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  Parsons unbuttoned the lower button of his Gannex and flicked a speck of dust off his trousers; with Parsons, the speck wouldn’t have been imaginary.

  “That’s what you think, is it?” he said.

  I shake my head.

  “You’ll never do it, Parsons,” I told him. “Whatever the Sheps give you, you’ll never do it.”

  “You think not?”

  “Associating with Farlow and the Sheps? You know what you should be looking at, don’t you? You should be looking at what they might possibly be fitting you up for, not me. That, if I was you, would be the first thought that strayed into my mind after I’d been approached by that particular Band of Hope.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” he said.

  I looked at him and said nothing. He made me sick.

  “Now,” he said, “can I speak?”

  “Speak away,” I said.

  “I’m only saying this,” he said, “because I like to get things straight.”

  As the proverb goes, there is no answer to that.

  He continued, “I am in no way involved with the Shepherdsons. I am in no way involved with Farlow. In fact, if there was no alternative to a choice between Farlow and the Shepherdsons, I would choose the Shepherdsons.”

  I still didn’t say anything.

  “No,” he said, “I’m not involved, as you imagine. You see, to me, in that way, there would be no satisfaction.”

  “Except that you’re quite prepared to pick up anything they happen to leave lying around in a hotel in Amsterdam.”

  “I would have picked up anything I could use in evidence against you, yes,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I could be a party to it having been put down.”

  “You ever thought of doing a detergent commercial?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said, “but what I’ve thought of is this: and that is, you protest too much. However hard you try to steer me towards a fit-up from the Shepherdsons, it won’t be hard enough, because I know that Glenda and Ray, if he turns up, are down to you, and it is for that, and that alone, that I will see you eventually at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. The day I need to play games with Farlow and the Shepherdsons will be the day I hand in the evidence of my commendations which, as you know, add up to quite a collection.”

  “It must have been the helmet,” I said. “All those years carrying it around on the night shift, in Paddington. Irreversible brain damage. That’s what must have caused it.”

  “That’s right, Fowler,” he said. “That’s what it must have been; but better to have been accidental rather than incipient, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’d say what I said to you before,” I said to him. “That you are just a thick copper with nobody and nothing in your pocket. Except for your highly scrupulous expenses chitties, which are no doubt neatly folded and are sometimes not even cashed over the counter.”

  THE SEA

  THIS SATURDAY, MABLETHORPE HAS a little more life to it than usual.

  The season is one more weekend closer. Easter isn’t far away. They’re even getting the funfair ready, just in case anybody comes.

  I sit in the Marina at the bottom of the ramp and watch them in their many attempts at raising the ferris wheel. For a while, it’s pretty good fun, but eventually it palls, becoming too predictable. Anyway, I think to myself, getting out of the Marina, nobody ever goes on it anyway, the prices they charge.

  I walk to the top of the ramp. As yet there are no donkeys on the sands.

  I look in the direction of the Dunes. The entrance door is open, even though it is not yet opening time. Which in my case makes no difference, whichever way you look at it. But before I go and pass some time with Howard, I walk back down the ramp and cross the promenade and past the arcade and make for the newsagent’s. The arcade is not yet open. The sun makes its dusty glass shine like burnished gold.

  In the newsagent’s I buy the local weekly paper and go back to the Marina and sit in it and unfold the newspaper.

  The picture is the same one that was in the evening paper, and the story is pretty much the same. The body of the Cortina’s passenger is as yet unidentified.

  I drop the paper on to the passenger seat next to me and light a cigarette. I look out of the window. The crane operator has finally got it right; the wheel has been swung into its position and it’s lowered on to its pivot, all nice and ready to start turning its circles again.

  I take my flask out of my pocket and unscrew the top.

  THE SMOKE

  THIS TIME ALL FIVE of the Shepherdsons were in the Steering Wheel, and this time I didn’t go on my own. This time Mickey went with me. But Mickey was Mickey, and at no time on his way to the Steering Wheel, or at it, or on his way back from it, was there anything that could give me any idea, not one inch, not one way or the other.

  It being early evening, the Shepherdsons had not yet gone on to anywhere else they may have been going on to. All five of them were there, almost filling out the booth: Charlie, Walter, Jimmy, Rich and Johnny. Charlie and Walter were the two oldest. They were around my age. Out of the five of them, they were the only two of any consequence. Which out of that five didn’t mean an awful lot.

  Johnny was sitting at the end of the booth, his artificial leg sticking out at right angles from the table, as if tempting anybody who might be so inclined to try tripping over it.

  Drinks and extra chairs were brought, and Mickey and I sat down.

  After I had a sip of my drink, I said to them, “You’ll notice I didn’t come in the way Ronnie and Reggie’s boys went into the Barn.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “We’re observant like that.”

  Johhny laughed at Charlie’s razor-sharp wit.

  “You seem to be observant in a lot of other areas at the moment.”

  “We keep our eyes and ears open.”

  “Like regarding Glenda.”

  “Yeah,” Walter said. “We saw about that in the papers. Was it in the News or the Standard?”

  “Wasn’t she Ray Warren’s lady?” Rich said.

  “I heard something to that effect,” Jimmy said.

  I took another sip of my drink.

  “When I was in here the other day,” I said, “talking to Johnny, I got the impression he not only understood English but that he spoke it, too.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Walter said. “Johnny told us you’d been in.”

  “And did he manage to tell you what I said to him?”

  “He said you seemed to have some idea that we put Arthur Philips up to talking to Farlow about that four-hander that went down not so long ago,” Charlie said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Here, hang about,” Walter said. “I think I’m just cottoning.”

  “Perhaps we should all drink to that,” I said.

  Walter looked at Charlie, all full of hurt concern.

  “You know what he’s saying, Charlie?”

  “What’s that, Walter?”

  “He’s not only come here suggesting we put Arthur up to what he done,” Walter said. “He’s come here again trying to say that we have some idea as to the way Ray Warren’s Glenda shuffled off these mortal coils.”

  “No,” Charlie said. He looked at me. “I mean, why should we want to top a slag like Glenda in order to irritate you? If we was going to do that, there are many other ways we could think of.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Then what?” Charlie said. “What are you talking about?”

  Johnny adds his little laugh to the proceedings once again.

  “What I’m talking about,” I said, “is this. I’ve come here to tell you that although you probably know already, the Amsterdam charade has been screwed; there is no longer any mileage in it for you. Not unless you can come up with a photograph of me personally cutting Glenda’s throat.”

  “So why have you come here to tell us things you think we already know?” Rich asked.

  “To tell you that I know them too,” I said.
“That’s all. And to demonstrate to you that after two attempts I’m still walking around; if there’s a third one, you won’t be. Not any of you.”

  Johnny smiled to himself.

  “Well,” said Walter, “you don’t half make yourself clear, don’t you?”

  “I always try to do that,” I said.

  “That’s a lot of us to put down,” Johnny said, “if that’s what you were thinking of doing.”

  “Only numerically speaking. The sum total doesn’t add up to all that much.”

  “So,” Charlie said, after a small silence. “That’s what you came to tell us.”

  “That’s what I came to tell you,” I said.

  I stood up. Mickey moved my chair to one side.

  “The next time I come, if it’s necessary,” I said, “you won’t even know that I’ve been.”

  Mickey and I walked out of the club. In the car Mickey said, “You really think Amsterdam was down to them?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but it doesn’t do any harm to let them think I do.”

  Mickey didn’t say anything. He just carried on driving the motor. I considered the thoughts possibly going through Mickey’s mind, depending on which side of the fence he was on.

  Eventually I said, “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, do I? It’s all too complicated for a simple fellow of the kind that I am.”

  That was the kind of remark I’d have expected from Mickey, in either eventuality, being the kind of clever fellow he was.

  “What I can’t understand is,” Mickey said, “them being the thick bastards they are, if it was down to them, how they got on to Ray, and what he was pulling, so they’d be able to top Glenda and get that stuff of Ray’s and plant it there. That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “Leading us to the question of the moment: Is Ray already with Glenda in Paradise? Or what?”

  “Yeah,” Mickey said. “Or what?”

  THE SEA

  IN THE DUNES, HOWARD is bottling up, an activity he ceases immediately when I appear at the other side of his bar.

  Everywhere is activity this morning; the wrestling ring in the auditorium is being dismantled. There is also some gear on the stage that looks as though it belongs to Eddie.

  Howard puts the drinks between us.

  “How did your wrestling go last night?” I ask him.

  “Highly entertaining,” he said. “Made my week. Which says a lot for the kind of week I have these days.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “Maybe things’ll pick up when the season starts.”

  “Yes,” says Howard. “The monsoon season.”

  He drinks and for a minute or two we watch the efforts of the workers as they set about the wrestling ring.

  “The way they’re going on,” Howard says, “they won’t have it down for next Wednesday week, let alone tonight’s down-home get-together.”

  “Something on two nights running?”

  “Oh yes, we don’t muck about around here.”

  “What’s going off?”

  “Well, from now on, until the season starts proper, Eddie does Saturday nights here. Regular.”

  “And when the season starts proper?”

  “I get him five nights a week, plus the kids’ talent shows every dinner-time.”

  “You’ll be looking forward to that then.”

  “Oh yes. Can’t wait,” Howard says. “Mind you, if he could have got that girl to stick for the season, at least she’d shine out like a kind act in an unfriendly world.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Certainly a pity, that is.”

  “Still,” he says, “what could you expect? A girl like that, and a group like Eddie’s.”

  “Quite,” I say.

  I buy us two more and while we’re drinking those we watch the men go about their business with the wrestling ring. After a couple more, the spectacle loses whatever fascination it may have had earlier and I decide to have a wander.

  As I’m about to go, something occurs to Howard and he says, “You going to the South?”

  “Probably. Why?”

  “I should have thought, earlier, when we were talking about him. Eddie was in, setting up. Said if I saw you, tell you he wanted to see you, if you were around.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, I doubt if it’s about paying you back what you doled out to him yesterday.”

  “He didn’t say what?”

  “No, he didn’t. He just looked as chuffed as a pussy that’s been on the rhubarb. Mind you, so would I, if I’d been on the end of that kind of generosity.”

  “You never know, Howard. Maybe some day.”

  “You never know.”

  “Anyway, I’ll probably be in the South later, if you see him before I do.”

  “I’ll tell him that.”

  I walk out of the Dunes in the bright Saturday morning sunshine. The sea glitters beneath it, appearing almost inviting. Almost, but not quite.

  THE SMOKE

  HOWEVER MUCH SPECULATION WAS going down about a final outcome to what was buffetting the organisation slightly, this speculation in no way intruded into our private lives; we continued to act like the rest of the nation’s consenting adults. Only in our case, the props were more realistic, and the productions better lit, the supporting players prettier and more professional.

  It was during one of these at-homes, when the central character was Jean, playing the role of a WRAF officer whose barrack-room subordinates stripped and humiliated her, and which I was videotaping, that the phone rang.

  Normally, on these occasions, the phone didn’t ring. Whoever was on duty out on the Penthouse landing took all calls that came through the switchboard in the club downstairs if they were intended for me. Unless they were absolutely urgent, they never got through to me on occasions such as tonight.

  So when the red signalling light came on in the small studio beyond the projection room, I was well pleased; we were only halfway through. So instead of stopping the action I handed over the videotaping to a girl who was only at present marginally involved in the action and went out and through the projection room and into the vastness of the lounge to pick up the phone on my desk. Gerry Hatch was on duty outside that particular night and I said to him, “What the fuck is it?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Fowler,” Gerry said. “But Mr. Collins is on the line and he’s saying to me it’s very urgent.”

  Collins, I thought to myself. There was nothing about Collins at the moment that was urgent except his concern for his own skin. But as he’d interrupted me, and he was still on the line, I wanted to tell him what I thought about him calling at this particular time.

  “All right, Gerry,” I said. “Get him put through.”

  Collins came on.

  “George—” he began.

  “Fuck all that, Dennis. Didn’t Gerry tell you I was busy?”

  “Yes, he did—”

  “And you know what that means, don’t you? It means I don’t want bastards like you calling me up with nothing whatsoever to say to me.”

  “George, I have,” he said. “I have got something to tell you.”

  “Oh yes?” I said. “Like what? Like the Bank Rate’s just going to be cut by a quarter of a percent or that Jesus Christ Superstar is still running at the Palace?”

  “George, I’m serious. And I’m shit-scared.”

  “You surprise me.”

  “Listen. I know something.”

  “You still surprise me.”

  “All right,” Collins says. “All right. If you don’t want to know, you don’t want to know. That’s your privilege. Only after this phone call, don’t try and phone me. Because by the time all that could possibly go down has gone down I won’t be able to be reached, not even by the international operator.”

  For Collins to talk like this, there must be something, so I said, “All right, Dennis. Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

  “Not even on this telephone, George
.”

  “It’d be difficult for you to come round here at the moment—”

  “I know it would. Bloody difficult. Because I don’t want to come round there anyway, not at the moment.”

  “What are you talking about, Dennis?”

  “At the moment, nothing. We’ll meet where we’ve sometimes met before, and then I’ll tell you. You know what place I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Dennis.”

  “I’ll see you there in an hour.”

  Then he put the phone down before I had a chance to reply.

  THE SEA

  I WALK DOWN THE ramp and past my Marina. Up at the top of the steps, on the funfair, they’ve begun to give the ferris wheel a few practice whirls, just to test it out in case it might do something unexpected, like fall over, or something like that. Its height makes the rest of the town look even flatter, its black shadow like an enormous film-spool circling across the ramp and over the promenade and down the street as far as the far west end of the arcade.

  I cross the promenade, because now the arcade is open for business, and I have plenty of my customary time to kill.

  It’s fuller than on a usual Saturday morning; a further sign of the approaching season. Kids run from machine to machine, leaving each machine in a permanent state of tilt. Three kids are giving hell to my favourite machine, so after I’ve got my change I spend a quarter of an hour on the anti-tank game, satisfying myself as each explosion knocks over a tank as it trundles forward over the desert dunes.

  After I’ve exhausted the entertainment value of that, I spend some money on the grappler machine, manoeuvre the mechanical crane, trying to grab a dusty bar of chocolate or a plastic ring, an achievement I have never yet in my life accomplished, but the regularity of its failure gives the machine a certain compulsion and I’m quite happy to while away some more time swinging the crane as unsuccessfully as the man who had been inserting the ferris wheel.