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  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  I light a cigarette.

  “Sounds to me as if you gave up very easy,” I tell her.

  “Does it?”

  “I mean, twenty-two. Hardly too late for a comeback, is it?”

  “You don’t know what happened.”

  “What could have happened? You missed out first time round. Who doesn’t? And you’re hardly going to get a second chance round here.”

  “Aren’t I?”

  I shrug.

  “Want to manage me, do you?” she says.

  “All right. You know what you’re doing.”

  “Yes. I know what I’m doing.”

  The Carly Simon record stops. Silence.

  “You mind if I put on another record?” she says, getting up. “No, I don’t mind.”

  She picks out one of the albums. It’s a Barbra Streisand, Live Concert at the Forum. It was Jean’s favourite.

  “Not that one,” I say to her.

  “You don’t like Streisand?”

  “There’s some others there of hers.”

  “I haven’t heard this one.”

  “Another time,” I say.

  She shrugs, replaces the record, searches for another, pulls out one of Stevie Wonder’s, turns to face me with the cover.

  “This one in order?” she says.

  THE SMOKE

  THE MATCH SOUNDED LIKE a gun going off in the caravan.

  “Mr. Fowler,” Johnny said. “George—”

  “It’s George, is it?”

  Johnny started to try and wriggle his wrists out of the ropes behind his back. I knelt down and put the match to the paraffin on Johnn’s leg and retired quickly.

  Blue flame danced on the sickly pinkness of the smooth plastic.

  Johnny screamed and thrashed about as the flame darted up his leg to the knee part, where the folds of his shoved-up trousers began.

  “Christ!” Johnny screamed. “My Christ!”

  “What, Johnny?” I said. “Now what have you got to say?”

  Johnny was lying on his side on the bench, trying to tug himself away from the table leg, like a man in a gin trap, only in this case the spirit was paraffin.

  “Well, Johnny, is that what you told Wally?”

  The flame leapt at the squeezed-up cuff of his trousers. I picked up the paraffin can and shook a few drops on to the other trouser leg, the one with his good leg inside, and struck another match and dropped it on the material. A patch of paraffin sprung to life.

  “Christ,” he screamed. “Yes, yes, Mickey done it, Mickey copped for you. He did, he did, he copped for you.”

  Mickey screamed even louder, in a different way.

  “You dirty fucking cheating bastard,” he shrieked, drawing his shooter from his shoulder holster. “You fucking wanker!”

  Mickey aimed at Johnny’s head.

  Two things happened simultaneously.

  Mickey fired, and Jean fired. The combined noise was like a bomb exploding.

  Because of Johnny’s thrashing about, Mickey missed.

  Jean didn’t.

  The barrels were only six inches from the small of his back when she fired. Mickey was lifted up off his feet and thrown across the table and landed on top of Johnny, his blood and insides reaching Johnny before Mickey did, making Johnny’s face and shirt and jacket scarlet, as though someone had splashed a full paintbrush all over him. His screams became even louder as Mickey slid off him and lay on his back on the floor, his legs across Johnny’s burning legs, a great black-red bubbling hole where his stomach had been.

  I opened the door and Jean went down the steps still holding the pump action. I picked up my shotgun and emptied the rest of the paraffin over Johnny, and slammed the door on his screams as the flames began to blossom all over him.

  We were almost at the Mercedes by the time the flames got to the Calor gas and the whole caravan went up, illuminating the night sky like the centrepiece of a firework display.

  THE SEA

  THE STEVIE WONDER RECORD finishes. I stand up.

  “Another drink?” I ask her.

  She looks at her watch.

  “I haven’t time.”

  I look at my watch. It’s ten past twelve.

  “Got a prior engagement, have you?”

  She smiles at me, as warm as ice.

  “I might have.”

  It’s my turn to smile.

  “Is this the moment you make the move?” she says.

  “I’m going to make a move, am I?”

  She maintains the smile.

  “Actually,” I say to her, “it’s the moment I ask you if you’d like another drink.”

  She hands me her glass. Unmelted ice slides about the base.

  “All right,” she says. “I’ll have one more. Before I go.”

  “Fine,” I say, and begin to make the drinks. When I’ve done that I give her hers and go and sit down opposite her again.

  “In any case,” she says, after taking a sip, “I’m frigid. So it wouldn’t really be worth it, would it?”

  “I don’t suppose it would.”

  “Or would you consider that a challenge?”

  “Some men might. If they believed it.”

  “And you?”

  “I thought you’d got me all weighed up.”

  She smiles her smile again.

  “There’s always rape; meant to be more exciting if the woman’s frigid, isn’t it?”

  “So they say,” I say.

  “Or are you more of a watcher. Yes,” she says, “at your age, I’d say you’re more of a watcher.”

  “Would you?”

  She raises her glass in the direction of the screen in the ceiling.

  “That’s what that’s for, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “Hardly had it installed just for home movies, did you? Although there are home movies and home movies, aren’t there?”

  “So they say,” I say again.

  “I did some once,” she says. “In London.”

  She takes another sip of her drink. I don’t say anything.

  “One of my accidents. The money was good, though.”

  “It would have to be,” I said. “Seeing as you’re frigid.”

  “I’m a professional,” she says. “At whatever I do. I always give a good performance.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Besides, it was lesbian stuff. Which doesn’t mean to say I’m a dike, because I’m frigid.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Are you taking the piss?”

  I shake my head. She takes another sip of her drink.

  “Is that how you spend the long winter evenings, then? Watching blue movies?”

  I shake my head. She smiles the smile again.

  “Of course not,” she says. She drains her glass. “You don’t do things like that, do you?”

  THE SMOKE

  “YOU FUCKING IDIOT,” JAMES said. “My Christ Almighty. After The Music Lovers, I’d thought I’d seen everything. It’s me that must be stupid, to think you have sense.”

  I gave him his drink, frowning, hearing James swear like that.

  “And you, Jean,” he said, after he’d downed half his brandy. “At least I thought you’d be able to prevent something like this. At least attempt to.”

  He swallowed the other half and I took his glass from him.

  “And now I find you were actually a party to it.”

  “It was quite some party,” I said, handing him back his glass, refilled.

  He took another drink and sat down.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

  “Well, I do,” I said. “We did what had to be done.”

  “Like what?” James said. “With all the means at your disposal?”

  “What means? Mickey was my means of disposal. I trusted him. Who else could I get to do it for me, if I couldn’t trust him?”

 
“I don’t mean that. I mean the bodies. Why didn’t you do it Sonet Lumière at the Bloody Tower? It mightn’t quite have attracted the same amount of attention, but I suppose it would at least have been appropriate.”

  “It was appropriate, all right. It spelt it out in fire, like at Belshazzar’s Feast. In big letters, so that even the Shepherdsons can read it.”

  “Parsons can read as well,” James said.

  “And what’s he going to do, when all the time I was sitting here in the bosom of my family, entertaining various well-known and well-paid friends?”

  “And well-trusted, I suppose?”

  “Look, nobody’s going to risk talking to their own reflection in the mirror after this. And what’s Parsons going to do? Wait for some more secondhand furniture from the Shepherdsons?”

  “He will do what he can.”

  “Which is fuck all.”

  James had cooled down slightly; this time he only sipped at his brandy.

  “And as you mention them,” he said, “what do you think they intend to do? Lock the doors at the Steering Wheel and hope you didn’t pick up Johnny’s key?”

  “I’ve done them a favour. Their best-laid plans were fucked up, thanks to their terrible brother. He was a liability, and now he’s proved it. I’ve done them a favour.”

  “And supposing they don’t think you’re intending to stop at Johnny?”

  “I’ll tell them,” I said. “When I go round and see them.”

  “When you what?”

  “When I go round. To thank them for putting me on to Mickey. Without their help I’d never have known, would I?”

  James took the rest of his brandy at one go. I raised my glass.

  “To absent friends,” I said. “The cock-sucking bastard.”

  THE SEA

  SHE STANDS UP AND I stand up and pick up my jacket and she watches me and says, “What are you doing?”

  “Putting my jacket on.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s cold out.”

  “I don’t want you to drive me home,” she says.

  “What?”

  “I want to walk home along the beach.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a nice night and I like walking along the beach.”

  I put my jacket back on the chair.

  “I could have you back in five minutes,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “Whereabouts exactly is it you live?”

  “In Mablethorpe,” she says, giving me the smile.

  “Well, I’ll show you out.”

  “You’d better. You’ve got more locks than the Bank of England.”

  “That’s because I’ve got more money than they have.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “I don’t suppose much would,” I say, as we walk out into the hall and towards the front door.

  “Not any more, no,” she says.

  I unbolt and unlock the front door and open it for her.

  “Are you?” she says.

  “Am I what?”

  “Surprised. At the way the evening turned out?”

  “I’m neither surprised nor not surprised.”

  “Wasn’t quite what you expected, though, was it?”

  “I didn’t expect anything. If showing out and holding back turns you on, well, everyone to their own.”

  “That’s what I always say,” she says. “Now I’ve gone you’ll be able to run a few movies, all by yourself. Look out for me, won’t you? You’ll recognise me by the wig, if by nothing else. Good night.”

  THE SMOKE

  I PHONED THE STEERING Wheel before I went round.

  When I got there, there were only Charlie and Walter waiting for me.

  I sat down opposite them, only this time I wasn’t given a drink.

  “Do you want to know what happened?” I said.

  “You think we don’t know?” Charlie said.

  “I think you ought to know the details,” I said.

  “You fucking chancer, you—” Charlie began, but Walter halted him.

  “Listen to him,” Walter said. “I want to hear what he has to say.”

  “You what?”

  “Just shut up,” Walter said.

  “First of all, it was through Johnny that I found out about what was going down; so you’ve only got yourselves to blame.”

  “Like what was going down?” Charlie said.

  “Leave it out,” Walter said. “Just listen to what he’s got to say.”

  “So,” I said, “like I said, it was through Johnny I found out.”

  “And you topped him, just for that,” said Walter. “Just because one of your blokes—”

  “I didn’t top him.”

  “You what?”

  “Mickey did.”

  “Same thing, isn’t it?”

  “You’re not understanding me,” I said. “I said Mickey topped him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I mean, off his own bat.”

  “Why should he want to do a thing like that?” said Charlie.

  I shook my head in despair of them.

  “Mickey finds out what Johnny’d been saying,” I said. “Right? He didn’t know I’d found out. So he didn’t want me to hear, so he arranged to meet Johnny and he topped him. So I wouldn’t.”

  “You’re barmy,” said Charlie.

  “Listen,” said Walter to his brother. Charlie listened.

  “But I found out. I followed Mickey. By the time he’d got there he’d seen off Johnny.”

  “So who saw off Mickey?” said Charlie. “Johnny?”

  “Who do you think?”

  There was a silence.

  “You?”

  “You’ve got it in one.”

  “You knocked off Mickey?” Charlie said. “For—”

  “Shut up,” said Walter.

  “You’re saying you topped Mickey for topping Johnny, for what he did?” Walter said.

  “I’m not saying I wouldn’t have maybe topped Johnny myself, if I’d seen him first. But I thought I’d let you know, Johnny brought it on himself. Once Mickey got wind, that was it.”

  A silence.

  “So,” I said, “I came to tell you how things happened, before you started getting steamed up over something you started and finished yourselves.”

  Another silence. Then Walter said, “You’re saying you topped Mickey. Because of what he found out?”

  “Of course.”

  Walter took his cigarettes out and lit one up and then watched me.

  “You couldn’t stand it, could you?” he said. “Not even your best man.”

  “Could you?”

  “You couldn’t live with it, could you? Him knowing. So you topped him.”

  “Knowing?” I said.

  “What was going down.”

  “Of course not. Seeing as how—”

  “Hang about,” said Charlie. “I’m not with this.”

  “I am,” said Walter. “He’s barmy. But that’s beside the point.”

  “What is the point, Walter?” I said.

  “The point is,” said Walter, “as far as Johnny’s concerned, that’s still down to you, however you choose to write your memoirs.”

  “Too right,” said Charlie. “Too fucking right.”

  I was quiet for a moment.

  “All right,” I said. “But you’re madmen. To start all over.”

  “Not quite as fucking barmy as you are, Fowler,” Walter said.

  “So I’ll be hearing from you?” I said.

  “What do you think?”

  “Let’s get it done now, Walter,” Charlie said.

  “No,” said Walter. “I want time to think. Let me count the ways.”

  “Apart from the fact you haven’t the bottle, just the two of you,” I said.

  “We’ll wait,” said Walter. “There’s plenty of time. There’s plenty of things to remember.”

  THE SEA

  I LOCK AND BOLT the
door behind her and go back into the lounge and pour myself another drink.

  It’s possible. Think.

  It would certainly explain a lot. Why I thought I’d seen her before, why I’d transferred my memory to the girl from Grimsby who’d looked so much like her, instead of pointing it towards the real source, a half-remembered face from a blue movie.

  It’s possible. But is it probable? Consider.

  It certainly wouldn’t be too coincidental; to the average man, who maybe sees about half a dozen during his whole life, sure. But the odds on coincidence, being in the business I’m in, are much shorter. I’ve seen thousands. So there, coincidence is probable.

  But the coincidence of her being here, where I am. That is where coincidence begins to be improbable.

  Removing the coincidental aspect here, the probability is that she knows who I am.

  She knows that I am George Fowler. And she has been in a blue movie. Probability again: one of mine. I’ve seen more of my own than I have of the competition’s. Thus the vague memory.

  So she’s been in one of my movies. And she knows I am George Fowler.

  Of course, she wouldn’t have known at the time. She wouldn’t have got within a hundred people of knowing who I was then, the way I had everything structured.

  But now, the probability is that she does. The probability is that she knows I am George Fowler, and who George Fowler is.

  How?

  Not even James knew I was here. Not even the number. I never even phoned him from here.

  How?

  And why?

  The probabilities of why are easier to evaluate.

  She’s been sent. Or she’s working for herself.

  If she’d been sent, whoever by, I would no longer be here, in one way or another. They wouldn’t risk this kind of cat and mouse.

  So she’s working for herself. And to her, the cat-and-mouse game doesn’t seem so much of a risk. She’s even dropped a hint to point me in the direction of the Blues. That’s why she came. And left at that point, to leave me to consider.

  Consider what? Her reasons, her connection?

  Her reasons.

  In her position, a lot of very very good reasons, hundreds and thousands of them, all signed by the chief cashier of the Bank of England. Because she knows who I am, and she knows enough of what happened in the Smoke to appreciate the value of knowing where I am.