Armadillo (26 page)

Lorimer leant over and kissed her, hoping the smile on his face concealed the despair in his heart.

‘Don’t say anything yet,’ Stella said. ‘Just listen.’ She began to go over the figures, turnover and profit margins, the kind of salary they could pay themselves, the prospects for major expansion if they could break into certain markets.

‘Don’t say yes, no or maybe,’ Stella went on. ‘Give yourself a few days to mull it over. And everything it implies.’ She grabbed his head and gave him a serious kiss, her lithe tongue flicking in and out of his mouth like… like a fish, Lorimer balefully noted.

‘I’m excited, Lorimer, it really excites me. Out of the city, in the country….’

‘Does Barbuda know anything about these plans?’ Lorimer said, gladly accepting the offer of a celebratory post-prandial brandy.

‘Not yet. She knows I’ve sold Bull scaffolding. She’s pleased about that, she’s always been embarrassed by the scaffolding.’

Revolting little snob, Lorimer thought, saying, ‘The fish farm will go down better,’ without much confidence.

Stella hugged him fiercely at the door as he left. It was only four o’clock but already the streetlamps shone bright in the gathering murk. Lorimer’s depression was acute, but there was no way he could burst the bubble of her fishy dreams here and now. He kissed her goodbye.

He stood on the pavement by his car, reflecting a while, looking across at the high, lit cliff faces of the sprawling housing estate a few streets away, thumbtacked with satellite dishes, washing hanging limply on balconies, one of the great ghetto colonies of the city’s poor and disenfranchised which arced east, south of the river, through Walworth, Peckham, Rotherhithe and Southwark, small slum-states of deprivation and anarchy where life was lived in a manner that would be familiar to Hogg’s Savage Precursors, brutish and nasty, where all endeavours were hazardous in the extreme and life was one gargantuan gamble, a cycle of happenstance and rotten luck.

Was this all there really was, in the end, he wondered? Beneath this veneer of order, probity, governance and civilized behaviour – aren’t we just kidding ourselves? The Savage Precursors knew… Stop, he told himself, he was depressed enough as it was, and bent to unlock his car. He heard his name softly called and looked round to see Barbuda standing ten feet away, as if restrained by an invisible
cordon sanitaire
around him.

‘Hi, Barbuda,’ he said, the two words overburdened by all the friendliness, pleasure and genuine good-natured blokiness he could force upon them.

‘I was listening,’ she said, flatly ‘She was talking about a fish farm. Near Guildford. What’s she gone and done?’

‘I think your mother should tell you that.’

‘She’s bought a fish farm, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes.’ There was nothing to be gained by lying, he thought, seeing Barbuda’s bottom lip fatten as she pushed it forward.

‘A fish farm.’ She made it sound vile, horror-filled: a vivisection laboratory, the dankest sweat-shop, a child brothel.

‘It sounds like fun,’ he said, urging a chuckle into his voice. ‘Could be interesting.’

She looked skywards and Lorimer saw the shine as the streetlamp caught her teartracks.

‘What am I going to tell my friends? What will my friends think?’

It seemed not to be a rhetorical question so Lorimer answered. ‘If they think any the less of you because your mother owns a fish farm, then they’re not true friends.’

‘A fish farm. My mother’s a fish farmer.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with a fish farm. It could be very successful.’

‘I don’t want to be the daughter of someone who owns a fish farm,’ Barbuda said in a desperate, whining voice. ‘I can’t be. I won’t be.’

Lorimer knew the feeling: he understood the reluctance to have an identity thrust upon you – even though he could not bring himself to sympathize with the brat.

‘Look, they know she runs a scaffolding firm, surely they –’

‘They don’t know. They know nothing about her. But if she moves to Guildford they’ll find out.’

‘These things seem important, but after a while –’

‘It’s all your fault.’ Barbuda wiped away her tears.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s done it for you. If you weren’t in her life she would never have bought the fish farm.’

‘I think she would. Anyway look, Barbuda, or Angelica, if you like –’

‘It’s all your fault,’ she repeated in a small hard voice. ‘I’ll kill you. One day I’ll kill you.’

She turned and ran, on light, quick feet, back into the house.

Well, you’ll just have to join the queue, Lorimer reflected with some bitterness, exhaling. He was becoming fed up with this role of fall-guy for other people’s woes, he was reaching the end of his tether; if life didn’t ease up on him he might just possibly break.

There were four fire engines outside the ShoppaSava when Lorimer drove past and a small crowd had gathered. Some fitful wisps of smoke and steam seemed to be issuing from the rear of the building, Lorimer could see, parking the Toyota and wandering along the street to discover what had happened. He peered over the heads of the onlookers at the blackened plate-glass doors. Firemen, draped in breathing apparatus like deep sea divers, were wandering around in a relaxed manner, swigging from two-litre bottles of mineral water, so Lorimer assumed the worst was over. A policeman told him it had been a ‘ferociously fierce’ fire, with everything pretty much consumed. Lorimer mooched around for a few more minutes and then headed back to his car and realized, after a moment or two, that he was following a figure that was vaguely familiar – a figure in pale blue jeans and an expensive-looking ochre suede jacket. Lorimer ducked into a shop doorway and watched the figure covertly: was this what it was like being a secret agent in the field, he asked himself with some bitterness, a life of eternal vigilance the price demanded? Gone forever that unreflecting amble through your own particular
quartier
of your own particular city, always edgy and alert like –

He watched the man climb into a glossy new-model BMW – Kenneth Rintoul. No doubt he’s been sniffing around number II, trying to catch him off his guard. A little bit of grievous bodily harm of a Sunday afternoon, just the ticket. Lorimer waited until Rintoul had driven off and then loped diffidently to his rust-bucket. The mobile rang as he opened the door. It was Slobodan.

‘Hi, Milo, you haven’t heard anything from Torkie, have you?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Well, he went home, Saturday, to sort out some sort of lawyer business but he never came back. I’d cooked him dinner and he’s missed a ton of work. I wondered if he’d shown up at your place.’

‘No. No sign. Tried his home number?’

‘Nothing but answer machine. You don’t know if he’s turning up Monday morning, do you?’

‘I’m not Torquil’s keeper, Slobodan.’

‘Fair dos, fair dos. Just thought you might be in the loop, is all. See you tomorrow, then. Three.’

Lorimer had forgotten. ‘Oh yeah, right.’

‘Shame about old Dad, eh? Still he had a good –’

Lorimer interrupted before he could round off the homily. ‘See you tomorrow.’

‘Cheers, Milo.’

When he reached home, and as he crossed the hall to the stairs, he heard Jupiter give a brief, gruff bark from behind Lady Haigh’s door. He was usually the most silent of dogs and Lorimer chose to interpret this exception as a fond, canine ‘hello’.

Chapter 18

Monday, Lorimer reflected, had not started in a promising manner: in the night someone had stolen his car. In the dawn darkness he stood by the empty space where he had parked it and asked himself what inept thief, what desperate fool, would choose to steal a car with such an obvious dose of terminal corrosion? Well, to hell and back with it, he thought, at least it’s insured, and strode off into the gloom towards Victoria Station to catch a tube.

He sat in a hot, crammed compartment with his fellow commuters, trying to keep irritation at bay and, also, ignore the thin, keening note of indeterminate worry that nagged at him like tinnitus. Moreover, he was already missing his car, knowing he would have needed it for the funeral, to make the long trajectory across town to Putney. It’s just a motor car, he told himself, a mode of transport – and a pretty inauspicious one at that. There were other methods available when it came to the ferrying of his person from point A to point B: by the standards of the world’s injustices he was getting off lightly.

The tube network bore him efficiently beneath the city’s streets so that he was at the office fifteen minutes before his appointment with Hogg. He was about to clamber up the flight of stairs when he saw Torquil emerge on the landing, suited and tied, and with a pile of files under his arm. Torquil conspiratorially waved him back outside and presently joined him on the pavement. They wandered a way along the street, Torquil regardlessly hailing every occupied taxi that passed as if it would at once disgorge its paying customer at his imperious behest.

‘The most amazing thing happened this weekend,’ Torquil told him. ‘There I was, Saturday evening, arguing the toss with Binnie about getting the kids into cheaper schools, when Simon calls.’

‘Sherriffmuir?’

‘Yes. There and then he offers me a job. Director of Special Projects at Fortress Sure. My old salary, secretary, car – better car, actually – as if nothing had ever happened. TAXI!’

‘Special projects? What does that mean?’

‘Well, not so sure… Simon said something about feeling our way forward, establishing parameters as we go, sort of thing. For Christ’s sake, it’s a job. Pension, BUPA, the works. TAXI ! I knew Simon would see me right. Just a question of when.’

‘Well, congratulations.’

‘Thanks. Ah, got one.’ A black cab had stopped across the street and was waiting to make its tight turn.

‘And,’ Torquil added, a little smugly, ‘the Binns has forgiven me.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you know. The kids, I suppose. Anyway, she’s a noble soul. And I promised to be a good boy.’

‘What about Irina?’

Torquil looked blank for a moment. ‘Oh, I told her I couldn’t see her – for a while. She took it pretty well. I think we might let that one just fizzle out, anyway. Plenty more fish in the sea.’ Torquil opened the cab door. ‘Look, let’s have lunch some time.’

‘I’ll tell Lobby you won’t be turning up.’

‘Lobby? Oh, God, yeah, would you? Forgot about him in all the excitement. Tell him I’m taking a cut in salary, that’ll make him laugh. It’s true, actually. Sorry to hear about your pa, by the way.’

Lorimer closed the door on him with a satisfying bang and watched Torquil rummaging in his pockets for a cigarette while telling the taxi driver where he wanted to go. He didn’t bother to wave goodbye as Torquil didn’t bother to look out of the window.

Lorimer bounded up the pine stairway, heading for Rajiv’s counter, about to tell him of the car theft, but Rajiv pre-empted him, tapping his nose and pointing skyward.

‘Mr Hogg’s asked three times if you’ve come in.’

So Lorimer went straight up; there was no sign of Janice so he rapped on Hogg’s door.

‘Who is it?’

‘Lorimer, Mr Hogg.’

Hogg threw a rolled-up newspaper at him as he entered and it bounced off his chest and fell to the carpet. It was the
Financial Times.
Lorimer’s eye was immediately caught by the second headline: ‘Property giant snaps up Gale-Harlequin. Racine Securities pays 380 million.’ He scanned through the rest of the article: ‘Shares purchased at 435P… Investors take large profits.’ There followed a list of investors – two fund managers, a famous US property tycoon and arbitrageur and a couple of other names he did not recognize. Hogg stood, hands on hips, legs braced as if on a rolling poop deck, watching him while he read.

‘How much did you make?’ Hogg said, with quiet venom. ‘Stock options or a flat deal?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You must think I’m like some virgin novice nun from a convent stuck up in the mountains, a hundred miles from the nearest…’ the simile ran out of steam. ‘Don’t make me fucking laugh, you tosspot.’

‘Mr Hogg –’

‘Now I know why the adjust went so smoothly. No one wanted the boat rocked with this one coming up on the rails.’

Lorimer had to admit it made some sense.

‘I did a straightforward adjust, pure and simple.’

‘And you’re fired, pure and simple.’

Lorimer blinked. ‘On what grounds?’

‘Suspicion.’

‘Suspicion of what?’

‘How long have you got? I suspect you of every nasty, suppurating, corrupt trick in the book, matey, and I can’t afford to suspect a member of my staff for even one second. So you take the prize fucking biscuit, chum. You’re out. Now.’ He actually smiled. ‘Car keys.’ He held out a broad palm.

Lorimer handed them over. ‘By the way, it was stolen this morning.’

‘No. We lifted it. You’ll be getting invoiced for the respray. Janice!’

Janice peered nervously round the door.

‘Take Mr Black to his office, let him pack up his personal effects and then lock the door. On no account is he to be left alone for one second, or make a phone call.’ He offered Lorimer his hand. ‘Goodbye, Lorimer, it’s been real.’

It was to his credit, so Lorimer told himself later, that he did not shake Hogg’s hand. He merely said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice: ‘You are making an enormous mistake. You will live to regret it,’ turned sharply on his heel, back muscles already in spasm, and managed to walk out.

201. An Old Joke.
Hogg told me this joke more than once, it’s a particular favourite. A man goes into a sandwich bar and says, ‘Can I have a turkey sandwich?’ The guy behind the counter says, ‘We’ve got no turkey.’ ‘OK,’ the man says, ‘in that case I’ll have chicken.’ The guy behind the counter says, ‘Listen, mate, if we had chicken you could have had your turkey sandwich.’

Since Hogg told me this joke it has perturbed me unduly, as if it contains some deep truth about perception, about truth, about the world and our dealings with it. Something about this old joke disturbs me. Hogg, for his part, could hardly get the words out for laughing.

The Book of Transfiguration

Lorimer placed the cardboard box containing his personal effects on the hall table and rested his hand on the crown of his Greek helmet. The metal felt cool and pleasingly rough under his hot palm. Give me strength, he thought. He analysed his feelings and came up with nothing concrete: vague outrage, vague worry about the future and, curiously, vague relief.

There was a message to call Bram Wiles on his answer machine.

‘Did you see today’s papers?’ Wiles asked immediately.

‘Yes. What do you make of it?’

‘One of the investors in Gale-Harlequin is a company called Ray Von TL – it has just over a fifteen per cent stake. It’s registered in Panama. I suspect that if we could find out who was behind Ray Von TL we’d have a few more answers.’

Lorimer had a few guesses: Francis Home? Dirk van Meer? He would not be surprised. Fifteen per cent of Gale-Harlequin was suddenly worth this morning a nice 48 million. A handsome slice of the pie to call your own. But how did such massive profit-taking impinge on the insignificant lives of Torquil Helvoir-Jayne and Lorimer Black?

‘You know Gale-Harlequin was only floated on the stock exchange fourteen months ago?’ Wiles asked.

‘No, I didn’t. Could it have a bearing?’

‘I should think so, wouldn’t you? Somewhere along the line.’

Wiles speculated on possible schemes and plans but they were all guesses. Lorimer asked him to keep on digging, to see if he could find out any more about this Ray Von TL company – it seemed their only lead. Even then, as Wiles reminded him, it might be perfectly legitimate: there were many offshore investors in British companies.

After he hung up Lorimer thought for a while, hard, and with ever-mounting alarm. One of Hogg’s regular maxims nagged away at the edge of his brain – ‘we set a sprat to catch a rhino’ – for the first time in his life he thought it made some kind of perverse sense. He rephrased it along classic Hoggian lines: in difficult times a fool is more use than a wise man.

He found a black tie at the back of a drawer and put it on – it certainly suited his mood. From a position of steady normality – steady job, steady prospects, steady girlfriend – he now found himself adrift in uncertainty and chaos: no job, no car, no girlfriend, insolvent, fatherless, sleepless, loveless… Not the ideal set of circumstances to find oneself in, he reflected, given that he was about to go to a funeral at a crematorium.

He walked down Lupus Crescent, wondering whether his bank card would still work, and was beckoned over by Marlobe. He had a copious stock of lilies in today and even in the dull, chilly, wintry air their perfume was cloying and almost nauseating, Lorimer thought, making his sinuses tickle and catching at his throat. Lilies that fester… How did the line go? Lilies, daffs, tulips, the omnipresent carnations. He bought a bunch of pale mauve tulips for his father’s grave.

‘Off to a funeral then?’ Marlobe observed cheerily, pointing at his black tie.

‘Yes, my father’s.’

‘Oh yeah? Commiserations. Is it burning or under the ground?’

‘Cremation.’

‘That’s what I want. Burnt to a crisp. Then have my ashes scattered.’

‘Over the carnation fields of the Zuider Zee?’

‘Come again?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Talking about fire…’ Marlobe leaned forward, pushing his pale gingery face close to Lorimer’s. ‘Did you see what happened over at ShoppaSava? Burnt out. They might even demolish the place.’

‘Shame. It was a good supermarket.’ Fire, Lorimer thought suddenly, occupied a prominent place in his life. Who was the god of fire? Prometheus? His life recently seemed to be dogged by some malicious Prometheus, showing him his power in all its protean forms.

‘It’s an ill fucking wind…’ Marlobe said doomily, like some demotic sage, then grinned, showing his fine teeth. ‘Won’t be selling any more flowers, though, eh? Ha-ha. Eh? Eh?’

As Lorimer walked away he began thinking about the fire: no, surely, not even Marlobe was that ruthless – to destroy an entire supermarket? Surely not? He sighed loudly in the street. But then he resolved that nothing was going to surprise him any more, not after the events of recent weeks, all anticipations had been well and truly disturbed, his mind would be forever open, always a door ajar to the most outlandish possibility. He slipped his card in the machine and, gratifyingly, it poked out a crisp tongue of new notes.

396. Prometheus and Pandora.
Prometheus, a titan and a demiurge, also known as ‘the great trickster’, and a culture-hero. Bringer of fire to earth and man. Stealer of fire from Zeus. Prometheus, firestealer, firebringer.

Zeus, determined to counterbalance this beneficence, created a woman, Pandora, endowing her with fabulous beauty and instinctive cunning, and sent her to earth with ajar containing all manner of miseries and evils. Pandora duly lifted the lid from the jar and all these torments flew out to punish and distress mankind forever. So, Prometheus brings the blessing of fire, and Zeus sends Pandora with her malign jar. There is too much of Prometheus and Pandora in my life at the moment. But lam consoled by the coda to the legend. Hope was in Pandora’s jar, but Pandora closed the lid before Hope could escape. But Hope lurks somewhere, she must have squeezed out of Pandora’s jar by now. Prometheus and Pandora, my kind of gods.

The Book of Transfiguration

Once through the gates and away from the the traffic, Putney Vale Crematorium did not resemble, Lorimer saw, all crematoria everywhere. He had assumed that some time in the 1960s one firm of architects had been given the sole contract for the nation. There was no spacious, neatly mown park, no carefully positioned conifers and larches, shrubberies and flower beds, no low brick buildings or featureless waiting rooms with their dusty arrangements of artificial flowers.

Instead, Putney Vale was a gigantic, scruffy, over-populated graveyard, set behind a superstore, dotted with clumps of trees with a dark avenue of shaggy yews leading to a dinky Victorian Gothic church, converted somehow to take the crematorium’s furnace. Despite its idiosyncratic appearance the same mood always seemed to accrue around these places – regret, sorrow, dread, all the soul-sapping
mementi mori –
except Putney Vale had them loudly amplified: the acres of the encroaching necropolis, the bottle-green unpruned lugubrious yews seeming almost to suck in light out of the air like black holes (trees of death. Why did they plant the wretched things? Why not something prettier?) – all adding up to this atmosphere of municipal melancholia, of standardized, clock-watching obsequies.

But as if to prove him wrong he sensed at once, as he stepped out of his taxi, that his family were in jovial and buoyant mood. As he approached the church he heard a blare of laughter rise above the hum of animated chat. Groups of B and B drivers were gathered on the lawn outside having a smoke, their cigarettes held respectfully out of sight, in cupped hands behind their backs, keeping their distance from the central knot of Bloçj family members. He saw Trevor one-five, Mohammed, Dave, Winston, Trevor two-nine and some others he did not recognize. They greeted him boisterously. ‘Milo! Hi, Milo! Looking good, Milo!’

His family was gathered before the arched doors waiting for their turn: his grandmother and mother, Slobodan, Monika, Komelia, Drava and little Mercedes – all looking smarter than normal in new clothes he had not seen before, hair coiffed and combed, make-up prominent. Slobodan was wearing an orange tie and had reduced his ponytail to a sober bun, and Mercy ran up to show him her new shoes agleam with many silver buckles.