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  “I know what time it is, whatever you think, James,” I tell him.

  “Well, George, and I say this in all friendship and sympathy, you haven’t exactly sounded yourself the last few times you called.”

  “Well, forget my state of health for the moment, James,” I say. “I’m only phoning to tell you not to bother with that registration number.”

  “Oh?” says James. “How come?”

  “Never mind,” I tell him. “It’s no longer necessary.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t think so, but it doesn’t matter.”

  There is a slight pause.

  “You haven’t done anything that might be termed a little bit extreme?”

  “No, I haven’t. It’s just that it is no longer of any importance.”

  “I’ve heard you use phrases like that before.”

  “In this case you can take it at its face value.”

  “I hope so. Because things are going well down here and the last thing either of us wants is for you to draw any untoward attention to yourself.”

  “Quite, James.”

  “I’m sorry to sound like a dutch uncle, but after everything that’s happened, the way everything’s been smoothed out, it would seem ridiculous to say the least, at this point—”

  “James,” I say to him, “there’s nothing to worry about. I’m telling you.”

  There is another slight pause.

  “Look,” James says, in his most diplomatic manner, “it hasn’t been me that’s been worried. It has been yourself who’s been telephoning, out of concern.”

  “All right, James,” I say. “Point taken.”

  “I realise after all that’s happened you’re probably—”

  “Whatever I’m probably, let’s not go into what’s happened, eh?”

  “No. As you wish. You’re quite right. I’m just concerned. That you’re—that you’re quite yourself.”

  “Don’t worry, James. No need to worry about that. I am. I’m quite myself.”

  THE SMOKE

  “WHAT WAS MICKEY’S REACTION,” James said, “when you told him about Amsterdam?”

  I told James what Mickey’s reaction had been.

  “Rather simplistic, don’t you think?” James said. “I mean, knowing Mickey.”

  “I repeat,” I said. “Mickey would have to be totally insane to imagine that bringing me down would do him any good whatsoever.”

  “At the moment,” James said, “motivation is rather beside the point; the point is that if I were a gambling man, which I am not, on the basis of the facts, the odds are on Mickey.”

  “But not the form,” I said.

  James was silent.

  “And it’s not a matter of facts,” I said. “It’s circumstantial, James, if I might put it that way.”

  “George,” Jean said. “Forget the semantics. Listen to James. He’s not saying what he’s saying just for fun.”

  “And you think,” I said to her, “that after all this time, after all Mickey’s been to this firm, all it’s worth to him, he’s going to throw in with a circus like the Shepherdsons?”

  Jean didn’t say anything.

  “There is no deal he could do with them that could prevent him going down with us. You above anybody know that.”

  James took out his cigar case.

  “So what do you intend to do?” he said. “Nothing? You hardly lay back and thought of England in the case of the collectors.”

  “That was different.”

  Jean didn’t look at me and said, “Well, what do you intend to do, George?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Naturally, I shall take everything into consideration, and I do mean everything. And I shall look into everything. But with the greatest of care. I don’t want to be falling down any manholes.”

  “That, at least, is very wise,” James said. “Although at present, thanks to our member from the Common Market, Parsons is without evidence, I’d advise a low-profile situation.”

  “James,” I said. “You didn’t start representing me yesterday. I had arrived at that conclusion myself.”

  “Because God knows what else the Sheps might have in their possession to put in Parsons’s pocket.”

  “I realise that.”

  “And in the meantime,” Jean said, “if it’s Mickey feeding the Sheps, that’s very handy, isn’t it?”

  “Well, there’s one thing for sure; in establishing the rights or wrongs of Mickey’s case, we don’t proceed in the manner in which we proceed against the collectors. Horses for courses.”

  “Well, let’s hope this course isn’t Aintree,” said James.

  “Look, the pair of you,” I said. “If it’s Mickey, I’ll find out. You both know that, for sure.”

  I poured myself another drink.

  “I mean,” I said, “I do take it you consider me reliable in at least that department.”

  THE SEA

  AFTER I’VE MADE THE phone call to James, I go back to my drink, and to Howard.

  The wrestling ring has been set up in the centre of the auditorium, the packaway seats boxing it in, some of them set in rows on what is normally the stage. As yet the place is totally empty.

  Howard, naturally enough, is in a buoyant mood. As he’s said earlier, he looks forward to his bit of wrestling; the nearest thing he gets to his kind of fun around here. Mind you, he told me, the women are the worst; a couple of pairs of well-hung bollocks thrashing about underneath the spotlight, and well, the castration complex is nowhere in it; it’s as if they want to take them home and hang them on the wall along with the flying ducks, he’d said.

  You don’t say, I’d said to him earlier.

  But now the topic of conversation is a different one.

  “Eddie told me what you done,” he says. “Come in here earlier on like he’d got a sixpenny-bit up his backside.”

  “That dates you,” I tell him.

  “What doesn’t?” he says. “Except fellers.”

  I help him along in his routine by smiling a little.

  “You, er, you’re not masquerading under false colours, are you?” he says.

  “How do you mean, Howard?”

  “Well, you know.”

  “No, Howard, I’m not.”

  “No, I thought not. I was going to say, if you were, I could have seen my way clear to helping you get rid of the odd fiver.”

  “Sorry, Howard. And all that.”

  “Ah well, I can dream, can’t I?”

  “Dream away.”

  Howard refreshes himself with his drink.

  “The only thing is,” he says.

  “What, Howard?”

  “Well, I mean. Eddie. Why? I mean, he’s not going to be able to settle up with you first thing Monday morning, is he?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “And you don’t strike me as being your actual philanthropic type. Not, I hasten to add,” he hastens to add, “that you’re not always generous to me, you are; you know what I mean. There, I’ve done it again. Come out all wrong.”

  “I know what you mean, Howard.”

  Howard goes into a theatrical production of wiping his brow and flicking the invisible sweat from his fingertips.

  “You know what I mean,” he says. “Honestly, if Sam Spiegel walked in here and offered me the lead in Lawrence of Arabia I’d probably tell him I was Jewish.”

  “Howard,” I say to him, “I understand you.”

  “If only you truly meant that,” he says, doing a fair enough Janet Gaynor.

  “Optics, Howard,” I say to him. “To the optics.”

  “But what I can’t understand,” he says, zipping the glasses up and down, “is you knowing what you’re doing and yet lending money to Eddie, which is like injecting capital into British Leyland.”

  He sets the drinks down between us.

  “Don’t ask me,” I say to Howard. “Perhaps it was a momentary aberration.”

  “We all have those,” Howard
says. “Only some less momentary than others.”

  Howard picks up his glass.

  “Anyway,” he says, “to our aberrations. Whatever they may be.”

  We drink.

  “Men,” says Howard. “I’ll never understand them.”

  Which Mickey said, once.

  I drain my glass.

  “Another?” Howard says.

  “No,” I tell him. “I’ve got to be going.”

  “Not staying for the wrestling?”

  “No, not tonight.”

  “It’s not something I’ve said?”

  “No, it’s not anything you’ve said,” I tell him.

  THE SMOKE

  IN BED, WHILE WE were making love, Jean began to talk to me, the way she often did, about other people, about what she’d like to do to them, in fantasy, what she’d like them to do to me, what she’d like them to do to her, would I like it, would I like that, would I like to do something like that, would I, would I, and I would say yes, yes, to elevate her excitement, to help to lift her mind and her body, to help in opening the floodgates, and this time, it was Mickey. Would I like to do that to him, she’d like to see him do that to me, what would I feel like if I did that to him, would I, would I, really? Christ, would I, God, my God, would you, Christ. Christ.

  Afterwards, I brought us drinks to the bed. She was very quiet, and so was I.

  Eventually, I said, “It’s not because of that, is it?”

  She didn’t reply, and therefore I knew what her answer would be.

  “Because it’s not that kind of situation,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “You didn’t think I was serious, did you?”

  I took a sip of my drink.

  “It didn’t seem difficult to convince you that it’s down to Mickey. When it was being discussed.”

  “James neither, if you remember.”

  “That’s true enough,” I said. “But I know you even better than I know James. So, with you, I have a broader range of motives to select from.”

  “Come off it, George. You may know what I’m like, in that respect, but you also know what I’m like as far as the business is concerned, and through that, our mutual self-preservation. And that particular preservation is not coloured by any artificial flavouring.”

  “No,” I said. “I suppose not.”

  “Although,” she said.

  “Dispense with the although,” I said. “Save the although if and until it’s necessary.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “And after all is said and done,” I said, “I don’t believe, in your water, or even in your blood, that you believe, that this, in any way, is down to Mickey.”

  THE SEA

  I AWAKE.

  I’m lying on top of the bed, still wearing my suit. The far-off sound of the sea murmurs in my ears like sounds from sea-shells. On the bedside table, the scotch bottle is almost finished, the morning sun shining through its transparent emptiness.

  I sit upright, reach for the glass and complete the work I started on the bottle the night before.

  When I’ve done that, I swing my legs off the bed and stand up. It is not too much of a shock to my system, but I stand there for a moment or two without moving, until my body’s completely sure that that is what it’s meant to be doing.

  After that’s been ascertained, I take off my clothes and pick up my robe and walk into the bathroom and while I’m standing under the shower I look at my multi-faceted reflection as the water teems off me. Considering everything I’m still in good shape. The old scars still show, but those are very old, and over the years have almost assumed the same tone as the rest of my skin. Almost, but not entirely. It’s never entirely.

  I towel myself down and put my robe back on and plug in my razor and put the toilet seat down and sit on it and watch myself in the mirrors as I shave. As the razor moves over my skin it seems to solidify the slight signs of flabbiness that have appeared over the last few months, and when I switch off the razor and examine my face a little bit closer, I’m not displeased with the way I’m looking; I’m looking better than I’ve looked for ages.

  It must be all the sea air I’m getting.

  I have breakfast and when I’ve done that I go back into the bedroom and put on some fresh casual clothes and then I go back into the kitchen and take the jug of iced orange juice from the fridge and take it into the lounge.

  I climb the steps and go over to where the champagne is and as I’m crossing the upper level I notice that the screen is half in and half out of the ceiling and that one of the small lamps that is operated from the same panel is still switched on from the night before. I shake my head and put the jug down on top of the piano and go over to the panel and switch off the lamp and operate the screen back up into the ceiling. I swear quietly to myself as I walk back to the piano. These days it’s not unusual to forget switching off lights and to fall onto the bed rather than get into it, but you would have thought, despite the bottle of scotch, that I’d have noticed half-setting off the movie screen.

  But really, I think, as I’m mixing the champagne with the orange juice, that’s what it’s all about, the bottle of scotch. A lot is down to that, these days.

  I raise my glass in celebration of that profound thought, and drink.

  THE SMOKE

  “SO YOU MEAN WE’RE going to do nothing,” Mickey said.

  “That’s it,” I said.

  “What, fuck all?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well,” Mickey said. “I don’t know. What can I say?”

  “Not a great deal.”

  “But, that bit about the address book. I mean, what does it look like?”

  “What do you think it looks like, Mickey?”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Exactly. That’s why we’re not doing anything. Let them let the shit fly for the moment; we’ll content ourselves with fielding it.”

  “But why? We could dryclean the lot of them in twenty-four hours. Half that time.”

  “I know. Which Parsons would highly enjoy.”

  “So we fit him up at the same time.”

  I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “That way we may clear the decks but we still haven’t flushed out what’s doing down in our own operation. Plus Parsons would need a lot of fitting up. No, the time is not appropriate. But it will be.”

  “Well,” Mickey said, “at least I can still talk to Ray’s collectors.”

  “I’d like you to leave that as well, for the moment. For the time being, just collect from them. Give whoever it is a false sense of security.”

  “I know what I’d like to give them.”

  “Yes, but that’s a pleasure to be savoured at a future date.”

  After Mickey had gone, Jean came in.

  “How much did you tell him?”

  “As much as I said I would. Just enough.”

  “So if it’s Mickey the Shepherdsons will know we’re not doing anything at the moment.”

  “Correct.”

  “Which gets us where?”

  “Which gets us the Shepherdsons not expecting us to do anything.”

  “You promised James.”

  “What I said was, I’d keep a low profile until it was worth doing otherwise. And at the moment, it isn’t, is it?”

  THE SEA

  I UNLOCK THE DOOR that leads into the garage and open and close it behind me and lock it again. Then I switch on the photoelectric mechanism and walk across to the Marina and as I’m doing this I stub my toe on one of the bolts that fasten down the trapdoor. Involuntarily I look down, and I notice that the lifting handle of the bolt is not flat to the floor, but sticking up at right-angles.

  Looking down at it, I think back to the last time I checked the bolts, which was probably last night. Because I haven’t been down there since I put away the stuff I brought up with me from London. For various reasons.

  But checking the bolts has developed into a habit
with me; each time I bring in the Marina, I look at them and sometimes even get down on my hands and knees and perhaps slide one of them in and out, as if by doing that I’m making that which lies beneath the garage floor that bit more secure. And I only usually manipulate one, as if to stop myself from going any farther, from sliding back all the bolts and actually lifting the trapdoor and going down there.

  But last night I can’t remember doing it. Which isn’t surprising as I can’t actually remember getting into the bedroom and on to the bed.

  So I kick the bolt flat and go over to the Marina and unlock it and get in and switch on the ignition.

  THE SMOKE

  THIS TIME, PARSONS DIDN’T accept a drink from me. He even thought quite lengthily about whether he was going to sit down or not, but eventually he did.

  “You don’t mind if I do?” I said, indicating the drinks.

  He didn’t say one way or the other, so I helped myself and sat down opposite him.

  “Well,” I said, “I suppose this time there won’t be such diffident politeness.”

  “Possibly not,” Parsons said.

  “So,” I said.

  “You’ve been very efficient,” he said.

  “In which particular way?”

  “Getting the evidence away from my colleagues in Amsterdam.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

  “I was hoping you wouldn’t, no.”

  “But,” I said, “I was. And now, what you’re going to say is—because even though you’ve become involved by association with the worst team in London apart from Queen’s Park Rangers, you’re going to play the game—what you’re going to say is that you’re surprised by my initial inefficiency.”

  Parsons didn’t say anything.

  “That’s what you were going to say,” I said to him. “Weren’t you, you fucking thick copper?”

  Parsons remained silent.

  “Listen, you cunt,” I said, “try and fit me up all you want. There’s a filing cabinet through in the office; go and have a browse through. Feel free. But don’t come here playing the Shepherdsons’ game. It doesn’t suit you. You’re like a sardine in a trifle. You couldn’t pull off a fit-up if they kitted you out to look like Vince Hill, instead of wearing that clerical grey—you must spend hours on getting it to shine just right. Stick to your rules, Parsons. Stay within the guidelines of your striped suit. Have a get-together with the Inland Revenue, or the VAT boys, go after me that way. But don’t come in here in a haze of the Sheps after-shave and try and play that game. You are strictly not headline material.”