Paul Murray - The Mark and the Void

It strikes me that Robert Dodson believed in him the last time, and he just never submitted the book, but I decide not to press the point. ‘And he will give you some money, as well as belief?’

‘He needs a couple of pages first — just the basic set-up, to show the finance people. But once that’s done, he’s pretty sure he can scrap the previous advance and set up a whole new deal.’

‘Debt forgiveness, eh?’

‘They won’t pay much. But get this. Just a few days after I saw you, I got an email from this investment company, asking about buying the apartment for cash.’

‘This apartment?’

‘Yes! I told them straight up it’s got structural problems. They didn’t seem to care. Cyrano Solutions, you ever heard of them?’

‘No, but there are all kinds of foreign investors in town, buying up property.’

‘I couldn’t find anything about them online. It sounded kind of shady to me. But then the next thing I know we get this huge whomp of money into our account! I mean just like that! And these people say we can wait and move out whenever. Isn’t that crazy? Like I wouldn’t say our troubles are over, exactly, but I’ll be able to keep writing full-time, at least till I’ve got a first draft. After that maybe I can get a few gigs on the side, reviews, that kind of thing — you know, now that I’ve got my bona fides again.’

‘That is wonderful.’ I clink his plastic glass. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Thanks. We were sailing pretty close to the wind this time. Sometimes I even thought … well, why dwell on it. Suffice to say, it’s nice to have some good news for a change. And a lot of it’s down to you.’

‘Me?’ I say, through a mouthful of butterfly cake.

‘You assaulting Banerjee did me no harm at all. He didn’t say it, but I got the distinct impression Dodson’s been wanting to hit him with a sculpture for a long, long time. I reckon I could have given him the ABC after that and he still would have published it.’

‘ Au contraire , it is your talent.’

‘So the question now is how to end it,’ Paul says, as in a far corner of the room a synthesizer polka starts up and the children dance around. ‘Dodson thinks he’s got to rob the bank.’

‘The banker?’

‘He says it’s the only ending that makes sense. After everything that happens.’

‘I see,’ I say, a cold spiral of metal coiling up from my gut.

‘So I wanted to run something by you. I know you said robbing an investment bank was basically impossible. But I’ve been reading about this guy in France, this Pierrot — you’ve heard of him?’

‘Of course.’

The children are jumping up and down now, the noise so thunderous it almost drowns out the music.

‘He breaks into the back office in the middle of the night, forges some papers, transfers his clients’ money into his own account. Couldn’t that work here?’

The music stops abruptly: the children freeze.

‘Pierrot got caught,’ I say.

‘He got greedy. He did it over and over. What if our guy only does it once? And he takes the money from some really evil client, so it wouldn’t seem so much like stealing?’

I stroke my chin; my fingers feel like ice. ‘It’s true, if he put the money into a third party’s account it would be almost impossible for the bank to get back,’ I say, forcing the words through numb lips. ‘And maybe, if he was lucky, the client wouldn’t find out till their end-of-year returns. Still, it would only be a matter of time.’

‘In theory, though, you could have it so that by the time the client finds out they’ve got away?’

‘ “They”?’

‘The banker and the waitress.’

I feel a curious jolt, as if the world has slipped from its wheel. ‘What about her boyfriend?’

‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend,’ Paul says, erasing him with a single wave of the hand. ‘Maybe the banker thinks she has a boyfriend. And that’s what makes his sacrifice authentic? But then he finds out the truth, using a bespoke waitress surveillance system. Although Dodson’s not 100 per cent about that part either,’ he confesses.

‘Dad, we need you for pass-the-parcel …’ Remington appears at his father’s elbow.

‘Oh, right — but in principle, that’d work? The back-office thing?’

They get away; a happy ending. ‘Yes, I think that would work very well.’

‘ Dad .’

‘All right, all right. Hey, try the dinosaur cake, Claude, it’s unbeatable!’

He is pulled away. Left by the table, nibbling on dinosaur cake, I think about what he said. Could they really escape, the banker and the waitress? Is there still somewhere in the world the bank wouldn’t find them?

‘You look like one of the musical statues.’

I turn around. Clizia has materialized beside me. ‘Just daydreaming,’ I tell her. ‘Enjoying the party?’

‘I should get back to the office. But I’m worried that if I move I will stand on somebody.’

‘They’re tougher than they look,’ she says with a laugh. Her hair is tied back, and instead of her usual micro-skirt she wears a tracksuit, liberally adorned with food smears and tiny fingerprints; the bruising around her eye has faded almost to nothing.

‘Things are better?’ I say.

She shrugs. ‘If he finishes book.’

‘What about you? How are your … travel plans?’

She shrugs again, though not without a smile. ‘We’ll see. For now, everything is good.’

‘No more volleyball.’

‘I pay off boss.’ She waits a moment after relaying this information, then says, ‘Don’t you want to know how?’

‘Hmm, Paul mentioned that you’ve sold the apartment?’

She looks amusedly into my eyes, and for a moment our gazes criss-cross, glancing off one another like bright swords in a duel. Then she takes my hand. ‘Come, before you leave, there’s someone I want you to meet.’ She scans the partygoers, then locates the one she is looking for, beside the refrigerator: a small, olive-skinned boy, with a blue stripe on the bridge of his nose and pink daubs on his cheeks.

‘This is one of Remington’s friends from school,’ she says. ‘Tell Claude your name, darling.’

The small child looks up at me. He does not speak: he does not need to. His eyes are a brilliant, luminescent green, like light through the trees of some Olympian forest.

‘I think maybe you know his mother,’ Clizia says innocently. ‘She works in a café near your bank?’

‘Ah — oh — is that right?’ I stammer.

‘It closed … but then it opened again.’

‘I see.’

‘Someone gave them a whole lot of money.’

‘Is that so? Good for them.’

‘But they don’t know who he is.’

‘Well, that’s the business world, so impersonal …’

Clizia touches my arm, leans in to me and says, ‘You’re a good man, Claude.’

‘Me? Oh, you mean the ant farm?’

‘There are not many good men. So few that sometimes we forget even to look for them. We are too busy trying to pick out the best of the bad men.’

I continue to make fish-out-of-water gestures of incomprehension, which Clizia continues to ignore.

‘Oscar’s mother will be coming to collect him in about half an hour,’ she says absently, stooping to pick up a little girl who has collided with the dustbin. ‘If you are still here, you can all walk back together?’

Ariadne? Here? With no more tricks, or ploys, or misunderstandings? For an instant it seems that life and story are merging at last into one, everything I hoped for coming true … but then my phone begins to ring, and I remember it’s already too late for that.

‘Where are you, Claude?’ Rachael’s secretary is at the other end of the line.