Armadillo (11 page)

‘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 fucking 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 fucking 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 fuck.’

‘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.’