by William Boyd
Lorimer worked late, doggedly going through the Gale-Harlequin contracts, paying special attention to the paperwork relating to the Edmund, Rintoul deal. They confirmed his suspicions, as he suspected they would, but the work could not distract him from the dark seep of melancholy that seemed to be penetrating his soul like a stain.
So he spent two and a half hours surfing the channels on his cable TV before he caught the Fortress Sure advertisement once more. He quickly switched on his video and managed to record the last forty seconds. Replaying it, and freezing the frame at the end, he stared at the girl’s gently shuddering face for some moments. Now he had her, caught fast, and it was indeed her, without doubt. And surely, he thought, cheered suddenly, there must be some straightforward way of finding out her name.
At half past four he padded quietly downstairs and slipped a note under Lady Haigh’s door. It read: “Dear Lady Haigh, is there any way I can prevent Jupiter’s last journey to the vet? What if I promise solemnly to look after him in the unlikely event of something happening to you? It would greatly please me. Yours ever, Lorimer.”
Chapter 4
Lorimer’s surveillance of Edmund, Rintoul Ltd had lasted two days and he did not anticipate it requiring much longer duration. He waited in a cafe across the Old Kent Road from their offices, a suite of rooms above a carpet warehouse. At the rear was a small builder’s yard, garlanded with razor wire and containing a couple of battered vans and, unusually, the firm’s own skip-lorry (which was also for hire). Lorimer turned in his seat to signal for another cup of tea, eventually catching the eye of the surly, unhappy patron who was swiping margarine on to a leaning tower of white bread slices. It was 10.45 in me morning and St Mark’s cafe was not busy: apart from himself there were a nervy, chain-smoking girl with lip, nose and cheek studs and a couple of old blokes in raincoats annotating the Sporting Life, doubtless waiting for the pub or the bookie’s to open.
The St Mark’s was unpretentious in the extreme, not to say unequivocally basic, but Lorimer took a perverse pleasure in the place—these caffs were steadily dying out and soon they’d be distant memories, or else lovingly recreated as temples of post-modern kitsch, serving cocktails along with sandwiches aux pommes frites. There was one long counter, a chilled display unit, a lino floor and a dozen formica-topped tables. Behind the counter was a huge handwritten menu laboriously detailing the dozens of combinations available from a few central ingredients—eggs, bacon, chips, toast, sausages, beans, mushrooms, gravy and black pudding. The windows facing the Old Kent Road were fogged and teary with condensation and the display unit contained only three ingredients for sandwiches—ham, tomato and chopped boiled eggs. Tea was served from an aluminium teapot, coffee was instant, the crockery was Pyrex, the flatware plastic. Such brutal frugality was rare, almost a challenge to its clientele. Only the boldest, the poorest or the most ignorant would seek shelter and sustenance here. Lorimer felt it could easily qualify for his Classic British Caffs series—an informal log he kept in The Book of Transfiguration of similar establishments that he had encountered on his wanderings across the city. Forget pubs, he reasoned, this was where the country’s true and ancient culinary heritage resided; only in these uncompromising estaminets would you find the quintessence of a unique way of English life, fast disappearing.
His dark brown steaming tea was poured, he milked and sugared it (Hogg would have approved) and he gazed across the road through the bleary porthole of clarity he had smeared in the condensation.
As far as he could tell, Dean Edmund was the builder of the partnership and Kenneth Rintoul the front man who dealt with the clients and contractors. They were both in their late twenties. Parked up on the cracked and weedy pavement in front of the graffitied shutters of the carpet warehouse were two shiny new motors—a Jaguar and a BMW—worth approximately £150,000 between them, so Lorimer had calculated, and Rintoul’s (the BMW) also had a personalized number plate - KR 007. Edmund lived with his wife and three children in a large new house in Epping Forest; Rintoul’s pad was a converted warehouse loft in Bermondsey with a distant view of Tower Bridge — there was clearly a deal of money swilling around. Rintoul sported a small ponytail and both men were neatly goateed. Lorimer had an appointment with them at eleven o’clock but he always thought it advisable to be ten minutes late—meetings tended to go better, he found, if they started with apologies.
174. The Recurring Lucid Dream. It is night and you are walking down a corridor, cool lino under your bare feet, heading towards a door. From behind this door comes the noise of many people whooping and cheering and the indistinct blather of a TV set with the volume high. You are vexed and aggravated, the noise is bothering you, angering you, and you want it to cease.
Just as you reach the door you realize you are naked. You are wearing only an unbuttoned shirt (pistachio green, un-ironed) and its tail floats above your naked buttocks as you stride down the corridor. It is not clear whether you are fully tumescent or not. You reach for the door knob (just as an extra-loud mass screech of delight followed by gulping ululations erupt in the room beyond)—but you suddenly withdraw your hand. You quickly turn and retrace your steps to your small boxy room, where you dress immediately and with care, before going out again into the night.
—The Book of Transfiguration
“This way, sir. Mr Rintoul and Mr Edmund will see you right away.”
“Sorry, I’m a bit late,” Lorimer said to the rear view of the young, black and heavily perfumed receptionist who led him down a short corridor to Rintoul’s office. The day before Lorimer had had his hair cut and this morning had lightly gelled it flat. He was wearing a fawn leather blouson jacket, a pale blue shirt and striped knitted tie, black trousers and Italian loafers. He had removed his signet ring and had replaced it with a tooled gold band which he wore on his right middle finger. His briefcase was new, shiny brass and polished leather. All specialist loss adjusters had their own approach to the job—some were aggressive, some cynically direct, a few bullied, or set out to inspire fear, others came in strong and hostile like hit-men, some were neutral apparatchiks emotionlessly executing orders—but Lorimer was different: he was much more interested in the absence of threat. He dressed this way not to disguise himself but—crucially, deliberately—to reassure: these were expensive clothes but they would not threaten the likes of Edmund or Rintoul, they did not hint at other worlds, strata of society alien or hostile or sitting in judgement—in theory they shouldn’t even notice what he was wearing, which was, in fact, their designed effect and the modus operandi of his personal and particular loss adjusting method. No one knew about this approach—methodology was never discussed or shared amongst the adjusters—and Hogg only judged by results, he did not care how success was arrived at.
Hands were warmly shaken: Rintoul was smiley, chipper, agitated, matey; Edmund tenser and more circumspect. Coffees were ordered, Priscilla, the receptionist, enjoined to use the espresso machine this time—not instant (“We can tell the difference, darling”)—and Lorimer began his apologies, blaming the delay on the diabolical traffic. They talked for some time on this subject, while the coffee was made and served, and the merits of alternative routes in and out of the East End were discussed in precise detail.
“Deano lives in Epping Forest,” Rintoul said, pointing a thumb at his partner. “Murder, isn’t it, Deano? Traffic.” Rintoul moved constantly, as if he could not decide which body position to adopt, as if he were testing them all out. His facial muscles too were similarly mobile, Lorimer noticed—was that a smile forming or a pout, a frown or an expression of surprise?
“M11, is it? Blackwall Tunnel?” Lorimer said. “Got to be fucking kidding. Every day, there and back?”
“Fucking nightmare,” Edmund admitted, reluctantly, with a sniffing toss of the head. He was a gruffer, slower, heavier man, not entirely at ease in the office, off the site. His hairy wrists looked thick and clumsy projecting from the fine striped cotton of his snazzy shirt cuffs; his go
atee was badly, half-heartedly shaved, as if he had grown it as the result of a dare rather than a genuine hirsute affectation.
“Yeah, well,” Lorimer said, winding up the traffic discussion, “all part of life’s rich pageant.” Polite chuckles at this. Lorimer was rounding his vowels, as well as swearing, and introducing the hint of a glottal stop. Click, click—he sprang the locks on his brief—“Well, gentlemen, shall we ponder the fire at the Fedora Palace?”
Incredulity mingled with regret (it had been the firm’s biggest contract to date), ritual cursing of the truly rotten filthy luck that so often attended those who toiled in the building trade (“Try finding decent plumbers,” Edmund said with real anger and resentment,
“they’ve gone, like they’re extinct. There ain’t any.”). Lorimer listened, nodded, winced, then he said, “There was a ten-grand-a-week penalty clause if you were late.”
A silence here: Edmund said, defiantly, too quickly, “We were on target.”
“Seems a bit steep,” Lorimer said, sympathetically, “steepest I’ve seen on a job like this.”
“Fucking right,” Rintoul said, bitterly. “But it’s the only way people like us get jobs like that, these days. They screw you on the penalty clause.”
“It makes no sense: you have to work so fast, can’t guarantee the same quality, surely?” Lorimer oozed sympathy, now.
Rintoul smiled. “Exactly. That’s how it works, see. You bust a gut, you finish on time. Then they fuck you on the snagging—“‘This isn’t right, that’s not right.” Refuse to pay the last instalment.” He turned to Edmund. “We didn’t get our full whack on what? Last three jobs?”
“Four.”
“See? They got you. Short and curlies.”
Lorimer looked at his notes. “You say you were on target to complete at the end of the month.”
“Definitely.”
“Absolutely.”
Lorimer paused. “What if I put it to you that you were actually running late, well late ?”
“We was a bit late on account of the fucking Turkish marble,” Edmund said, “but we had a waiver for that. All in order.”
“The quantity surveyors say you were looking at a ten—to fifteen-day penalty.”
“Whoever told you that,” Rintoul said evenly, his voice quieter, “is a fucking liar.”
Lorimer said nothing: silence could be so eloquent, silence could work like a rising tide on a sandcastle. Rintoul leaned back in his chair, folding his hands behind his head; Edmund stared at his lap. Lorimer put his notes away.
“Thank you, gentlemen. All seems very clear. I won’t trouble you no further.”
“I’ll walk you down,” Rintoul said.
Outside the carpet warehouse Rintoul turned his back to the wind and hunched his jacket to him, leaning close to Lorimer.
“Mr Black,” he said, with quiet vehemence, “I know what’s going on.” Lorimer thought he could detect a faint West Country burr beneath the East End twang, a sedimentary trace of Rintoul’s early life in Devon or Dorset, perhaps.
“Oh yeah? What is going on, Mr Rintoul?”
“I know you insurance people,” Rintoul continued, “you just don’t want to pay out, so you’re going to fucking shaft us with this fire business so you don’t have to pay the claim to Gale-Harlequin. We were on time to finish, Mr Black, no way we’d of been late. This is our life here, our livelihood. You could mess it all up for us, easy, you could ruin everything. I see the way you’re thinking, I see where this is heading…” He smiled again. “Please don’t go down that road, Mr Black.” There was no entreaty in his voice, but Lorimer was impressed—he was very nearly convincing.
“I’m afraid I can’t discuss my report with you, Mr Rintoul. Like you, we just try to do our job as professionally as possible.”
Lorimer drove away from the meandering mean street that was the Old Kent Road, his head busy, away from the giant new petrol stations and the unisex hair salons, the cash ‘n’ carrys, the tyre and wheel depots and the karaoke pubs. ‘Houses cleared’ signs told him, and he saw the evidence in the landscape everywhere. Timber merchants, panelbeaters, lorry parks and closed-down electrical goods merchants behind dusty diamond mesh grilles passed by until he drove beneath the river and emerged on the north bank, swerving east through Limehouse and Poplar and Blackwall towards Silver-town. Lorimer put in a call to the office to book an appointment with Hogg. Janice told him when he could come in, then added, “I got a call from Jenny, PR at the Fort, about that advert. They think the name you’re looking for is Malinverno. I’ll spell it: Flavia Malinverno. F-L-A-V-I-A—”
Lorimer stood in his empty sitting room looking at the view through curtainless windows. He had a clear sight of the City Airport across the choppy blue-grey waters of Albert Dock and beyond that, dark against the sky, the industrial alp of the Tate & Lyle sugar factory, wisps of steam emanating from various pipes and funnels, a steel Krakatoa threatening to blow. To his right, in the distance, stood the immense obelisk of Canary Wharf, its blinking eye on its summit flashing at him like a beacon across Canning Town, Leamouth and the Isle of Dogs. The light was cold and harsh, the horizons bulldozed flat, bereft of houses, crisscrossed by the elevated concrete ribbons of the spine roads and the M11 link and the stalky modernity of the tracks and stations of the Docklands Light Railway loftily picking its way from Beckton to Canning Town. Everything old was going here, or being transformed, cast out by the new. It seemed a different, pioneering city out here in the east, with its emptiness and flatness, its chill, refulgent space, its great unused docks and basins—even the air felt different, colder, uncompromising, tear-inducing—not for the faint-hearted or uncertain. And further over to the east, beyond the gas and sewage works, he could see the full mass of a purple and gunmetal cloudscape, a continent of cloud bearing down on the city, gilded with the citrus clarity of the estuarine light. Snow coming, he thought, all the way from Siberia. His house was small and detached, and was set in the centre of a raked rectangle of mud, part of a tentative development called Albion Village established by an optimistic builder. On the ground floor there was a garage, kitchen and dining room, and above, a sitting room and bedroom with a bathroom off the landing. Another atticy bedroom with an en suite shower lurked under the roof tiles, lit by skylights. The place smelt of paint, putty and builder’s dust and the honey-coloured cord carpet had been recently laid, strewn with offcuts. On either side of him, forming a rough arc, were the six other houses of Albion Village, all of similar but, tastefully, not identical design, some occupied, some with the builder’s tape still crisscrossing the windows. A small, pseudo-community, awaiting its members, with its newly sown green grass and spindly wind-thrashed saplings, purpose-built on the very eastern fringe of the city, another small encroachment on the wastelands.
And it was all his, bought and paid for. His little home in Silvertown…He began to note down the very minimum he would need to make it habitable - bed, sheets, pillows, blankets, sofa, armchair, desk and chair, TV, sound system, pots and pans. The kitchen was fitted, no dinner parties were envisaged, so a few tinned and frozen foods would suffice. Curtains? He could live awhile with the complimentary roller blinds. The odd table lamp would be welcome but they, by definition, required tables and he wanted to have the house ready as quickly as possible, with as little fuss and distracting choice. Why did he need another place to live? Good question, Lorimer. Insurance, he supposed. Same old story.
So, it was Flavia Malinverno. The name itself couldn’t be better, couldn’t be more perfect. And how would you be pronouncing that, Miss? Flahvia? Or Flayvia?
Marlobe brandished a newspaper at him, the headline exposing some government U-turn on its tax and pension plans.
“Looks like snow,” Lorimer said.
“This country needs a fucking revolution, mate. Sweep them away—politicians, financiers, fat cats, civil servants, toffs, nobs, TV personalities. String ‘em up. Get the people back running things. Hard-working people.
You and me. Our sort. Fucking violent bloody revolution.”
“I know what you mean. Some days—”
“Got some white carnations for you, mate—special. Fiver. Ta.”
Suspended from his door, held by a strip of festive Xmas sticky tape, was a folded note. It read: “My Dear Lorimer, One day soon Jupiter will be all yours. Thank you so much. Yours ever, C. H.”
Lorimer felt useless regrets crowd around him as he read it through again, weighing the consequences of his generosity. If only he had not been so precipitate…Still, he supposed it was a ‘good thing’ he had done. At the very least Jupiter might find his appetite had returned, now his execution had been forestalled.
In his hallway he ritually rested his palm on his three helmets in turn and wondered, suddenly, if Ivan would take them as part-exchange for the Greek one. A swift computation of their collective value told him he would still be some way short of the requisite amount but it would certainly be a leap forward towards his goal. Thus cheered, he put King Johnson Adewale and his Ghana-beat Millionaires on the C D and poured himself a small tumblerful of vodka. Lady C. Haigh. Curious, he had never wondered about her Christian name, never even imagined her with one. “C”—what could it stand for? Charlotte, Celia, Caroline, Cynthia, Charis? A young girl’s name, conjuring up the 19205 and ‘305, Oxford bags, bright young things, trophy hunts, illicit weekends in provincial riverside hotels…As the vodka hit and the highlife rhythms gently thudded through the flat he allowed himself a small smile of self-congratulation.
Chapter 5
Lorimer set his alarm for an early rise—a mere gesture, this, as he tossed and turned and was wide awake by 4.45. So he read doggedly for a while, managed to doze off again and woke at 7.00 feeling drugged and stupid. He bathed and shaved and changed the linen on his bed, then, like an automaton, he hoovered the flat, wiped down the surfaces in his kitchen, took his shirts and smalls to the laundry, and two suits to the dry cleaners, visited the bank and bought some food at the ShoppaSava on Lupus Street. These mundane rituals of bachelordom did not depress him, rather he saw them as proud domestic testimony to his independence. What was it Joachim had said to Brahms ? Fret aber einsam, ‘Free but lonely.’ Brahms was, perhaps, the greatest bachelor the world had known, he thought now, as he selected some freesias from the ShoppaSava’s newly installed flower stand. Brahms with his genius, his unshakeable routines, his huge dignity and his ineffable sadness. There was the exemplar, this was what he should aspire to, he reflected as he bought some lemony ranunculus and spotted tall apricot tulips, assorted pot plants of the most vivid green, ferns, eucalyptus, gypsophila and ranked boxes of daffodils at one-third the price Marlobe charged. Well enough stocked, he thought, when did they put this in ? No carnations, though, that franchise was still securely Marlobe’s.