Full of Money (18 page)

According to the dossier, Hodge had an old style .45 Sokolovsky automatic, a model described a few decades ago as the most expensive pistol in the world, and probably still capable. It was like that posturing twerp, Hodge, to go for something glamorized by history. Pellotte and Dean carried nine mm Brownings, thirteen rounds apiece. But Pellotte hoped none of these weapons would be used today. He didn't want to go into the Powell conference smelling of cordite. Dean had a drily witty way of delivering literary talks, and breathlessness after possible excitement at Hodge's house might mess up his timing and ability with consonants.

Even if there were only non-firearms violence, Pellotte would hate to see torn, bloody knuckles taking hold of a lectern in such a setting. Faunt Castle had become an arts and culture centre with hireable rooms at low cost, and Pellotte didn't want its reputation shaken by crude signs of violence. Dean had introduced him way back to Powell's work, and Pellotte felt real gratitude. Dean had read the twelve books many times over, of course, while serially jugged. Dean said he'd thought now and then that the overall title should be changed to
A Dance to the Music of
Doing
Time
. Dean's astonishing memory and the many lock-up re-readings meant he could repeat pages in their entirety from several of the
Dance
volumes.

Pellotte did not mind too much having to listen over-and-over to these very unnecessary fucking performances. After all, as Pellotte saw it, the main point about Dean was the certainty that if a blitz squad came over from Temperate one afternoon meaning to disfigure, maim or kill him – him, Adrian Pellotte – Dean would try very nearly everything to prevent it. Yes, very nearly everything.

Naturally, they had packed the BMW boot with complete changes of clothes and shoes as well as moist face flannels and towels, first-aid gear, blood transfusion equipment and an oxygen cylinder with mask, for their personal use. Pellotte recognized that the visit might turn out complicated, with possible rips and/or staining and contusions. But he hoped all this gear would prove unnecessary. Between them he and Dean should be able to see off Hodge if things went that way, but Pellotte would try to avoid any type of rough-house
pro
tem
.

Hodge and his family had an interesting property. When Pellotte and Dean knocked, he came swiftly to the door, wearing a blue roll-topped sweater and navy jogging trousers. Pellotte felt at once that these clothes did not look at all the kind of outfits convicts on their way to execution wore in, say, Texas, but at a push they'd do. Pellotte considered the clobber and Hodge's bubbling attitude made him seem extremely relaxed – the two-timing, embezzling rat. Of course, he might have spotted the BMW doing its preparatory circling just now and readied his larcenous, filthy self. One of the special strengths of doorstepping was shock, and this might have been lost.

Hodge cried: ‘Adrian, Dean! Here's a happy surprise. I understood you were away today, out of town at a conference on Anthony Powell. He said it “Pole” though, didn't he, so as to knock the Welshness out of it? But, obviously, I've been expecting a visit.'

‘Yes?' Pellotte replied. ‘You saw the car?'

‘Saw the car? No,' Hodge said, ‘but I meant on account of this exceptionally tricky Dione situation. You're bound to seek support. And I . . . I am equally bound to provide it. Am proud and delighted to provide it. Not to mention the shit flying your way because of the journalist who met his deadline, as it were.' Hodge stood back in the doorway. He made a real sympathy thing of this, like an Eskimo welcoming travellers out of the blizzard and into his igloo.

The exterior of the house was unattractive, the same as all the others round about, but Hodge and his partner had done the inside minimalist, probably under top-notch professional advice not necessarily gay, and to Pellotte it looked wonderfully spacious and light, the walls pastel shaded and with, here and there, a good, framed surrealist print, but nothing crudely bright and unnerving. The dots, broccoli heads, JCBs, biplanes, panthers, trombones and halberds in these pictures seemed to fit in with one another very well.

Letitia, Hodge's partner, must be out. The firm's personnel records showed Hodge had two daughters – Delphine and Maisy – both away at boarding school in Cheltenham, now near the end of term. One girl was by Hodge, one previous. Pellotte thought such first names fair enough for this kind of family. They had a total difference in sound, and if Hodge shouted for one of them during a vacation because he urgently needed somebody to get help, it would be obvious which he meant, not as if he had a Jane and a Joan, or a Celia and a Delia.

Hodge took Dean and Adrian to the lounge, and they sat in excellent blue leather chairs, the arms and legs shiny tubular steel of what seemed prime quality, and possibly fashionable among some. Little other furniture. Hodge didn't drink or, apparently, keep alcohol in his house and brought from the kitchen three glasses of barley water on a tray decorated with what looked to Pellotte like Old Masters illustrations, including one by Bronzino
.
Even on barley water, this lad, Hodge, could really smile. The smile had a kind of true authenticity to it, a false kind. The smile helped make him a fine street salesman. Pellotte recently watched a TV rerun of the Oliver Stone film,
Nixon
, which began with a sales director instructing a subordinate on the value of a smile, and showing him one. But this looked a foully unbelievable, trickster's smile, and referred, of course, to President Nixon's. But Hodge's smile had terrific depth and, if you did not know him, you could easily believe it meant unrestrained friendship. Punters – including punters new to Gordon –
all
punters felt confident as to quality of the stuff he offered, and reasonableness of price, from Ecstasy and resin through skunk to H. Suppose things could not be resolved, Hodge would be an undoubted loss to the trade, but Pellotte had to think about the ethics of the situation, and if Hodge did represent unfortunate finagling within the firm he could not be excused. It would get to be a contagion otherwise.

‘No, Gordon,' Dean said, ‘not to do with Dione or the journalist, God rest his soul, but—'

‘I knew you'd be getting around everybody, lobbying to see who are your allies in the Dione matter, Adrian,' Hodge said.

Dean said: ‘No, that's not it, Gordon. We—'

‘Well, I want to say straight out that I'm with you all the way on this one, Adrian,' Hodge said. ‘I expect you heard the buzz and decided in your kindly fashion that you must drop in and show your gratitude. But no need, I assure you, Adrian.'

‘Which buzz, Gordon?' Pellotte asked.

‘That I've been talking your case to people in the firm – people potentially extreme. I mean extreme in a negative sense. I've argued for Dione's absolute right to a love life – if I may so call it – no matter where the man comes from. This is surely fundamental for a democratic state. Good Lord, we're almost into the new millennium! Don't tell me we're reverting to “arranged” courtships, as prevail in some countries. I've demanded restraint of colleagues. Really, demanded it. Plus, I've attempted to choke off unpleasant rumour about the death and so on of Gervaise Manciple Tasker, Dean. I do believe I can impose some influence. There are people on Whitsun – our people – who would use their own methods to end that relationship between Dione and Rupert Bale, as you know, Aid. They claim to feel stained by it. So far, I've been able to hold them in check. Difficult work, but entirely worthwhile. And you've had a whisper about my efforts, have you, Aid, on both the Dione and Tasker front? The Dione situation being hugely more important, naturally. I'm thrilled you can regard me as so much an ally that you make this personal call, despite your commitment to the cultural occasion at Faunt Castle today and tomorrow, I gather.'

‘You're twenty-one thousand pounds fucking short for October, give or take a twenty,' Dean said.

‘We can't overlook that, Gordon.'

‘Certainly not,' Hodge said. Pellotte thought Hodge's very amused but still entirely convincing smile said it would be crazy for anyone, including him, Hodge, to think they
might
overlook it. ‘Or, actually nearer twenty-three, by my reckoning.'

Hodge: spare, mid-height and long faced – the sort of face that might look sulky and hostile, but ready nearly always to turn to smiles, though, obviously, not if he was getting beaten shitless, for openers. His eyes managed integrity and friendship at consummate speed from a neutral start. He wore a couple of rings on his right hand, both triple amethysts, as far as Pellotte could make out, and one of those bulky watches on his left wrist, just below the edge of the sweater arm, with several dials, for different time zones, or blood pressure readings, or barometric forecasts, or luminous compass bearings to guide underwater diving explorers in a black lake.

The firm ran a £10,000 prize competition for ‘Trader of the Year'. Hodgy had scooped it three times, though, admittedly, he'd been second on the last occasion, but moved up to first when the original winner, Gladstone Milo Naunton, got shot dead in a territory spat by something of very small calibre, but effective. This occurred only twenty-four hours before formal announcement of the award.

In a way, Pellotte admired those who used small calibre guns because they indicated precision and the coolness to achieve it. Almost anyone could blast a target's head or chest away with a .45, but a .22 had to be pinpoint. He wondered where Hodge kept the .45 Sokolovsky. He didn't have it on him. A harness under the sweater would cause an obvious bulge, and so would a pistol in his jeans. The Sokolovsky was a big gun, as pistols went. Pellotte and Dean kept the Brownings in the side pockets of their jackets. Probably, Hodge would spot the outlines, and he should know, anyway, that these were their usual weapons. But that might be for the good – deterrence.

Gladstone Milo Naunton's removal during that turf trouble could have caused chaos. However, Pellotte had ordered at once that Hodge must go to top place following the death: a kind of walkover, a walkover over a corpse. Some colleagues and associates of Gladstone had wanted him to be named as ‘honorary' or ‘posthumous' winner in tribute to his work in the period, but Pellotte pointed out as tactfully as he could that the contest was not to find ‘Deceased Trader of the Year'. He insisted the competition must look forward as well as to the period just past, and this required someone living to collect the distinction. Tasker, the journalist, had been quizzing people on Whitsun about this difficult management episode, and Pellotte thought his curiosity very unnecessary. Financially, he certainly helped Gladstone's live-in and probably principal boyfriend, Bert (Albert) Jutland Marsh, for the present. That was only basic humanity.

Dean said: ‘I've gone over the figures taking into account all due variables, and, in fact, allowing a one point five per cent shortfall factor in your favour for poor street weather from the eleventh to the thirteenth, and for that special police clampdown on discos and raves in the third week. We still come to a twenty-one thousand pounds plus gap. Adrian likes to run a tidy operation. It's . . . well, it's of his essence, a passed-down attitude of his family, like politics with the Kennedys, or the Redgraves and theatre.'

‘Famed for it. Extensively and justly praised for it,' Hodge said with full enthusiasm in his tone. ‘Mention Adrian's name far, far afield and people will immediately refer to the notable abstention from hand jewellery and then very soon afterwards to the tidiness of his operation.' He glanced down at the amethysts, his horse-collar face shifty for a moment in possible shame at his own skittish trinkets. ‘Ringlessness, tidiness, these are synonymous with Adrian. This is what I tell people agitating now about Dione and Bale. I ask them how . . .
how
they can turn against a chief of Adrian's solid, earned reputation merely because his daughter chooses to step out of line.' Quickly, he softened this: ‘That is, again, in
their
embittered, palsied view, to step out of line. It's not a view I or several others in the firm can share. I say to the anti-Dione lobby, “Please judge Adrian Pellotte as Adrian Pellotte, not just as the father of a supposedly headstrong, heart-strong woman. Consider his enormous mercantile achievements over almost a decade, his status on Whitsun and afield. Would you
dare
act against him in person? Yet, by acting against Dione, or even against Rupert Bale, you would, in fact, be acting against Adrian.” In their rabid state they don't seem to have realized that.'

‘So where's the fucking absent takings, Gord?' Dean replied.

‘Of course, I realize this is also a concern for you, Adrian,' Hodge said. ‘Comparatively very minor as against worries over Dione and the dead journalist – a lucre matter only – but still indubitably a concern.'

‘No question you owe it,' Dean said.

‘Undoubtedly,' Hodge said.

‘So, where?' Dean grew edgy, impatient. ‘Listen, Gordon,' he said, ‘not to press unduly, but I'm billed to give a lecture on a book topic. It's in the printed programme. This is a quite educated gathering – people from northern universities and so on, and Boston USA.'

‘I'd heard about that,' Hodge said. ‘Admirable. I think it's grand to have interests outside the work environment.'

‘I can't be late,' Dean said. ‘It's disrespectful to the author concerned and to other members of the Society.'

‘Certainly,' Hodge said. ‘I'll admit that this, what you might call “missionary work” on behalf of Adrian and Dione among the disaffected in our organization, has preoccupied me, rather. And the Tasker whispers. Hence, my self-accounting sessions fell behind a little – the major payment handed in, of course, but then these little catch up sums sidelined momentarily.'