Barron sat on the bed. If, as Sophie had suggested, the destruction of the carriage had been a one-off carried out by a maniac, then the chances of ever discovering the identity of the bomber were slim – in which case he couldn’t fault his network of information. It was some consolation. But still the thought of the train distressed him.
‘According to the papers, a man called Frank Pagan is in charge of the bomb investigation,’ she said. She tossed one of the newspapers toward him.
He didn’t pick it up. He said, ‘Frank Pagan. He has quite a reputation for being tenacious, I understand.’
The woman said nothing. She rolled on her side, reached for her cigarette lighter and struck it for flame, which she held toward the wick of the candle. Barron felt the tension drain out of his body and he leaned conspiratorially toward the woman, holding her face against his shoulder – hearing her sweep all the newspapers away from the bed, hearing them slither to the floor, the world turned aside, discarded, the bomb in the London Underground forgotten, leaving nothing but this room illuminated by the small steady flame of the candle.
TEN
LONDON
AFFLICTED BY RESTLESSNESS, HAUNTED BY VISIONS OF THE TUNNEL, Pagan put on his overcoat and left the apartment. He took with him a bottle of Gordon’s gin he’d bought at the duty-free shop in Dublin. He got inside the Camaro convertible. His infatuation with American cars went back to the time he’d seen Elvis driving a long-finned red Cadillac in a bad movie whose title he couldn’t recall.
He turned the key in the ignition a couple of times before the car came to life and then he drove it through the streets of Holland Park. He travelled towards Battersea by a series of back roads, thinking how run-down certain neighbourhoods had become. He gazed at the streets, the rows of handsome old houses carved into bedsits, here and there a splash of graffiti, much of it incomprehensible to him; the spray-painters had an angry language of their own. Corner pubs looked shabby and unwelcoming, hostile. Houses had been abandoned, windows boarded-up, front gardens overgrown with shrubbery, trash dumps. Groups of kids congregated in gloomy little parks that were nothing more than concrete slabs in which had been planted a few niggardly trees. Dear old London Town: what had become of her? A grubby, broken-down old girl, an impecunious dowager in a tarnished tiara.
He parked in a littered cul-de-sac where a row of cottages had been transformed into a variety of business premises, some of them of a specious nature. A print shop that Pagan knew was a front for fake ID cards. A garage that had been raided at least twice in the past three years for doing paint jobs on stolen cars. Windows were barricaded behind steel shutters. He walked a few yards, skirting rubbish bins and parked vehicles, until he came to a door on which was inscribed Stamp Collections Bought and Sold. He rang the bell, heard a shuffle of feet. The door was opened a few inches.
The woman before him was a thin wraith in a black cardigan and kilt whose tartan was of uncertain provenance. She had pinched features and lips that were angled awkwardly, as if at some time in her life she’d suffered a stroke.
Pagan said, ‘Got any old Cayman Island stamps? Anything from Egypt showing King Farouk at the height of his fatness?’
The woman laughed. ‘I got some highly interesting examples from the Raj, Mr Pagan.’
Pagan stepped inside the room, which was filled with dirty glass display cabinets in which were enclosed cellophane packets of postage stamps, a riot of bright colours, butterflies and birds and beetles in red and yellow triangles issued by republics that had ceased to exist. Dead monarchs and deposed despots stared out of their plastic containers – the Shah of Persia, General Franco, Stalin, Hitler. A half-drunk glass of stout stood on one of the cases.
‘I was having my nightly,’ said the woman. She picked up the glass, sucked at the brown-white froth. ‘Want one, Mr Pagan?’
Pagan produced the bottle of gin from his coat pocket. ‘Brought you a present.’
‘Aren’t you a dear?’ The woman picked up the bottle, opened it at once, poured two glasses. She gave one to Pagan, who took it reluctantly. Gin, especially straight, wasn’t his drink. He sipped it anyway.
‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘Is the other half around?’
‘He’s dossing in front of the telly, I expect.’ The woman went to a door, opened it, called out. ‘Freddie! Freddie! We got a visitor!’
A man appeared in the doorway. His slack trousers were held up by an old-fashioned leather belt. His thick hair rose in contrary clumps from his skull and he needed a shave. He had the appearance of a man who has fallen asleep in one century only to waken, astonished, in the next. He blinked at Pagan. ‘I was having this dream where I’d found the secret recipe of the alchemists. Happens a lot. I get this close, this close,’ and here he clenched a fist slackly. ‘Then I always wake up before the bearded bloke tells me how to turn lead into gold.’
‘What bearded bloke?’ Pagan asked.
‘The All-Seeing One, I expect.’ Freddie tugged at his belt. He wore an ancient V-necked pullover with no sleeves.
‘He dreams a lot,’ the woman said and drained her gin. ‘Sometimes it’s a winning horse. Sometimes it’s the football pools. He always wakes up before the crunch.’
Freddie shuffled in Pagan’s direction, then his attention was drawn to the gin bottle. ‘I thought you was on leave of absence, Mr Pagan.’
‘Change of plan,’ Pagan said. He was oddly fond of this pair, Freddie and Wilma Scarfe, despite their flirtation with the criminal fringe. Maybe that was why he liked them: they made an improbable pair of villains. Violence wasn’t an integral part of their world. When they committed a crime it was always of a curiously innocent kind, a minor embezzlement that was usually somebody else’s fault, an item of stolen property they’d come across in good faith, the sale of allegedly rare stamps they had no idea were forgeries.
‘Wasn’t it nice of Mr Pagan to bring us a bottle?’ Wilma asked, indicating the gin.
‘You’re a prince, Mr Pagan,’ said Freddie, and helped himself to a generous glass. He knocked his glass against Pagan’s and added, ‘Don’t tell me why you’re here. See if I can guess.’
‘It wouldn’t be hard,’ said Pagan.
Wilma Scarfe shook her head sadly. ‘Terrible bloody business, Mr Pagan. All those poor people on the Tube. It’s getting where you can’t go out these days.’
Pagan walked round the room, examining the stamps. The air smelled stuffy, as if it were infused with the stale saliva of everyone who had ever licked any of these postage stamps. ‘How’s business?’ he asked. He had another swallow of gin.
‘Can’t give stamps away,’ Freddie said, picking up the bottle and screwing up his eyes to examine the label.
‘Dying hobby, you see,’ said Wilma. ‘Video games nowadays, if you don’t mind. Beep beep. Wankers looking at screens. Wonder they don’t go blind before they’re twelve.’
‘What have you heard?’ Pagan asked.
Freddie scratched his chin. ‘Now now, Mr Pagan. You know that’s not my line. Not at all.’
‘I know you listen, Freddie.’ Pagan leaned against the wall, arms folded. ‘You keep your ear so close to the ground you should have chilblains on your lobes.’
‘Ha,’ Freddie said. ‘I don’t keep up the way I used to.’ He reached for the bottle again, refilled Pagan’s glass, then Wilma’s, then his own.
‘Come on, Freddie. Think. You’re in the company of a desperate man. You heard of any movement? Anybody asking around for Semtex? Any kind of explosives? Detonators?’
Freddie poked around inside a display case and shuffled some packages of stamps. One fluttered in the air and fell to the floor. He bent, picked it up. ‘Southern Rhodesia,’ he said in a wistful manner. ‘The Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Royal tour of 1947. Lovely young girls they was then. Look at them now. Look at the whole bloody monarchy. Scandalous.’
‘I didn’t come down here to talk about royalty,’ Pagan said. The Scarfes could go on about the monarchy f
or hours if you didn’t intervene.
‘Your generation doesn’t feel the same way,’ Freddie said. ‘Doesn’t mean the same to you at all.’
Pagan said, ‘I don’t give a shit about any of them to be honest, Freddie. No offence.’
‘None taken.’ Freddie looked at Pagan for a long time as if all of a sudden he’d forgotten Frank’s name and occupation. He had moments of wandering in and out of things. He finished his drink and moved in the direction of the bottle.
‘Now,’ Wilma said, and frowned. ‘Don’t be overdoing it, Freddie.’
‘What’s a small drink between friends?’ Freddie winked at Pagan. He was pouring gin again. Pagan, to his despair, saw his own glass filled to the rim.
‘Cheers,’ Freddie said. ‘There was some fellow looking for Semtex about three weeks ago. That’s what I heard. I can’t say where I heard it. Some Arab, I believe it was.’
‘Did he get it?’ Pagan asked.
‘I don’t believe he did, Mr Pagan. Mind you, I can’t say for sure. Sometimes you hear the beginning of stories but you don’t always hear the end of them. Know what I mean?’
‘What about the Irish?’ Pagan asked. ‘You hear anything on that front?’
‘Ha,’ Freddie said. ‘The Irish don’t need to be asking for Semtex in London, do they now? They can get it anywhere.’
‘Have you heard anything else?’ Pagan waited patiently because sometimes it took a long time for pennies to fall down the chutes of Freddie’s memory. He looked inside his glass, realized he’d drunk a little more than he’d intended. Gin had a way of screeching directly to his brain.
‘The word is that it’s a foreign job, Mr Pagan.’
‘What kind of foreign?’
Freddie shrugged. Pagan said, ‘Foreign can mean anything.’
‘I’m only saying that’s the word,’ Freddie said. ‘And it’s a quiet word too, Mr Pagan. Barely a whisper.’
‘And that’s it? That’s all you’ve got?’
‘That’s it.’
‘You don’t know anything else about this Arab?’
‘Only that he was asking after explosives. That’s all I heard. You know how it goes. Information’s not always reliable.’
Pagan was beset by a sense of people murmuring without purpose in a junkyard of rumour and gossip. A Palestinian asking about explosives. It was the sort of talk that might have originated in certain pubs just before closing time, somebody adrift on a raft of drunken bravado. I’m looking for Semtex. Know anybody that can help? Dreamers of angry dreams, men made belligerent by booze. It was an attitude that led more often to a battered wife and a hangover than an explosion.
He wandered among the display cases. ‘Nothing then,’ he said. He took another drink from his glass, then set it down. There was already a vague disturbance in his perceptions, a simple giddiness that would pass as soon as he had fresh air.
‘I’ll be listening,’ Freddie remarked. ‘You can be sure of that. Another drop?’
Wilma Scarfe reached for the bottle before Freddie and moved it away from his outstretched hand. ‘I think you’ve had enough, Freddie.’
‘One more,’ Freddie said.
Wilma shook her head. ‘You’d have the whole bleeding lot finished in no time.’
Pagan looked round the room as he moved to the door. ‘Why don’t you get a telephone installed in this place?’
‘Don’t believe in them,’ said Freddie. ‘Always safer to use a public phone.’
Pagan shrugged and went outside, back to his car. He had other sources throughout London, but Freddie and Wilma Scarfe were usually the best informed. What was the point in scouring half of the city only to encounter vague allusions to mysterious strangers looking for explosives? Besides, the nature of the device used in the Tube hadn’t yet been identified. How did he even know what he was looking for? It was as if he held in his hand a deck of cards evenly divided between blanks and jokers.
He drove to the Embankment, parked the car, got out. The wintry air helped clear his head somewhat, but he was still a little out of touch with himself. He found a call-box, dialled the number in Golden Square, got through to Foxworth.
‘Anything stirring?’ he asked.
Foxie said there were no new developments.
‘I’m going to do some work at home,’ Pagan said. ‘Pick me up at six a.m. And if anything happens in the meantime, you know where to reach me.’
‘You OK?’ Foxie asked.
‘Why?’
‘You sound funny.’
Pagan said he didn’t feel funny, and hung up. He walked a few yards. He looked at the Thames and watched the river flow sluggish and cold toward Tower Bridge and it seemed to him that the identity of the bomber was as elusive as any object that might be caught up and dragged by currents of black water toward the sea.
He turned, moving back in the direction of the Camaro – which was when he saw a small white car, travelling too quickly on the wrong side of the road, swing along the Embankment. The collision was inevitable, sudden, shocking. Pagan heard the scream of brakes, the roar of rubber on concrete as the driver of the white car tried to swerve – too late, too goddam late. The car swiped into the back of Pagan’s Camaro with the sorry sound of metal clanging on metal and glass breaking. Sweet Christ. Pagan broke into an angry run, already trying to assess the damage to his vehicle. The passenger door of the white car opened, and a young woman stepped out and examined the collision with a gesture of dismay.
‘Holy shit, holy shit,’ she said. She looked at Pagan, who was bending to scrutinize the point of contact. The Camaro’s chrome fender was dented, the rear lights shattered, the lid of the boot creased.
‘Don’t you look where you’re bloody going?’ Pagan asked. The licence plate was crumpled, dangling from the body of the car. He picked up shards of broken red glass and rattled them in the palm of his hand. ‘You came round the corner like …’ Exasperated, he got to his feet, stared at the girl, then looked back at the Camaro. He laboured to repress his anger, thinking It’s only a bloody car, it’s not a human life, it’s just a conglomeration of painted metal and rubber and wires – but he’d been attached to this vehicle for years. He’d restored it, repaired it, bestowed attention on it, all of which affection he understood was slightly ridiculous in a sense, a substitute for a genuine human fondness. But still.
The girl was shaking her head. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I took the corner too quickly, and I’m not used to driving on the wrong side of the goddam road anyway, I mean practically everybody else in the world drives on the right-hand side except in this country …’ Her accent was American; Pagan couldn’t place it exactly but guessed East Coast, Connecticut. ‘In any case, I don’t see tremendous damage. A few new lights, a little work on the fender. Some minor bodywork on the lid of your trunk. My car, on the other hand,’ and she gestured toward the Escort. Steam was pouring through the plastic grille, which was shattered. ‘I’d say my radiator has sprung a leak.’
Pagan moved closer to the Escort. The bonnet was buckled slightly and the radiator was emitting an ominous hissing sound. Steam, tugged by the breeze from the Thames, swirled around the vehicle.
The girl said, ‘My insurance will take care of your car. You’re not going to be out of pocket, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘That’s not what worries me,’ he said. He looked at her, seeing her properly for the first time, even though the light was dim. She had a remarkable combination of very brown eyes and blond hair, a beguiling alliance of dark and light, a composition of opposites. The face, framed by wayward hair which she kept pushing back, had a delicate bone structure of the kind you sometimes see on ballerinas. She wore almost no make-up or if she did it had been so skilfully applied it wasn’t noticeable. Her only item of jewellery was a slender silver chain around her neck.
‘I’m genuinely sorry. I am. Obviously the car means a lot to you. All I can say in my own defence is I got confused when I turned the corner. I just kin
d of instinctively moved into the right lane instead of the left. Typical American tourist ditz, huh? They shouldn’t let us loose in the world, should they? They shouldn’t issue us with passports.’
Pagan laid one hand on the side of the Camaro, the gesture of a man comforting a wounded horse. The girl moved a little closer to him, scanning the car. ‘What year? Sixty-three?’
‘Sixty-two,’ Pagan said. ‘A collector’s item.’
‘I’ll give you my insurance details,’ she said. ‘The Ford’s rented, but it’s fully covered. I guess we should exchange names and addresses. Is that the routine here? Or do we have to call the cops and report the accident?’
Pagan took out his wallet, showed the girl his Special Branch identity card.
‘Oh shit, no,’ she said. ‘You are a cop. Is this where you handcuff me and drag me in for reckless driving?’
‘It’s a temptation,’ Pagan said.
The girl was quiet for a time, looking beyond Pagan in the direction of the river. He was drawn into her features, the slight look of worry in her eyes. She brushed a gloved hand nervously against her lower lip and turned her face back to Pagan. ‘Well? What happens next? Do I need to get myself a lawyer?’
‘A lawyer? God forbid,’ Pagan said. Lawyers, in Pagan’s scheme of things, occupied the same oily rung as politicians. ‘We do just what you said. We exchange insurance information. I’ll report the accident myself.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then we let the insurance people sort it out.’
‘That’s it? No arrest for dangerous driving?’
‘You made a mistake, that’s all.’
‘You’re being generous.’
‘Our economy needs tourists,’ Pagan said, trying to make light of the situation although his attention strayed back to the creased lid of the boot, which resembled a scar. Flecks of red paint had peeled away from the undercoat. He thought: Tell yourself it’s only a car, you’ve suffered more in your lifetime than a bloody dent in an automobile. You can restore cars; you can’t resurrect people.
Jigsaw Page 10
