Armadillo

by William Boyd

  The Book of Transfiguration

  ‘– and this is Adrian Bolt,’ Hogg was saying, ‘Dymphna Macfarlane, Shane Ashgable, Ian Fetter, and, last but by no means least, Lorimer Black.’

  ‘How do you do?’ Lorimer said, coaxing his features into what he hoped was a smile of welcome. He was now familiar with the full meaning of the expression ‘etched with pain’. He felt like Gérard de Nerval in the photograph by Nadar. A very sharp burin had been at work on his head but the ache in his shoulder had shown ambitious powers of improvisation in the hours since the attack. His whole left side was experiencing collateral damage, even his left foot seemed to be throbbing dully in sympathy. Hogg was introducing the GGH loss adjusters to their newest colleague, Felicia Pickersgill, a tough-looking woman in her forties with thick, badgery grey hair and a shrewd, unimpressed look in her eye. He had not really concentrated on Hogg’s preamble but he thought he recalled that she had held some senior rank in the WRENS or the army, something in the services anyway, before she had joined a bank and then an insurance company, probably Military Police, Lorimer thought, Hogg would respond well to that in a curriculum vitae. However, all Lorimer wanted to focus on was the wine in the bottles standing behind the plates of canapés on Hogg’s desk. He had vomited twice on waking this morning and had generously brandied his tea as a result. The pain had dimmed for a while but now he needed more analgesic alcohol.

  ‘– extremely pleased to welcome Felicia to GGH and look forward to her special expertise contributing to the success and reputation of the firm.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ Rajiv and Yang Zhi said in unison and Janice began to clap, but Hogg held up a palm for silence.

  ‘Felicia knows, as indeed you all know, that you represent the hand-picked élite of our profession. We are few in number but our power and influence is out of all proportion to our size. GGH has established itself as pre-eminent in the highly competitive world of specialist loss adjusters. Much of this success is down to you and your efforts. I know I can be a bit stern and severe (dutiful chuckles) but it’s because only the highest standards allow us to thrive. To thrive and flourish in a difficult, nay, harsh world. When things get tough, as an American cinema artiste once said –’

  (Oh get on with it, Lorimer thought.)

  ‘– the tough get going. Only the toughest survive here and Felicia, I know, is going to make a valuable contribution to our “special forces”. We look forward to working with her.’

  Hogg led the applause, Lorimer led the advance on the food and drink. He was on his second Chardonnay when Hogg pushed his big face up to his.

  ‘I hope you were listening, Lorimer, cleaned out the ear wax. Words of wisdom. What’s the matter with you? Look like death warmed up.’

  ‘Someone tried to mug me last night. Severe blow on the shoulder.’

  ‘Oh. Any advance on Gale-Harlequin?’

  ‘I think I may have a new lead.’

  ‘I thought I might put Felicia on the case. Bit of backup for you.’

  Lorimer did not like the sound of this. ‘I’m better on my own, I think.’

  ‘We only judge by results here, Lorimer.’ Hogg turned away.

  Lorimer smiled weakly and popped a vol-au-vent into his mouth, drained his glass and refilled it and went in search of Dymphna.

  ‘Why are you walking in that canted-over way?’ she asked. ‘You look awful.’

  ‘Random urban violence. But you should see the other guy.’

  ‘I don’t like the look of this Felicia. Do you think she and Hogg are lovers?’

  ‘I refuse to contemplate that possibility.’

  ‘Shane thinks she’s been sent to spy on us.’

  ‘Could be. Hogg’s got a terminal dose of bunker mentality at the moment. Listen, Dymphna, you know lots of journalists. Could you introduce me to one who understands property deals?’

  ‘I can always ask Frank.’ Frank was her ex-boyfriend who had worked on the financial pages of The Times.

  ‘I just need someone who knows the ropes. I’ll give him the information, he can supply the analysis.’

  Dymphna lit a cigarette and looked interested. ‘What’s all this about? Gale-Harlequin?’

  ‘Yes. No. Possibly.’

  ‘That just about covers everything,’ she said, sardonically ‘I hear Hogg won’t pay your bonus.’

  ‘Who told you that, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Rajiv. Don’t worry, I’ll find you your journalist.’ She looked at him meaningfully. ‘What’s my reward?’

  ‘My undying gratitude.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll have to do better than that, Lorimer Black.’

  Chapter 14

  The day of the Dupree inquest dawned bright and cloud-free, with a blue sky of near alpine clarity and a low blazing sun that cast sharp shadows and burned blindingly off the rows of car windows parked outside the coroner’s court in Hornsey.

  Lorimer walked slowly down the steps to the innocuous brick building – like a science lab in a new comprehensive school, he thought – not looking forward to his first appearance as a key witness and wincing as he inadvertently flexed the fingers of his left hand. Any movement seemed to affect adversely the big shoulder muscle (the trapezius, as he now knew it was called, having looked it up in an encyclopaedia), transforming itself into a pain-trigger, tracing itself back to the crushed fibres. His shoulder had now turned a lurid damson-brown, like some horrible algae infesting his epidermis.

  ‘Morning, Mr Black.’ Detective Sergeant Rappaport stood in the lee provided by the concrete columns of the main door, a small cigar in his hand. ‘Lovely day for it.’

  Lorimer noticed that the coroner’s court was adjacent to an anonymous-looking building signed ‘Public Mortuary’. The disturbing thought arrived in his head that it might contain the body of Mr Dupree, awaiting the verdict on his passing. It was better not to know.

  ‘What exactly will I have to do?’ Lorimer asked.

  ‘A formality, Mr Black. Just tell them how you found Mr Dupree. Then I give my spiel. There’s a member of the family with a few observations on Mr D’s state of mind at the time of the incident. Should wrap things up inside of an hour. By the way, what’s happened to your car?’

  Lorimer told him and they went inside and upstairs, where, in a dim hall, small groups of people stood around, hushed and nervous as if at a funeral, talking in low voices. Juvenile delinquents, washed, smart and contrite, squired by their parents, glum no-hopers, petty thieves, self-righteous merchants pursuing creditors through small-claims courts, traffic code violators, ashamed drunken drivers swearing sobriety. Lorimer felt cast down being amongst their number: ‘witness to a suicide’, that was his tag, his category, and somehow it reduced him to their level. Here were life’s niggles and gripes, not real problems – the snagged nail syndrome, the minor toothache disturbance, the sprained ankle effect. There was no drama or tragedy or big emotion about what happened here; instead there were misdemeanours, cautions, tick-ings-off, wrist-slappings, minor fines, licences endorsed, bans administered, debts verified, injunctions granted… It was all too tawdry.

  Yet he still felt dry-mouthed and insecure when he took the stand and swore his oath and the coroner, a stout woman with a rigid ash-blonde perm, asked him to describe his discovery of Mr Dupree. He did so, recalling the day, the hour of the appointment.

  ‘You had no inkling such a likelihood – Mr Dupree’s suicide – was, ah…likely?’

  ‘It was a completely routine meeting as far as I was concerned.’

  ‘Could he have been suffering from depression?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so. It had been a serious fire, his factory was completely ruined. Anyone would have been entitled to feel depressed in those circumstances.’

  She consulted her notes. ‘You are a loss adjuster, I see. In what way were you involved with the deceased?’

  ‘Our job is to ascertain the validity of an insurance claim. We are employed by the insurance company – to see if it’s
fair.’

  ‘And in this case it seemed fair.’

  ‘As far as I know,’ Lorimer said evasively. ‘There were some figures that had to be confirmed – the exact value of an order from the USA. I know our investigation was effectively over.’

  Rappaport took the stand after him and read off the relevant facts: Mr Dupree’s age, the time of Lorimer’s phone call, the time of death, the cause of death, the authenticity of the death certificate, the absence of indications of foul play. His voice was strong, his pleasure in his role evident, so evident he seemed constantly to be repressing a self-satisfied smile.

  Through the window to his right Lorimer could see a square of blue sky being invaded by some serious-looking grey clouds… His mind wandered, as he realized for the first time in his adult life he was going to have to ask his bank manager for an overdraft – a bad sign that, an evil omen. Damn Hogg. He did not hear Rappaport come down from the stand and was only half aware of the conversation between the clerk and the coroner. But he could have sworn that when they called the next witness the clerk uttered a name very similar to ‘Mrs Malinverno’. It just showed how she dominated his –

  He looked around to see a thin, pale-faced woman with a weak chin and sharp nose, wearing a black suit, step nervously into the room and fussily take her place – much smoothing of skirts, dusting and hitching of sleeves – across from the coroner. She had an amber brooch on her lapel which she kept touching as if it were a talisman of some kind. She pointedly avoided looking at him, Lorimer noticed, even her shoulders were canted around, suggesting that some physical effort was being employed to prevent her turning to face him. The family member, he supposed, looking over at Rappaport, who grinned, gave him an A-OK sign and mouthed ‘well done’.

  The coroner was speaking: ‘Mrs Mary Vernon, you were the late Mr Dupree’s sister?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  Hence the black, Lorimer thought. Dupree had been unmarried, Rappaport had told him, ‘wedded to his work’, as the expression went. Must be an awful shock, a suicide in the family, Lorimer thought sympathetically, so many questions unanswered.

  ‘I had been abroad on a Mediterranean holiday,’ Mrs Vernon, née Dupree, was saying, with a slight tremble in her voice. ‘I had spoken to my brother on the phone twice in the week before he died.’

  ‘How would you describe his mood?’

  ‘Very worried and depressed, which is why I came straight from the airport to see him. He was very upset at the way the insurance company was behaving – the delays, the questions, the refusal to pay.’

  ‘This company was Fortress Sure?’

  ‘He kept talking about the loss adjuster they had sent round.’

  ‘Mr Black?’

  Finally her eyes moved to him. The inhumane coldness of her gaze flayed him. Jesus Christ, she thinks it was me who –

  ‘It must have been,’ she said. ‘My brother, Osmond, never mentioned his name, he kept talking about the loss adjuster.’

  ‘Mr Black said that the appointment with your brother was completely routine.’

  ‘Why was my brother so upset, then? He dreaded the visit of the loss adjuster, dreaded it.’ Her voice was rising. ‘Even when I called the last time he kept saying, “The loss adjuster is coming, the loss adjuster’s coming.”’ She was pointing at him now. ‘These people were tormenting and terrifying an emotionally disturbed elderly man whose whole life had been destroyed.’ She rose to her feet. ‘I believe that this man sitting here, Mr Lorimer Black, drove my brother to his death!’

  At which point the clerk shouted, ‘Order! Order!’, the coroner started thumping her gavel on the desk and Mrs Vernon burst into tears. Lorimer was thinking: Hogg, what had Hogg done to terrorize Mr Dupree? Some people were never meant to cope with Hogg. He was too much, too powerfully malevolent, too strong a force, Hogg… Business was adjourned for ten minutes as Mrs Vernon was helped from the room, then the coroner duly returned a verdict of death by suicide.

  ‘There you go,’ Rappaport said, handing over the slip of paper upon which was written Mrs Vernon’s address and telephone number. Lorimer felt he had to call or write to explain to clear his name, rid his reputation of this appalling slur or, even, better, arrange somehow for Hogg to tell her the truth, which would be far more effective. Rappaport had advised against trying to make contact, but had been happy to procure the address.

  ‘Clearly overcome with grief,’ Rappaport analysed, confidently. ‘They don’t want to hear it, Mr Black. I wouldn’t give it a thought. Happens all the time. Wild, wild accusations are made all the time. Totally out of order. Strangely attractive woman, though.’ They were standing by the coffee machine in the lobby drinking the hot fluid it provided.

  ‘No,’ Rappaport went on, philosophically, ‘they want to blame someone, you see, they need to, anyone – usually because of their own guilt, somewhere along the line, and usually it’s us, the police, they go for with their wild accusations. Lucky for me you was in the frame.’ He chuckled.

  ‘Lucky for you?’ Lorimer said bitterly. ‘She practically accused me of murder.’

  ‘Got to develop a thicker skin, Mr Black.’

  ‘My professional reputation’s at stake, if this gets out.’

  ‘Ah, seeking the bubble reputation, Mr Black. Don’t worry about it. Anyway, nice to see you again. Cheers.’

  Rappaport sashayed off, body swaying like a gun-slinger, through the crowds of yobbos, petty criminals and pinched-faced litigants. Perhaps he isn’t so dim after all, Lorimer thought, troubled, resenting Rappaport’s cockiness, his breezy insouciance, and realizing that at this particular moment his hatred extended to every human being on the planet. But I’m an innocent man, he wanted to yell out to these furtive people, I’m not like you. Hogg has landed me in it again.

  100. George Hogg’s Philosophy of Insurance. Hogg spoke frequently about this theory, it was close to his heart. ‘To the Savage in the jungle,’ he would say, Ho our Savage Precursors, all life was a lottery. All his endeavours were hazardous in the extreme. His life was literally one big continuous gamble. But times have changed, civilization has arrived and society has developed, and as society develops and civilization marches forward this element of chance, of hazard, is steadily eliminated from the human condition.’ At this point he would pause, look around, and say, Anyone here foolish enough to believe that?… No, my friends, life is not made that way, life does not run smoothly along tracks that we have laid down. We all know, deep in the secret places of our souls, that our Savage Precursors had got it right. However much we seem to have it under control, to have every eventuality covered, all risks taken into account, life will come up with something that, as the good book says, “disturbs all anticipations”. And this is what we, the loss adjusters, embody. This is our vocation, our métier, our calling: we exist for one reason alone – to “disturb all anticipations”.’

  The Book of Transfiguration

  Lorimer’s mood was still dark and unsettled as he drove to Chalk Farm and parked his car not far from Flavia’s house. He felt a profound need to see her again, even clandestinely, the whole Dupree business reminding him of that first day, that first magical, dream-like glimpse. It was as if the sight of the flesh and blood Flavia would confirm his sanity somehow, reassure him that all was not skewed and awry in his increasingly demented existence.

  He parked thirty yards down the street from her front door and settled down, with thudding heart, to wait. The street was avenued with lime trees and the ageing, flaking, psoriasistic stucco houses on either side were built on a grand scale, with large bow windows, porches and balustraded flights of steps up from the street, but were now all sub-divided into bedsits, flats or maisonettes, judging from the crowded ladders of bell-pushes ranked beside the doors.

  The clouds had obliterated the morning’s fresh blue sky and now spots of rain began to tap against the windscreen as he hunched down in his seat, arms folded, and concentrated on feeling sorry for himself f
or a while. It was all getting out of hand: Torquil, the Rintoul attack, Hogg’s suspicions and now this hellish accusation from Mrs Vernon. Even when the coroner had returned her verdict, Lorimer thought he could detect a look of unpleasant doubt in her eye… And Flavia, what was going on – meeting him, flirting, kissing him? But that kiss outside the restaurant was different, of a different order, suggesting profounder change.

  He saw her, an hour and a half later, coming up the hill from the tube station, an umbrella up, wearing a chocolate-brown fun fur, a plastic shopping bag in one hand. He let her pass by the car before stepping out and calling her name.

  ‘Flavia.’

  She turned, surprised. ‘Lorimer, what’re you doing here?’

  ‘Sorry, I just had to see you. I’ve had the most shocking –’

  ‘You’ve got to go, you’ve got to go,’ she said in a panicky voice, glancing over her shoulder at the house. ‘He’s in there.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gilbert, of course. If he sees you he’ll go berserk.’

  ‘Why? He seemed fine in the café.’

  Flavia stepped behind a lime tree so she couldn’t be seen from the windows of her house. She made an apologetic face.

  ‘Because I told him something which, on sober reflection, I probably shouldn’t have.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That we were having an affair.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  ‘He found your number, on the scrap of paper. Rang it and got your answering machine. He’s a manically jealous sort of person.’

  ‘Why did you tell him, then? For God’s sake –’

  ‘Because I wanted to hurt him. He was being vile, cruel, and I just sort of blurted it out.’

  She paused, her face shadowed, as if she’d never considered the full consequences of her daring lie.