman gesticulating at the driver. The rear door opened – but that was all, because he was away, off down Archway and Holloway Road, down Upper Street to the Angel, along City Road to Finsbury Square to see, soon appearing ahead of him, the rain-lashed, jagged towers and dripping walkways of the Barbican.
He found a meter near Smithfield Market and strode briskly back up Golden Lane to the office. Some sort of stingy, sleety rain was falling diagonally – he could feel it, despite his bowed head, smiting his cheeks and chin. Freezing, foul day Shop lights glowing orange, pedestrians hurrying, heads down like him, suffering, clenched, concerned only about reaching their destination as quickly as possible.
At the door he keyed in his code and stamped up the pine stairs to the first floor. Rajiv saw him through the reinforced glass panel, the door buzzed and Lorimer pushed through.
‘Brass monkeys out there, Raj.’
Rajiv stubbed out his cigarette. ‘What’re you doing here?’
‘Hogg in?’
‘What d’you think this place is? Holiday camp?’
‘Humorous, Raj. Very satirical.’
‘Idle damn bastards.’
Lorimer hefted his briefcase on to the counter and clicked it open. The neat rows of new bills always gave him a small shock – their unreal latency, their strange mint purity, unfingered, not crumpled or folded, yet to be exchanged for goods or services, yet even to function as money. He started stacking the trim wads on the counter top.
‘Aw, f*ck,’ Rajiv said and strolled to the back of his den to open the big safe. ‘Police called, asking about you. Thought it might be trouble.’
‘Not the best start to the day.’
‘Bleater?’ Rajiv filled his palms with money.
‘I should be so lucky. Topper.’
‘Ouch. I’m going to have to get security back, aren’t I? Doesn’t make Rajiv happy.’
‘I’ll take it home, if you like.’
‘Sign here.’
Lorimer signed the money back in. ￡500,000. Twenty wads of five hundred fifty-pound notes, fresh with their astringent, chemical, paper smell. Rajiv hitched his trousers over his belly and lit another cigarette as he checked the docket. As he bent over the page the overhead strip light was reflected down the middle of his shiny, perfectly bald pate. A lucent Mohican, Lorimer thought.
‘Want me to call Hogg?’ Rajiv asked, not looking up.
‘No, I will.’ Hogg always claimed that Rajiv was the best accountant in the country; he was even more valuable to the firm, Hogg said, because he didn’t know it.
‘Damn bore,’ Rajiv said, slipping the docket into a file. ‘Hogg was expecting you to have this one sorted, what with the new chappie coming.’
‘What chappie?’
‘The new director. For God’s sake, Lorimer Black, how long’ve you been away?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Lorimer said, remembering.
He waved vaguely and airily at Rajiv and headed down the corridor to his office. The set-up here reminded him of his college: small, identical, boxy rooms off an overlit corridor, each door fitted with a rectangle of reinforced glass so that absolute privacy was denied. Pausing at his hutch, he saw that Dymphna was installed opposite, her door ajar. She looked tired, her eyes weary, her big nose blown raw. She smiled lethargically at him and sniffed.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he said. ‘Sunny Argentina?’
‘Sunny Peru,’ she said. ‘Nightmare. What’s up?’
‘Had me a topper.’
‘They are bastards. What did the Hogg-man say?’
‘Haven’t told him yet. I had no idea it was likely. Never suspected. Hogg never told me anything.’
‘He never does.’
‘Likes surprises.’
‘Notour Mr Hogg.’
She made a knowing, resigned face, hoiked up her heavy bag – one of those squared-off ones with many internal compartments reputedly favoured by airline pilots – and set off past him down the corridor, homewards. She was a big, solid girl – haunchy, buttocky – lugging her heavy bag with ease. On her feet she wore surprisingly fine, high-heeled shoes, all wrong for this weather. She did not turn round as she said, ‘Poor old Lorimer. See you at the party. Wouldn’t tell Hoggy straight away, though, he’ll not be a happy camper, what with this new director coming.’ Rajiv laughed in loud agreement at that. ‘Night, rascal Raji,’ Dymphna said, and was gone.
Lorimer sat at his desk for an aimless ten minutes, pushing his blotter about, selecting and rejecting various pens before deciding that perhaps a memo to Hogg was a bad idea. He hated memos, Hogg. Face to face was what he liked. Nose to nose, even better. Hogg must surely understand in this case: everyone had a topper sometime, it was a risk in this job. People were at their weakest, their most fallible and unpredictable – Hogg was always telling you that – going over the edge was an occupational hazard.
He drove home to Pimlico, turning off Lupus Street into Lupus Crescent and finally finding a parking space a mere hundred yards from the house. It had grown decidedly colder and the rain now had a heavy spittley look as it angled through the tangerine glare of the street lights.
Lupus Crescent was not crescent-shaped, though the street of standard basement and three-storey, cream stucco and brown brick terraced houses did have a slight bend in it, as though it had aspired to crescenthood but did not have the energy to go the full distance. When he’d bought his flat in number 11 he had been put off by the name, wondering why anyone would want to christen a street after a particularly unpleasant ailment, a ‘disease of the skin, usually tubercular or ulcerous, eating into the substance and leaving deep scars’, according to his dictionary. He was relieved when his downstairs neighbour, Lady Haigh – a slim, spry octogenarian, genteelly impoverished – explained that Lupus had been the family name of an Earl of Chester, something to do with the Grosvenor family, who had owned the whole of Pimlico at one time. Still, Lupus was an unfortunate surname, given its medical connotations, Lorimer considered, and was one he would have thought seriously about changing, had he been the Earl of Chester. Names were important, which was all the more reason for changing them when they didn’t suit, or irked in some way or gave rise to unpleasant associations.
Lady Haigh’s television set mumbled loudly through her front door as Lorimer sorted through the post in the hall. Bills for him and one letter (he recognized the handwriting); Country Life for Lady H; something from the Universit?t von Frankfurt for ‘Herr Doktor’ Alan Kenbarry up top. He pushed the magazine under Lady Haigh’s door.
‘Is that you, Alan, you jackanapes?’ he heard her say. ‘You woke me up this morning.’
He changed his voice. ‘It’s, ah, Lorimer, Lady Haigh. I think Alan’s out.’
‘I’m not dead yet, Lorimer, darling. No need to worry, my sweet.’
‘Glad to hear it. Night-night.’
The magazine was tugged effortfully inside as Lorimer padded up the stairs to his flat.
As he closed the door behind him, hearing the new aluminium and rubber seals kiss shut, he felt an immediate sense of relaxation rinse through him. He laid his palm ritually on the three helmets that stood on the hall table, feeling their ancient metal cool beneath his skin. Buttons were pressed, switches flicked, low lights went on and a Chopin nocturne crept through the rooms following him, his feet soundless on the rough charcoal carpet. In the kitchen he poured himself two fingers of ice-cold vodka and opened his letter. It contained a polaroid photograph and on its reverse side, scrawled in turquoise ink, the following message: ‘Greek Helm. c. 800 BC. Magna Graecia. Yours at a very special discount – ￡29,500. Sincerely, Ivan.’ He studied the picture for a moment – it was perfect – then he slipped it back into the envelope and tried not to think about where he could lay his hands on ￡29,500. Glancing at his watch, he saw he had at least an hour to himself before he would need to prepare for the party and head off to the Fort. He slid The Book of Transfiguration out of its drawer, spread it on the counter and, taking a tiny, lip-numbing sip from his glass and selecting a pen, he settled himself down to write. What pronoun should he use, he wondered? The reproachful, admonitory second person singular, or the more straightforwardly confessional first? He moved between ‘you’ and T as his mood took him, but today, he considered, he had done nothing untoward or recriminatory, there was no need for harsher objectivity – T it would be. ‘379’, he wrote, in his tiny, neat hand. ‘The Case of Mr Dupree’.
37g. The Case of Mr Dupree. I had spoken to Mr Dupree only once, when I called to make the appointment. ‘Why isn’t Hogg coming?’ he had said immediately, neurotically, like a lover, disappointed. ‘Had enough fun, has he?’ I told him Mr Hogg was a busy man. ‘Tell Hogg to come himself or the whole thing’s off,’ he said and then hung up.
I relayed all this to Hogg, who made a sick-looking face, full of contempt and disgust. 7 don’t know why I bothered, why I took the trouble,’ Hogg said. ‘He’s squatting in the palm of my hand,’ he said, holding out his broad palm, callused like a harpist’s, ‘with his trousers around his ankles. You finish it off, Lorimer, my lad. I’ve got bigger fish to fillet.’
I did not know Mr Dupree, which is why my shock was so short-lived, I suppose – still disturbing to think about, but not profoundly so. Mr Dupree had existed for me only as a voice on the telephone, he was Hogg’s case, one of Hogg’s rare sorties into the market, as he liked to put it, to sample the wares and the weather, just to keep his hand in, and then passed him on to me, routinely. That’s why I felt nothing, or, rather, what genuine shock I felt was so brief The Mr Dupree I encountered had already become a thing, an unpleasant thing, true, but had a flayed cow carcase been hanging there, or, say, I had been confronted by a pile of dead dogs, I would have been equally upset. Or would I? Perhaps not. But Mr Dupree, the human being, had never impinged on me, all I had to go on was the importunate voice on the phone; he was merely a name on a file, merely another appointment as far as I was concerned.
No, I don’t think I am a cold person, on the contrary I am too warm and this, in fact, may be my problem. But why am I not more shattered and distressed by what I found today? I do not lack empathy but my inability to feel anything lasting for Mr Dupree disturbs me rather. Has my job, the life Head, given me the emotional responses of an overworked stretcher-bearer on a crowded battlefield blankly noting and enumerating the dead only as potential burdens. No, I’m sure of it. But the case of Mr Dupree was something that should never have happened to me, should never have become part of my life. Hogg sent me there on his business. But did he know something like this might occur? Was it his insurance to send me there instead?
The Book of Transfiguration
He cabbed to the Fort. He would drink too much, he knew, they all would, they always did at these rare gatherings of the entire team. Sometimes if he drank a lot he slept at night but it didn’t always work, though, otherwise he would have embraced alcoholism with a convert’s zeal. Sometimes it kept him up, jangled and alert, mind going like a train.
Getting out of the cab, he saw that the Fort was agleam, all aglow tonight, spotlights picking out its full twenty-four floors. Three swagged, gilded commissionaires stood at the porte cochère below the aquamarine neon sign. Solid, emphatic, classical roman font – FORTRESS SURE. Something grand must be going on in the boardroom, he thought, all this is not for the likes of us. He was checked, saluted and directed across the lobby to the escalators. Second floor, Portcullis Suite. There was a full-sized catering kitchen on the twenty-fourth, he had been told, and a chef. Someone had said it could have doubled as a three-star restaurant: it probably did, for all he knew – he had never risen to those heights. He smelt cigarette smoke first, then heard the ebb and flow of too-loud conversation and chorused male laughter, feeling the transient electricity of excitement that free drink always provoked. He hoped some canapés had made their way down here to the proles. Mr Dupree had made him miss lunch, he realized, and he was hungry.
Dymphna’s breasts were momentarily visible as she stooped to stub out her cigarette. Small with pale pointy nipples, he noticed. She really shouldn’t wear such low –
‘– He’s f*cking livid,’ Adrian Bolt was saying to Lorimer with enthusiastic relish. Bolt was the oldest member of the team, an ex-police inspector, a Mason and an aspiring martinet. ‘Steam coming out of his ears. Course, you can’t tell with Hogg. That control, that discipline –’
‘Isn’t the steam a bit of a giveaway?’ Dymphna said.
Bolt ignored her. ‘He’s impassive. Like a rock, Hogg. A man of few words, even when f*cking livid.’
Shane Ashgable turned to Lorimer, his square face sagging with false sympathy. ‘Wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, compadre.’
Lorimer turned away, a sudden acid sting of nausea in his throat, searching the busy room for Hogg. No sign. He saw that a microphone was being attached to the moulded pine dais at the far end and thought he could make out the oiled grey-blond hair of Sir Simon Sherriffmuir, Fortress Sure’s chairman and chief executive, in the midst of a cluster of beaming acolytes.
‘Another drink, Dymphna?’ Lorimer asked, needing something to do.
Dymphna handed him her warm, empty, smeared glass. ‘Why thank you, lovely Lorimer,’ she said.
He pushed and eased his way through the drinking throng, all drinking avidly, quickly, glasses held close to their mouths, as if someone was likely suddenly to snatch them away, confiscate the booze. There were very few he knew here any more, just a sprinkling from his own days at the Fort. They were a young crowd, early to mid-twenties (trainees?), newly suited, loudly tied, flushed, cheery faces. Friday evening, no work tomorrow, arse-holed by midnight, rollocked, well bevvied. The women were all smoking, confident in their minority status, laughing as the males grouped and regrouped about them, sure of themselves, sought-after. Lorimer ruefully reflected that he hadn’t really been fair to –
His elbow was gripped, hard. He barely had the strength to hold on to Dymphna’s glass. He felt obliged to utter a small gasp of pain as he was wheeled round, effortlessly, as if on a dance floor, being masterfully led.
‘How’s Mr Dupree?’ Hogg asked, his big, lumpy face bland, and very close to Lorimer’s. His breath smelt most odd, a mix of wine and something metallic, like Brasso, or some other powerful cleansing agent, or as if every cavity in his teeth had been freshly filled an hour ago. Hogg had also, improbably, tiny ruby jewels of shaving cuts on his left earlobe, his upper lip and another two centimetres down from his left eye. He must have been in a hurry.
‘Mr Dupree in the pink, is he?’ Hogg went on. ‘Tip top, hale and hearty, full of piss and vinegar?’
‘Ah,’ Lorimer said weakly, ‘you heard.’
‘From the f*cking POLICE,’ Hogg said in a throat-grating whisper, his big simple features looming ever closer, almost out of focus. Lorimer held his ground: it was important not to flinch in the brunt of Hogg’s verbal batterings, even though, if he thrust his face any further forward, they might as well be kissing. Hogg’s mineral breath wafted off his cheeks, fanned his hair gently.
‘I had no idea,’ Lorimer said, resolutely. ‘He agreed to meet. I figured I’d have it tied up –’
‘– Nice choice of vocabulary, Black.’ He prodded Lorimer in the chest with some force, hitting his right nipple square on, as if it were a bell-push. Lorimer winced, again. Hogg stepped back, his face a mask of loathing, of profound, metaphysical disgust. ‘Sort it out. And keep it squeaky.’
‘Yes, Mr Hogg.’
Lorimer swiftly gulped two glasses of wine at the bar, inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times, before heading back towards Dymphna and his colleagues. He saw Hogg across the room pointing him out to a fleshy-looking man in a hand-made pin-stripe suit with a pink tie. The man began to make his way towards him and Lorimer felt his throat tighten suddenly – What now? Police? No, surely not in bespoke tailoring? – and he ducked his head to suck at some of his wine as the fellow approached, smiling a thin, insincere smile. The face was puffy, strangely weather-beaten with the roseate, burny glow of burst capillaries around the cheeks and nostrils. Small, bright, unfriendly eyes. Closer to he saw that the man was really not that old after all, not much older than he was, he just seemed older. The motif on the man’s pink tie, he noticed, was of tiny yellow teddy bears.
‘Lorimer Black?’ the man said, raising his deep voice, a lazy patrician drawl, to compete with the babble around them. Lorimer noticed that his lips barely moved, he spoke through his teeth, like an inept ventriloquist.
‘Yes.’
‘Stalk hilly virgin.’ His mouth had opened a slit and these sounds had issued forth. These were the words Lorimer aurally registered. He proffered a hand. Lorimer juggled glasses, slopped wine, managed a brisk, damp shake.
‘What?’
The man looked at him fixedly and the insincere smile grew marginally wider, marginally more insincere. He spoke again.
‘Thought we’ll heave the gin.’
Lorimer paused for the briefest of moments. ‘Excuse me. What exactly do you mean?’
‘Torn, we’ll lever chain.’
‘Look, I don’t know what –’
‘TALK, OR WE’LL LEAVE HER, JANE.’
‘Jane who, for God’s sake?’
The man looked about him in angry incredulity. Lorimer heard him say – this time quite distinctly – Jesus f*cking Christ.’ He fished in his pocket and produced a business card which he offered to Lorimer. It read: Torquil Helvoir-Jayne, Executive Director, Fortress Sure PLC.
‘Tor-quil-hell-voyre-jayne,’ Lorimer read out loud, as if barely literate, realizing. ‘I’m so sorry, the ambient noise, I couldn’t –’
‘It’s pronounced “heever”,’ the man said contemptuously. ‘Not “hellvoyre”. Heever.’
‘Ah. I get it now. Torquil Helvoir-Jayne. Very pleased to –’
‘I’m your new director.’
Lorimer handed Dymphna her glass, thinking only that he had to leave this place now, pronto. Dymphna did not look drunk but he knew she was, knew in his bones that she was deadly drunk.
‘Where’ve you been, mein Liebchen?’ she said.
Shane Ashgable leered over at him. ‘Hogg was here looking for you.’
There was the sound of a gavel being beaten vigorously on a wooden block and a stertorous voice bellowed. ‘A-ladies and a-gentlemen, pray silence for Sir Simon Sherriffmuir.’ Genuinely enthusiastic applause appeared to break out from those crowded round the dais. Lorimer glimpsed Sir Simon stepping up to the podium, slipping on his heavy tortoiseshell half-moons and peering over them as he held up one hand for silence, the other producing a tiny slip of notepaper from a breast pocket.
‘Well…’ he said – pause, pause, theatrical pause – ‘It’s not going to be the same old place without Torquil.’ Energetic laughter greeted this modest sally. Beneath its reverberations Lorimer edged towards the twin doors of the Portcullis Suite only to have his arm gripped at the elbow for the second time that evening.
‘Lorimer?’
‘Dymphna. I’m off. Must dash.’
‘D’you fancy supper? Just the two of us. You and me.’
‘I’m dining with my family,’ he lied quickly, still moving. ‘Another time.’
‘And I’m going to Cairo tomorrow.’ She smiled and raised her eyebrows as if she had just provided the answer to a ridiculously easy question.
Sir Simon started talking about Torquil Helvoir-Jayne’s contribution to Fortress Sure, his years of tireless service. Lorimer, filled with despair, gave Dymphna what he hoped was a forlorn, hey-life’s-like-that smile and shrug.
‘Sorry’
‘Yeah, another time,’ Dymphna said, flatly, and turned away.
Lorimer requested that the taxi-driver actually raise the booming volume of the football match that was being broadcast on his radio and was thus driven – thunderously, stridently – through an icy and deserted City, over the black, surging, tide-turning Thames, south of the river, his head echoing and resonant with the commentator’s raucous tenor voice detailing the angled crosses, the silky skills of the foreigners, the scything tackles, the grip on the game loosening, the lads giving it one hundred and ten per cent all the same. He felt alarmed, worried, stupid, embarrassed, surprised and achingly hungry. And he realized he hadn’t drunk nearly enough. In such a state, he knew from past experience, the melancholy silent cell of a black cab is not the best place to be. Then a new and welcome sensation stealthily infiltrated itself into his being – as the sands of time drew to a close and the final whistle beckoned – drowsiness, lassitude, languor. Perhaps it would work tonight, perhaps it really would. Perhaps he would sleep.
II4. Sleep. What was his name, that Portuguese poet who slept so badly? He called his insomnia, if I remember correctly, ‘indigestion of the soul’. Perhaps this is my problem – indigestion of the soul – even though I’m not a true insomniac? Gérard de Nerval said, ‘Sleep takes up a third of our lives. It consoles the sorrows of our days and the sorrow of their pleasures; but I have never felt any rest in sleep. For a few seconds I am numbed, then a new life begins, freed from the conditions of time and space, and doubtless similar to that state which awaits us after death. Who knows if there is not some link between those two existences and if it is not possible for the soul to unite them now?’ I think I know what he means.
The Book of Transfiguration
‘Dr Kenbarry, please,’ Lorimer said to a suspicious porter. He always over-articulated the name, unused as he was to referring to Alan in this way. ‘Dr Alan Kenbarry, he’ll be in the Institute. He’s expecting me, Mr Black.’
The porter pedantically consulted dog-eared lists and made two phone calls before he allowed Lorimer any further into the Social Studies Department of the University of Greenwich. Lorimer rode the scuffed and litter-strewn lift to Alan’s demesne on the fifth floor, where he found Alan waiting for him in the lobby, and then they walked together through the dim passageways towards the double swing doors blazoned with the inscription (in a lower-case Bauhaus-style font) ‘the institute of lucid dreams’, and on through the darkened lab towards the shrouded cubicles.
Are we alone tonight, Doctor?’ Lorimer asked.
‘We are not. Patient F. is already installed.’ He opened the door to Lorimer’s cubicle. After you, Patient B.’ There were six cubicles side by side in two rows of three at the end of the laboratory. Wire rose from each to be gathered centrally at a metal beam in a loose braid which looped its way across the ceiling to the control area with its banks of tape recorders, stacks of winking monitors and EEGs. Lorimer had always used the same cubicle and had never encountered a fellow lab-rat. Alan liked it that way – no symptom-sharing, no exchange of placebos or special tricks. No gossip about that nice Doctor Kenbarry.
‘How are we?’ Alan asked, a solitary strip light somewhere turning his spectacle lenses into two white coins as he moved his head.
‘We’re quite tired, actually. The day from hell.’
‘Poor baby. Your jim-jams are ready. Do we need to go to the loo?’
Lorimer undressed, carefully hung up his clothes and pulled on the clean cotton pyjama trousers. Alan reappeared a moment later with a flourished tube of ointment and a roll of transparent sticking plaster. Lorimer stood patiently as Alan busied himself with the electrodes: one to each temple, one below the heart, one on the wrist at the pulse.
Alan taped down the electrode on his chest. ‘I think another little shave might be in order, before the next time. Bit bristly,’ he said. ‘There we are. Sweet dreams.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
Alan stood back. ‘I’ve often thought we should attach one to the patient’s cock.’
‘Ha-ha. Lady Haigh said you woke her up this morning.’
‘I was only putting the rubbish out.’
‘She was cross. She called you a jackanapes.’
‘The Jezebel. That’s because she loves you. Everything OK?’
‘Fine and dandy.’ Lorimer crawled into the narrow bed, while Alan stood at its foot, arms folded, smiling at him like an affectionate parent, the tableau marred only by his white coat – a complete affectation, Lorimer thought, wholly unnecessary.
Any requests?’
‘Waves on the beach, please,’ Lorimer said. ‘I won’t need an alarm, I’ll be out of here by eight.’
‘Night, Big-Boy. Sleep well. I’ll be here for an hour or so.’
He switched out the lights and left, leaving Lorimer in absolute darkness and in almost absolute silence. Each cubicle was thoroughly insulated and the noises that filtered through were so indistinct as to be unrecognizable. Lorimer lay in the dazzling darkness waiting for the photomatic flashes in front of his eyes to subside. He heard the tape of ocean breakers come on, the lulling susurrus of foam smashing on rock and sand, the plash and rattle of the pebbles in the undertow, as he settled his head deeper in the pillow. He was tired, what a disastrous day… He tried to keep his head clear of images of Mr Dupree and found instead that they were replaced by the unsmiling face of Torquil Helvoir-Jayne.
Now that was something else. A director, he had said, looking forward very much, challenging times, exciting developments ahead, and so on. Leaving the Fort to come to us. And he had always thought Hogg was the sole director, the big tuna – or at least the only visible one. Why would Hogg agree to that? It was Hogg’s show, why would he tolerate someone like Helvoir – sorry, ‘heevor’ – Jayne? He seemed all wrong. Embarrassing moment, that. Lazy speaker, elocution lessons required, especially with a name like that. Torquilheeverjayne. Arrogant sort of shit. Snotty. Ego at large. Strange having someone like him about the office. Not quite our type. Seems all wrong. Torquil. Somehow foisted on Hogg? How could that happen?… This had to stop, he realized, or he’d never sleep. Change of subject required. That was why he was here. What to think about. Sex? Or Gérard de Nerval? Sex. Sex it was. Dymphna, sturdy, broad-shouldered, small-breasted Dymphna and her candid invitation. Right out of nowhere, that. Never would have dreamt. Trying to imagine Dymphna naked, the two of them making love. Those silly shoes. Strong, shortish legs. As he felt himself slipping away, going under, another image replaced that of Dymphna – a sliding diorama on a taxi’s glossy door and above it a girl’s face, a girl’s wan, oval, perfect face, eager, hopeful, long-necked and wide-eyed –
Brutal knocking on the door, two harsh iron-knuckled raps, jerked him awake, alarmed. He sat upright, heart kicking, in impenetrable darkness, to the sound of notional waves breaking on a notional shore.
The lights went on and Alan came in, a resigned smile on his face, a printout in his hand.
‘Woah,’ he said, showing Lorimer a jagged mountain range. Almost broke a rib there.’
‘How long was I out for?’
‘Forty minutes. Was it the knock-on-the-door thing?’
‘Yep. Someone’s fist on that door. Bam-bam. Loud.’
Lorimer lay back, thinking that more and more often it was – for some unknown reason – the heavy noise of knocking, or of doorbells ringing or sounding that woke him these nights. Experience told him that this sort of awakening was a brusque portent of an end to sleep as well; he never seemed to drift off again, as if the shock of that rousing had so rattled and shaken his system that it required a full twenty-four hours to settle again.
‘Absolutely fascinating,’ Alan said. ‘Tremendous hypnopompic reveries. Love it. Two knocks, you said?’ ‘Yes. Glad to be of help.’
‘Were you dreaming?’ He gestured at the dream diary by the bed. All dreams were to be logged, however fragmentary.
‘No.’
‘We’ll keep on monitoring. Try and get back to sleep.’
‘Whatever you say, Doctor Kenbarry.’
The waves rolled in. The darkness resumed. Lorimer lay in his narrow cell and thought this time about Gérard de Nerval. It did not work.