The Fat of Fed Beasts

by Guy Ware

  It’s also no surprise a real loss adjuster got here first – it happens – though this is a bit quick off the mark. The place was only robbed yesterday. I say there are a few details I need to check. She doesn’t look convinced, but she gets on with her work, and I get on with watching the way her breasts move whenever she reaches up for a file on the shelf above her desk.

  Wenlock’s door opens, and there are two policemen in it. One’s a uniform, the other’s a DS I know to nod to. A few years back, I turned up early at a dubious family suicide/slaughter job that was obviously never suicide (or I wouldn’t have been assigned it in the first place) and found the police still there. Mother in the bath with her wrists open and the bathwater an interesting shade of purple. Father and two kids in the car, the car in the lock-up, a garden hose jerry-rigged to the exhaust. What other, legitimate use they’d ever had for a hose living in a twelfth-floor flat wasn’t obvious to anyone. I asked for the story and DS Proctorow said living in this shit hole was enough to make anyone kill themselves.

  “Or each other?”

  “Both. Don’t quote me.”

  I said not to worry, I wasn’t a reporter. Which was true, to an extent.

  The kids got Limbo. Given their age and context, I thought that was pretty harsh. It wasn’t what I recommended, and was the last time Theo let me near anything with self-harm in it. The mother went down. The father survived and got life. Which, when I told him, Alex said was pretty much proof of God’s essential sarcasm. The kind of thing Alex says.

  Proctorow shakes my hand. I say, “I thought they wouldn’t let you anywhere near bodies these days?”

  Since the murder/suicide thing there’d been a serial murder-rapist thing that hadn’t gone right, and the story was that his career got caught up in the fall-out. He looks puzzled for a moment, then his face clears as if he’s given up worrying about it. He shakes his head.

  I say, “We should have that beer sometime.”

  The guy’s an oaf, but it never hurts.

  When I eventually get to see Wenlock, he’s professionally polite, but I can see it’s an effort. The corporate red that covers most of everything else is more muted in his office. There’s a computer on the desk, but it isn’t switched on. The desk itself gleams like some exotic beetle.

  “How can I help you, Mr Pitt?”

  He has taken my card, and that’s the name on it.

  I say, “I appreciate that you’ve already been over the systems issues with my assistant.” I’m getting that in right away, to get off the defensive and flatter the guy with the idea he’s dealing with the top dog now. And save having to talk about alarms and CCTV for half an hour. Pretty slick, I think, but Wenlock says, “Actually, she seemed more interested in one of the witnesses.”

  She? There are women loss adjusters, real ones, I know. I’ve met a few. I slept with one once. (Even I was surprised when the beautiful without your glasses thing worked.)

  I was the one who called what we do loss adjusting. Alex has some crap about Ancient Egyptians, Rada goes straight theology; I prefer something a bit more up to date. Loss adjusting is a real profession in the insurance industry: they have exams and an institute and everything. We’re not in the insurance business, exactly, but the term appealed to me. It’s a kind of metaphor. Alex raised his eyebrows when I said that, like he was surprised I knew what a metaphor was, but Theo said he liked it. That was the first time I thought I might be there for the long term, not just waiting for something better to turn up. A loss adjuster. Who I am.

  I smile chummily and say, “For the moment, I’m interested in the victims.”

  “Quite right, Mr Pitt. I don’t have to remind you that the bank is the real victim here.”

  I suppose bank managers have to be heartless bastards – it goes with the job like a pension and a reserved parking space – but, even so. He looks young for the job, dressed up in his father’s clothes.

  “As a business, which is worth more to you, Mr Wenlock – an employee or a customer?”

  “It depends . . .” He clamps his thin lips tight to cut himself off. “We like to think of our people as people . . .”

  I can’t help laughing at that, and Wenlock looks startled.

  “OK. So when one of your employee-people and one of your customer-people both get shot in the head, which is the bigger loss?”

  Wenlock presses a button underneath the desk.

  He says, “I made quite clear to your colleague this morning that nobody here was shot in the head, or anywhere else. Shots were fired and a number of our people” – he underlines the word in a way that makes it almost visible – “are suffering from shock. One man is being treated for a possible broken rib. But nobody – nobody – was seriously injured. Nobody was shot.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “If someone had been shot in my bank, Mr Pitt, do you think I wouldn’t know?”

  I pretend to think about that.

  “You might be lying.”

  He pauses long enough to show that he has registered the insult but isn’t going to react.

  “The police were just here, Mr Pitt. They are investigating a robbery. They are quite clear about that. It is only you and your colleague who seem to think otherwise. She was very insistent – and, I must say, quite offensive – on this point.”

  Now I know it can’t be a coincidence.

  “This colleague of mine? Tall girl? Pale? Short hair? Mid-thirties?”

  Wenlock nods. But I didn’t really need to ask. It wasn’t the insurance company that had got here first.

  The PA appears in the doorway and Wenlock says that Mr Pitt is leaving.

  I stop off at the café between the bank and the office, and order an espresso. A girl with studs in her face says “Double?” and I nod without thinking about it.

  There are no claims to adjust. Rada has already been in asking questions she shouldn’t, so she must know already. Theo said the MI would decide if there was a disciplinary case to consider. Which in my opinion is a fucking stupid question because there isn’t any question. She walked out on at least one and maybe two dead contenders, when either or both of them might’ve had claims we’d be interested in. Plus she waltzed off after some nutty old professor who by rights should’ve been dead but wasn’t, and therefore wasn’t any of our fucking business. Open and shut.

  Basically, Rada’s fucked up. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

  So what’s she up to now?

  I pay for the coffee and take it over to a stool in the window. It pisses me off that she’s beaten me to the bank. I don’t care that she’s getting herself into deeper shit: the deeper the better. Theo’s retiring, but there’s no way he’ll let Riverside House stop him choosing his successor.

  I should have got in first. I left first – Rada was still chewing her way through the horse food Gary calls breakfast. But she still got to work before me, even when she isn’t supposed to be at work at all. I know how: she rides a bike and I drive. I park in the tiny, over-priced building site that passes for a car park around the corner from the office, and then walk up to the gym near the bridge. As Gary never tires of pointing out, my routine makes no sense. It’s financially ruinous, environmentally disastrous and a massive waste of time. But what can I do? With a car like mine, it’d be a criminal offence not to drive it.

  At least Alex won’t be in yet. I’m pretty sure Alex will be rolling out of bed right about now, asking Gary if there’s any coffee left. And Gary – who, let’s face it, is a total pushover, even if he is a whiny, whale-hugging lefty-liberal git – is probably saying no, but he’ll make some more. And he’ll know what Guatemalan estate the beans came from and exactly how much the pickers got paid, because he bought it at the organic food co-operative where he’s the biggest customer and that’s the sort of bollocks they talk about. Alex doesn’t give a shit about th
e coffee-pickers because Alex doesn’t give a shit about anything, really, but he’d be getting a cup of coffee made, and by now Gary would probably be toasting him a slice of that bread he bakes that tastes like someone has been sick in the dough. Why my sister ever married Gary is beyond my comprehension.

  God moves in mysterious ways, she says.

  I finish my coffee. I’m wasting time. When I get to the office, I’ll replay the conversation with Wenlock in my head. There’s always stuff you can learn that way.

  We should make friends with our mistakes. That’s how we improve. I read that, I think. Or maybe it’s one of those things Theo says? I’m pretty sure I read it.

  I put down the empty cup. The thick porcelain clicks dully against the saucer, and I get a memory flash of putting down the cup Wenlock’s PA gave me, putting it on the low glass table next to the gym bag I’d left on the table deliberately so I wouldn’t forget it when it was time to leave. Great. Now I’ll have to waste more time going back for it. I think about just leaving it there. Let them live with the reek of my sweaty shorts. I am definitely tempted. But there are expensive products in the bag, too. Things for my skin and my hair I don’t want to be without. I’ll pick it up at lunchtime.

  When I get to the office, it turns out I was wrong about Alex, who’s already there. If mistakes are my friends, I must be pretty popular today.

  Alex seems to be trying to make himself as uncomfortable as possible – leaning back in his chair with his dirty trainers up on one arm of his L-shaped desk, twisting his body to type into the computer on the other, the phone cable curled around his back and under one armpit, the handset clamped all the while between his shoulder and his ear. On my way past to my own desk, I catch his attention and mouth: “R. S. I.” Alex raises his eyes to the ceiling. He manages to shrug while keeping the phone in place. I slip my jacket onto my personal hanger, the one with the broad pads that keep the shape of the shoulders better. I sit down, hitching up my suit trousers slightly to preserve the crease, before I press the button on my computer.

  When Alex hangs up he carries on typing for a moment. Then he says, “Mothers. Fuck’em.”

  “You said that yesterday.”

  “Did I?”

  I say, “What’s the case?”

  Alex swings his feet off the desk. “Kid gets caught in the wrong postcode. Abdullah Hatim.”

  “Abdullah? Why are we even looking at him?”

  “Because he was born Denis Spence and his mum never accepted his conversion.”

  “It’s not her call.”

  “Not normally.”

  I wait.

  “But Denis is fifteen . . .”

  I whistle. I’m enjoying this now. I say, “Bad luck.”

  “. . . and Denis’ mum is Gina Spence.”

  I can see the name’s supposed to mean something to me, but it doesn’t.

  Alex adopts his favourite tone. Like he’s a professor and I’m a remedial student. “For your information, D, until her husband left and she couldn’t cope with a six-year-old and the job, or didn’t want to, Gina Spence sat right about where you’re sitting now. She was one of the best. She has weight with Theo.”

  “Who always says we don’t work for the living.”

  “Until the living turn out to be his old mates.”

  This gets better.

  “Oh, you poor fuck,” I say, shaking my head. “You poor, poor fuck.”

  Alex scowls. He picks an empty plastic water bottle off his desk and throws it at me.

  I turn away, towards my PC, rolling my shoulders. I’m not ready yet to talk about the bank and, when I do, I won’t be wasting it on Alex. I open my email. Nothing there that can’t wait. A train rumbles past, level with the office window. I close my eyes. I breathe in deeply through my nose and out through my mouth five times.

  Alex says, “Do you have to do that?”

  I ignore him. Actually, I do better than that: I notice that Alex is talking, notice that it will irritate me if I let it, and I choose not to. I put both thoughts aside. I have read about this, too. I place myself back in the bank, back with Wenlock.

  Wenlock said Rada pressed him about the dead woman – or women – which is how I knew it had been Rada. Because, if there weren’t any dead women, then surely only somebody who’d been there at the time and heard the shots and the screams and really thought somebody was dead, would have done that. But what exactly had Wenlock said? I put the question aside and concentrate on my breathing. I feel the way my diaphragm rises and falls, feel the air pass over my nostrils. I count one – in; two – out, up to ten and start again. I can see Wenlock’s desk reflecting the light from the window, Wenlock behind it – he hadn’t stood up or offered to shake my hand. Wenlock’s face was pale and round, his collar tight. He took the card I offered and called me Mr Pitt. He had watched me closely as I made my opening pitch and had interrupted me: actually she seemed more interested in one of the witnesses. Not victims: witnesses. I’d assumed she’d gone there about the dead women that weren’t dead – just as I had – and that’s what had offended Wenlock. But Rada had really been interested in the witness.

  I feel a surge of energy that comes with knowing I’ve found something. I almost open my eyes – it is hard to stay in the chair but I force myself to concentrate on my breathing again. One – in; two – out; three – in . . . Which witness? Well, that’s obvious: the professor, the old guy Rada said she followed and lost. It wouldn’t be hard to track him down; not if the bank was willing to play ball. The ATM records would show immediately who had withdrawn money in the middle of the robbery, just before the first shot was fired. That would give them a name, an address, everything. But Wenlock wouldn’t have given out that kind of information to Rada. So what has she got? And what is she looking for?

  I put the questions aside, concentrate on my breathing again.

  Alex says, “Ommmmmmm.”

  I throw the water bottle back.

  Alex says, “Peace, man.”

  He’s sitting there in holey jeans and dirty trainers saying this to me? I tell him, I’m not the fucking hippie.

  Alex shakes his head slowly. “And yet you come in here with your meditation shit.”

  “I’m not meditating, dipstick. I’m focusing my mental energies. Something you might want to try, if you had any. I’m using visualisation to . . .”

  “If it looks like a duck . . .”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  “And quacks like a duck . . .”

  This is the sort of thing that pisses me off about Alex. He brings nothing to the party. Just sits there quacking. Quacking about quacking. I say, “It’s a technique I read.”

  Alex laughs in a way that makes me want to seriously hurt him. It is not a laugh that means what I said was funny. It’s a noise that’s supposed to let me know I’ve just proved I’m a moron. But I’m smart enough to know that’s what his little snigger was supposed to do, so I ignore it.

  He says, “Was that in an actual book?”

  I sit down again, make a point of opening an email.

  Alex says, “No, but really? Did the author have a middle initial? And a PhD?”

  I open another email; Alex waits. It seems like he has all the time in the world. Some of us have work to do. I delete the email unread, open another. Alex’s breathing becomes gradually louder until I can no longer pretend not to hear it. I delete another email without even opening it and stand up suddenly, sending my chair skittering back across the office.

  “Focusing your mental energies?” Alex asks placidly.

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  Theo arrives just as the last ‘f’ dies on my lips.

  How has that happened? Theo steps into the middle of the office, between my desk and Alex’s. He carries a cane, with a silver handle in the shape of a dog’s head. He is wearing
the pale grey Prince of Wales check, and a hand-made shirt the colour of pus. His tie is lime green, though I imagine he calls it something else. He must have been very cheerful when he dressed this morning. Now my profanity causes him to shake his head sadly. He even taps the cane on the carpet.

  “That’s enough, boys.”

  I am twenty-nine. Alex must be thirty-six, the same as Rada. He latched on to her at university and hasn’t let go since. We’re a bit old to be ‘boys’, even if Theo himself came out of the Ark. I keep the thought to myself. Not much longer, now.

  Theo looks each of us in the eye. He plants the cane between his feet and folds his hands over the dog’s head.

  “While Rada is, ah, absent, we will of course have to cover her workload. I will take two cases myself, but I have to ask you boys to share the rest out between you. It should not be for long.”

  I’m so surprised I can’t stop myself. “You?”

  Theo smiles. “Indeed. It is not too preposterous, I hope? I thought it might be quite fun to get back into the field again. Before I finally let go.”

  Fair enough, I suppose, if that’s what he wants. But things have changed a bit since 1812, or whenever it was he last stepped outside. The internal combustion engine, manned flight, genocide, methamphetamine, the internet.

  “I’m not that old,” Theo says.

  Alex says, “Of course you are, sir. That’s the point of you.”

  And that, right there, is number three or four in the list of one hundred reasons why I’m going to step into the old man’s shoes, and Alex isn’t.

  I find myself saying, “Rada was at the bank this morning.”

  Theo waits.