Armadillo

Chapter 7

His mother passed him a small circular tray of piled white bread sandwiches.
‘Here, Milo, take this down to Lobby, darling, will you?’
He thought there were probably twenty or thirty sandwiches, cut into triangles, with various fillings of meat and all neatly laid out in concentric circles as if to be handed round at an office party or working lunch.
‘They’re not all for him, surely?’
‘He’s a growing young boy,’ his grandmother said.
‘He’s nearly forty years old, Gran, for heaven’s sake.’
His grandmother spoke to his mother in their language, saying something that made them both chuckle.
‘What’s that?’ Lorimer asked.
‘She say: if a man eat too much fish he don’t got enough meat.’
‘Go on, go on, Milo. Lobby don’t like to wait for his lunch.’
From the hall he could see his father being walked gently along the angled walls of the living room by Komelia, her hands carefully supporting an elbow. His father was wearing a blue blazer with a badge on the breast pocket and a pair of pale blue slacks. His white beard had been recently trimmed, its edges razored sharp against his pink skin.
‘Look, Dad, there’s Milo,’ Komelia said, as the circuit brought him round to face the open doorway to the hall. His father’s creased bright eyes twinkled, the permanent smile never faltered.
‘Give him a wave, Milo.’
Lorimer raised his hand for a second or two and let it fall. It was all too f*cking sad, he thought, desperately. Komelia led him off again, his father’s feet moving busily in short shuffling steps.
‘Isn’t he doing well? Hello, Dad. Look, Milo’s here.’ Monika had appeared silently from somewhere in the house to stand beside him. She helped herself to one of Slobodan’s sandwiches. ‘Tongue?’ she exclaimed, chewing. ‘Since when does he get tongue?’
‘He seems fine,’ Lorimer said, inclining his head in his father’s direction. ‘How’s he doing?’
‘He’s sixty-five years old, Milo, and he’s not as regular as he should be.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Doctor’s coming. We think he needs a wee enema.’
Lorimer carried Slobodan’s tray downstairs and along the street to the B and B office. There was a gusty cold wind blowing with a misty fine rain mixed up in it and Lorimer held his spread palm an inch above the sandwich rings in case one of them might be flipped away by the stiff breeze. In the office Drava sat in front of a VDU making up the accounts; beyond her on two shiny, bum-worn sofas lounged half a dozen drivers, reading the papers and smoking. There were mutters of welcome.
‘Milo.’
‘Cheers, Milo.’
‘Hi, Milo.’
‘Dave, Mohammed, Terry. Hi, Trev, Winston. How you doing?’
‘Brilliant.’
‘Smashing.’
‘You off to a wedding, Milo?’
‘This is Mushtaq. He’s new.’
‘Hi, Mushtaq.’
‘He’s Lobby’s little bro.’
‘He’s the brains in the family, ha.’
‘Give us one of Lobby’s sarnies, then,’ Drava said, taking off her specs and pinching the bridge of her nose, hard. ‘How are you, Milo? Look a bit done in. They working you too hard? Very smart, I must say.’
‘It’s the weight of that wallet what he has to carry around, ha,’ Dave said.
‘I’m fine,’ Lorimer said. ‘Got a meeting in town. I heard Dad was poorly, said I’d drop by.’
‘He’s got awful constipation. Rock solid. Won’t budge. Hang about, that’s tongue.’
‘Get your mucky paws off of my lunch,’ Slobodan said, wandering out of his control room. ‘Trev, take over, will you? Mohammed? Parcel at Tel-Track. How are you, Milo? Looks a bit tired, don’t he, Drava?’
Slobodan relieved him of the tray, winked at him and started eating a sandwich. ‘Tongue,’ he said appreciatively, ‘nice one,’ and stuck his own out at Drava. ‘Back in half a mo. Anything you want me to tell Phil?’
‘Nothing printable.’
‘I’ll tell him that and he won’t be well pleased, Drava. Come on, Milo. Have a word in my office.’
Lorimer followed his brother out into the street and round the corner to his small terraced house. He noticed that Slobodan had plaited his ponytail and as he walked it bumped unpliantly from shoulder to shoulder as if it were stiffened with wire. The house was a product of Slobodan’s brief (six months) marriage some eight or nine years ago. Lorimer had only met his sister-in-law, Teresa, once – at the wedding, in fact – and could dimly bring to mind a feisty, lisping brunette. The next time he returned home the marriage was over and Teresa had left. But the purchase of the nuptial home had at least ensured Slobodan’s quitting of the Blocj household and he had lived in impoverished but seemingly contented bachelorhood around the corner ever since. He was always keen to volunteer confidences about his sex-life and occasional partners (‘Can’t do without it, Milo, it’s not natural’) but Lorimer did not encourage such revelations.
Slobodan, to give him credit, Lorimer thought, kept the place tidy. He had gravelled the thin strip of front garden and had trailed a clematis over the front door. He paused now at the gate, munching, and gestured with his tray of sandwiches at his shiny car, an ancient, much-loved burgundy Cortina.
‘Looking good, eh?’
‘Very shiny’
‘Waxed her yesterday. Come up lovely’
There were no pictures on the walls in Slobodan’s immaculate house and only the absolute minimum of furniture sparsely occupied the rooms. A persistent smell of air freshener lingered about the place as if someone regularly wandered upstairs and down with a can of aerosol scooshing wafts of ‘Forest Glade’ or ‘Lavender Meadow’ into the corners. Above the fireplace in the living room was the house’s sole ornament, a large crucifix with a quarter-life-size, writhing, blood-drizzled Christ. The television was on and watching the lunchtime news was Phil Beazley, a can of beer in hand, Drava’s ex-husband and Slobodan’s partner in B and B Mini-cabs and International Couriers.
‘Hey, Milo,’ Phil said, ‘my main man.’
‘Hi, Phil.’
‘What you drinking, Milo?’ Slobodan stood by his crammed drinks trolley – over fifty beverages on offer, was his proud boast. Lorimer passed; Phil had his beer replaced and Slobodan fixed himself a Campari and soda. Phil knelt forward and turned down the volume on the television. He was a small, thin man – dangerously thin, Lorimer thought – with sunken cheeks and jutting narrow hips. He dyed his fine hair blond and wore an earring. His blue eyes were slightly astigmatic and he cultivated a jolly, laddish demeanour that seemed entirely false. One’s first and lasting impression of Phil Beazley was one of suspicion. For example, Lorimer suspected strongly that Beazley had only married Drava – a hunch that was reinforced by the christening of Mercedes – for the euphonious motoring associations of her name.
‘Good to see you, Milo,’ Phil Beazley said, regaining his seat. ‘Been a while. Looking terrific, isn’t he, Lobby?’
‘Smart as a new pin, Phil.’
‘You handsome bastard. I can see life’s treating you well, no worries,’ Beazley said.
Lorimer felt a weariness descend on him and simultaneously a concomitant, metaphorical weightening of his cheque book in his breast pocket, as if its leaves had turned to lead.
It duly turned out that B and B’s cash-flow problem was insignificant and temporary, so Slobodan and Phil warmly informed him. A valued account customer had gone bankrupt, leaving four months’ unpaid bills. This valued account customer had turned out to be a f*cking bastard evil cunt because even though he knew he was going to go belly-up he was still ordering cars like ‘they was going out of fashion’. Cars here, cars there, cars to take packages to Bristol and Birmingham, cars for wait-and-returns clocking up idle hours outside pubs and nightclubs. Phil said he wanted to sledgehammer the valued account customer’s kneecaps or do a ‘chesterfield’ on his back with an industrial stapler but Lobby here had dissuaded him. They were taking on more drivers to make up the shortfall but in the interim, temporarily, through no fault of their own, they were in need of an injection of capital.
Above board, Milo, no favours, here’s what I propose. I, me, am going to sell you the Cortina.’
‘How much?’
‘Three K.’
‘I have a car,’ Lorimer said. ‘What do I want with your Cortina? You need it.’
‘I’ve got a new motor, a Citroen. The Cortina is a classic car, Milo. Look on it as an investment.’
On the television set were mute images of a burning village in Africa. Boy soldiers brandished Kalashnikovs at the camera.
Lorimer reached for his cheque book. ‘Three grand will cover it?’
Phil and Slobodan looked at each other as if to say: shit, we should have asked for more.
‘You can’t do it cash, can you, Milo?’
‘No.’
‘That going to be a problem, Phil?’
‘Ah. No. Could you make it out to my dad? Anthony Beazley. Great. Terrific, Milo, ace.’
‘Diamond,’ Slobodan agreed. ‘Diamond geezer.’
Lorimer handed over the cheque, trying to keep the resignation out of his voice. ‘Pay me back when you can. Keep the car for the firm. Find another driver, use it, make it work for you.’
‘Nice idea, Milo. Good thinking, Phil, isn’t it?’
‘That’s why he’s the City gent, Lobby, not like us daft cunts. Nice idea, Milo.’
As he drove east – New King’s Road, Old Church Street, along the Embankment, along the sunken, torpid, mud-banked river, past the bridges – Albert, Chelsea, Vauxhall, Lambeth – on to Parliament Square and its honey-coloured, busily buttressed and fretted palace (focus of Marlobe’s unquenchable bile), an uncharitable thought edged its way into his mind: how had Slobodan known he was coming that day and so contrived to have Phil Beazley present? Answer: because when he, Lorimer, had called his mother she had said his father was unwell and he had immediately arranged a visit. But his father had seemed unchanged, or at least much as usual, despite all the loud diagnosis about the state of his bowels. And this business with the sandwiches – his mother and grandmother practically pushing him out of the kitchen… It was as if he had been set up, set up by his own family for a three grand sting to help Lobby Blocj out of a jam.
214. Lorimer Black. If you want to change your name, the solicitor said, simply do so. If enough people call you by, or know you under, your new name then you have effectively, to all intents and purposes, changed your name. As an adult you are perfectly free to do this, as the case of many actors and artistes demonstrates.
But this seemed too easy to you, too ephemeral. What about documents, you asked? What about driving licence, passport, insurance, pension plan? What if you wanted all the documentation of your life to bear your new name?
Then that will require formalizing, the solicitor said. Either by deed poll or by what is called a statutory declaration, witnessed by a lawyer. You submit the statutory declaration as formal evidence of your change of name.
This was what you wanted, you wanted your new name to be in all the record banks and computer mainframes, in the files and phone books, the voting registries, in your passport and on your credit cards. Only in this way could you truly possess your different identity. Tour old name is deleted, becomes an endangered species, then, eventually, extinct.
This was what was dominating your thoughts when you returned so suddenly from Scotland. A clear and distinct schism had to be established. Milomre Blocj would not be rubbed out entirely but would live on quietly, known to a handful of people in a corner of Fulham. But to the rest of the world he would cease to exist: your statutory declaration would see to that, from now on you could and would become Lonmer Black.
You came back suddenly from Scotland to change your name and life and found your father ill.
He was lying in bed, his skin grey, his beard untrimmed, whiter and thicker than you remembered.
‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ you asked. ‘Working too hard?’
‘I keep thinking I fainting,’ he said. ‘Everything going like misty. The noise too, I don’t hear the noise proper. I feel tired. Maybe I got virus.’
‘Take it easy, Dad.’
‘You come home, Milo. Everything all right?’
‘I need to get a job, Dad. I need your help.’
‘What you want to do? EastEx is not so good now. You could work with Slobodan on the cars.’
‘I need something different. Something safe. Something ordinary.’ You were thinking: nine to five, Monday to Friday, an office, steady, anonymous, routine, grey, calm. You were thinking: accounting, a bank, civil service, telephone sales, credit control, assistant manager, personnel…
‘You tell me, Milo, I got plenty friends. I can get y ou job. But be quick, OK? I don’t think I very well man. What job you want to do, Milo?’
You said, quite spontaneously, ‘Insurance.’
The Book of Transfiguration
Lorimer parked in the multi-storey off Drury Lane, where he sat in his car quietly for five minutes gathering his thoughts, calmly rehearsing the phrases he would use and the inflections he would give them. Then he changed his tie – silk, but very subdued – put the waistcoat on under his jacket and changed his tassled loafers for lace-up brogues. As a final touch he recombed his hair and placed the parting an inch further to the left. Most of these small signifiers would be undetected by ninety-nine per cent of the people he met; the remaining one per cent who almost unreflectingly registered them would regard them as a norm, and thus entirely unexceptional. And this was what he was after, really: the minute alterations in his appearance were designed primarily for himself, they were for his own peace of mind, encouraging confidence in the persona he had decided to wear. They functioned, in a way, as a form of almost invisible armour and, thus protected, he was ready to do battle.
Jonathan L. Gale’s capacious corner office looked down Holborn towards St Paul’s cathedral and beyond to the tall scattered towers of the City. The day was fresher, the blue sky populated with a dense flotilla of clouds, spinnakering north. The wink of sunflash on high windows, as he turned his head.
‘If you can believe it,’ Gale was saying, sawing at the vista with the edge of his palm, ‘I’m actually going to spoil my own view. Our new development is going to block out about three-quarters of the dome of St Paul’s…’ He shrugged. ‘It is a rather super building, I must say’
‘I think Wren is the master, finally,’ Lorimer said.
‘What? Oh no, I mean our new development.’ He went on proudly to name a firm of architects he was employing of whom Lorimer had never heard.
‘You could always move office,’ Lorimer ventured.
‘Yeees. Can I get you some coffee, tea, acqua minerale?’
‘No, thank you.’
Jonathan Gale sat down behind his desk, taking care not to crease his jacket. He was a slackly handsome man in his fifties with an even sunbed-bronzed look to him and thinning, oiled-back chestnut hair. Lorimer was relaxed, Gale was in the ninety-nine per cent, he had overcompensated. Gale was also a little too well-dressed, in Lorimer’s verdict. Savile Row suit, yes, but the cut was slightly too tightly waisted, the lapels a little wide, the rear vents a little too long. Also the vibrant cobalt blue shirt with the white collar and cuffs, the pillar-box red of the tie were distinctly lurid – all this and the unfamiliar knobbled leather (mamba? iguana? komodo dragon?) and pointed-ness of the shoes hinted at dandysme, the ultimate sin in Ivan Algomir’s book, the worst sort of pretension. The watch was ostentatious, heavy, gold, rising half an inch off the wrist with many dials and projecting winders. This chronometer was consulted and there ensued some speculation about the tardiness of Francis, whereupon he presently arrived, apologizing.
Francis Home was olive-skinned, wearing a dollar-green suit that only the French and Italians can get away with. He had dark, crinkly hair and a fine gold chain around his right wrist. He smelt of some faint coniferous, cedary aftershave or cologne. Cypriot? Lebanese? Spanish? Egyptian? Syrian? Greek? Like himself, Lorimer knew, there were many types of Englishmen.
Lorimer shook the hand with the gold chain. ‘Mr Hume,’ he pronounced carefully, ‘how do you do? I’m Lorimer Black.’
‘Homey’ Home said with a slight gutteral rasp on the ‘h’. ‘The “e” is not silent.’
Lorimer apologized, repeated his name correctly, coffee was ordered and fetched and they took up their positions.
‘We are simply devastated by the fire,’ Gale said. ‘Shocked. Aren’t we, Francis?’
‘It is a most serious matter for us. The knock-on effect to our operations is… is…’
‘Disastrous.’
‘Precisely’ Home agreed. He had a very slight accent, quasi-American, Lorimer thought. ‘The claim is in,’ Home went on. ‘I assume everything is in order,’ he added, knowing full well it wasn’t.
‘I’m afraid not,’ Lorimer confirmed, sadly. ‘It turns out that the fire in the Fedora Palace was a deliberate one. Arson.’
Gale and Home looked sharply at each other, eyes beaming messages in unfeigned alarm, Lorimer thought.
He continued: ‘It was started by one of your subcon tractors, Edmund, Rintoul, to avoid paying penalty charges. Of course they deny it, categorically.’
Gale and Home’s surprise deepened. They wanted to speak, to curse, to exclaim, Lorimer guessed, but some profound level of caution silenced them. They glanced at each other again, as if waiting for a sleepy prompter: the mood in the room grew darkly serious, stakes increasing by the second.
‘Deliberately? Are you sure?’ Gale managed to say, forcing a baffled smile.
‘It happens all the time. A week or two’s delay is all they’re after, a rescinding of the penalty clause. Force majeure, sort of thing. The trouble with the Fedora Palace was that it all got out of hand, badly out of control. A little bit of damage to the gymnasium would have sufficed – they’d no intention of destroying five floors and the rest.’
‘This is outrageous. Who are these men? They should be in prison, for God’s sake.’
‘They deny everything.’
‘You should prosecute them,’ Home said brutally. ‘Sue. Destroy them. And their families.’
‘Ah, but it’s not our problem, Mr Home. It’s yours.’
There was a silence. Home began to look genuinely troubled, rubbing his hands together persistently to produce an irritating slippery rasp of moist flesh.
‘You’re saying that this will affect payment of the claim in some way’ Gale ventured.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so,’ Lorimer said. ‘In a significant way’ He paused. ‘We will not be paying.’
‘It’s not a question of disagreeing with the valuation?’ Gale asked, still civil.
‘No. But in our opinion it has become a criminal matter. It’s no longer a straightforward claim for fire damage. One of your own contractors has deliberately destroyed a fair proportion of the building. We can’t simply reimburse arsonists, you must understand. The whole city would be ablaze.’
‘What do the police say?’
‘I’ve no idea. These conclusions are a result of our own investigations, carried out by us on behalf of your insurer.’ Lorimer paused. I have no alternative under these circumstances but to advise them – Fortress Sure – not to honour this claim.’ He paused once more, giving a trace of a saddened smile. ‘Until these matters are satisfactorily resolved. It could take a long time.’
Gale and Home looked at each other again, Gale making an effort to keep his features composed.
‘You’ll have to pay us in the end. Good God, man, did you see our premiums?’
‘The premiums are nothing to do with our firm. We are simply loss adjusters. Our advice is that this is a criminal matter and in view of this it would be most inappropriate –’
It went on for a while in this clipped and politely hostile way, the subtext – Lorimer was sure – emerging plain and lucid for all to see. Then he was asked to leave the room for a while and was served a cup of tea by a brisk, matronly woman who made small effort to disguise the utter loathing she held him in. After twenty minutes he was summoned back – Home was no longer present.
‘Is there any way you can see that might get us out of this… this fix?’ Gale asked, more reasonably ‘Any compromise we might reach in order to avoid endless delay?’
Lorimer met his gaze unflinchingly: it was vital to avoid all sense of embarrassment, of covert shamefulness, of tacit admission of guilt.
‘It’s possible,’ Lorimer said. Our clients are normally keen to find a solution – some sort of median figure that is acceptable to both parties is usually the best way forward.’
‘You mean if I agree to take less?’
‘If you see the difficulties this sort of case presents us with and if you decide in the interests of expediency –’
‘How much?’
This was too bold, so Lorimer decided to press on, formally: ‘-you decide in the interests of expediency that the full claim should be reduced. If I go back to my client with this information, I’m sure a compromise can be reached.’
Gale looked at him coldly. ‘I see. And what sort of a figure do you think Fortress Sure will be able to live with?’
This was the moment: Lorimer could feel the pulses pumping in his wrists – 20 million? 15 million? He looked at Gale and his instincts spoke loud and clear.
‘I should think,’ he frowned as if making swift mental calculations, but he had already decided, ‘I should think you’d be safe with 10 million.’
Gale let out a throaty half-laugh, half-expletive.
‘You owe me ￡ 27 million and you offer me 10? Jesus Christ.’
‘Remember this is no longer normal business, Mr Gale. Your contractors started this fire deliberately. We would be entitled to walk away from this.’
Gale stood up, walked to the window and contemplated his soon-to-be-spoilt view of the ancient cathedral.
‘Would you put that in writing? The offer of 10 million?’
‘You are the one making the offer,’ Lorimer reminded him. ‘I’m sure that if it’s acceptable you will be formally notified.’
‘Well, I’ll make the offer formally, you get me an “acceptance” in writing, Mr Black, and we’ll take it from there.’ He bowed his head. ‘If 10 million seems the way of least resistance, then I will – with huge reluctance – reduce my claim on the Fedora Palace.’
At the door Gale turned to face him, blocking his exit. His tan face was flushed with blood, his anger turning him brick-coloured.
‘People like you are filth, Black, you’re scum. You’re no better than thieves, lying f*cking villains. You’ll happily take our money but when it comes to paying out – ‘
‘Would you please let me leave.’
Gale continued to swear harshly at him in a low voice as Lorimer stepped back.
As soon as we have your communication we’ll be in touch, Mr Gale. Tomorrow, probably.’
As Lorimer hummed down in the lift towards the lobby, towards its lush greenness and discreet lighting, he felt his head throbbing slightly, felt his chest fill and lighten, as if packed with effervescing bubbles and – strangely, this was a first – his eyes smarted from unshed tears. But beneath his exhilaration, his buoyant sense of triumph, a keener warning note sounded. Gale had seemed angry, sure – he had just lost ￡ 17 million that he might reasonably have thought were coming to him – but he hadn’t been nearly angry enough, in Lorimer’s opinion, not nearly, that was the trouble. Why not? This was worrisome.
117. The First Adjust. You flourished in ‘insurance’ in those early years. Tour father’s connections delivered a lowly but secure actuarial job, you diligently worked and were duly rewarded and routinely promoted. As part of a diversification and work-experience scheme in your first company you were sent on attachment to a firm of loss adjusters. Tour first adjust was at a shoe shop in Abingdon whose stock had been ruined as a result of a burst pipe, inundating the basement, unnoticed over a bank holiday weekend.
How did you know the owner was lying? How did you know that the grief and handwringing was sham? Hogg said later it was pure instinct. All great loss adjusters, Hogg said, can spot a liar at once because they understand, at a fundamental level, the need to lie. They may be liars themselves – and if they are they are excellent liars – but it is not necessary. What is necessary is this understanding of the philosophy of a lie, the compulsive urge to conceal the truth, its complex grammar, its secret structures.
And you knew this man was lying about his soaked and sodden stock, and you knew his wife was lying too as she tried gamely to hold back the tears while they contemplated, alongside you, the destruction of their family business. Mr Maurice, that was the name.
You looked at the papier maché litter of hundreds of drenched shoe boxes, the shining puddles on the floor, smelt the stench of wet leather in your nose and something made you turn to Mr Maurice and say, ‘How do I know you just didn’t turn your hose on the rest of the stock that weekend, Mr Maurice? It seems tremendous damage for one burst pipe.’
It is the quality of the rage that gives them away. The rage is always there, it always erupts, and Mr Maurice’s rage was impressive, but something about the pitch and tone of an indifferent liar’s rage rings false, troubles the inner ear, like the whine of a mosquito in a darkened bedroom, unmistakable, unerringly disturbing.
So you told Mr Maurice that you were going to advise his insurers to refuse to honour his claim on the grounds of fraud. Shortly after, Mr Maurice was prepared to accept a cash payment of ￡2,000 as compensation. You saved the insurance company ￡14,000, you earned your first bonus, it was inevitable that you became a loss adjuster and your continuing, remarkable success in your chosen field brought you, eventually, to the attention of George Gerald Hogg.
The Book of Transfiguration
‘Well, well, well,’ Hogg said sonorously, and lit a cigarette with his usual little flourish. ‘Well, well, well. Ten million.’ Hogg raised his pint of lager. ‘Cheers, son, well done.’
Lorimer toasted himself with his half of Guinness. He had calculated as thoroughly as he could on the way over and, as far as he could tell, on the basis of a ￡ 17 million adjust, the bonus due to him was ￡ 134,000, give or take a few hundred. A standard 0.5 per cent up to one million and then a complex scale of exponentially diminishing fractions of one per cent as the amount grew. He wondered what the company’s commission would be – Hogg’s commission. Well into seven figures, he guessed. This was a big one: only Dymphna dealt routinely in sums like these with her botched dam projects, unbuilt power stations and disappearing jumbo jets. This was a straight and simple ‘save’ for Fortress Sure. No risk had been laid off. A good day at the office for all concerned, so why wasn’t Hogg happier?
‘Any trouble?’ Hogg asked. ‘Missiles? Screamers?’
‘No. Just the usual insults and oaths.’
‘Sticks and stones, chummy. Still, I take my hat off to you, Lorimer,’ Hogg said. ‘I don’t think even I’d have dared pitch it quite that low myself. So – the question looms large – why did he go for it?’
Lorimer shrugged. ‘I don’t know’ he said. ‘I couldn’t really figure it out. Cash-flow problems? Doubt it. A little of something better than all of nothing? Perhaps. They seem a pretty secure organization.’
‘They are,’ Hogg said, reflectively. Tunny that. I thought there would have been more of an explosion. A few writs, threats, telephone calls…’
T must say I was a bit surprised too,’ Lorimer admitted.
Hogg looked at Lorimer, shrewdly. ‘You cut along to the Fort. See Dowling in Finance, be the bearer of good news.’
‘Me?’ Lorimer said, puzzled. This was normally Hogg’s prized and privileged role.
‘You deserve the credit, son. Drink up. I’ll get another round in.’
Dowling was genuinely pleased, however. A genial, plump man with a big belly and a capric stink of lunchtime cigars about him, he shook Lorimer’s hand warmly and talked a lot about appalling oversights, damage-limitation and the valued saving to the firm. Then he excused himself and left the room, returning in two minutes with Sir Simon Sherriffmuir himself. Up close, Sherriffmuir’s face was fleshier and more seamed than had appeared the night of Torquil’s farewell party But Lorimer could not fault his clothes: a black pinstripe just shy of ostentation, butter yellow shirt and a big-knotted, pale-pink, self-coloured tie. Everything bespoke, Lorimer knew instantly, even the tie. He wore no watch, Lorimer noticed and wondered if there was a fob somewhere. Interesting: he was not up on the protocols of fobs – perhaps he should affect one? – he would have to check with Ivan.
‘This is the young man’, Dowling was saying, ‘who’s saved us all that money’
Sherriffmuir smiled automatically, his handshake was firm and brisk. ‘Best news I’ve had all day. And you are?’
‘Lorimer Black.’ He just managed to prevent himself adding a servile ‘sir’.
‘So, you’re one of George’s brilliant young samurai,’ Sherriffmuir mused, looking at him almost fondly. ‘It’s been a bit of a bloody cock-up, this Fedora Palace business, I’m most grateful to you. Can you wrap it up quickly? We want to get the whole mess behind us.’
‘I’ve agreed we’ll OK the new claim,’ Dowling interjected.
‘Good, good…’ Lorimer felt Sherriffmuir still studying him, with some mild curiosity ‘You’re not Angus Black’s youngest, are you?’
‘No,’ Lorimer said, thinking: I’m Bogdan Blocj’s youngest, and feeling a small, rare flush of shame.
‘Send my love to your pa, will you? Tell him we’ve got to get him south of the border soon,’ Sherriffmuir said, not listening and turning to Dowling. ‘Peter, see you at –?’
‘– Half five. All arranged.’
Sherriffmuir moved easily to the door, slightly round-shouldered like many tall men, the hair on the back of his head curling up above his collar, Lorimer noticed.
He gave Lorimer a loose, parting wave. ‘Thanks, Lorimer, fine work.’
Despite his better instincts Lorimer felt pride in himself, as if he had been suddenly ennobled, vindicated by Sir Simon’s praise and the familiar use of his Christian name. For God’s sake, he rebuked himself almost instantly: the man’s not God Almighty, he just works in insurance, like the rest of us.
Rajiv was leaning on his counter, smoking, tie off, his shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel, as if he were on holiday.
‘Hail to the conquering hero,’ he said, not smiling.
‘Thanks, Raj,’ Lorimer said. ‘You lose some, you win some.’
Rajiv slipped his hand inside his shirt and massaged a plump breast. Now he did smile, a slight puckering of his round cheeks.
‘Don’t get too big for those boots,’ he said. ‘Hogg’s in your cubicle.’
As Lorimer wandered down the corridor Shane Ash-gable poked his head out of his office, jerked a thumb and mouthed ‘Hogg’ at him. Such rare solidarity, Lorimer thought, can only mean one thing: Hogg is in one of his black moods.
Pausing at his door, Lorimer could see through the glass rectangle Hogg openly going through the files and correspondence in his in-tray. He glanced towards Dymphna’s door – she was sitting at her desk crying, dabbing at her eyes with a corner of tissue. Bad, bad omens, Lorimer thought. But why the mood change? What had happened? The first wave of Hogg’s wrath had evidently broken on poor Dymphna: he would have to be nicer to Dymphna, he thought suddenly, charitably, perhaps he would ask her for a drink after work.
Hogg did not look round, nor desist from his investigation of Lorimer’s paperwork, when he entered.
‘You heard any more from the police about that suicide?’ Hogg asked.
‘Just a follow-up visit. Why?’
‘Has there been an inquest?’
‘Not yet. Will there be one?’
‘Of course.’
Hogg stepped round the desk and lowered himself slowly into Lorimer’s chair and scrutinized him aggressively.
‘Go all right with Dowling?’
‘Fine. Sir Simon came in.’
‘Ah. Sir Simon, himself. Very honoured.’
Lorimer could see there was a torn-out sheet from a message pad in the middle of his desk blotter. Reading it upside down he saw that it said ‘Dr Kenbarry’ and was followed by a number. A telephone number, and, below that, an address. He felt his throat go dry, tight.
Hogg was wrestling angrily with something stuck in his jacket pocket and cursing silently. Finally he removed it and handed it over to Lorimer – it was a compact disc, still wrapped in its tight cellophane sheath. On a plain white field in jagged child’s handwriting the cover read ‘David Watts. Angziertie.’ Along the bottom of the square was a photograph of three dead bluebottles on their backs, their sets of six legs brittle, half-clenched.
Angziertie,’ Lorimer read slowly ‘Is that German? Or bad spelling?’
‘For the love of Mike, how should I know?’ Hogg said, angrily.
He is in a filthy mood, Lorimer remarked to himself, and wondered again what harshness had been visited on Dymphna.
‘Who is David Watts?’ Lorimer tried again.
‘Your next job,’ Hogg said.
‘Who is David Watts?’
‘Sweet suffering Christ, even I’ve heard of David Watts.’
‘Sorry.’
‘He’s a singer. A “rock” singer. D’you know his music?’
‘The only contemporary music I listen to these days is African.’
‘Right, that does it.’ Hogg stood up, furiously, abruptly, to attention. ‘You know, Lorimer, sometimes I think you’re f*cking barking mad. I mean, for God’s sweet sake, man.’ He began to pace angrily about the office. Lorimer pressed himself against the wall. ‘I mean, Jesus Christ, how old are you? What’s the point of employing young people? You should have this popular culture stuff at your fingertips. He’s a bloody rock singer. Everyone’s heard of him.’
‘Oh, yes. Rings a bell, now. That David Watts.’
‘Don’t f*cking interrupt me when I’m talking.’
‘Sorry’
Hogg stopped in front of him and stared, balefully, frowningly at him.
‘Sometimes I think you’re not normal, Lorimer.’
‘Define “normal”
‘Watch it, right?’ Hoggjabbed a blunt, nicotined finger at him, then he sighed, allowed his features to slump, tutted, and shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Lorimer, I just don’t know… I’m not a happy matelot at the moment. My life is lacking in joy Janice has got the file on this David Watts character. Sounds right up your alleyway.’
He paused at the door, made sure it was shut and then in a curious crabwise fashion shuffled back towards him, still keeping half an eye on the corridor visible through the glass panel. He smiled now, showing his small yellow teeth through the slit in his lips.
‘Know what I’m going to do Monday? First thing Monday morning?’
‘No, Mr Hogg. What?’
‘I’m going to sack ‘Torquil Helvoir-Jayne.’
388. A Glass of White Wine. Torquil is not a particularly proud or vainglorious man; I would not say ‘pride’ was listed among his many vices, but he is fiercely defensive about what he considers his sole claim to lasting fame, and he defends his rights to this obscure celebrityhood with adamant passion. He claims, he insists, he demands to be credited, acknowledged to be the originator, the only begetter of apiece of apocrypha, a snippet of contemporary folklore that he himself spawned but which, to his continuing fury, has now passed unattributed into common currency.
It happened at a weekend house party in Wiltshire (or Devon or Cheshire or Gloucestershire or Perthshire). On the Saturday night, copious alcohol had been consumed by the guests, all in their twenties (this was a while ago, in the 1980s), young men and women, couples, singles, a few marrieds, escaping to the country for their precious weekends, fleeing their city homes, their jobs, their humdrum weekday personae. Torquil had been possibly the drunkest that Saturday night, knee-walking drunk, he said, mixing drinks with abandon, whisky following port following claret following champagne. He had risen late on the Sunday morning, after midday, when the other guests had already had breakfast, been for a walk, read the Sunday papers and were now forgathering in the drawing room for pre-Sunday lunch drinks.
‘I arrived downstairs’ Torquil says, taking up the story, feeling like total shit, serious bad news, hill-cracking headache, mouth like an ashtray, eyes like pissholes in the snow. And they’re all standing there with their bloody marys, gins and tonics, vodkas and orange juice. There’s a bit of jeering, bit of ribbing as I stumble in, feeling like death, and the girl whose house party it was – forget her name – comes up to me. Everyone was looking at me, you see, because I was so late and I looked like absolute death warmed up, all laughing at me, and this girl comes up to me and says, “Torquil, what’re you going to have to drink? G and T? Bloody mary?” Actually, to tell the truth, the thought made me want to puke and so I said, quite seriously, quite spontaneously, “Ah, no thank you, I couldn’t possibly touch a drop of alcohol, I’ll just have a glass of white wine.”
At this point he stops and stares at me long and hard and says, ‘Now, you’ve heard that story before, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I remember I said. ‘I have. I can’t think where. It’s an old joke, isn’t it?’
‘No. It was me,’ Torquil protests, helplessly, voice cracking. ‘That was me. I said it: I was the first person who said it, ever. It was my line. Now any old smart-arse bounds down the stairs on a Sunday morning and gets a cheap laugh. It’s not an “old joke”, it was something I said. I said it first and everyone’s forgotten.’
The Book of Transfiguration
He punched out the telephone number that Alan had given him, realizing that he was functioning on a kind of personal automatic pilot; he was acting on pure whim, without reflection or analysis or thought of any consequences beyond the present moment. The phone rang, rang again, rang again.
‘Yeah?’
A man’s voice. He was jerked out of his robotic reverie: he thought fast.
‘Hello, could I speak to Mr Malinverno?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Oh good. I’m calling from –’
Lorimer hung up. Why had he not thought of this before? How could this probability, or possibility, not even have entered his calculations? So, she was married. No – it could have been a brother, or even a father, or even an uncle (just). All feeble, self-deluding stuff, he realized: a Mr Malinverno had answered the phone – the odds were that this was the man in her life.
To clear his mind, and calm himself down, he turned to other more pressing matters: he dictated a letter into his pocket memo for Gale-Harlequin confirming that a reduced claim of ￡10 million would be acceptable to his clients, Fortress Sure. Janice would arrange to have it typed up and sent off in the morning – at least some sort of satisfactory full-stop had been appended to that Chapter of his life.
Dymphna’s eyes were still heavy and pink-rimmed but she seemed to have regained her usual animated and genial mood, he thought. Appropriately, it was happy hour and they were in The Clinic, a newly themed, large pub off Fleet Street – Dymphna’s choice. The barmen wore white coats and the serving waitresses were dressed in skimpy nurses’ uniforms. Dymphna was drinking a cocktail called a Soluble Aspirin which, as far as Lorimer could tell, was made up of a random selection of white spirits (gin, vodka, white rum, triple sec) topped off with a dash of coconut milk. The music was full-throatedly loud and the place was hectic with suited young men and women weary from work and looking for fun. Dymphna lit a cigarette and puffed smoke into the low grey haze that shifted and eddied above their heads. Lorimer had a slight tension headache, the epicentre located an inch above his left eyebrow.
‘He’s a complete bastard,’ Dymphna said. ‘He just wanted to make me cry, for some reason. Kept going on at me. Do you know what made me break? I’m so pissed off with myself. Furious.’
‘You don’t need to tell me–
‘He said, please don’t come in wearing skirts of that length any more.’
‘Bloody nerve.’ Lorimer looked down at Dymphna’s caramel skirt, its hem an orthodox couple of inches above her somewhat pudgy knees.
‘He said I had fat legs.’
‘Jesus Christ. Well, if it’s any consolation he said I was barking mad. He was in a filthy mood.’
Dymphna drew heavily and thoughtfully on her cigarette. ‘I don’t have fat legs, do I?’
‘Course not. He’s just a mean bastard.’
‘Something’s really bugging him. He’s always rude when he’s unsettled.’
Lorimer wondered if he should tell her the news about Torquil’s impending demise. Then with a shock of clear vision he realized that this was exactly what Hogg was expecting him to do – it was one of the oldest traps in the book and he had almost walked right into it. Perhaps he had told everyone, perhaps it was a test of loyalty, who would leak the news first?
‘Another Soluble Aspirin?’ he asked, then added, innocently, I think the presence of Torquil may have something to do with it.’
‘That wanker,’ Dymphna said harshly, handing him her cloudy glass. ‘Yes please. One more and you can have your way with me, lovely Lorimer.’
That was what happened when you tried to be ‘nice’, Lorimer thought, as he ordered another Soluble Aspirin and a low-alcohol beer for himself. He was pretty sure Dymphna knew nothing about the firing but, all the same, he would have to snuff out her amorous tendencies pretty –
Flavia Malinverno was across the room. He stood on tiptoes and peered – someone’s head was in the way. Then she moved and he saw it wasn’t her at all, nothing like her. Good God, he thought, it showed what was on his mind – practically hallucinating with wishful thinking.
Dymphna sipped at her white drink, her eyes firmly on him over the glass’s rim.
‘What is it?’ Lorimer said. ‘Too strong?’
‘I really like you, Lorimer, you know? I’d really like to get to know you better.’
She reached out and took his hand. Lorimer felt his spirits begin their slow slide.
‘Give us a kiss, then,’ she said. ‘Go on.’
‘Dymphna. I’m seeing someone else.’
‘So what? I just want a f*ck.’
‘I’m… I’m in love with her. I can’t.
‘Lucky you.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘It’s hard, meeting someone you like. Then when you do, you find they’ve got someone else. Or they don’t fancy you.’
‘I do like you, Dymphna, you know that.’
‘Yes, we’re great “chums”, aren’t we.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Who is this damn girl, then? Do I know her?’
‘No. She’s an actress. Nothing to do with us, our world.’
‘Wise. What’s her name?’
‘Flavia. Listen, have you heard of a singer, a rock singer called David Watts?’
‘Flavia… What a horribly attractive name. Is she very la-di-da? David Watts? I love David Watts.’
114. REM Sleep. You have a lot of REM sleep, much more than the average person. Could this be because your brain is in need of more repair each night?
REM sleep. The brain wave patterns are on a far faster frequency, there is a higher heart beat and respiration, your blood pressure may rise and there is significantly more motility of the facial muscles. Your face may twitch, your eyeballs move behind your closed eyelids, there is increased blood flow to the brain, your brain becomes hotter. Sometimes in REM sleep your brain is firing more neurons than when you are awake.
But at the same time your body experiences a form of mild paralysis: your spinal reflexes decline, you have heightened motor inhibition and suppressed muscle tonus. Except in one area of your body. A further identifying characteristic of REM sleep is penile erection or *oral engorgement.
The Book of Transfiguration
The steel crescents set in the toes and heels of his shoe soles clicked militaristically on the concrete floor of the multi-storey carpark, the white fluorescent bulbs leaching the primary colours from the rows of shiny cars, the noise of his shoes contributing to the mood of incipient threat which always appeared to brew amongst these stacked decks after dark, with their unnatural luminosity, their oppressively low ceilings, their bays crowded always with empty cars but unpopulated by their drivers or passengers. He was thinking about Hogg and his mood swings, his bully-boy provocations. Behind the bluffness and the banter he and Hogg had always got along and there was in their exchanges an implicit sense – often jocularly remarked on by his colleagues – that Lorimer was the golden boy, the chosen one, the dauphin to Hogg’s Sun King. But today that had not been the case: the huge confidence that allowed Hogg to swagger through his little fiefdom had been absent – or rather, it had been there, but forced and strained for, and therefore uglier. He had seemed, frankly, worried, and Lorimer had never before associated Hogg with that particular state of mind.
But what was troubling him? What could Hogg see coming down the pike that he couldn’t? There was a bigger picture here but Lorimer was not staring at the whole canvas. He was right, too: the news about Torquil’s sacking was an attempt at entrapment, a blatant one. Hogg was waiting to see whom he told, waiting to see, Lorimer realized, if he would tell Torquil himself. But why would Hogg think this of him, his golden boy? Why would Hogg test him in this way?
Lorimer’s steps slowed as the answer came to him. Hogg, troubled, unsettled, aware of these larger dimensions that Lorimer could not yet grasp, saw – or thought he saw – a role in them that was being played by Lorimer himself. Hogg, Lorimer realized with a genuine shock, was suspicious of him. He stood still now, some yards from his car, his brain working. What was it? What could Hogg see that he could not? Something was eluding him, some pattern in recent events… This uncertainty was alarming and it was even more alarming when he considered the natural consequences of suspicion: if Hogg was suspicious, then that implied only one thing – George Gerald Hogg no longer trusted Lorimer Black.
Someone had done something to the front of his car. Most curious. He saw as he drew near that letters had been made from sand, sand poured on to the bonnet and moulded into two-inch-high ridges to spell – BASTA.
He looked around him. Had the perpetrator been alerted by the martial click of his shoe steels and fled, or was he, or she, still hiding somewhere near by? He saw no one, nothing stirred, so he swept the cold sand from the gentle slope of the bonnet. How to explain this? Was this directed at him or was it random, his bad luck? BASTA – it meant ‘enough’ in Italian. Or was it an incomplete slur on the marital status of his mother? Basta. Enough. Enough already. Enough questions. He hoped he would sleep tonight, but he doubted it, his mind was already full of his next project: he was going to telephone Flavia Malinverno in the morning.