Armadillo

by William Boyd

  Chapter 10

  When Lorimer came into the office he heard Hogg down the passageway, singing, boomingly, ‘I got a gal in Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo’ and he knew that Torquil had been sacked.

  He hung back, waiting for him to move on before slipping unnoticed into his room, where he sat quietly and assiduously going through the newspaper clippings in the David Watts file and speed-reading his way through a slackly written, instant biography called David Watts – Beyond Enigma that had been published a couple of years previously. The most intriguing fact about David Watts was that ‘David Watts’ was his stage name. He had been born Martin Foster in Slough, where his father had worked for the Thames Water Board as assistant manager of the vast sewage works to the west of Heathrow airport. It was curious, Lorimer thought, to exchange one bland name for another. All the other details of his life and progression to eminence were unexceptionable. He was a bright, withdrawn only child with a precocious talent for music. He had dropped out of the Royal College and with a friend, Tony Anthony (now, was that a stage name?), had formed a four-man rock band called, first, simply Team, which had metamorphosed into David Watts and the Team. Their first three albums had gone double-platinum; there was a protracted dalliance with a girl called Danielle, who worked on a music paper before becoming David Watts’s live-in lover; they had enjoyed two sell-out tours to the USA… Lorimer found he was nodding off: so far, so predictable. The biography concluded with a fanfare of bright tomorrows: the world was there for the taking; rumour had it Danielle was pregnant; the creative juices were flowing in veritable torrents. Anything was possible.

  That had been two years ago and now the newspaper clippings took up the story where the biography ended. The romance with Danielle hit the reef: she left, became ill, became anorexic, disappeared, probably aborted the baby (this provoked abiding tabloid fodder: the lost child of David Watts). The band split with satisfying acrimony; Tony Anthony sued and settled out of court. Danielle was discovered in Los Angeles, washed-up and haggard, on detox and living with some other unsuitable rock hasbeen. She denigrated David Watts with routine and tireless venom (‘egomaniac’, ‘control-freak’, ‘satanist’, ‘nazi’, ‘communist’, ‘martian’, ‘nerd’ and so on). David Watts released his first solo album with a select bunch of the world’s best session-musicians, Angziertie, which, contrary to all expectations, outsold everything previous to it. A thirty-five-nation, eighteen-month world tour was mooted. Then David Watts had a nervous breakdown.

  Here the newspapers gave way to insurance policies. A £2 million claim was filed for costs incurred over the cancellation of the tour. As Lorimer riffled through the documents he came across many affidavits from Harley Street physicians and psychiatrists testifying to the genuine nature of David Watts’s crise. A series of increasingly angry letters had started coming in from DW Management Ltd, signed by Watts’s manager, one Enrico Murphy, as Fortress Sure’s first set of loss adjusters doggedly queried every expense and invoice. A compensatory loss of earnings claim was submitted for £1.5 million and one or two of the larger arenas (a baseball ground in New Jersey, a dry dock in Sydney, Australia) and bona fide foreign impresarios were paid off. By the time Lorimer reached the file’s final letter, Enrico Murphy was angrily demanding outstanding settlement to the tune of £2.7 million and threatening litigation as a result of all this ‘incredible hassle’ which was further undermining his client’s fragile health. Moreover, he was ready and willing to go public: the press was permanently avid for news about David Watts.

  Shane Ashgable rapped gently on Lorimer’s door and sidled conspiratorially into the room. He was a lean, fit man whose relentless work-out programme had squared his face almost perfectly with bulging jaw muscles. He walked as if he had his buttocks permanently clenched (Hogg said once, memorably, ‘D’you think Ashgable’s got a fifty pence piece held between his cheeks?’). He once confessed to Lorimer that he did a thousand press-ups a day.

  ‘Helvoir-Jayne’s been canned,’ Ashgable said.

  ‘Jesus Christ! When?’

  ‘This morning. He was in and out of here like shit through a tin horn. Never seen anything like it. Ten minutes.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘No idea. Hogg’s like a man pissing on ice. What do you make of it?’ Ashgable was no fool, Lorimer knew; he had spent a year at the Harvard Business School, hence his penchant for American slang.

  ‘Haven’t the faintest,’ said Lorimer.

  ‘Come on,’ Ashgable said, with a sly smile. ‘He’s your friend.’

  ‘Says who?’

  ‘Says Torquil Helvoir-Jayne, constantly. You spent the weekend at his house, didn’t you? He must have had wind of it. No one’s that insensitive.’

  ‘I swear he never gave a sign.’

  Ashgable was clearly sceptical. ‘Well, as he left he kept asking for you.’

  ‘Maybe I should see Hogg…’

  ‘We want a full report, Lorimer.’

  Upstairs there was a cardboard box in the hallway containing bits and pieces from Torquil’s rapidly cleared desk. Lorimer caught a glimpse of a studio portrait of a smiling, pearl-collared Binnie and the three scrubbed, plump children.

  Janice raised her eyebrows helplessly, and gave a short piping whistle as if that were the only way to illustrate her incredulity. She beckoned Lorimer over and whispered, ‘It was brutal and sudden, Lorimer, and the language was unseemly on both sides.’ She glanced towards Hogg’s closed door. ‘I know he wants to see you, he keeps asking if you’ve left the building.’

  ‘Come,’ Hogg barked when Lorimer knocked. Lorimer stepped in and Hogg pointed wordlessly at the chair already placed before his empty desk.

  ‘He had no idea what hit him, not a clue,’ Hogg said, manifest pride colouring his voice. ‘Most satisfying. That look of total disbelief on someone’s face. Moments to cherish, Lorimer, moments to recall in your dotage.’

  ‘I told no one,’ Lorimer said.

  ‘I know. Because you’re clever, Lorimer, because you’re not thick. But what intrigues me, though, is just how clever you are.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Do you think you’re so clever you can outsmart us all?’

  Lorimer was begining to feel offended and hurt by Hogg’s recondite innuendoes: Hogg’s paranoia was registering off the dial. Lorimer also sensed his own ignorance once more, a feeling that he was in possession of only a few of the facts, and those not the most crucial.

  ‘I’m just doing my job, Mr Hogg, that’s all, as I always have.’

  ‘Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?’ Hogg paused, then added breezily, ‘How was your weekend with the Helvoir-Jaynes?’

  ‘Ah, fine. It was purely social, purely’

  Hogg clasped his hands behind his head, a faint sense of amusement causing his eyes to crinkle at the edges and his thin lips to twitch, as if there was a laugh behind them trying to bubble forth. What had Ashgable said? Like a man pissing on ice.

  Lorimer rose from his chair. ‘I’d better get on,’ he said. ‘I’m working on the David Watts adjust.’

  ‘Excellent, Lorimer, tip-top. Oh and take Helvoir-Jayne’s odds and sods with you when you go, will you? I’m sure you’ll be seeing him again sooner than I will.’

  210. Shepherd’s Pie. We had nearly finished the shepherd’s pie, I remember, because I was contemplating putting in an early claim for seconds, when the room went yellow, full of yellows – lemon, corn, sunflower, primrose – and refulgent whites, as in a partial printing process or silk-screening, waiting for the other primary colours to be overlaid. Some sort of aural dysfunction kicked in too: voices became indistinct and tinny, as if badly recorded some decades before. Turning my head extremely slowly, I registered that Sinbad was telling some rambling and inarticulate story, flinging his big hands about the place, and that Shona had started to cry softly. Lachlan (Murdo was away) seemed to lurch back from his plate as if he’d discovered something disgusting on it but then start
ed to poke fascinatedly around the mince and potatoes with a fork as if he might unearth something valuable like a gemstone or a golden ring.

  I took deep breaths as the room and its contents leached to white, all the yellows gone, and then shimmered and stirred into shades of electric, bilious green.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Joyce said quietly. ‘Oh oh oh.’

  ‘It’s fantastic, isn’t it?’ Sinbad said.

  I could hear the blood draining from my head, a bubbly death rattle, like water whirlpooling down a too-small plughole. Joyce reached trembling fingers across the table to me and squeezed my hand. Junko had risen to her feet and was swaying about, as if on the pitching deck of one of her fishing boats. Then Shona seemed to pour, as if molten or boneless, off her chair and reformed in a tight foetal ball, weeping loudly now in clear distress.

  ‘Brilliant,’ Sinbad opined. ‘Wicked.’

  For my part the green had given way to deep interstellar blues and blacks and I was becoming aware of some kind of shaggy fungoid growth forming on the walls and ceiling of the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve got to get out of here before I die,’ I said, reasonably, sensibly, to Joyce. ‘I’m going back to the hall.’

  ‘Please let me come with you,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t leave me, my darling one.’

  We left them – Shona, Junko, Lachlan and Sinbad – Sinbad laughing now, his eyes shut and his wet lips pouting, his hands fumbling at his fly.

  Outside it was better: the cold, the streetlamps’ harsh glare helped, seemed to calm things down. Arms around each other, we waited ten minutes for a bus, not saying much, holding tight to each other like lovers about to be parted. I felt disembodied, muffled; the colour changes modified, shifted, faded and brightened but I could cope. Joyce seemed to be retreating into herself making small mewing kittenish noises. As the bus arrived all sound appeared to cut out and I could hear nothing: no Joyce, no bus engine, no hiss of compressed air as the door opened, no wind noise in the trees. The world became hushed and absolutely silent.

  The Book of Transfiguration

  There was something grubbily attractive about the sullen girl who opened the door to him at DW Management Ltd in Charlotte Street, Lorimer had to admit. Perhaps it was just her extreme youth – eighteen or nineteen – perhaps it was the deliberately botched peroxide job on her short hair, or the tightness of the leopardskin print T-shirt she was wearing, or the three brass rings piercing her left eyebrow, or the fact that she was simultaneously smoking and chewing gum? Whatever it was, she exuded a cut-price, transient allure that briefly stirred him, along with a combination of latent aggression and a massive weariness. There were many minor skirmishes ahead, he sensed, only counter-aggression would work here; politesse and civility were a waste of time.

  ‘Yeah?’ she said.

  ‘Enrico Murphy’ He added a hint of urban twang to his voice.

  ‘Not here.’

  ‘This is DW Management, yeah?’

  ‘Ceased trading. I’m packing up.’

  Lorimer looked around, concealing his surprise: he had assumed the office was simply a mess but he began to see traces of order amongst the mess, some documents piled, some pot plants in a cardboard box.

  ‘Well, well,’ Lorimer said, looking her in the eye. ‘Turn up for the books.’

  ‘Yeah, brilliant.’ She wandered back to the reception desk. ‘David fired him, Sat’day’

  Everybody getting the bum’s rush, Lorimer thought. ‘Where is Enrico, anyway?’

  ‘Hawaii.’ She dropped her cigarette in a styrofoam cup containing an inch of cold tea.

  ‘All right for some, eh?’

  She twiddled with a fine gold chain at her neck. ‘He must’ve been in here at the weekend – took a lot of files, took the platinum discs.’ She pointed at some darker rectangles marking the hessian walls. ‘Even the fucking phones’re dead.’

  ‘Enrico do this?’

  ‘No, David. Thought I’d nick ‘em, I suppose. Haven’t been paid yet this month, see.’

  ‘Who’s the new manager, then?’

  ‘He’s doing his own management now. From home.’

  Lorimer thought: there were always other ways, of course, but this was probably quickest. He took out his wallet and counted out five twenty pound notes on to the desk in front of her, then picked up a pen and a sheet of notepaper and placed them on top of the notes.

  ‘I just need his phone number, thanks very much.’

  He looked down at the dark cutting her parting made in her white-blonde hair as she bent her head to scribble the figures on the sheet of paper. He wondered about this young girl’s life, what had brought her here, what path it would take now He wondered what Flavia Malin-verno was doing today.

  8. Insurance. Insurance exists to substitute reasonable foresight and confidence in a world dominated by apprehension and blind chance. This has a supreme social value.

  The Book of Transfiguration

  There were several messages on his answer machine when he returned home that evening. The first went: ‘Lorimer, it’s Torquil… hello? Are you there? Pick up if you’re there. It’s Torquil.’ The second was a few moments of quiet hiss and then a click. The third was: ‘Lorimer, it’s Torquil, something ghastly’s happened. Can you call me?… No, I’ll call you.’ The fourth was from Detective Sergeant Rappaport: ‘Mr Black, we have a date for the inquest.’ Then followed the date and time in question and various instructions relating to his attendance at Hornsey coroner’s court. The fifth was to the point: ‘It’s not over, it’s not over yet, Black.’ Rintoul. Damn, Lorimer thought, perhaps the situation did require cod-liver oil after all. The sixth made him stop breathing for its duration: ‘Lorimer Black. I want you to take me to lunch. Sole di Napoli, Chalk Farm. I’ve booked a table, Wednesday’

  He slid Angziertie into his C D player and removed it after approximately ninety seconds. David Watts had a reedily monotonous, albeit tuneful voice with no character and the rank pretension of the lyrics was rebarbative. The fatal gloss and polish of the most expensive recording studios in the world stripped the music of all authenticity. He realized this reaction placed him in a tiny minority, was almost freakishly perverse, but there was little he could do about it: it was as if one of his senses had gone, smell or taste or touch, but he simply was unable to tolerate any contemporary British, American or European rock music of recent decades. It seemed fatally bogus, without soul or passion, a conspiracy of manipulated tastes, faddery and expert marketing. He replaced David Watts with Emperor Bola Osanjo and his Viva Africa Ensemble and sat back, brain in neutral, trying to cope with the preposterous sense of elation that was building inside him. He thought of Flavia Malinverno’s beautiful face, the way she looked at you, the way she seemed always to be half-challenging you, provoking you… There was no question, without doubt she –

  The doorbell buzzed and he lifted the speakerphone off its cradle, suddenly worried that it might be Rintoul.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank Christ. It’s Torquil.’

  Torquil put his suitcase down and looked about Lorimer’s flat in frank admiration.

  ‘Nice gaff,’ he said. ‘It’s incredibly neat and sort of solid, if you know what I mean. Is this real?’

  ‘It’s Greek,’ Lorimer said, gently taking the helmet out of Torquil’s big hands. ‘About three thousand years old.’

  ‘Have you got any booze ?’ Torquil asked.’ I’m gagging for a drink. What a fucking awful day. Have you any idea how much a taxi costs from Monken Hadley down here? Forty-seven pounds. It’s outrageous. Scotch, please.’

  Lorimer poured Torquil a generous Scotch and himself a slightly less generous vodka. When he turned, glasses in hand, Torquil had lit a cigarette and was sprawled on his sofa, thighs splayed, two inches of shin showing above his left sock.

  ‘What the hell is this crap you’re playing?’

  Lorimer switched off the music. ‘I heard about what happened today’ he said, consolingly ‘Rotten luck.’<
br />
  Some of Torquil’s swagger left him and he looked suddenly deflated and shocked for a moment. He rubbed his face with his hand and took a long pull at his drink.

  ‘It was pretty fucking scary, I can tell you. He’s a vicious bastard, that Hogg. He took the car keys off me too, there and then. By the time I got back home after lunch it had been repossessed. Bloody embarrassing.’ He exhaled. ‘Out. Just like that. I put a call into Simon but I’ve heard nothing.’ He looked plaintively at Lorimer. ‘Have you any idea what it’s all about?’

  ‘I think,’ Lorimer began, wondering whether it were wise to confide in Torquil, ‘I think it’s something to do with the Fedora Palace.’

  ‘I thought you’d sorted that all out.’

  ‘So did I. But there’s something else going on. I can’t figure it out.’

  Torquil looked aggrieved. ‘OK, so I cocked up – and I admit it – and was duly shunted out of Fortress Sure. Now I’m shunted out of G G H. It’s not fair. There should be some sort of statute of limitations. I made a wrong calculation, that’s all, I can’t keep on being punished for the rest of my life.’

  ‘It’s more complicated, I think. I just can’t put all the pieces together. It’s got Hogg worried, though, for some reason. What did he say to you?’

  ‘He came in and said: “You’re sacked, get out, now.” I asked why and he said: “I don’t trust you,” and that was it. Well, we called each other a few choice names.’ Torquil frowned and winced, as though the act of recollection were causing him physical pain. ‘Bastard,’ he said, and tapped ash absent-mindedly on the carpet. Lorimer fetched him an ashtray and a refill.