Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

‘Nostalgia,’ Anselm said. ‘I was thinking the other night. I’ve never asked. What happened to Angelica?’

‘She doesn’t work anymore. She paints. She married an Englishman and now there’s an American.’

‘People you know?’

‘The Pom, yes. I liked him. Eton and kicked out of the Guards. Rooting the CO’s batman probably, much worse than rooting the CO’s wife, he doesn’t fuck his wife. The American’s rich, inherited. I had dinner with them in Paris, in their apartment, the Marais can you believe? They have a cook, a chef. But there’s hope, she’s really distant with the hubby. Not surprising, he’s an Egyptologist, the place’s like a tomb and he could bore Mormons stiff.’

O’Malley drank the last of his wine. ‘Still interested?’

‘Just curious.’

‘I could bring you together. Accidental meeting.’

‘We only actually kissed once. While very drunk.’

‘I remember. The Angel didn’t kiss casually, though. Not a serial kisser.’

‘I may be too late for accidental meetings. I may have had my ration of accidental meetings.’

‘No, there’s always one left.’

A youth in white had appeared to take away the plates. Close behind him came another young man, dark, Italianate, long-fingered. He fawned over O’Malley, suggesting the dessert trolley or something from the kitchen, anything, any whim. O’Malley ordered cognacs. He had the accent identified with Cologne, somehow frivolous in the intonation. North Germans found it annoying.

The waiter gone, O’Malley sighed. ‘Well, a business lunch. What’s a put-and-pluck cost?’

‘As an estimate, plenty.’

O’Malley was looking away, watching three sailors on a Japanese container ship taking photographs of the shore. He said nothing for a while, drank some riesling, nodded in answer to some inner question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought it would be in that vicinity.’

They sat in silence until the cognacs came, more fawning. O’Malley rotated his fat-bellied glass and sniffed the small collar. ‘If angels peed,’ he said, and sipped.

Anselm felt the unease returning, wanted to be out of the place, away from people. He saw O’Malley’s mouth rolling the liquid, his upward gaze, the calibrating.

‘Nice lunch,’ said Anselm. ‘Thank you.’

O’Malley landed his glass on the heavy white linen. ‘My pleasure. You eat quickly, not so much a diner as an eater.’

‘I usually eat in the street,’ Anselm said. ‘Vendor food. You get into habits like that.’ The unease was growing. He steadied himself. ‘I have to go.’

On their way out, O’Malley stopped and bent over a handsome woman in dark business clothes, alone. ‘Are you stalking me, Lucy?’ he said. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

Anselm kept going, he wanted to be outside. A flunky was waiting to open the door. He went out onto the pavement, closed his eyes, breathed deeply, said his mantra.

In the taxi, O’Malley said, ‘That woman, she’s English, a very smart maritime lawyer based here. Froze a Polish ship for us in Rotterdam. I hope she’s going to do the trick again.’

‘I’m sure the courts look kindly upon her.’

‘She’s persuasive. They say she blew a judge when she was starting out in England. That’s the gossip. Judgment overturned on appeal.

Black mark for a judge.’

‘At least he’s got his memories,’ Anselm said. ‘Keep her wig on?’

O’Malley shook his head. ‘How can you be so ignorant of legal decorum?’

…LONDON…

Halligan, the deputy editor, presided over the news conference. Caroline Wishart was nine minutes late, just behind skeletal Alan Sindall, the chief crime reporter.

‘Welcome,’ said Halligan. ‘I’m thinking of making this meeting’s time more flexible. We’ll just run the fucking thing from 2 p.m. to whenever, open-ended, pop in whenever it suits you.’

‘Sorry,’ said Sindall, eyes down.

Caroline said nothing, eyes on the styrofoam cup of coffee she was carrying.

‘Came together did you!’ shrieked Benton, the small, fat deputy news editor, clapping his hands in front of his glasses. ‘Came together!’

‘Shut up, Benton,’ Halligan said, ‘we don’t have to be like our readers. We purvey smut. That does not require that we ourselves be amused by childish double entendres.’

‘Just a joke, Geoff,’ said Benton, eyes down.

‘Pathetic. Since by the grace of something or other the chief criminal reporter and the stand-in to the power of three for the editor of Frisson or Pissoir or whatever it’s called are now here, let’s hear it. About Brechan, Marcia?’

‘Where’s Colley?’ said Marcia Connors, the news editor, a sharp-faced woman in her late thirties. ‘Does he still work here? Does anyone know?’

Colley ran the paper’s Probe team.

‘He’s accounted for his absence,’ said Halligan. ‘What’s happening?’

‘Nothing,’ said Simon Knight, the chief political correspondent, slumped, looking over his glasses, chins rolling into a loosened collar already dirty. ‘Brechan apparently doesn’t have a care in the world.’

‘The question was addressed to me,’ said Marcia.

‘Oh,’ said Knight. ‘Well, go for it, old dear.’

Marcia eyed him briefly, touched a canine with a short-nailed fingertip. ‘Brechan gave us the slip last night.’

‘And the catamite?’ Halligan was looking at her hopefully.

She shook her head.

‘Can’t find him?’

‘No.’

‘Marcia, someone is going to find out about this and find the prick. We heard it first. You’re saying it’s not going to be us?’

‘We can’t find him.’ She ran a hand over her hacked-short hair. ‘Simple as that. If someone else can, good fucking luck to them. Gary vanished on Tuesday, thereabouts. His ex-boyfriend, this little poof is more vegetable than animal, into very serious substance abuse, he thinks Gary rang at some time around Tuesday to say he was going into a private clinic somewhere. He thinks . And he’s never heard of Brechan.’

‘Somewhere?’ said Halligan.

‘Somewhere. We’ve tried, believe me, we’ve tried. Could be in fucking Montevideo.’

‘Have you tried Montevideo?’ said Simon Knight.

Marcia didn’t look at him. ‘Oh fuck off, you fat ponce,’ she said.

Halligan waved his hands placatingly, swivelled his chair to face the window. ‘How did we come to stuff this thing up so comprehensively? Handed to us on a plate.’

‘Don’t know about handed anything,’ said Marcia. ‘It was only a tip-off.’

‘Perhaps it is a pack of lies,’ Simon Knight said. ‘The man’s got more enemies than Thatcher at her peak. And he’s only the Defence Minister in waiting.’

Halligan came back to face the room, deep lines across his forehead. ‘Bugger it,’ he said. ‘I told the boss we’d get the story. He was beside himself with joy. His favourite position.’ He shook his head. ‘Well, what is there for the front then?’

‘Public schoolboys selling drugs,’ said Marcia.

‘That’s news?’ said Merton, the industrial affairs editor. ‘What about pubs selling beer?’

‘And fuck you too,’ said Marcia.

Caroline put up a hand.

‘Yes?’ said Halligan.

‘I’ve got pictures,’ she said.

Silence in the room.

‘What?’ said Marcia.

‘What?’ said Halligan.

‘Pictures.’

Marcia showed teeth, both top and bottom. ‘I think it’s too early in the day for you, darling. Up all night with the braying coke snorters. Tell us about your shitty little shots when we get to the rubbish end of the paper.’