Armadillo

Chapter 10

When Lorimer came into the office he heard Hogg down the passageway, singing, boomingly, ‘I got a gal in Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo’ and he knew that Torquil had been sacked.
He hung back, waiting for him to move on before slipping unnoticed into his room, where he sat quietly and assiduously going through the newspaper clippings in the David Watts file and speed-reading his way through a slackly written, instant biography called David Watts – Beyond Enigma that had been published a couple of years previously. The most intriguing fact about David Watts was that ‘David Watts’ was his stage name. He had been born Martin Foster in Slough, where his father had worked for the Thames Water Board as assistant manager of the vast sewage works to the west of Heathrow airport. It was curious, Lorimer thought, to exchange one bland name for another. All the other details of his life and progression to eminence were unexceptionable. He was a bright, withdrawn only child with a precocious talent for music. He had dropped out of the Royal College and with a friend, Tony Anthony (now, was that a stage name?), had formed a four-man rock band called, first, simply Team, which had metamorphosed into David Watts and the Team. Their first three albums had gone double-platinum; there was a protracted dalliance with a girl called Danielle, who worked on a music paper before becoming David Watts’s live-in lover; they had enjoyed two sell-out tours to the USA… Lorimer found he was nodding off: so far, so predictable. The biography concluded with a fanfare of bright tomorrows: the world was there for the taking; rumour had it Danielle was pregnant; the creative juices were flowing in veritable torrents. Anything was possible.
That had been two years ago and now the newspaper clippings took up the story where the biography ended. The romance with Danielle hit the reef: she left, became ill, became anorexic, disappeared, probably aborted the baby (this provoked abiding tabloid fodder: the lost child of David Watts). The band split with satisfying acrimony; Tony Anthony sued and settled out of court. Danielle was discovered in Los Angeles, washed-up and haggard, on detox and living with some other unsuitable rock hasbeen. She denigrated David Watts with routine and tireless venom (‘egomaniac’, ‘control-freak’, ‘satanist’, ‘nazi’, ‘communist’, ‘martian’, ‘nerd’ and so on). David Watts released his first solo album with a select bunch of the world’s best session-musicians, Angziertie, which, contrary to all expectations, outsold everything previous to it. A thirty-five-nation, eighteen-month world tour was mooted. Then David Watts had a nervous breakdown.
Here the newspapers gave way to insurance policies. A ￡2 million claim was filed for costs incurred over the cancellation of the tour. As Lorimer riffled through the documents he came across many affidavits from Harley Street physicians and psychiatrists testifying to the genuine nature of David Watts’s crise. A series of increasingly angry letters had started coming in from DW Management Ltd, signed by Watts’s manager, one Enrico Murphy, as Fortress Sure’s first set of loss adjusters doggedly queried every expense and invoice. A compensatory loss of earnings claim was submitted for ￡1.5 million and one or two of the larger arenas (a baseball ground in New Jersey, a dry dock in Sydney, Australia) and bona fide foreign impresarios were paid off. By the time Lorimer reached the file’s final letter, Enrico Murphy was angrily demanding outstanding settlement to the tune of ￡2.7 million and threatening litigation as a result of all this ‘incredible hassle’ which was further undermining his client’s fragile health. Moreover, he was ready and willing to go public: the press was permanently avid for news about David Watts.
Shane Ashgable rapped gently on Lorimer’s door and sidled conspiratorially into the room. He was a lean, fit man whose relentless work-out programme had squared his face almost perfectly with bulging jaw muscles. He walked as if he had his buttocks permanently clenched (Hogg said once, memorably, ‘D’you think Ashgable’s got a fifty pence piece held between his cheeks?’). He once confessed to Lorimer that he did a thousand press-ups a day.
‘Helvoir-Jayne’s been canned,’ Ashgable said.
‘Jesus Christ! When?’
‘This morning. He was in and out of here like shit through a tin horn. Never seen anything like it. Ten minutes.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘No idea. Hogg’s like a man pissing on ice. What do you make of it?’ Ashgable was no fool, Lorimer knew; he had spent a year at the Harvard Business School, hence his penchant for American slang.
‘Haven’t the faintest,’ said Lorimer.
‘Come on,’ Ashgable said, with a sly smile. ‘He’s your friend.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says Torquil Helvoir-Jayne, constantly. You spent the weekend at his house, didn’t you? He must have had wind of it. No one’s that insensitive.’
‘I swear he never gave a sign.’
Ashgable was clearly sceptical. ‘Well, as he left he kept asking for you.’
‘Maybe I should see Hogg…’
‘We want a full report, Lorimer.’
Upstairs there was a cardboard box in the hallway containing bits and pieces from Torquil’s rapidly cleared desk. Lorimer caught a glimpse of a studio portrait of a smiling, pearl-collared Binnie and the three scrubbed, plump children.
Janice raised her eyebrows helplessly, and gave a short piping whistle as if that were the only way to illustrate her incredulity. She beckoned Lorimer over and whispered, ‘It was brutal and sudden, Lorimer, and the language was unseemly on both sides.’ She glanced towards Hogg’s closed door. ‘I know he wants to see you, he keeps asking if you’ve left the building.’
‘Come,’ Hogg barked when Lorimer knocked. Lorimer stepped in and Hogg pointed wordlessly at the chair already placed before his empty desk.
‘He had no idea what hit him, not a clue,’ Hogg said, manifest pride colouring his voice. ‘Most satisfying. That look of total disbelief on someone’s face. Moments to cherish, Lorimer, moments to recall in your dotage.’
‘I told no one,’ Lorimer said.
‘I know. Because you’re clever, Lorimer, because you’re not thick. But what intrigues me, though, is just how clever you are.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Do you think you’re so clever you can outsmart us all?’
Lorimer was begining to feel offended and hurt by Hogg’s recondite innuendoes: Hogg’s paranoia was registering off the dial. Lorimer also sensed his own ignorance once more, a feeling that he was in possession of only a few of the facts, and those not the most crucial.
‘I’m just doing my job, Mr Hogg, that’s all, as I always have.’
‘Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?’ Hogg paused, then added breezily, ‘How was your weekend with the Helvoir-Jaynes?’
‘Ah, fine. It was purely social, purely’
Hogg clasped his hands behind his head, a faint sense of amusement causing his eyes to crinkle at the edges and his thin lips to twitch, as if there was a laugh behind them trying to bubble forth. What had Ashgable said? Like a man pissing on ice.
Lorimer rose from his chair. ‘I’d better get on,’ he said. ‘I’m working on the David Watts adjust.’
‘Excellent, Lorimer, tip-top. Oh and take Helvoir-Jayne’s odds and sods with you when you go, will you? I’m sure you’ll be seeing him again sooner than I will.’
210. Shepherd’s Pie. We had nearly finished the shepherd’s pie, I remember, because I was contemplating putting in an early claim for seconds, when the room went yellow, full of yellows – lemon, corn, sunflower, primrose – and refulgent whites, as in a partial printing process or silk-screening, waiting for the other primary colours to be overlaid. Some sort of aural dysfunction kicked in too: voices became indistinct and tinny, as if badly recorded some decades before. Turning my head extremely slowly, I registered that Sinbad was telling some rambling and inarticulate story, flinging his big hands about the place, and that Shona had started to cry softly. Lachlan (Murdo was away) seemed to lurch back from his plate as if he’d discovered something disgusting on it but then started to poke fascinatedly around the mince and potatoes with a fork as if he might unearth something valuable like a gemstone or a golden ring.
I took deep breaths as the room and its contents leached to white, all the yellows gone, and then shimmered and stirred into shades of electric, bilious green.
‘Oh my God,’ Joyce said quietly. ‘Oh oh oh.’
‘It’s fantastic, isn’t it?’ Sinbad said.
I could hear the blood draining from my head, a bubbly death rattle, like water whirlpooling down a too-small plughole. Joyce reached trembling fingers across the table to me and squeezed my hand. Junko had risen to her feet and was swaying about, as if on the pitching deck of one of her fishing boats. Then Shona seemed to pour, as if molten or boneless, off her chair and reformed in a tight foetal ball, weeping loudly now in clear distress.
‘Brilliant,’ Sinbad opined. ‘Wicked.’
For my part the green had given way to deep interstellar blues and blacks and I was becoming aware of some kind of shaggy fungoid growth forming on the walls and ceiling of the kitchen.
‘I’ve got to get out of here before I die,’ I said, reasonably, sensibly, to Joyce. ‘I’m going back to the hall.’
‘Please let me come with you,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t leave me, my darling one.’
We left them – Shona, Junko, Lachlan and Sinbad – Sinbad laughing now, his eyes shut and his wet lips pouting, his hands fumbling at his fly.
Outside it was better: the cold, the streetlamps’ harsh glare helped, seemed to calm things down. Arms around each other, we waited ten minutes for a bus, not saying much, holding tight to each other like lovers about to be parted. I felt disembodied, muffled; the colour changes modified, shifted, faded and brightened but I could cope. Joyce seemed to be retreating into herself making small mewing kittenish noises. As the bus arrived all sound appeared to cut out and I could hear nothing: no Joyce, no bus engine, no hiss of compressed air as the door opened, no wind noise in the trees. The world became hushed and absolutely silent.
The Book of Transfiguration
There was something grubbily attractive about the sullen girl who opened the door to him at DW Management Ltd in Charlotte Street, Lorimer had to admit. Perhaps it was just her extreme youth – eighteen or nineteen – perhaps it was the deliberately botched peroxide job on her short hair, or the tightness of the leopardskin print T-shirt she was wearing, or the three brass rings piercing her left eyebrow, or the fact that she was simultaneously smoking and chewing gum? Whatever it was, she exuded a cut-price, transient allure that briefly stirred him, along with a combination of latent aggression and a massive weariness. There were many minor skirmishes ahead, he sensed, only counter-aggression would work here; politesse and civility were a waste of time.
‘Yeah?’ she said.
‘Enrico Murphy’ He added a hint of urban twang to his voice.
‘Not here.’
‘This is DW Management, yeah?’
‘Ceased trading. I’m packing up.’
Lorimer looked around, concealing his surprise: he had assumed the office was simply a mess but he began to see traces of order amongst the mess, some documents piled, some pot plants in a cardboard box.
‘Well, well,’ Lorimer said, looking her in the eye. ‘Turn up for the books.’
‘Yeah, brilliant.’ She wandered back to the reception desk. ‘David fired him, Sat’day’
Everybody getting the bum’s rush, Lorimer thought. ‘Where is Enrico, anyway?’
‘Hawaii.’ She dropped her cigarette in a styrofoam cup containing an inch of cold tea.
‘All right for some, eh?’
She twiddled with a fine gold chain at her neck. ‘He must’ve been in here at the weekend – took a lot of files, took the platinum discs.’ She pointed at some darker rectangles marking the hessian walls. ‘Even the f*cking phones’re dead.’
‘Enrico do this?’
‘No, David. Thought I’d nick ‘em, I suppose. Haven’t been paid yet this month, see.’
‘Who’s the new manager, then?’
‘He’s doing his own management now. From home.’
Lorimer thought: there were always other ways, of course, but this was probably quickest. He took out his wallet and counted out five twenty pound notes on to the desk in front of her, then picked up a pen and a sheet of notepaper and placed them on top of the notes.
‘I just need his phone number, thanks very much.’
He looked down at the dark cutting her parting made in her white-blonde hair as she bent her head to scribble the figures on the sheet of paper. He wondered about this young girl’s life, what had brought her here, what path it would take now He wondered what Flavia Malin-verno was doing today.
8. Insurance. Insurance exists to substitute reasonable foresight and confidence in a world dominated by apprehension and blind chance. This has a supreme social value.
The Book of Transfiguration
There were several messages on his answer machine when he returned home that evening. The first went: ‘Lorimer, it’s Torquil… hello? Are you there? Pick up if you’re there. It’s Torquil.’ The second was a few moments of quiet hiss and then a click. The third was: ‘Lorimer, it’s Torquil, something ghastly’s happened. Can you call me?… No, I’ll call you.’ The fourth was from Detective Sergeant Rappaport: ‘Mr Black, we have a date for the inquest.’ Then followed the date and time in question and various instructions relating to his attendance at Hornsey coroner’s court. The fifth was to the point: ‘It’s not over, it’s not over yet, Black.’ Rintoul. Damn, Lorimer thought, perhaps the situation did require cod-liver oil after all. The sixth made him stop breathing for its duration: ‘Lorimer Black. I want you to take me to lunch. Sole di Napoli, Chalk Farm. I’ve booked a table, Wednesday’
He slid Angziertie into his C D player and removed it after approximately ninety seconds. David Watts had a reedily monotonous, albeit tuneful voice with no character and the rank pretension of the lyrics was rebarbative. The fatal gloss and polish of the most expensive recording studios in the world stripped the music of all authenticity. He realized this reaction placed him in a tiny minority, was almost freakishly perverse, but there was little he could do about it: it was as if one of his senses had gone, smell or taste or touch, but he simply was unable to tolerate any contemporary British, American or European rock music of recent decades. It seemed fatally bogus, without soul or passion, a conspiracy of manipulated tastes, faddery and expert marketing. He replaced David Watts with Emperor Bola Osanjo and his Viva Africa Ensemble and sat back, brain in neutral, trying to cope with the preposterous sense of elation that was building inside him. He thought of Flavia Malinverno’s beautiful face, the way she looked at you, the way she seemed always to be half-challenging you, provoking you… There was no question, without doubt she –
The doorbell buzzed and he lifted the speakerphone off its cradle, suddenly worried that it might be Rintoul.
‘Yes?’
‘Thank Christ. It’s Torquil.’
Torquil put his suitcase down and looked about Lorimer’s flat in frank admiration.
‘Nice gaff,’ he said. ‘It’s incredibly neat and sort of solid, if you know what I mean. Is this real?’
‘It’s Greek,’ Lorimer said, gently taking the helmet out of Torquil’s big hands. ‘About three thousand years old.’
‘Have you got any booze ?’ Torquil asked.’ I’m gagging for a drink. What a f*cking awful day. Have you any idea how much a taxi costs from Monken Hadley down here? Forty-seven pounds. It’s outrageous. Scotch, please.’
Lorimer poured Torquil a generous Scotch and himself a slightly less generous vodka. When he turned, glasses in hand, Torquil had lit a cigarette and was sprawled on his sofa, thighs splayed, two inches of shin showing above his left sock.
‘What the hell is this crap you’re playing?’
Lorimer switched off the music. ‘I heard about what happened today’ he said, consolingly ‘Rotten luck.’
Some of Torquil’s swagger left him and he looked suddenly deflated and shocked for a moment. He rubbed his face with his hand and took a long pull at his drink.
‘It was pretty f*cking scary, I can tell you. He’s a vicious bastard, that Hogg. He took the car keys off me too, there and then. By the time I got back home after lunch it had been repossessed. Bloody embarrassing.’ He exhaled. ‘Out. Just like that. I put a call into Simon but I’ve heard nothing.’ He looked plaintively at Lorimer. ‘Have you any idea what it’s all about?’
‘I think,’ Lorimer began, wondering whether it were wise to confide in Torquil, ‘I think it’s something to do with the Fedora Palace.’
‘I thought you’d sorted that all out.’
‘So did I. But there’s something else going on. I can’t figure it out.’
Torquil looked aggrieved. ‘OK, so I cocked up – and I admit it – and was duly shunted out of Fortress Sure. Now I’m shunted out of G G H. It’s not fair. There should be some sort of statute of limitations. I made a wrong calculation, that’s all, I can’t keep on being punished for the rest of my life.’
‘It’s more complicated, I think. I just can’t put all the pieces together. It’s got Hogg worried, though, for some reason. What did he say to you?’
‘He came in and said: “You’re sacked, get out, now.” I asked why and he said: “I don’t trust you,” and that was it. Well, we called each other a few choice names.’ Torquil frowned and winced, as though the act of recollection were causing him physical pain. ‘Bastard,’ he said, and tapped ash absent-mindedly on the carpet. Lorimer fetched him an ashtray and a refill.
‘How did things go,’ Lorimer asked, innocently enough but genuinely curious, ‘after Saturday night?’ He felt, simultaneously, a vague alarm: here they were, he and Torquil, nattering about problems at work, problems at home. They even had a shared history, now, just like two old friends.
Torquil looked glum and threw his head back to stare at the ceiling. ‘It got really bad,’ he said. ‘Nightmare. She became very quiet, Binns, after she calmed down, icy cold, not like herself at all, sort of drawn in on herself. I apologized, of course, but she refused to speak to me.’ He paused. ‘This morning she went to a lawyer – while I was getting the sack. Then she chucked me out. Said I could go and live with Irina. She wants a divorce.’
‘Hence the suitcase.’
‘My worldly goods. It gets worse. I had to speak to this lawyer. He says I’ve got to start giving Binnie money, regularly, some sort of maintenance while the divorce goes through. I told this lawyer chappie that I’d just got the sack so they could whistle for it. Apparently he and Binnie went over the bank statements, credit cards, building society passbooks, the works. Turns out I’m ￡54,000 in the red. Thank Christ I don’t have a mortgage.’
‘How does that line go? When sorrows come they come not as single spies but in battalions.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Shakespeare.’
‘Oh. Right. Thing is, Lorimer, as it turns out, you’re the only friend I have.’
‘Me? What about Oliver Rollo?’
‘Can’t stand him. Mindless idiot.’
‘What about your family?’
‘They’ve all rather sided with Binnie, say I’m a disgrace. I’m a bit of a pariah, to tell the truth. Shunned all round.’
‘I side with Binnie, too.’
‘Yeah, but you understand, you were sort of involved.’
‘Involved? What’re you talking about? You climbed into bed with Irina, not me.’
‘But you’d met Irina. And she was meant to be your girlfriend.’
‘The key word is “meant”. I’d only spoken to her for two minutes.’
‘I don’t think, Lorimer. That’s my trouble in life, I don’t think ahead.’
Lorimer knew what was coming next, that premonitory heaviness weighing on him again.
‘I was wondering’, Torquil said with a weak smile, ‘if I could kip down here for a night or two, until it all blows over.’
‘Blows over? What do you mean?’
‘Binnie’ll take me back, once she’s calmed down.’
‘You sure?’
‘Course. She’s a forgiving person, old Binns.’
‘Well, all right, but just for a night or two,’ Lorimer said, telling himself with scant confidence that Torquil knew his wife better than he did. ‘I’ll get you the duvet.’
211. The Television Set. Yon felt cold because you were naked and you pushed yourself up against Joyce’s pale, freckly body, your eyes tight shut to keep the colours out Joyce said, you’re wet, you’re greasy, keep away from me, don’t touch me. When you opened your eyes the colour changes had calmed down but your small boxy room pulsed like a beating heart in its socket, contracting and expanding as if the walls were pliable rubber. Noise was a problem now, and you yearned for the perfect silence of the bus ride. All you could hear was the ear-batteringyammer of a television set from the floor below and boorish, loutish cheers and shouts. You looked at your watch but your eyes wouldn’t focus. Joyce turned into you now, her long breasts falling and squashing into your side and you felt, dully, absurdly, alarmingly, a distinct sexual thrill – although you knew enough to realize that sex under these circumstances could have life-altering side effects. Still, maybe –
Why are they shouting and screaming, Milo? Joyce said, and you could feel the wiry prickle of her pubic hair pressed against your thigh. Make them stop, Milo, make them stop, my darling.
Joyce had never used endearments before, never articulated affection, you thought, and you liked it, filled with love for her, and an intense desire that fuelled your rage against the television set and its ill-mannered booming voice. You were out of bed, snatching up your shirt and clawing it on.
THIS IS MAKING ME F*ckING ANGRY! you shouted, I’M IN A FURY, I’M F*ckING ENRAGED!
Make them stop, Milo, sweetheart, make them stop, Joyce said, sitting up in bed, tears streaming.
Furious, you opened the door of your boxy little room and strode off down the corridor, your shirt tails flying in the air behind you, heading furiously for the source of the din, the roaring noise, furiously determined to silence the television set for ever.
The Book of Transfiguration
He found it impossible to sleep with another person in the flat, the space shared, another source of unfamiliar noise. He would doze off from time to time but every time Torquil coughed or grunted or shifted on the sofa he was roused instantly adrenalin-charged, brain working, eyes wide, alarmed – until he remembered his guest’s presence in the sitting room.
Torquil slept on, dead to the world, as Lorimer, with deliberate clatter and door-bang, noisily prepared his frugal breakfast in the kitchen. He peered into the dark sitting room and saw Torquil’s wide, bare back pale in the gloom, heard the troubled snort and rasp of his breathing, and the unwelcome thought struck him that Torquil might be naked under the spare duvet – but surely no one slept naked on a sofa? Slept naked on someone else’s sofa in someone else’s house?…
He drank his tea and left a note explaining some of the operational idiosyncrasies of the flat and stepped out into the icy greyness of another Pimlico dawn. He carried with him a small grip containing an assortment of clothes and key props for the David Watts adjust, whenever that might arise. He had not found a parking space in Lupus Crescent the night before and consequently had something of a walk to his car, parked outside a Methodist church in Westmoreland Terrace. He could feel the cold biting at his cheeks and forehead and found himself longing vernally for some sunshine, some soft green days. The gusting east wind that had been blowing the night before had not dropped at all and he felt it tugging at the skirts of his coat and heard it thrashing the bare boughs of the sycamore and cherry trees at the corner of the street. Leaves were being whirled along the pavement and flicked into the sky, thick, dark, irregularly shaped leaves – maple, perhaps, or ginko – flung dancing and skittering into the rows of parked cars. The last leaves of last year, he thought elegiacally, suddenly ripped from their branches after a tenacious struggle all winter, to be sent burling along – hang about, he said to himself, there’s not a leaf left on a tree in the country that isn’t evergreen. What were all these things filling the air? He stooped and picked one up, a jagged rhomboid shape, thick like holly but which snapped in his fingers like shellac or brittle enamel…
Lorimer had no affection or nostalgia for the many cars he had owned in his loss adjusting career. A car, as far as he was concerned, was just an efficient device for getting from A to B: he was not interested in cars, in fact he cultivated a deliberate lack of curiosity in them so that Slobodan had no excuse for starting to talk to him about ‘motors’. However, it was oddly disturbing to see his Toyota with its top coat burnt off, scorched and blistered, with the occasional patch of racing green still adhering. Flakes of paint were still being snatched from it by the wind but the car was almost wholly paint-free, looking as if it had been specifically camouflaged for some flinty tundra – a grey terrain of rock and lichen with a rare patch of grass. A blowtorch, Lorimer thought, running his fingers over the now cool, roughened steel, of the camping gas variety that painters and decorators use, or chefs to brown the sugar on their cremés brulées. Quick work too, he assessed, a couple of men, or three, could do the car in ninety seconds. He imagined pale blue flames, a powerful smell, a spit and bubble as the paint ignited. What had Rintoul said? ‘It isn’t over yet.’ There was no choice now: Hogg and his oiling crew had to be called in. If Rintoul and Edmund wanted to play hardball, as Shane Ashgable would have said, they had no idea what lay in store for them.
The Toyota was fine in every other motoring regard and Lorimer drove easily – though a little self-consciously – through the hesitant beginnings of the rush-hour to Silvertown. He was aware, at traffic lights or waiting at junctions, of the curious looks his torched car received. He turned up the volume on his radio and some soothing Dvo?ák took him most of the way from Westminster to Canning Town while he kept his eyes fixed on the road.
The furniture van arrived with surprising promptness at half past nine and by ten o’clock his house was capable of supporting life. There was a bed and blankets and bed linen, a sofa, a divan for the spare room, a telephone, a portable television, a cherrywood table that could double as a desk and four dining-room chairs. He had bought some modern-looking cantilevered standard lamps so that he did not have to rely exclusively on the central lights in the ceiling and the kitchen was fitted out with a minimum of pots and pans, half a dozen wine glasses, a corkscrew, tin-opener and a young-married’s start-up set of cutlery and crockery. Now all he needed was a supply of lavatory paper and provisions and the place would be ready.
He stepped outside his front door and walked down the flagged concrete path that bisected the levelled square of mud which one day would be his front lawn and contemplated his new neighbourhood. He seemed to be quite alone in Albion Village this morning. A brindled cat flowed up and over a wooden fence, there was a car parked outside number 2 and some damp washing flapped and cracked on a whirligig behind number 7, but he was the only sign of bipedal life. Then there was the sudden blaring, ripping noise of a motorbike starting and one duly emerged, carrying a pillion passenger, and as it accelerated past him two bug-eyed heads turned to stare briefly at him. Hello there, Lorimer said to himself, half raising his hand, I’m your new neighbour. Then they were gone and the noise died away and he was left alone in Albion Village and the near-silence again.
That was fine by him: everything was new here, and he felt new also, a new species of man, as if he were in a newer city, different altogether, more anonymously European, somehow. He turned to the east towards this more proximate Europe and filled his lungs: that keen wind in his face had rushed and buffeted its way across France or Belgium or the Netherlands – he felt a little bowel-shift of excitement now he was established here in his new domain. He did not know a soul and, better still, not a soul knew him.
He squared his shoulders. Time for some phone calls on his new white telephone: first, summon the cod-liver oil brigade to deal with Rintoul then, second, set up the meet with rock ‘n’ roll legend David Watts.
206. Alan told me that there is a tribe in a remote part of the Philippines where you are severely punished if you wake a sleeping person. Sleep is the most precious gift, these tribespeople think, and to wake someone is effectively to steal something precious from him or her.
I was worried about being such an overloaded REM sleeper. Well, you’re a classic light sleeper, Alan said, and REM sleep is light sleep. But it doesn’t feel light, I said, it feels deep, when it happens. Ah, Alan said, that’s because it is only in REM sleep that you dream.
The Book of Transfiguration
David Watts lived in a vast, detached, white stuccoed house – in a quiet street off Holland Park Avenue – of the sort normally described as ‘ambassadorial’. It had its own high wall with a gate and security cameras positioned here and there covering all possible angles of approach.
Lorimer had thought hard about how to present himself for this encounter and was quietly pleased with the results. He had not shaved since his meeting with Flavia and his jaw had been dark with stubble. So when he did shave he left a postage stamp-sized rectangle of bristle immediately below his bottom lip. He chose an old suit, off the peg, mouse-grey, and to it added a royal blue Vneck sweater, a white nylon shirt and a thin tie, olive green with a narrow, diagonal, pistachio band. Shoes were rubber-soled ankle boots, highly polished, with yellow stitching on the seams. He had decided to wear spectacles, square, silver-framed with clear lenses, and he added – a nice touch this, he thought – a binding of Sellotape to the right hinge. The look, he hoped, said striven-for unexceptionalness; the pretensions of the figure he wanted to cut had to be almost imperceptible.
He was sitting in his car a hundred yards up the road from the Watts mansion, contemplating his reflection in the rear-view mirror, when he realized suddenly that the underlip patch was wrong. He reached into his glove compartment for his electric razor (always carried) and he immediately shaved it off. He sloshed some mineral water over a comb and dragged it through his hair to remove any shine as a final touch. Now he was ready.
It took two minutes to gain access through the gate in the wall and another three before the front door was opened. While he waited he paced around the paved courtyard with its terracotta urns of bay and box aware, as he did so, of the minute adjustments of the cameras tracking his every move.
The man who opened the door eventually was overweight and baby-faced, his gut covered by a ‘The Angziertie Tour’ sweat shirt (Lorimer wondered if this were pointedly for his benefit). He introduced himself as Terry and led him across an empty hall, newly parqueted and smelling of varnish, to a small sitting room, furnished with various uncomfortable black leather and chrome chairs. A huge primeval fern sprouted and sprawled in one corner and on the walls were classic posters behind perspex – Campari, SNCF, Esso, Aristide Bruant in his red scarf. Up in the corner of a wall beside the winking red eye of the movement detector was another camera the size of a household box of matches. Lorimer sat himself down on two or three chairs, found one his spine could tolerate, took his glasses off, polished them, replaced them and then sat still, his hands in his lap, and waited, inert and uninterested.
Twenty-five minutes later David Watts came in with Terry and was introduced. Watts was tall but seemed almost anorexically thin, Lorimer thought, with the concave chest and the tapered hips of a prepubescent boy. He was wearing leather trousers and a crew-neck Shetland sweater with a hole in one elbow. The long, buttery hair that had featured in the CD liner-notes photo had gone, replaced by a U S marine buzz-cut, and, curiously, his left cheek was unshaved – it looked like a small square of carpet tile stuck to the side of his face. Watts’ long, bony fingers stroked and touched this partial beard constantly, and rather repellently, Lorimer thought – as if it were a comfort blanket. Lorimer was glad of his last-minute, prescient shave: two beard patches in the same room would have looked suspiciously mannered.
‘Hi,’ Lorimer said, not smiling, ‘Lorimer Black.’
‘Yeah,’ said Watts.
Terry offered drinks and Watts finally settled on Italian beer. Lorimer asked for Pepsi and when this was not forthcoming said he would accept no substitute – he was fine, thanks.
‘We got Coca, don’t we, Terry?’
‘Coke, Diet Coke, Caffeine-free Diet Coke, Caffeine-free Regular Coke, Diet-free Caffeine Coke, you name it.’
‘I don’t drink Coke,’ Lorimer said. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’
Terry left to fetch the Italian beer and Watts lit a cigarette. He had small, even features, his eyes were pale greyish brown and a spatter of tiny moles was splashed under his jaw and down the side of his neck, disappearing beneath his jumper collar.
‘You with the insurance?’ Watts asked. ‘You the sods been jerking us around all these months?’
Lorimer briefly explained the functions and duties of a loss adjuster: not independent but impartial.
Watts frowned at him and drew on his cigarette.
‘Let me get this straight,’ he said, there was the faintest hint of the near-west in his glottal urban-speak, of Slough and Swindon and Oxford, ‘we draw up a contract with you maggot-farmers, right? We pay the gi-f*cking-gantic premium, then when I get ill and cancel they call you guys in to argue the toss?’
‘Not all the time.’
‘Hang about. They call you in to advise them, professionally, on whether to pay me what they have already agreed they’ll pay me if something goes wrong, right? When we drew up the policy I didn’t see anything saying these loss adjuster geezers will be all over your face saying, no way, José.’
Lorimer shrugged, it was absolutely vital to remain calm and unmoved. ‘It’ll be there in the small print,’ he said. ‘I didn’t invent the way they do business,’ he added, ‘I just work here.’
‘As the concentration camp guard said when he turned on the showers.’
Lorimer sniffed, wiped his nose. ‘I resent that,’ he said, evenly.
‘And I resent you, you maggot-farmer,’ Watts said. ‘What was the last music you bought, eh?’ He listed several well-known rock groups with scathing, harsh contempt, as if he had a fishbone in his throat. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I bet you like Three Bodies Minimum. Just looking at you I bet you’re a Three Bodies Minimum type. Bet you.’
‘Actually it was’, Lorimer paused, ‘Kwame Akinlaye and his Achimota Rhythm Boys. An album called Sheer Achimota’
‘Sheer what?’
‘Sheer Achimota.’
‘What’s that, then, “Achimota”?
‘I don’t knowv.’
‘“Sheer Achimota”… You like African music, then?’
‘Yeah. I don’t listen to European or American rock music post-1960.’
‘Oh, yeah? Why’s that, then?’
‘It has no authenticity’
‘What about my stuff? Can’t get more f*cking authentic, man.’
‘Not familiar with your work, I’m afraid.’
Lorimer could see that this gave Watts genuine pause, disturbed him in some quite profound but ill-defined way.
‘Terry,’ Watts shouted, ‘where’s the f*cking beer, man?’ He turned back to Lorimer, his fingers caressing the hair on his cheek. ‘You don’t think I was ill then, that it?’
Lorimer sighed and took a notebook from his briefcase. ‘Two weeks after the Angziertie Tour was cancelled you were on stage at the Albert Hall –’
‘Aw, come on. That was for f*cking charity – Sick Kids in Music, or something. Jesus Christ. TERRY I’M DYING OF THIRST HERE. Where is that fat bastard? Look, I can get you an army of doctors.’
‘It doesn’t make any difference.’
Watts looked flabbergasted. ‘I’ll sue,’ he said, weakly.
‘You’re free to take any legal action you want. In fact we prefer these matters to go through the courts.’
‘I mean, what’s going on here exactly?’ Watts said. ‘Talk about changing the rules half way through the game. Talk about moving the goalposts. Everybody takes out insurance, everybody, it’s the most common thing in the world. Even people who don’t have a mortgage have insurance. Even people on the dole have insurance. But nobody would do it if you wankers kept popping up moving the goalposts like this. I mean, you maggot-farmers are just saying, “Tough, we won’t pay. F*ck off,” aren’t you? I mean, if people knew this sort of thing went on…’
‘It’s a question of good faith or bad faith.’
‘Meaning what? TERRY!’
‘Meaning we don’t think you are submitting the claim in good faith.’
Watts looked at him curiously, almost fascinated. ‘What did you say your name was?’
‘Black, Lorimer Black.’
‘Just do this one thing for me, Lorimer Black. Keep your head still and look as far to the left as you can, as far round as your eyeballs will go.’
Lorimer followed his instructions: his vision blurred, the transparent profile of his nose hovered in his left-side field of vision.
‘See anything?’ Watts asked. ‘Anything unusual?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I do, mate.’ Watts looked to his left, swivelled his eyeballs as far as they would go. ‘I can see a black shape,’ he said. ‘The very furthest left side of my vision I can see a dark shape. Know what that is?’
‘No.’
‘It’s the devil. It’s the devil sitting on my left shoulder. He’s been there for six months now. That’s why I don’t shave my cheek.’
‘Right.’
‘Now you tell me, Mr maggot-farmer loss adjuster, how the hell is a musician meant to go on an eighteen-month, thirty-five-nation tour with the devil sitting on his shoulder?’
Terry brought him his coat as Lorimer waited in the hall.
‘I’ll make sure we’ve got some Pepsi in, next time,’ he said cheerily.
‘I don’t think there’ll be a next time.’
‘Oh yeah, definitely’ Terry said. ‘You made a big impression. I’ve never seen him talk to anybody – part from Danielle – for more than two minutes. You got a card? He liked you, mate. You’re his kinda guy.’
Lorimer handed him a card, not sure whether to feel flattered or alarmed.
‘Why does he keep calling me a maggot-farmer?’
‘He calls everyone that,’ Terry explained. ‘You know on telly when they run a film with swearing and cursing, effing and blinding? And they re-record it, you know “f*cking” becomes “frigging”, “shit” becomes “shoot”, that sort of thing?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, if a character in a film says “mother-f*cker” they re-dub it on telly as “maggot-farmer”. Honest, you listen the next time. He was well taken with that, was David,’ Terry said with a smile. ‘The little maggot-farmer.’
He drove straight up Holland Park Avenue through Notting Hill Gate and the Bayswater Road to Marble Arch, then down Park Lane, Constitution Hill, left at Westminster Bridge and on to the Victoria Embankment. Lorimer could not explain why he decided to turn off the Embankment, but the idea came to him suddenly and he followed it at once.
The Fedora Palace was half gone, down to three storeys, lorries carting rubble away, the stiff claws of JCBs scratching at the outer walls, the stour of cement dust thickening the air. Lorimer spoke to a foreman in a hard hat who informed him that the site was to be levelled and the hoardings left up. Lorimer paced about, trying to make sense of this new development, trying to play all the angles, but with little success. He called up Torquil on the mobile.
‘Thank God you called,’ Torquil said. ‘I can’t find your washing machine.’
‘I don’t have one. You have to go to the launderette.’
‘You must be joking. Oh yeah, and something’s gone wrong with your bog. It won’t flush.’
‘I’ll deal with it,’ he said. ‘Listen, the Fedora Palace is being demolished, make any sense to you?’
‘Ah…’ Torquil thought. Lorimer could practically hear him thinking. ‘No,’ Torquil said, finally.
‘Hell of a write-off, don’t you think? The thing was practically finished. Why knock it down, even with the fire damage?’
‘Beats me. Where can you get a decent fry-up around here?’
Lorimer directed him to the Matisse and then switched off the phone. He decided to consider the Fedora Palace case closed: he had his bonus, it was pointless stirring matters up any further, and, in any event, he was more worried about what was going on in his flat.