The Green Flash (37 page)

‘There's four or five of them in London,' I said. ‘A couple in the Midlands and the North. One at least in Scotland. We'll have a go at some of them tomorrow.'

‘I'm not with you, guv.'

‘Somebody must have sold the cartons to Matthew Smith. It's a long shot but we can try. Doesn't it strike you as all being a bit of a one-man band?'

‘Because the rep and the man picking up the letters was the same bloke?'

‘Yes. And it only seems to have been an isolated incident again.'

‘Dunno, guv. I've a hunch it's bigger than that.'

I

Yours, Maurice

A woman of many moods, my wife. As many moods as she had hairstyles. For fencing or other athletic occasions the ingenuous ponytail was spot on; but for supper parties she began to fancy it brushed straight down at the side of her face, where it made a shiny blonde curtain that fell forward all the time and had to be forked back; or it was extravagantly back combed and worn high; or it was looped at the sides with her ear showing through like a Jane Austen girl. Each coiffure called up a different persona: dignity, elegance, girlishness, sophistication. She even spoke a bit differently and was cross when I twitted her about it. I told her marriage hadn't gone to her head, it had gone to her hair.

One day the following month she said to me: ‘David, I think I've found you a new job.'

‘What as: coach-in-chief to the Women's Foil Champion?'

‘Don't be funny. Have you heard of Globe Differentials?'

‘I should have. I've had them in at least two of my cars.'

‘Well, did you know they've just been bought up – by the Japanese?'

‘Who told you this?'

‘Daddy, at the weekend. Ninon Kuni are buying into the English market and Globe is one of their first purchases. They want to manufacture most of their car engines and gearboxes here: it's some deal they have with Austin Rover.'

‘They're buying into England to get into the Common Market,' I said.

‘Maybe. Anyway they're going to expand Globe by opening two new factories in the first year. One in Wales, one in Lancashire. But that's only a beginning. And what they're looking for is a new man to take over the whole operation in England for them.'

‘And where do I come in?'

‘Where d'you think?'

I smiled at her. ‘This one of your practical jokes?'

‘Certainly not!'

‘Then there's more to it than meets the eye.'

‘Well, Daddy knows Mr Matsuko, who is over here at present, and you could call and see him.'

I said: ‘The sales manager of a
perfumery
firm? With no special know-how of the kind he's looking for?'

‘You've a terrific knowledge of cars – and interest in them. You're titled … all right, all right, it shouldn't count but you know damned well it does. And you've got abilities far beyond selling Charisma. It's organizing skill he's looking for, not narrow technical knowledge.'

‘Did Daddy tell you all this?'

‘I sometimes wonder – you must have a pansy streak! You can be bitchy enough!'

I patted her arm, which she withdrew out of my reach. ‘You have it all planned. Go on.'

‘I've nothing planned, David. But it seems to me a wonderful opportunity. And you'd get much better paid.'

I was pretty sure Erica was jealous of the fact that I still saw Shona; this would be a way of ending it as a business thing. All the same, you couldn't just throw the idea out of the window because of that. I was now her husband, she was pitching for me, just as I was hanging in with her on the Moscow job. We were husband and wife; I still sometimes had to remind myself of that.

In the end I said all right, if Mr Matsuko wanted to see me I'd go along and listen. It wasn't quite the right attitude for some bright-eyed, white-cuffed, youngish executive eager as a squirrel to better himself, but that was the best I could muster.

A week or two before all this Shona had complained of me being irritable. I've not known you so – irascible before. I hope you are not still thinking of the failure of Semaphore.'

‘I've not given Semaphore a thought. In fact I'm not thinking of anything in particular.'

‘That was my impression.'

‘Are you suggesting I'm not doing my job?'

‘Far from it. But tell me what else you can do about the forgeries.'

My impression was I'd done pretty well all I could do, even though it hadn't come to much in the end. I'd traced the particular carton firm to a place in Tottenham. The manager was a fat dark little Pakistani. I told him the truth, that we were on the track of some forgeries, that the forgeries had been delivered in Wellington's Baby Food cartons which had probably been supplied by his firm, said could he help us by giving us the name of the firms he had supplied with these particular cartons.

Pakis are usually law-abiding because they're ingenious and industrious enough to make money legally; and he played ball at once. Only four names. The second one was Matthew Smith and Co., Webster Park Road, Ealing. We went.

‘This is the same as what happened to me last time,' said Van, who had a trying habit of establishing a telling sentence and then repeating it.

The Matthew Smith shop was empty. It had been taken on a short lease, the owner said; the lease had still a month to run but the firm had moved. No forwarding address.

I said to Shona: ‘They'll slip up sooner or later. They'll get careless, or somebody will talk.'

‘In the meantime …'

‘Oh yes, I know. But the boxes are such good copies that it's hard for the reps to see any difference without opening the bottles and sniffing.'

‘You still think this is a small operation,' she said. ‘I have a feeling it is large. Rochas, Lancôme, Chanel have all been complaining.'

Erica being hock-deep in her fencing left me at a loose end most evenings, so I began to drift over to the Cellini Club. This was really an excuse because it was the early evening when she fenced and the late evening when I gambled; but in fact marriage had put my habits out of joint. I hadn't seen Derek for months, and twice recently I'd rung him but no reply, so I thought I might catch up with him at the Cellini. I didn't for a moment suppose him to be linked with the forgeries, but in his funny airy way he knew a lot of shady things about a lot of shady people, and I thought he might help to point my nose in the right direction.

This, I told myself, was why I was going to the Cellini, but the reasons were fairly complex. Waiting for him to turn up, I began playing poker and lost £2,500 in no time at all. I switched to bridge and began to recoup.

In the second week he was there. He said: ‘No help from me, darling. I've never passed a bad
cheque
in my life, let alone a bad bottle of stink. I've figured the angles and it doesn't pay.'

‘Know anybody who might see it differently?'

‘What? D'you mean do that sort of caper? Pass off copies as the real thing? Search me.'

‘D'you see much of Roger now?'

‘I
see
him. He's more than ever busy these days, become rather a drone, collecting honey for the Queen Bee. His new mistress, Lady Beatrice Something-or-other. She's leading him a fine dance and spending his money like
water. And
his last wife's threatening divorce. I often think how lucky I am not to have to live a life with
tedious
legal complications. How's yours, by the way?'

‘My legal complication? We'll be happier when the Olympics are over.'

‘I
adore
Erica, you know. But sometimes I wonder if she really is the girl for you.'

‘I'm sure you sometimes wonder if any girl is the girl for me.'

‘Too true, matey. Too true.'

We talked and drank for a few minutes and then he said: ‘ Roger's very thick with this Laval fellow these days.'

‘What, Maurice Laval? The ex de Luxembourg man?'

‘Yes, I suppose that's him. It would be.'

Laval had been managing director of de Luxembourg in England until he had lost his job a couple of years ago. He was the most brilliant innovator of his time, but had got thrown out on his ear and no one in the perfumery business had offered him a job since. When I'd been sacked in those early days and Shona had been looking round for a replacement, she had probably had her beady eye on him more than anyone else.

‘I haven't seen him for a couple of years. What's he doing now?'

‘Something with Roger, obviously.'

‘And you?'

‘Me?' he grinned. ‘Oh, I get along. Been into one or two little things with Vince and Gerry.'

‘Who are they?'

‘Gerry Baker? Vince Bickmaster? You must know them. They're both members here. Look, David …'

‘What?'

‘Mind, it's none of my business; I keep on the right side of the Bill, as you know. But what's pushing you, what's pressurizing you to do the bloodhound act? All the difference in the world between keeping clear of the rozzers and doing the rozzers' work for 'em. Is it Madame?'

‘Not specially.'

‘Because now you've married money you don't need to let Shona trample on you any more.'

‘She never did.'

‘No, well, you know best about that. But if you start snooping along the lines you've told me, who knows what hornets' nest you may stick your nose in?'

‘Such as?'

‘Darling boy, I'm generalizing. Maybe it's all a thousand miles from here. But characters indulging in a forgery lark could take it amiss to see a bright young chap like you digging up the dirt about them.'

‘Never thought of it that way,' I said without blinking. ‘ Why should I do any bloodhounding? You're quite right. Let somebody else do it.'

II

I'd seen Laval only two or three times in my life – at trade shows and the like – but I hung around the Cellini for a few nights in the hope of seeing him again. I wanted to check certain recollections of what he looked like. Derek told me he was a compulsive gambler, and that fitted with my memory of how he'd come to leave de Luxembourg; there'd been some trouble over the accounts – money was missing.

I'd no intention whatever, of course, of taking Derek's well-meant advice. Can't think why, I've never suffered from moral righteousness, and what did it really matter if some rich firms had their overpriced products forged? Maybe it was the hunt for the hunt's sake.

I never did see Laval but I met Derek's two new friends, Gerry and Vince. I remembered Vince now, he'd been around in the club once or twice when I'd been leading on one of my Scottish friends. A big hefty chap, running to fat even in his middle thirties, a squash fanatic, something in the City, Derek said. But here was a compulsive gambler if ever there was one, never mind Laval.

Being a sucker myself for some things, it interested me watching other suckers get their little fly feet caught in the sticky webs. Roulette is fun if you've £500 to spare and you don't so much mind whether it flies away or comes home with more. It's no fun if it gets tied up with greed and ego and avarice and the urgency to win and the terror of running out of chips. Still less is it a joyride if you fancy yourself as a mathematical whizz-kid who by following your own system and watching the drop of the little ball can beat the bank and make a fortune. Vince Bickmaster was one such. He kept careful notes and had odd bits of paper and scribbled on them, and chewed the skin round his left thumb every time the wheel set off. Sometimes he won but more often he lost, but this didn't at all shake his conviction. It all had to come right in the end.

After playing bridge most of the evening I'd spend twenty minutes losing my winnings at roulette; but I always got up then and called it a day. Sometimes I'd stand behind and overlook the others. Rosy-minded idealists who argue that human nature is really rather sweet if given a chance would do well to watch roulette players. Almost all the seven deadly sins, except perhaps lust, are on view at the table – every night and all.

One night by mischance I almost bumped into Roger Manpole. It was the nearest to physical contact we'd ever made, and he brushed the sleeve of his jacket distastefully. He had a tall dark girl with him who was a stunning looker but had an expression as if she didn't care for the natives.

‘Well, David, what a stranger! I thought perhaps you'd left England.'

He was fatter, no other change. No attempt to introduce me to the dark girl.

‘No,' I said.

‘It occurred to me you might have wanted to emigrate after that last disaster.'

‘What disaster was that?'

‘Well – are there so many you lose count? I mean the total flop of Semaphore.'

‘It'll come again,' I said.

‘I wonder. Shona must have lost a hundred thousand, didn't she?
She
wouldn't like that.'

‘Charisma is making up for it.'

‘I wonder at that too. I hear it's going to be dropped from your American range.'

‘You hear a-wrong.'

‘Coming, darling,' he said over his shoulder to the girl, who'd wandered on. ‘You know, old chap, men just won't wear scent. It gives the wrong impression.'

‘You ought to know,' I said.

‘Ah.' He laughed. ‘I have unimpeachable references. It's knowing where one belongs in the sexual world … Talking of such things, how is the old lady now you've thrown her out? Or was it the other way round?'

‘Run after your girl, Roger,' I said. ‘Otherwise you might get into trouble.'

‘From Lady Beatrice? Hardly. She eats out of my hand. By the way, I hear old John Carreros is very sick. Did you know? Got the big C.'

He moved on before I could speak again. Resisting a temptation to spit, I turned back into the roulette room, stared unseeing at the wheel for a bit, then moved behind Vince Bickmaster out of curiosity to know what possible calculations he could be putting down. When he felt someone was actually trying to see them, he reacted like a snail that comes upon a foreign body. Nothing was to be seen but the shell of his clenched fists.