MARTIN AMIS - THE INFORMATION

"The titheads," 13 began, "is like a gang. The Old Bill," he went on, "is like a gang. Hired by the government. When did it happen? It happened when they upped they pay-1980 or whatever. They saying: it's gonna get rough. Unemployment is it. Riots or whatever. You keep a lid on it and we pay you extra. Where's the money come from? No worries. We'll fine the fuckers."

"Who've you been talking to?" "No one. Common sense."

Although he sounded amused or at least indulgent, Steve was in fact displeased. He kept trying to harden his voice and make his face go all blocked and reptilian-but it wasn't quite happening. Why? Coz Scozz was losing it? Or the old forms, the old rhythms, were just giving out . . . The reason for Steve's displeasure was as follows: 13 had kept him waiting. For ten minutes. They'd had words. "Where you been?" "Looking for the Coke machine. Fancied a Coke." "You spend half your fucking life in there. You know there's no Coke machine." 13 just shrugged and said, "Fancied a Coke." Yeah: leaving his mentor and patron on a double yellow and on a block much frequented by people in uniform, under the shadow of a municipal construct which was really just a massive doorway. The stuff in Latin on the portals, it said: This Is the Way to Other Places …

"Know how much it costs to keep a bloke in nick for a week?" "Go on then."

13 told him. Jesus: like fucking Claridge's. And for that world, with its slops and slop-outs, its stalled testosterone. Labor-intensive: all those retarded parkies in their reeking serge. Security was expensive, and got more expensive quicker than other things. Super-inflationary, like weaponry and medical equipment. Though you'd think, with security, that some counterforce would bring prices down eventually, what with the incredible demand.

13 turned to him and said, "Know what they should do with all that rucking money?"

"Go on then."

"Buy you a mortgage. Buy you a mortgage. All that money locking you up where all you do is learn more of the same. Watching TV about antiques is it. Buy you a mortgage. You got your own house you stay indoors out of trouble."

Until now 13's social analysis had found, in Steve Cousins, a reasonably sympathetic listener. There were lags of ninety who saw crime that way too: as guerrilla work in the class war. But 13 was leaving him here.

"Not much of a deterrent though, is it, Thirt?" said Scozzy. "What kind of message is that sending? Don't break into a house. Or else we'll buy you a house."

13 brooded for a traffic light or two. Then he said: "What they don't get is rich people like being robbed."

"Yeah? Why's that then?"

"Insurance! They in it together is it. Can't see what all the fucking fuss's about. They get it all back plus more and the insurance ups the premiums on the poor people. Simple as."

Passing Speakers' Corner and entering Park Lane, Steve had the rare and transient pleasure of engaging third gear. He glanced sideways. He changed down. In the days when he'd played squash regularly, and tried tennis out for a while, Steve had given a lot of thought to the question of where the power came from, on the shot: wrist or arm? Take a cloth serviette. You can throw that into somebody's face as hard as you like and it's nothing: just a powderpuff. But with a good flick of the wrist you can bloody their nose or blacken their eye. As he pulled away from the lights by the Dorchester, Scozzy changed from first to second and with a flick of the wrist gave his passenger four knuckles right across the cheekbone. 13 's head smacked into the side window and then bounced back again.

"Jesus. What was that for?"

"Never keep me waiting. Never do it, mate. Never."

13 sat there blinking and feeling his cheek. This was all he fucking needed. He was going to get beaten up tonight by Crash and Rooster-Booster anyway, as it was. To mark his appearance in court. 13 said, "That really hurt, man."

Of course you'd never get a meter. So 13 could just drive round Berkeley Square as fast as he dared for as long as it took while Steve went to pay his call on Mrs. V.

"See? All in the wrist, that," said Steve. "All in the wrist."

Anita Verulam's basement office was, as usual, a two-room altar of middle class and Middle Eastern gratitude and praise. Cellophaned bouquets, professionally gift-wrapped boxes of chocolates and bottles of champagne, various hampers and caskets: all these were offerings from the opulent households which Mrs. Verulam supplied with maids, cooks, chars, nannies, nurses, drivers, gardeners, hewers of wood and drawers of water, batmen, bondmen, gentlemen's gentlemen-and anyone else who came under the heading of help. In the saunas and restaurants and department-store coffee shops of West London the name of Mrs. Verulam was mouthed in sacred whispers by wealthy housewives, all of them, by now, crack delegators, their homes thrumming empires of monosyllabic vassalage. Had these ladies been a little bit crazier, and a lot richer, they might have built "shrines" to Mrs. Verulam, in attics, in disused guest rooms. The help she dealt in was exclusively foreign. Foreign help was actually helpful, foreign cleaning ladies could actually clean: they knew how you did it. Whereas the cleaning gene had long absented itself from the indigenous DNA. This was unfortunate, if you took the long view at the big picture. Cleaning, in planetary terms, and unlike other sectors, held wonderful promise. Cleaning was obviously going to be huge. Lady Demeter Barry had never set eyes on Mrs. Verulam, but on the telephone she poured her heart out to her three times a week.

Steve said, "Did you take a look in the file for us?" Us came naturally: it was less culpable somehow.

The cigarette in her mouth wagged up and down as she said, "When were they married exactly?"

He gave the month and the year.

"It seems to have got steadily choppier. A whole stream of walkouts." Mrs. Verulam was a fifty-year-old widow in a pink two-piece suit; when Mr. Verulam was alive she had walked with address into a certain kind of drawing room-Paris, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Milan. "It's not Lady Demeter. No complaints there." Her voice was warmly emphysemic, but her eyes were hooded and cold. Often during their encounters here Mrs. Verulam talked on, holding the telephone at arm's length while a baffled female larynx, a marooned existence, wailed or pleaded into the air, as if seized at the throat by her painted fingers. "It's him they don't like. No children," she added pitilessly.

"Do you think he uh…?"

"My little Spanish ladies and Portuguese ladies are sometimes very religious. They'll walk out on a couple if they think the rhythm method is being used. And of course Demeter's Catholic, isn't she? The other thing about these little ladies is that they're astonishingly discreet. Even to me. What we need," she said, re-consulting the folder, "is a Filipino. Or a Colombian."

Steve nodded approvingly. He understood. Filipinos, Colombians: you could lean on them with threats of deportation. You know: Been here long, have we, Charito?

"Mm, lots. Ah, Ancilla. Good. I'll talk to Ancilla and let you know."

"Appreciate it, Mrs. V. How's our friend Nigel?"

"Yes, thank you for that, Steve."

"I had a word with him."

"Good as gold now. Quiet as a mouse after ten o'clock."

"Yeah, well. I had a quiet word with him."

They looked at each other. Mrs. Verulam was a modern person, and routinely traded in information; and if it had ever struck her as odd or unprofessional it struck her that way no longer. She too was childless. There was an affinity between the Barnardo boy and Anita Verulam. Because the family was one thing and they were the other.

On the way out Steve wondered if Mrs. V had any idea just how loud it had been-his quiet word with Nigel. Nigel was a rich hippy who lived in the flat above Mrs. Verulam's best friend, another widow, called Aramintha. It was once Nigel's habit to play classical music, mostly Mahler, at full volume, well into the small hours. Aramintha tried everything. She asked Nigel nicely; she asked him not so nicely; she got the landlord to ask him; she got the police to ask him; she asked Nigel nicely again. All of Aramintha's entreaties were to no avail. Until Steve smashed his door down at three in the morning and went in there with Clasford and T, and kicked fucking Nigel out of bed and dragged him across the fucking floor by his fucking hair and put his fucking head on the . . . What did they do? Oh yeah. Jammed his head between the amp and the CD player while they shattered them with baseball bats. And Steve cracked his fucking elbow into Nigel's fucking mouth and told him, at full volume- no noise after ten. Good as gold now, and very polite on the stairs. It wasn't the first time Scozzy had helped out Mrs. V. She had a few bob and liked the sort of young man who gave trouble.