The Green Flash (47 page)

‘Even with the old shoulder-chip, eh?'

‘You must tell me about that sometime.'

‘Haven't you heard enough?'

‘That your mother was Jewish? That your father was a bit of a wastrel? Doesn't explain a thing.'

‘All the Abdens are bad news – more or less – aren't they? It's what Mary never tires of saying.'

‘She's got a thing about it. Malcolm was not all that difficult – if you try to be detached about it. Neither are you. Stop playing at being a bad boy.'

I laughed. Trina said: ‘I think this poor little fish is dead, Mummy.'

‘Well, you wouldn't throw it back,' said Alison. ‘Let me see … Yes, I think it is. Pity. It's a tiny baby plaice.'

‘How d'you know that?' I asked.

‘My parents had a house on Skye when we were young. Used to spend our summer holidays there. Often went fishing with my brothers.' She turned to Catriona. ‘This is a very baby plaice, Trina. D'you see, it has eyes on both sides of its head. It swims like this.' She held her hand vertically. ‘But when it gets older both eyes come almost together and it swims on its side.' Hand held flat. ‘Like that. It always swims on its left side, right side up. But a turbot does the opposite, swims on its right side, left side up.'

‘I don't
believe
you!' I said, laughing again. ‘It's a fairy story, isn't it, Trina?'

‘Nothing of the sort!'

‘Yes, yes, yes!' said Trina, clapping her hands excitedly. ‘It's a fairy story! Mummy, can I go another ride in Uncle David's car?'

‘Certainly you cannot if you don't believe my true stories!'

‘But Uncle David doesn't.'

‘Uncle David,' said Alison, ‘is a foolish man. Not yet quite grown up.'

‘My God!' I said. ‘Many a true word.' Then I looked her over, carefully and particularly and possessively, from her cropped hair to her fawny eyes, to her open blouse, to her worn blue slacks, to her clean, bare, naked feet. ‘Yes, I'll take you out, Trina, when we get back, on one condition: that you first have an hour's walk with Mrs Coppell over the moors.'

II

In my pocket I had a letter I didn't tell Alison about, a letter from Erica:

Dear David,

Surprise, surprise, a note from little me! I depend for news of your movements on your Russian friend, who tells me you have spent all these weeks in the bonny Highlands acquiring a Gaelic tan; but are shortly returning to London, at least for a visit. Does this mean I should air your pyjamas and put the electric blanket on? We are still officially husband and wife and cohabit according to the law, so I rather assume you'll make use of Knightsbridge House, no. 24, at least as a
pied à terre
. Don't let my presence disturb you; as you know, it's a large flat with plenty of living space and no need to conjoin unless we feel like it.

The Muscovites are of course long since back, and general opinion is that the selection committee boobed frightfully by not induding me. Consolation? Not much. Except that we could hardly have done worse. Francis wants me to go into strict training again. I'm hanging fire. Maybe we've got to get our own lives straightened out a bit first. We can't just go on living for ever in Dead Pan Alley. Perhaps a jolt or two would get the works moving again. Who knows what a little polite confrontation might do?

It may not have occurred to you – why should it? – that I was born twenty-six years ago next Thursday, and to celebrate an event which certainly has some importance in my life, I'm throwing a dinner party at the Dorchester. Only about eighteen. All our closest friends. Actually seventeen without you. Black tie; but a sweater with your face above it would pass. Time eight. No flowers by request.

PS. I will call you Sunday night for yea or nay.

On the way back to London I stopped in Inverness and Edinburgh to see the estate agents and old Macardle. I told Heeney to withdraw Wester Craig temporarily from the market. (I didn't want it suddenly whisked away in the present stage of my affairs.) This all took longer than expected and as it was blowing a gale and pelting with rain and the motorways were sure to be gurgling and splashing with traffic on a late Monday afternoon, I decided to get an early night, being sleepy after last night's long final hours with Alison. I left Edinburgh on Tuesday as dawn was breaking, but it was still a messy journey and I didn't break any records. I spent some of the driving time chewing over in my mind about the women in my life.

Shona was probably right in saying my marriage with Erica hadn't ever had a fair field. Her preoccupation with her fencing and my unwillingness to get drawn into another female web had strangled the thing in infancy. Was there any point in trying to revive it? Surely not. If I got a slice of the equity from the flotation of Shona & Co., I wouldn't need Erica's money; and Erica was sure of her title whatever happened in the divorce court. Seemed unlikely she'd raise many difficulties.

Yet Shona's rousing words to me, accusing me of not being willing to give anything to my marriage, scored at least a double ten on the dartboard. I hadn't given much, I knew I hadn't given much – I'd relaxed far more with Alison in a few weeks than with Erica in a year; not knowing why; it wasn't love; they were different women. Alison offered more, was warmer, more sexual, more demanding. Erica lived by the throwaway line. Yet maybe she cared when her throwaway lines were not picked up. Shona had said so, very pointedly, very angrily.

I didn't think I wanted to stay hitched to Erica, in any event. Her prospects, or lack of them, for producing another sprig of the Abden line was not the most important thing. She was light easy company, cynical, amusing; perhaps as good a person as anyone to choose to spend the rest of one's life with? But not for me, I thought, not for me.

On the telephone her voice had sounded like a stranger's: deeper, the flippant words not matching, like a movie out of sync. Had she really tried to make a go of it, was now racing two failures? After the fencing flop she'd needed all the support she could get, and I'd hardly given it her. But could I be blamed since she'd turned on me like a rattlesnake?

Anyway I'd said I'd go to the party. She sounded a bit coy about the people she'd asked, and I wondered whether her closest friends were going to be mine. As an incurable climber, she was likely to have asked all the titles in her address book. But, I said to myself, put a good face on it and play the old homecoming through with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of good will. For a while I'd see how tilings went before dropping the word divorce into our connubial bucket: it would probably hardly create a splash; if it did, if she objected for some unexpected reason, then we could just separate for a time. There was no hurry, and my aunt could wait another decade before I presented her with a suitable heir.

The Ferrari was playing up on the way back, needed a retune after all the taxiing it had done in Scotland, and I thought if there was time I'd try to take it round to the garage for a service, and get a taxi or something out to Barking. But there wasn't time. I went direct to the court and even then was half an hour late for the kick-off.

I sat next to Parker and Leo Longford but wasn't called. The culprits were duly arranged in the dock: Vince Bickmaster, Sitram Smith (wearing a turban), Maurice Laval, Matthew Charles and two others. They looked at me and I looked at them. You could pick out a few of their friends both in the court proper and in the public gallery. There was a man in dark glasses at the back of the court who wasn't unlike Charley Ellis but I couldn't be sure. Derek was noticeably not there.

When the day was ended Chalmers thanked me for putting in an appearance and said that, the way things had gone, there would be no need for me to turn up on the second day. But he wondered if as a last favour I'd mind coming back to the Yard with him. I had mentioned a man called Roger Manpole once, hadn't I? There were one or two photographs he would like me to see and comment on.

III

The glass and concrete beehive. The one thing modern architects can certainly do is design anonymous buildings. You could have found twenty like it in Tokyo or Hamburg or Chicago and been puzzled to know what the people did who worked there. You might have guessed a hospital or a TV studio before thinking it a police headquarters. Perhaps it had to be a bit of all three these days.

I'd thought Chalmers, though still polite enough, was a shade less regardful of me than when we first met, and after we talked a bit and I'd picked out one or two photos and I told him what I knew about the subjects, I said bluntly: ‘ Maybe you wonder how I know so many of these characters, even by sight and reputation. Or I expect you've already had it all printed out, have you?'

He straightened up from the photographs. ‘I imagine you know most of them from the Cellini, don't you? It's a well-run gambling club; it's never stepped out of line by breaking any of the fairly strict regulations governing such places; but it's known to be a meeting place for a number of the criminal classes. Not the big names perhaps: we look elsewhere for them; but the borderline people, the fringe people who occasionally break out and cause us trouble. I expect a moralist would say that wherever you get high-stake gambling you inevitably attract such people. How long have you been a member, Sir David?'

‘Oh … Sixteen, seventeen years. But what I meant was that I expect by now you've run my name through your computer and found that I've a record of a sort. One of the fringe people, in fact. In my jolly youth I spent four months in Pentonville.'

He pulled his trousers up over his stomach and went to the window.

‘As a matter of fact, we never did put you through the computer, Sir David.'

‘But you knew?'

‘It was pointed out to us about a month ago.'

‘Who took the trouble to point?'

‘That I'm not at liberty to say. But I have to tell you that it doesn't carry any weight with us.'

‘You surprise me.'

The telephone rang and he briefly answered it.

‘Don't get me wrong, sir. Of course our work is all about people with records. The average man who breaks the law more often than not has done it before, often in the same or a similar way, often in his youth; so inevitably we bear this in mind when looking at particular types of crimes and particular types of criminal. But we would be exceeding our brief if we allowed prejudice and suspicion to cloud our judgement in any way. Let me see, when were you – er – in prison?'

‘1966.'

‘Fourteen years. Well, after ten years it is a breach of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act to cite or speak of or publish details of any crimes committed by a person before that time.'

‘Or even to bear them in mind?'

‘That may be too much to ask. But I assure you you're quite in the clear, Sir David, so far as we are concerned.'

‘And you would not have mentioned it if I hadn't mentioned it.'

‘Of course not.'

I took out my car keys and weighed them in my hand. ‘ But I take it it was no friend of mine who brought this little incident to your notice.'

‘I'm really not at liberty to say.'

I listened to the rumble of the traffic. Going to be late for Erica's dinner. ‘ D'you think I could ask your secretary to ring my wife, tell her I'm on my way.'

‘Of course. And thank you again for your help.'

I stood up, stretching, suddenly feeling the long night, the short day.

‘A pity we can't pin something on Roger Manpole.'

‘I haven't given up hope,' said Chalmers.

IV

When I finally got home there was a single light burning in the hall and a note saying: ‘Gone ahead to be John the Baptist. We sit down to eat at eight thirty. Do
not
be late.'

It was eight o'clock then and I was tired and sweaty. I took a quick shower and while not yet dry pulled out a dinner jacket and black tie, found shoes; no socks (red socks, they would do); began dressing. I'd left the car at Owen's with instructions for it to be serviced, and reckoning anyway that it was easier to get a taxi from here. I could thumb a lift home with Erica at the end of the function. But when I went out all the taxis were busy. Eventually I found one and bundled in, clutching the thing I'd bought Erica in Edinburgh. It's all hell buying a present for a rich wife; she has everything except what you can't afford; in the end I'd found her a French bracelet with a few diamonds and sapphires. I knew she specially liked sapphires, but for £600 these obviously couldn't be top class. All the same it was pretty and was a gesture of goodwill, and she couldn't throw it out as a trinket.

Park Lane was full of slow-moving stuff, and I reckoned I could have made it quicker jogging across the Park. As I went up the steps of the hotel it was twenty minutes to nine. ‘Lady Abden's party? Oh, yes, sir, in the Belvedere Room on the seventh floor.' ‘Thank you, I know my way.'

Up in the lift, silently along the plush corridors; a waiter almost indistinguishable from the guests let me in. Laughter, talk, a bit high-pitched, they were already at supper, gilt mirrors reflecting endlessly the black coats and the sleek heads. Erica at the head in a brilliant sapphire-blue off-the-shoulder dress, blue gloves to above the elbow, £20,000 diamond brooch at her breast; fine earrings too. Hair drawn up in the high, backcombed style showing elegant neck and shoulders.

They were laughing as the waiter brought me in, and she was the first to see me.

‘Hi, David, come in, come in; we're only just through the caviar.' To the waiter: ‘Bring some for my husband, while we pause for breath.'

I was being offered a seat at the other end of the table. I sat down. My next-door neighbour was Derek Jones. On my left was a chap called Palmer who was a successful theatrical agent, good-looking but gaunt. Caviar and toast. Taittinger 1970. I picked up a knife and held it a few seconds unused.