by Bill James
‘What?’ Ian said.
‘You’re looking very, very well.’
‘It’s cod liver oil or malt.’
‘Oh, thanks. I thought it was me.’
‘Well, you do come into it.’
‘No. You come into it.’
‘Oh; God, are you being coarse again? Which side does he sleep on?’
‘Why?’
‘I’ll take the other.’
‘Quelle délicatesse.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘It means you’re full of surprises, Ian.’
‘But you’re bothered about it, too. You said so.’
‘I was. Now, no. This is my bed and I want my lover in it. What could be more natural than that? It’s not complete until you’ve been here.’
He lifted the duvet and moved in beside her. ‘I’ve missed you rotten,’ he said, stroking her face.
‘Yes, it hurts, doesn’t it? Worse for me. Half the time, I don’t know where you are, but you can always find me.’ Expertly, she climbed on top of him. ‘May I?’ She guided him into her, and everything was so right, and such a reproach for all the time they wasted not together.
‘Astraddle? You’ve seen My Beautiful Launderette.’
‘Actually, I knew about this sort of thing before.’
‘That so? Well, it is beautiful.’
‘Yes, it is.’ She began to move on him, slowly.
‘Oh, yes, yes, love,’ he said. But in a moment he rolled her over, without separating, and kissed her on the ears and neck and nose, gazing down at her. ‘I’m so used to looking at you from here.’
‘Ian, stay with me,’ she whispered. ‘Try not to leave me like that again.’
‘All right.’
She put her arms around his waist and gripped her own wrist, locking him to her and pulling him harder against her body.
He said: ‘Sarah, I –’
‘I don’t want to talk now.’
‘No. Right.’
But after a while she found herself muttering between her fine, animal grunts of pleasure, ‘Alive, yes, alive.’
‘What?’
‘I feel alive.’
‘True.’
‘In this bed, I don’t, usually. But I’m entitled, aren’t I?’
‘Of –’
‘Didn’t I say I don’t want to talk?’
‘You’ve been talking.’
‘Bloody nit-picker.’ She unclasped her wrist and ran her palms up over his back and shoulders, then down his sides and his hips, beating the bounds, as she liked to think of it, marking out ownership.
He seemed to sense what she was doing: ‘And your legs,’ he said. ‘Haven’t I told you how much I like that?’
She wrapped them around him, her heels digging into the back of his thighs.
Later on, when they were resting, she said: ‘And speaking of films, this – you and me, here, in this meaningful bed – this is our answer to that flabby and fashionable bloody homily, Fatal Attraction, the bloated monogamy ad.’
‘Is it? Is that what it is? If it hasn’t been on telly I haven’t seen it.’
‘That lingering shot of the family photograph at the end. Holy smarmy matrimony. God.’
‘Yes? It upset you?’
Yes, it had upset her, and she hissed: ‘Yanks. What a people. Always have to assert the pieties. Just think of The Caine Mutiny.’
‘The what? How does that come into it? Bogart? The yellow captain called –?’
‘At the end the supposed great radical lawyer, Jose Ferrer, must suddenly turn round and say the monster Queeg was right all the time, because he was the captain, the law and order man.’ Occasionally, she liked to cut loose, range a bit, to show Ian she had a mind.
But he had a mind, too, in his way. ‘I thought law and order was your pay packet.’
That she ignored. ‘It’s a nothing, burger culture, the States. Christ, they’ve even got a wine burger.’
‘What? Oh, I see, Weinberger.’
‘And they –’ Someone rang the door bell very hard and long. They lay silent. The ring was repeated, and then repeated again.
‘Who?’ he whispered.
She shrugged. ‘Not Des. He’s got a key.’ Play it as a joke, even if she did not feel like laughing: ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses?’
‘It’s that bastard, Ralph?’
‘Ralph? He wouldn’t come here.’
‘But no time ago you thought he was here. In the kitchen, you did. What goes on, Sarah? Tell me, now, honestly – honestly – it’s him?’ He gripped her wrist hard, as she had gripped it herself not long ago, to fix her to him and make her feel they belonged to each other, despite everything. That was not his object. He wanted to hurt her. His voice, although so subdued, suddenly had all that roughness and suspicion in it once more.
‘Let go,’ she told him. ‘I’ll try to see.’
But he did not release her. ‘Wait.’
There was another long peal on the bell and then the sound of someone rapping a glass panel in the door with a coin.
‘How do you mean, he wouldn’t come here?’ he asked.
‘Not to the door, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Where then? He does come here, but not to the door. Is that what you’re saying? What goes on?’
‘No, he doesn’t come here,’ she muttered wearily. ‘He lurked in the street. Once.’ They lay silent again for a few moments. He still held her wrist. ‘Gone?’ she said.
‘Maybe. He could have trailed me here. He’s sharp.’
‘They’ve given up,’ she said. But immediately then they heard someone try the rear door, and, when it did not open, start to shake it. She reached down to prise his fingers apart. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I’ll try to see.’ This time he allowed her to free herself and she swiftly left the bed and went out naked on to the landing, where there was a window overlooking the garden and rear door. Approaching it carefully from the side, she glanced out, and saw Margot walking hesitantly down the garden towards the wilderness.
Sarah went back to the bedroom. It’s all right. One of my friends.’ Swiftly, she began to dress. ‘I’ll have to go and see her.’
‘Which friend?’
‘Just a friend. Margot.’
‘You never mentioned her.’
‘Didn’t I?’ No, there had never seemed a reason to tell Ian she was taking expert advice about her marriage, and there seemed no reason now.
‘Why go and see her? She’ll give up and leave, won’t she?’
‘She might be worried. My car’s there, so I ought to be in. She’ll be puzzled.’
‘Well, so bloody what?’
After what had been said on the telephone Margot might be perturbed enough to call Desmond. ‘I think I’d better see her. Ian, you stay.’
‘We shouldn’t have gone to bed here. It was bound to turn out wrong.’
‘Ian, you sound like Fatal Attraction, as if we’re being punished for something. It’s not the Day of Judgement.’
‘Talk sense, will you, for Christ’s sake – about us, here, now, not fucking make-believe movies.’
To see Ian so ravaged by panic sickened her and her uncertainties about him were coming to the boil yet again. She went from the room and downstairs. Margot had returned to the front and was ringing the bell once more and, this time, calling Sarah’s name softly through the letter box.
She opened the door. ‘If you’d shouted before, I’d have come. I thought it was double-glazing, something like that.’
‘You’re all right?’
‘Of course.’
Margot came in. ‘Your call – I was damn worried.’
‘Yes, I’m sorry.’
Margot spoke rapidly. ‘I drove up just to look at the house from outside, check you were all right. I wasn’t going to stop, but then, in your road – Sarah, some men hanging about in a car.’
‘What men?’
‘Lord knows. But as if they were watching the house.’
&n
bsp; ‘Where?’
‘Twenty or thirty yards along.’
Oh, God. Again she wanted to scream out and ask what she had let herself in for. Maybe, after all, Ian was right to be so tense and changeable. Fright had started to affect her own ability to think properly. ‘You’re sure?’
‘That’s how it looked, Sarah. These were men I wouldn’t want hanging about near my house.’ Today she was almost smartly dressed, like a manageress or high-calibre secretary, in a light tweed suit and half-heeled shoes, not the trainers. ‘They watched my every move, really staring, you know, watched until they saw I’d noticed them. Then, all of a sudden, they became, oh, so very busy, heads down, pretending to examine papers or something.’
Sarah took her into the living room and they sat down. ‘How many men, Margot? What did they look like?’
‘Two. One grey-haired but not old. Thin. The other fair, burly. I didn’t see him so well.’
Sarah wanted to ask whether the grey-haired man wore rimless glasses, like the one at the Monty, but decided it was best to act dumb.
Margot gazed about the room and then up at the ceiling for a time, as if she could see through it. ‘Ian’s here, isn’t he?’ she said, gently.
‘What? What are you talking about? In the house?’
‘Now, come on, Sarah – the delay in answering, curtains over, and you look like somebody who’s just got out of bed, not after sleeping, either.’
‘My God, Margot, would I risk –?’
She smiled at the objections. ‘Bringing him here is some sort of symbolic act?’
Sarah gave in. ‘Actually, the act felt quite real.’
‘Nice.’
‘He’s in danger, Margot. Those men in the street.’
‘They’re looking for him?’
‘Most likely.’
‘And for you?’
‘It’s possible.’ She walked to the window. The sitting room was in the front of the house, but hedges at the end of the garden prevented her from seeing the road outside. ‘Margot, what can I do?’
‘They know he’s here?’
‘I don’t think so. No, they’d be there to follow me, in case I could lead to his hiding place. As if he’d tell me.’
Margot stood up and seemed about to cross the room to her. But she remained near her chair. ‘Oh, please don’t be miserable, Sarah. He’s bound to be like that. It’s a life and death habit, really it is. There would be nobody he trusts absolutely.’ Margot thought for a moment. ‘If you drove out, drew them off somewhere, Ian could –’
Sarah held up a hand to silence her. From upstairs had come the faint sound of movement and then a little while afterwards what could have been someone in the kitchen, although she heard nothing on the stairs. Hurriedly, she left Margot and ran up to the bedroom. Ian was no longer there, and his clothes had gone. She checked the other upstairs rooms, without success, and then rushed back down, yelling his name frantically. Margot came out and stood in the hall, her face anxious and sympathetic. In the kitchen, Sarah found the rear door open and she continued out into the garden, but saw nobody. Sprinting across the lawn, she made for the wilderness again, still calling him. Yes, stuff the neighbours. This was two men’s names they could puzzle about now, neither of them her husband’s. Although she did another search among the bushes and trees she did not find him. The fence was too high for her to look over, but he could have gone that way.
Margot joined her: ‘I thought you had doubts about wanting him.’
‘What? Which doubts? What are you talking about? Where is he? He could get killed, for God’s sake. He doesn’t know those people are waiting.’
‘They’re at the front of the house.’
‘The ones we know about are. How many others? This is a gang, you know. Anyway, which way did he leave? He’s not here. He might have gone around the side and up the drive into Rougemont Place.’
‘Would he?’
Margot’s calm and logic enraged her. ‘Christ, how do I know?’ she shouted and ran back over the lawn, then went to the side of the house and up the drive towards the street. Outside, Rougemont Place appeared as terminally sedate as ever. Margot followed again. ‘Where?’ Sarah asked. ‘Where’s this car with the men?’
She looked about carefully. ‘Gone.’
‘Yes, but where was it?’
Margot led her a little way along the road. Sarah scrutinized the ground.
‘What are we searching for?’ Margot asked.
Sarah was looking for blood, or for any sign of a struggle – a bit of torn clothing, a button. ‘I don’t know.’
Chapter Nine
Not long after dawn, Harpur stood on the quay-side at Young’s Dock, wearing his fire-damage sale camel-hair coat and the round, beige, two-tier Asian cloth hat ceremonially presented to him last year at a racial harmony gathering in the community hall on Ernest Bevin estate. Comfortable and warm, its original was maybe designed for protection against icy blasts pounding down from the Afghan mountains into West Pakistan, and Harpur reckoned it looked decently back-street ethnic, more peasant than those flash, I’ve-been-Intourist-to-Leningrad, curly, black fur jobs.
The divers waited in their Land Rover near him. Harpur loved the docks, even at this chilly hour, and despite what was going on. The sun, red and weak, had started coming up behind one of a group of moored tug boats, Destiny II, the first bits of pale light profiling its stubby, powerful frame. So, what destiny had Destiny I met with? Perhaps only age and obsoleteness, which hardly rated as destiny at all, but which were a pain and always liable to get you. Around the bridge and mast of Destiny II hung a few strands of morning mist, and more strands rolled sleepily in the breeze across the black water. Once he’d seen a painting of a French port, maybe Le Havre or Fécamp, with the same misty effects, though the ships were sail. If Jack Lamb had been here he could have given the locale and artist right away, might even have had the picture on his wall briefly for a few secret days at some time while he worked a deal.
Harpur saw no activity yet on any docked vessel and the only sounds were a couple of seagulls terrorizing another for a fillet of rubbish from a plastic sack, and, further off, a freight train lazily shunting. Things would wake up, soon, thank God. He could tire of romantic desolation. After some tough years, the docks had revived and business seemed good. Across the dock lay a big, well-cared-for Russian timber carrier and, a little way along the wharf, a handsome United States container ship was stacked up, ready to go. Ah, trade, so much more binding than diplomacy. Sights like this could almost make him believe in Thatcherism, though not to the degree where he would disclose it to his children or Megan, especially his children.
The divers sat silent in the back of the vehicle, waiting for more light before they put on their dry suits and went down. Given the choice, he knew they would have left it until much later in the day, when the sun would be higher and offer them an extra foot or two’s visibility at twenty feet. But the big American vessel could be moving around by then, as well as Destiny II and other tugs, all churning the water. In any case, the Chief wanted this first stage of things done when there were as few people as possible about. Why draw attention? Of course, if there were something important on the bottom it would be a crane operation, and that could not be kept discreet.
Iles had said he would probably visit a little later, so, in the meantime, Harpur concentrated on enjoying the scene and absence of stress, pacing the quay to keep his blood on the move. He had nothing to do here except wait. The sergeant with the diving unit would decide when the men should enter the water and what the procedure was to be if they found anything. Harpur would get the report, and until then was a spectator. He liked it that way, felt total non-envy of the divers. It would not be like snorkelling in the Aegean. And, after all, who knew whether they would find anything?
Although Jack Lamb might not be present, it was a tip from him that had brought them all here this morning. At Jack’s suggestion, he and Harpur had met yesterday, no
t this time on the foreshore, but at a sherry party to launch an exhibition of regional works – sculptures, oils and water-colours – in a small privately nin art gallery. Jack had brought Helen with him, the once punk child, now moving into chicness, but sent her off to look at pictures, while Harpur and he talked.
‘About something perilous?’ she asked.
‘How would I know anything perilous?’ Jack had replied.
‘You like this sort of small-time stuff?’ Harpur had said. ‘Really, Jack?’
‘Yes, I do. I even buy. Art’s not just about great names, great prices, Col. More to it than Dalis and Brueghels and Hobbemas.’
‘That so?’
‘You think I sound phoney?’
‘I’m always listening.’
‘Yes.’ They were standing under some gaudy versions of local landscape, all spinach greens and throbbing golds.
‘Anyway, Jack, you keep safe?’
‘Never a hint of trouble.’
‘So far.’
‘I’m thinking of renaming my house that, Col. So far is all any of us have.’
‘So far and no further?’
‘Who knows? Who ever knows?’ He smiled at someone and exchanged a couple of words about a London sale.
Harpur reminded himself once more that, without any doubt, Jack did legitimately buy some of the great art that came his way. It was the rest that worried Harpur, and the rest was most. Quite often, Lamb would talk unreservedly and fascinatingly about recent great art thefts – like the Impressionists from the Paris Marmottan Museum valued at around ten million pounds. Of course, talking about them, even in such expert detail, did not mean Jack had ever seen or handled any of these works. You could even argue the reverse: that the frank, full way he discussed them could only mean he was not involved. Would he lay such trails? Anyway, that was how Harpur argued. But there were times when he badly failed to convince himself. At those painful moments, he listed in his head as fast as he could all the items of unequalled information Lamb had fed him, and all the convictions that had come as a result. As to changing house names, Megan, who had begun to learn a little about the importance of informants, once suggested they should call theirs Quid Pro Quo.
