The Count of Eleven (9 page)

The female voice which he’d shouted down repeated the name of the insurance company. “Hold on,” Jack pleaded, relinquishing the clown’s head and sweeping the letter off the hall floor. “You’ve written to me. There’s been some mistake.”

“Have you a reference?”

“From my last employer before you’ll talk to me, you mean?” he mumbled as he scanned the letter. “Connecting you,” she said when he’d given her the reference, but her tone was so neutral that he couldn’t tell what else she might have heard him say. “Claims,” she said.

“Yes, that’s who sent me the letter.”

“Claims.”

“I just said so. You aren’t another robot, are you?” Jack demanded, then grasped that he was no longer speaking to the switchboard operator, however similar the voices were. “Sorry. Bit confused. This letter you sent me. Number one oh three stroke one oh one.”

“And what is the query?”

“I expect it’s your computer playing silly buggers. You say the business 1 claimed for isn’t insured.”

“Please hold.”

“Just don’t be gone so long the robot cuts me off,” Jack said when he was sure she couldn’t hear, but it was at precisely that moment she came back. “That’s correct,” she said with a hint of reproof, unless he was imagining that. The cover for Fine Films, formerly Right On Of New Brighton, was cancelled last October.”

“Someone’s bumbled. My partner had only just insured the business for a year when I bought him out, and that was in September.”

“Was your partner a Mr. Gavin Edge?”

“No other.”

“It was a Mr. Gavin Edge who cancelled the policy.”

Jack felt as though his fever had returned all at once as though the world had just recoiled from him. “He’d have told me.”

“I have his signed letter in front of me. Mr. Gavin Edge of Edge Enterprises.”

“It must be Jack trailed off, which left the words implanted in his consciousness like an admission he’d been forced to make. “I’ll call you back,” he said and broke the connection, dialled, squeezed the clown’s head. “Edge Enterprises,” the phone told him. “Bringing the future into your home. Maddy speaking.”

“Is Gavin there yet?”

“Who wants him, please?”

“Tell him Jack. More urgent than ever.”

“He’s with our programmer this morning. I’m not to disturb him.”

“When will he be approachable?”

“Round about noon. I told him you rang.”

“If you could remind him.”

“I will when he’s taking calls.”

It was just after ten o’clock. Jack lingered under the shower, hoping it would relax him, but the drops of water seemed to crawl over his skin. He tried watching Look Back and Laugh, a compilation tape of silent comedies, and then he went out for a stroll around the block. He watched the rest of the tape and viewed as much again of it as took him to twelve o’clock. He waited a minute and was dialling when it occurred to him that one past twelve made thirteen. If Gavin didn’t return his call by eleven minutes past, Jack would call him. The seconds ticked away, and he kept hearing the phone ring, but suddenly it was twelve minutes past and the phone hadn’t yet done so. He dialled, and couldn’t help feeling relieved that there were still a few seconds to go to thirteen minutes past when the receptionist said “Edge Enterprises. Bringing ‘

“I know all that. Is Gavin free yet?”

“Who wants him, please?”

“Still Jack.”

“He has a client waiting. If you’d like to try again in about ‘

“I wouldn’t,” Jack said, and shoved himself to his feet by leaning on the receiver as he slammed it onto the rest. He grabbed his coat, almost upsetting the hall-stand, and dashed out to the van, which he sent screeching past a bus which was pulling away from the terminus.

The Mersey Tunnel had twin tubes, each containing two lanes, but as usual at this time of day, one was closed. A yellow vehicle was raising workmen towards the tunnel roof. Traffic was queuing at all the tollbooths, and drivers were trying to insinuate their vehicles into adjacent lanes, having mistakenly assumed that the booths marked “No Change’ were meant for drivers with no change. When at last Jack entered the tunnel a brewer’s lorry was labouring uphill out of the dip a mile or so down it, slowing the traffic to a funereal crawl. By the time Jack reached the dip in the white-tiled tube, petrol fumes were blotting out the vehicles ahead of him except for the embers of their brake lights, and he felt as if he was descending into a fire. He had to force himself to breathe until he gained the end of the tunnel and sped out beneath a clear cold sky.

At the top of a long curve, Scotland Road split into several routes which swung towards different districts of Liverpool. Jack followed the road to Edge Hill, through a no man’s land of new houses. He had to brake for a woman wheeling a push chair heaped with Easter eggs across a zebra crossing. Was Laura too old to want an egg this year? The thought made him feel mean, as if he was trying to save pennies at her expense, and that stoked his anger as he steered the van into the technology park.

This was a maze of boxy brown buildings overlooked by the clock tower of Littlewoods Pools. To Jack they resembled nothing so much as cartons ready to be printed with the name of whatever merchandise they might contain. Some had several doors, and before long he found one marked edge enterprises in lower-case computer type. He parked the van outside and strode in.

Beyond the door was a small room illuminated by a fluorescent tube in the shape of a zigzag bolt of lightning. A fat couch with tubular legs faced a desk across a low table strewn with computer-gaming magazines. The desk was Scandinavian, and Jack guessed it had been assembled from a do-it-yourself kit, since it needed a folded envelope to pad its left front leg. Behind the desk a young blonde with purple eyelids and a blouse with edge printed on its sleeves was reading one of the magazines. He wondered if she would launch into her telephone routine, but she only said “Good afternoon’ as she looked up.

“I hope so. Is Gavin here?”

(oh, it’s Mr-‘

“Yes, it’s Mister. Shall I announce myself?”

“I’ll tell him,” she said, half rising from her seat as she thumbed a switch on the board. “Your ex-partner is at Reception,”

she said into the flimsy microphone which sprouted from the board.

She looked poised to grapple with Jack if he made for the door to the right of her desk, and he felt as if her wariness was compelling him to enact what she was anticipating. As his feet executed an inadvertent sideways shuffle she inched towards the door, maintaining her half-seated crouch. He veered towards the couch to reassure her, and kicked all the magazines off the table as he tried to step over it. The young woman let fly a piercing squeal of outrage or surprise, and the inner door banged open. “Mad,” Gavin Edge said, and rushed at Jack.

Jack was sprawling backwards on the couch when his ex-partner seized his hands and hauled him up. On his feet, Jack was half a head shorter than Gavin, whose large square-jawed blue-eyed face was grinning as though proudest of its teeth. “Why didn’t you say you’d be over, Jack? We could have done lunch. We still could, except I’ve got a lunch appointment guaranteed to put thousands in the bank.”

“Can we talk privately?”

“Don’t even ask. I’ve got ten minutes that are all yours. Make that fifteen.” He steered Jack away from the table before letting go of his hands. “Mad, could you tidy up this stuff Jack’s been throwing about? He was always impulsive, our Jack.”

Beyond the door was a short narrow brown corridor with three doors in the left-hand wall. “Still in the viddy business, Jack? You should have come along with me,” Gavin said, easing open the first door. “Computer games, they’re the future now. Kids love them, and the rest of us love finding out we’re still kids. Take a look.”

The cubicle managed to accommodate a wailful of boxed games as well as two desk-top computers, at one of which a girl was working. She gave Jack a shy sidelong glance through her hair without ceasing to type. “Have a play if you like when we’re finished,” Edge told Jack, and closed the door. “She’s my new partner’s daughter. Seventeen and brilliant. She’s created six new games already. Some nights I lie awake wondering how long we’ve got before someone bigger tries to buy out her contract with us. I don’t suppose your Laura’s showing any talent for programming?”

“She’s happy using the computer.”

“There’s time yet.” Edge ushered Jack into the next cubicle, his office. Two chairs whose black upholstery bulged through their tubular frames confronted each other across a desk which could never have been manoeuvred through the doorway in one piece. Gavin handed Jack into the nearer chair, closed the door carefully, sat behind the desk and thumped his folded arms on it. “Well, Jack, what can I thank for your visit?”

Jack tried to sit up straight, but the chair compelled its user to relax. “You may not feel like giving thanks.”

“I’d lay twelve to one against that, Jack. Tell me the news, however bad it is.”

Jack perched insecurely on the rim of the seat. “The insurance firm thinks you’ve cancelled the insurance on the shop.”

“True enough, but you knew that, of course.”

“How could I when you never told me?”

“Why, Jack, I know I did.”

Jack felt himself slipping off the upholstery onto the metal rim and fell back into the chair, waving all his limbs like a turtle turned turtle. “When did you?”

“I’m certain I sent you a copy of the letter I wrote them.” Gavin stared at him as though Jack should be able to supply the explanation, then he sprang to his feet. “That bloody girl,” he snarled.

Jack thought he was going to confront the receptionist, but instead he spun round once and sat down again. “Mad’s predecessor,” he said. “We had to put her back on the market, but we never realised she’d been sitting on any mail. It doesn’t matter, though, does it? You must have known I’d cash in the policy for what I could get. I let it run for nearly a month.”

Jack was still struggling to find a way to sit on the chair, but presumably his silence was unambiguous enough. “Sorry if I overestimated your acumen, Jack,” Edge said. “You’ll have insured the shop by now, won’t you? Then I should see to it before you wish you had.”

“I already do.”

“You’re trying to tickle my ribs, aren’t you, Jack? You’re never telling me ‘

“A fire destroyed the shop, and now I find I’m not insured.”

“My God, Jack. How are the family taking it?”

“They don’t know.”

“You’ll have to tell them sooner or later, Jack. You wanted my advice first, did you? I’d be banging on my bank manager’s door.”

“I’ve just asked him for one loan. Before I found out about the insurance.”

“Even so …” Edge waved his hands beside his temples as if he was fanning himself or his thoughts. “I wish I could offer you more than advice, Jack, but my accountant would have a fit if I started fiddling with the cash flow. I should hire yourself one when you get the chance.”

“A fit?”

An accountant.” Gavin gave up his frown, then raised his eyebrows and let the corners of his mouth rise. “What is it you always say, Jack? You’ll muddle through so long as you can laugh? I miss working with you. You’re a tonic.”

He glanced at his watch and launched himself out of his chair. “Our time’s nearly up, but walk out with me if you like. Maybe we can brainstorm for two minutes.”

By the time Jack floundered off the chair Gavin was in the corridor, chortling at his performance. “You should be in the films, Jack. You’d have them rolling in the aisles, you would.” He strode past the reception desk and opened the outer door, and stamped his foot. “Will you look at this? Some clown’s parked a rust-heap in front of our name.”

“That’s my van.”

“So long as it gets you out and about, eh, Jack?” Gavin said, treating him to a nudge so extravagant that Jack almost staggered into the table on which Maddy had replaced the magazines. “Seriously, Jack,” Gavin said as he closed the door behind them, ‘the best of luck. If there’s anything I can do that I can do, you know where I am.”

Jack shook hands with him, a process which lasted for most of a minute, and watched him speed away in a black Peugeot. He had to have been telling the truth about the letter, Jack thought, and what could he have done if it had turned out that Gavin hadn’t bothered to write to him? He wasn’t at all sure now why he’d needed to confront Gavin, but believing him made Jack feel as if life retained some balance. Things would right themselves eventually, nothing worse could happen. The house was still for sale, and for all he knew, someone might be waiting to view it. He scrambled into the van and drove home.

Of course, he told himself, he hadn’t really expected to find anyone waiting outside the house. He let himself in and gazed at the phone as though he could tell by looking whether it had rung in his absence, then he dialled the estate agent. The receptionist broke off a conversation about feet to put Jack through to the junior partner. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve any good news for me,” Jack said.

“You might say so.”

Jack’s innards jerked, though he couldn’t judge if he was experiencing hope or panic. “Tell me.”

“We seem to have some definite interest in your property.”

“Isn’t that good?”

“If you think so. The buyer viewed the exterior a few minutes ago. She’ll need to see inside, but she’s unlikely to vary her offer.” The estate agent gave a dry polite cough. “You’ll recall you weren’t expecting us to ask so much for the property. Given the current state of the market, perhaps it would be realistic of us to reconsider. The buyer wants to drop the price by several thousand pounds.”

Jack didn’t tell Julia until they were in bed. He told her as much as he could, then he held his breath. Out on the misty bay a buoy tolled, a solitary foghorn lowed. “Oh, Jack,” Julia said like a long sigh rendered articulate, and after a pause: “It could be worse.”

They had been close to making love when he’d managed to confess. They were lying in each other’s arms, their breaths mingling. He’d switched off the light because he’d thought that wojrld help him talk, but it also meant that he couldn’t see her’ face Tell me how,” he said.