David Szalay - London and the South-East

‘You’ll pay them two hundred quid?’

‘I will. So … That should make it easier to find someone, shouldn’t it?’

Paul sighs. ‘I don’t know about suppliers … I don’t know how these things work …’

‘You don’t need to. I’ll explain everything. You find someone, and I’ll explain exactly what they have to do. All right?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘What don’t you know?’

‘If I can find someone.’

‘Well, you just try,’ Watt says, more menacingly. ‘See how you get on. I’m sure you’ll be able to — two hundred quid for a few hours’ work’s not bad. And I’ll sort out the equipment as well.’

‘What equipment?’

‘The hidden camera and all that. I’ll sort that out. You can leave that to me …’

He notices that Paul is staring at something on the other side of the room, and following his eyes, sees a young woman sitting with some other people.

Paul says, ‘Doesn’t she …?’

Work in the supermarket. A junior manager. Paul does not know her name — he sees her sometimes on the margins of his shift. She is in her late twenties, and her face, throat, arms and hands are entirely covered with fawn freckles — slightly strange-looking but not ugly, and Paul often wonders, with a tingle of excitement, whether they extend over the whole surface of her skin. ‘Who is she?’ he asks, in a quieter voice. Watt has turned on the bench so that he is almost facing the beige wall. ‘She’s … Her name’s Hazel,’ he says.

‘Do you think she’s seen us?’

‘How should I know? Look, I’ve got to leave.’

‘All right …’

‘Is she looking at us?’

‘No. If you’re leaving, I’ll come with you —’

‘No! We’ve got to leave separately.’

‘Why?’

‘What if we’re seen? Wait here for a few minutes. Just five minutes. Please. We mustn’t be seen together.’ He stands up — keeping his back to the part of the room where Hazel is sitting — and says, ‘I’ll call you next week.’ And then, pointedly, ‘I expect you’ll have found someone by then.’ Paul drains the last of the Bloody Mary — watery with melted ice — and stares obtusely at the tabletop.

When he looks up, Watt is no longer there.

Walking home through Amhurst Crescent, he thinks, What the fuck have I got myself mixed up in? He sighs, entering the smelly foot tunnel under the train tracks. And he is mixed up in it. Mixed up in something with someone who does not seem entirely sane. He emerges from the tunnel. Payne Avenue — not in fact an avenue, merely a quiet street — is empty and silent, except for some muffled music from the Kendal Arms. It seems extraordinary that Watt is prepared to shell out two hundred quid — more, with the equipment — on something so speculative, so shadowy, so impetuous, so wild. Of course, his whole professional life is on the line. Perhaps, Paul thinks, it is not surprising that he should be in such a state, that he should be so willing to use methods outside his normal pen-pushing modus operandi — twenty-five years of patient work and supermarket politics, store manager the prize, and just when it seems his, Martin Short sweeps past, and he is left with a modest pension, and years of senescence in which to savour the poisons of his failure.

On Saturday night Paul is still wondering who to sound out for the part of the produce supplier. His first thought was of the snooker hall. There would, however, be a possibility of Heather finding out somehow — and none of those lot would be able to persuade Martin that they were bona fide fruit wholesalers. What’s more, he might have seen them in town. A stranger then? Someone from a transients’ pub in Brighton? Paul imagines sidling up to a travelling salesman in the saloon of a two-star hotel and saying, ‘Hello, mate. I’m looking for someone to …’

And then his mind fastens onto the word ‘salesman’. A salesman . He knows a few of them . They would surely be well qualified for this sort of thing. They are all from out of town — from London and other parts of the south-east. And the subject of the impersonation is himself a sort of salesman. It is obviously the solution, and Paul immediately starts to think of the salesmen he knows, and wonder which of them to speak to. The first two he thinks of are Murray and the Pig, and there is no question, of course, of using them. Nor the likes of Wolé and Marlon. So who else? He looks through the numbers in his phone and finds others there. Some of them he has not seen or spoken to for years — their numbers probably obsolete — such as Mundjip from the Northwood days, and Nick and Paddy from Archway. Pax Murdoch is in prison in Thailand … In fact, for multifarious reasons, the options are more limited than he had hoped. In the end there is only one who properly fits what he is looking for, and that is Neil Mellor, one of his fellow managers at Park Lane Publications. Fortyish, worldly, quite well spoken, Neil would make a plausible fruit wholesaler. And he might like the look of a quick two hundred quid, too — PLP has surely folded, and who knows where he has washed up. Moreover, he did not know Eddy or Murray, and is unlikely to have stayed in touch with the Pig.

Paul phones him on Monday morning.

The first surprise — it seems utterly extraordinary — is that Park Lane Publications has not folded. It is still struggling on. Neil is on the sales floor there when he and Paul speak. He sounds slightly prickly — and this prickliness, obviously linked to what happened in December, is the second surprise. ‘Well, well, well,’ Neil says. ‘Rainey, you fucker.’

‘All right, mate …’

‘You’ve got a nerve, phoning us up here.’ It is said with a sort of smile — even so, it is not very friendly. They are still exchanging these pleasantries when Neil suddenly says, ‘Look, Lawrence is about. Can I call you back later?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll call you back later.’

When, the next morning, Neil has still not done so, Paul tries him again.

This time he seems to be in the smoking room, and Paul gets as far as saying that he has an ‘offer’ for him. Neil evidently assumes that this ‘offer’ will involve joining Paul at whichever outfit he is now working for, and is nonplussed when Paul starts saying that he needs someone to pretend to be a fruit wholesaler. ‘Sorry?’ he says, as though he must have misheard.

‘I said, I need someone to come down to Brighton for a day or two —’

‘Yeah, yeah. I got that. And do what ?’

‘And … Well, you’d have to meet this bloke and pretend you were a sort of fruit wholesaler …’

Neil laughs. ‘What?’

‘That’s the job.’

‘What is? I don’t understand.’

‘You’d have to meet this bloke, right, and pose as a fruit wholesaler.’ More laughter. Paul laughs slightly himself. ‘What? That’s all. It’s simple.’

‘I’d have to sell him some fruit?’

‘No … Well, not exactly. You’d have to pretend … I mean — are you interested at all?’

‘I don’t think so, mate. What is it? Some kind of scam?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. It’s two hundred quid for doing not much —’

‘Two hundred quid isn’t much. And anyway, I’ve got a job to do as it is —’

‘We could do it at the weekend. Or you could take a day off —’

‘Thanks for thinking of me, mate, but I’m not interested.’

‘It’ll probably be a laugh.’

‘I’m sure it will …’

‘A day out by the sea …’

‘No, mate. Seriously. I’ve got other priorities at the moment.’

Neil, it turns out, is now Lawrence’s number two, and the myriad problems of Park Lane Publications press down heavily on his shoulders. (Since his nervous breakdown, Lawrence himself has been little more than a figurehead.)