Peter Temple - In the Evil Day

Kael: You know what they want to do, don’t you?

Serrano: Maybe.

Kael: They want to tidy up. And they want the assets.

Serrano: These boats, I’m not getting… Kael: Tell him we agree but it’ll take time. Seventy-two hours at least.

Serrano: Where does that get us?

Kael: They’ll have this prick by then. If what he’s got is bad for us, we’re possibly in trouble. If not, we haven’t handed them our hard work on a plate.

Serrano: You don’t actually think he’ll believe me?

Kael: Of course he won’t. But they won’t take a chance.

Tilders switched off. ‘That’s it,’ he said.

‘Good bug,’ said Anselm. ‘You’re doing good work.’

‘Another put and take…’ Tilders shook his head.

‘If you can’t, you can’t. We don’t want to spook anyone.’

Tilders nodded. His pale eyes never left Anselm’s, spoke of nothing.

…LONDON…

‘THere’s money in my account I know nothing about,’ said Caroline. ‘Ten thousand pounds.’

Colley was looking at her over the Telegraph , narrow red eyes, cigarette smoke rising. ‘Wonderful, darling,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised you noticed. Perhaps mummy popped it in.’

‘The bank says it’s a transfer from the Bank of Vanuatu. An electronic transfer.’

‘Electronic money. Floats in cyberspace, falls anywhere, at random. Like old satellites. Finders keepers. Congratulations.’

‘I’m declaring it to Halligan, I’m handing it over.’

He lowered the paper. ‘Are you? Yes, well, that’s probably a sound thing to do. In theory.’

‘In theory?’

‘Well, it may be a bit late to develop principles. After you’ve played the bagwoman.’

Caroline wasn’t sure what he was saying. She had no anger left, it had taken too long to get the bank to tell her where the money had come from. The blood drained from her face. She was no longer certain that she knew what had happened. But she had a strong feeling about what was happening now and she felt cold.

‘I’ve been set up,’ she said. ‘You know about this, don’t you?’

Colley shook his head. He had an amused expression. His strange hairs had been combed with oil and his scalp had a damp pubic look.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But if you’re unhappy, that probably stems from something unconnected with the present situation. It could come from realising that you’re just a pretty vehicle, a conduit. Something people ride on. Or something stuff flows though.’

She had no idea what he was talking about. ‘I’ve been set up.’

‘You’ve said that, sweetheart. Remember? Not too much nose-munchies with the public schoolboys last night? All I know is you came to me with a proposition involving paying someone for something that we could make a lot of money out of. I told you that the right thing to do was to go to Halligan. I said I wanted nothing to do with your proposal.’

He opened a drawer, took out a flat device. ‘You’re out of your depth here. Like to hear the tape?’

Caroline felt the skin on her face tighten, her lips draw back from her teeth of their own accord. She turned and left the room without saying anything, went down the corridor, through the newsroom. In her cubicle, door shut, she sat at the desk with her eyes closed, clenched hands in her lap.

Out of your depth.

Her father had said those words, those words were in her heart. The image came to her of her toes trying to find the bottom of the pool, toes outstretched, nothing there, the water in her mouth and nose, smell of chlorine. She could still smell chlorine anywhere, everywhere, smell it in the street, anywhere, any hint of it made her feel sick. Her father had used the phrase that day when she was a little girl wan from vomiting and he had repeated it every time she failed at anything.

She shut the memory out, stayed motionless for a long time. Then she opened her eyes, pulled her chair closer to the desk, and began to write on the pad.

Out of her depth? Go to Halligan and tell him the whole story? Who was going to be believed? Colley had a doctored tape. She had no hope.

Out of your depth.

No. Death before that.

The phone rang.

‘Marcia Collins. You probably don’t remember me. I’m the features editor now. Does your personal arrangement with the executive branch permit me to ask what the hell you’re doing? Am I allowed to ask that?’

‘No, you aren’t,’ said Caroline. ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’

A silence.

‘I suppose you’ve heard they found your little Gary. Dead of an overdose. Been dead for days.’

…HAMBURG…

When tilders had gone, Anselm went out on the balcony and smoked a cigarette, watched him drive away. He looked down at the unloved roses and thought about his first days in the family house.

On his second morning, he had woken in fright from a drunken sleep and did not know where he was. He had been fighting the top sheet, twisting, it was tight around him. He’d lain back and felt his hair. It was wet with sweat. He got up. The pillowslip was dark. He stripped it from the pillow. It gave off a chemical smell, the smell of the pink fluid the doctor gave him to drink before he left the hospital.

In the huge tiled bathroom, pissing into the rusty water in the toilet bowl, the same smell had risen, richer now, it sickened him.

He showered, standing uncertainly in the huge bath. Water fell on him, a warm torrent, he was inside a rushing tube of warm water. He did not want to leave it. Ever. But eventually he went downstairs. There was bread and butter and tea, tea in bags, a box of leaf tea. He made toast and tea, that was an ordinary thing to do.

An ordinary thing on an ordinary morning.

Tea brewed in a china pot. In a kitchen. Toast with butter.

He had thought it gone forever.

He’d made two slices of toast, put them on a plate, and put the pot of tea and the toast and butter and a bowl of sugar on a tray and gone out onto the terrace. There was an old, dangerous chair to sit on and a rusty garden table. He’d gone back and forth to the kitchen and, in all, eaten seven slices of toast, toast with butter, just butter. He drank three cups of tea from the English china cup, roses on it.

Just eating toast and drinking tea, sitting in the sunshine in the wobbly chair, massaging the two fingers on his left hand, he could not remember more peace in his life.

Then he was sick, he could not reach the bathroom.

He had not left the house for two weeks. There was enough food and drink for ten weeks, more. He did nothing, existed. The milk ran out, he drank black tea. He sat in the spring sun, dozed, tried to read Henry Esmond , found on his great-aunt’s bedside table, drank gin and tonic from before midday, ate something from a tin, slept in an armchair smelling faintly of long-dead dog, he had a memory of the dog, a spaniel, one eye opaque. He’d woken dry-mouthed, empty-headed, drunk water, poured wine, watched television in the study, not very much of anything, often went to sleep in the chair, woke cold in the small hours.

His brother had rung every second day. Fine, said Anselm, I’m fine. I’m pulling myself together. He had no idea what together would look like. There were terrifying blanks in his memory of the years before the kidnap-big blanks and small blanks, with no pattern to them. They seemed to go back to his teens. It was hard to know where they began.

He’d exhausted his clean clothes. Where was the laundry? He’d remembered a passage off the kitchen leading to a courtyard. The washing machine was unused for a long time, the hose disintegrated, water everywhere. He washed his clothes with old yellow soap in the porcelain sink, found a pleasure in it, in hanging the washing in the laundry courtyard.