1998 - Armadillo

by William Boyd

  He drank his tea and left a note explaining some of the operational idiosyncrasies of the flat and stepped out into the icy greyness of another Pimlico dawn. He carried with him a small grip containing an assortment of clothes and key props for the David Watts adjust, whenever that might arise. He had not found a parking space in Lupus Crescent the night before and consequently had something of a walk to his car, parked outside a Methodist church in Westmoreland Terrace. He could feel the cold biting at his cheeks and forehead and found himself longing vernally for some sunshine, some soft green days. The gusting east wind that had been blowing the night before had not dropped at all and he felt it tugging at the skirts of his coat and heard it thrashing the bare boughs of the sycamore and cherry trees at the corner of the street. Leaves were being whirled along the pavement and flicked into the sky, thick, dark, irregularly shaped leaves—maple, perhaps, or ginko—flung dancing and skittering into the rows of parked cars. The last leaves of last year, he thought elegiacally, suddenly ripped from their branches after a tenacious struggle all winter, to be sent burling along—hang about, he said to himself, there’s not a leaf left on a tree in the country that isn’t evergreen. What were all these things filling the air? He stooped and picked one up, a jagged rhomboid shape, thick like holly but which snapped in his fingers like shellac or brittle enamel…

  Lorimer had no affection or nostalgia for the many cars he had owned in his loss adjusting career. A car, as far as he was concerned, was just an efficient device for getting from A to B: he was not interested in cars, in fact he cultivated a deliberate lack of curiosity in them so that Slobodan had no excuse for starting to talk to him about ‘motors’. However, it was oddly disturbing to see his Toyota with its top coat burnt off, scorched and blistered, with the occasional patch of racing green still adhering. Flakes of paint were still being snatched from it by the wind but the car was almost wholly paint-free, looking as if it had been specifically camouflaged for some flinty tundra—a grey terrain of rock and lichen with a rare patch of grass. A blowtorch, Lorimer thought, running his fingers over the now cool, roughened steel, of the camping gas variety that painters and decorators use, or chefs to brown the sugar on their crimes brulees. Quick work too, he assessed, a couple of men, or three, could do the car in ninety seconds. He imagined pale blue flames, a powerful smell, a spit and bubble as the paint ignited. What had Rintoul said? “It isn’t over yet.” There was no choice now: Hogg and his oiling crew had to be called in. If Rintoul and Edmund wanted to play hardball, as Shane Ashgable would have said, they had no idea what lay in store for them.

  The Toyota was fine in every other motoring regard and Lorimer drove easily—though a little self-consciously—through the hesitant beginnings of the rush-hour to Silvertown. He was aware, at traffic lights or waiting at junctions, of the curious looks his torched car received. He turned up the volume on his radio and some soothing Dvorak took him most of the way from Westminster to Canning Town while he kept his eyes fixed on the road.

  The furniture van arrived with surprising promptness at half past nine and by ten o’clock his house was capable of supporting life. There was a bed and blankets and bed linen, a sofa, a divan for the spare room, a telephone, a portable television, a cherrywood table that could double as a desk and four dining-room chairs. He had bought some modern-looking cantilevered standard lamps so that he did not have to rely exclusively on the central lights in the ceiling and the kitchen was fitted out with a minimum of pots and pans, half a dozen wine glasses, a corkscrew, tin-opener and a young-married’s start-up set of cutlery and crockery. Now all he needed was a supply of lavatory paper and provisions and the place would be ready.

  He stepped outside his front door and walked down the flagged concrete path that bisected the levelled square of mud which one day would be his front lawn and contemplated his new neighbourhood. He seemed to be quite alone in Albion Village this morning. A brindled cat flowed up and over a wooden fence, there was a car parked outside number 2 and some damp washing flapped and cracked on a whirligig behind number 7, but he was the only sign of bipedal life. Then there was the sudden blaring, ripping noise of a motorbike starting and one duly emerged, carrying a pillion passenger, and as it accelerated past him two bug-eyed heads turned to stare briefly at him. Hello there, Lorimer said to himself, half raising his hand, I’m your new neighbour. Then they were gone and the noise died away and he was left alone in Albion Village and the near-silence again.

  That was fine by him: everything was new here, and he felt new also, a new species of man, as if he were in a newer city, different altogether, more anonymously European, somehow. He turned to the east towards this more proximate Europe and filled his lungs: that keen wind in his face had rushed and buffeted its way across France or Belgium or the Netherlands—he felt a little bowel-shift of excitement now he was established here in his new domain. He did not know a soul and, better still, not a soul knew him.

  He squared his shoulders. Time for some phone calls on his new white telephone: first, summon the cod-liver oil brigade to deal with Rintoul then, second, set up the meet with rock ‘n’ roll legend David Watts.

  206. Alan told me that there is a tribe in a remote part of the Philippines where you are severely punished if you wake a sleeping person. Sleep is the most precious gift, these tribespeople think, and to wake someone is effectively to steal something precious from him or her.

  I was worried about being such an overloaded REM sleeper. Well, you’re a classic light sleeper, Alan said, and REM sleep is light sleep. But it doesn’t feel light, I said, it feels deep, when it happens. Ah, Alan said, that’s because it is only in REM sleep that you dream.

  —The Book of Transfiguration

  David Watts lived in a vast, detached, white stuccoed house—in a quiet street off Holland Park Avenue—of the sort normally described as ‘ambassadorial’. It had its own high wall with a gate and security cameras positioned here and there covering all possible angles of approach.

  Lorimer had thought hard about how to present himself for this encounter and was quietly pleased with the results. He had not shaved since his meeting with Flavia and his jaw had been dark with stubble. So when he did shave he left a postage stamp-sized rectangle of bristle immediately below his bottom lip. He chose an old suit, off the peg, mouse-grey, and to it added a royal blue V-sweater, a white nylon shirt and a thin tie, olive green with a narrow, diagonal, pistachio band. Shoes were rubber-soled ankle boots, highly polished, with yellow stitching on the seams. He had decided to wear spectacles, square, silver-framed with clear lenses, and he added a nice touch this, he thought a binding of Sellotape to the right hinge. The look, he hoped, said striven-for unexceptionalness; the pretensions of the figure he wanted to cut had to be almost imperceptible.

  He was sitting in his car a hundred yards up the road from the Watts mansion, contemplating his reflection in the rear-view mirror, when he realized suddenly that the underlip patch was wrong. He reached into his glove compartment for his electric razor (always carried) and he immediately shaved it off. He sloshed some mineral water over a comb and dragged it through his hair to remove any shine as a final touch. Now he was ready.

  It took two minutes to gain access through the gate in the wall and another three before the front door was opened. While he waited he paced around the paved courtyard with its terracotta urns of bay and box aware, as he did so, of the minute adjustments of the cameras tracking his every move.

  The man who opened the door eventually was overweight and baby-faced, his gut covered by a ‘The Angziertie Tour’ sweat shirt (Lorimer wondered if this were pointedly for his benefit). He introduced himself as Terry and led him across an empty hall, newly parqueted and smelling of varnish, to a small sitting room, furnished with various uncomfortable black leather and chrome chairs. A huge primeval fern sprouted and sprawled in one corner and on the walls were classic posters behind perspex—Campari, SNCF, Esso, Aristide Bruant in his red scarf. Up in the corner of a
wall beside the winking red eye of the movement detector was another camera the size of a household box of matches. Lorimer sat himself down on two or three chairs, found one his spine could tolerate, took his glasses off, polished them, replaced them and then sat still, his hands in his lap, and waited, inert and uninterested.

  Twenty-five minutes later David Watts came in with Terry and was introduced. Watts was tall but seemed almost anorexically thin, Lorimer thought, with the concave chest and the tapered hips of a prepubescent boy. He was wearing leather trousers and a crew-neck Shetland sweater with a hole in one elbow. The long, buttery hair that had featured in the C D liner-notes photo had gone, replaced by a U S marine buzz-cut, and, curiously, his left cheek was unshaved—it looked like a small square of carpet tile stuck to the side of his face. Watts’ long, bony fingers stroked and touched this partial beard constantly, and rather repellently, Lorimer thought—as if it were a comfort blanket. Lorimer was glad of his last-minute, prescient have: two beard patches in the same room would have looked suspiciously mannered.

  “Hi,” Lorimer said, not smiling, “Lorimer Black.”

  “Yeah,” said Watts.

  Terry offered drinks and Watts finally settled on Italian beer. Lorimer asked for Pepsi and when this was not forthcoming said he would accept no substitute—he was fine, thanks.

  “We got Coca, don’t we, Terry?”

  “Coke, Diet Coke, Caffeine-free Diet Coke, Caffeine-free Regular Coke, Diet-free Caffeine Coke, you name it.”

  “I don’t drink Coke,” Lorimer said. “I’m fine, thanks.”

  Terry left to fetch the Italian beer and Watts lit a cigarette. He had small, even features, his eyes were pale greyish brown and a spatter of tiny moles was splashed under his jaw and down the side of his neck, disappearing beneath his jumper collar.

  “You with the insurance ?” Watts asked. “You the sods been jerking us around all these months?”

  Lorimer briefly explained the functions and duties of a loss adjuster: not independent but impartial.

  Watts frowned at him and drew on his cigarette.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said, there was the faintest hint of the near-west in his glottal urban-speak, of Slough and Swindon and Oxford, “we draw up a contract with you maggot-farmers, right? We pay the gi-fucking-gantic premium, then when I get ill and cancel they call you guys in to argue the toss ?”

  “Not all the time.”

  “Hang about. They call you in to advise them, professionally, on whether to pay me what they have already agreed they’ll pay me if something goes wrong, right? When we drew up the policy I didn’t see anything saying these loss adjuster geezers will be all over your face saying, no way, Jose.”

  Lorimer shrugged, it was absolutely vital to remain calm and unmoved. “It’ll be there in the small print,” he said. “I didn’t invent the way they do business,” he added, “I just work here.”

  “As the concentration camp guard said when he turned on the showers.”

  Lorimer sniffed, wiped his nose. “I resent that,” he said, evenly.

  “And I resent you, you maggot-farmer,” Watts said. “What was the last music you bought, eh?” He listed several well-known rock groups with scathing, harsh contempt, as if he had a fishbone in his throat. “No,” he said, “I bet you like Three Bodies Minimum. Just looking at you I bet you’re a Three Bodies Minimum type. Bet you.”

  “Actually, it was, ” Lorimer paused, “Kwame Akinlaye and his Achimota Rhythm Boys. An album called Sheer Achimota.”

  “Sheer what?”

  “Sheer Achimota.”

  “What’s that, then, ‘Achimota’?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “‘Sheer Achimota’… You like African music, then?”

  “Yeah. I don’t listen to European or American rock music post-1960.”

  “Oh, yeah? Why’s that, then?”

  “It has no authenticity.”

  “What about my stuff? Can’t get more fucking authentic, man.”

  “Not familiar with your work, I’m afraid.”

  Lorimer could see that this gave Watts genuine pause, disturbed him in some quite profound but ill-defined way.

  “Terry,” Watts shouted, “where’s the fucking beer, man?” He turned back to Lorimer, his fingers caressing the hair on his cheek. “You don’t think I was ill then, that it?”

  Lorimer sighed and took a notebook from his briefcase. “Two weeks after the Angziertie Tour was cancelled you were on stage at the Albert Hall—”

  “Aw, come on. That was for fucking charity - Sick Kids in Music, or something. Jesus Christ. TERRY I’M DYING OF THIRSTHERE. Where is that fat bastard ? Look, I can get you an army of doctors.”

  “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  Watts looked flabbergasted. “I’ll sue,” he said, weakly.

  “You’re free to take any legal action you want. In fact we prefer these matters to go through the courts.”

  “I mean, what’s going on here exactly?” Watts said. “Talk about changing the rules halfway through the game. Talk about moving the goalposts. Everybody takes out insurance, everybody, it’s the most common thing in the world. Even people who don’t have a mortgage have insurance. Even people on the dole have insurance. But nobody would do it if you wankers kept popping up moving the goalposts like this. I mean, you maggot-farmers are just saying, “Tough, we won’t pay. Fuck off,” aren’t you? I mean, if people knew this sort of thing went on…”

  “It’s a question of good faith or bad faith.”

  “Meaning what ? TERRY!”

  “Meaning we don’t think you are submitting the claim in good faith.”

  Watts looked at him curiously, almost fascinated. “What did you say your name was ?”

  “Black, Lorimer Black.”

  “Just do this one thing for me, Lorimer Black. Keep your head still and look as far to the left as you can, as far round as your eyeballs will go.”

  Lorimer followed his instructions: his vision blurred, the transprofile of his nose hovered in his left-side field of vision.

  “See anything?” Watts asked. “Anything unusual?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do, mate.” Watts looked to his left, swivelled his eyeballs as far as they would go. “I can see a black shape,” he said. “The very furthest left side of my vision I can see a dark shape. Know what that is?”

  “No.”

  “It’s the devil. It’s the devil sitting on my left shoulder. He’s been there for six months now. That’s why I don’t shave my cheek.”

  “Right.”

  “Now you tell me, Mr maggot-farmer loss adjuster, how the hell is a musician meant to go on an eighteen-month, thirty-five-nation tour with the devil sitting on his shoulder?”

  Terry brought him his coat as Lorimer waited in the hall.

  “I’ll make sure we’ve got some Pepsi in, next time,” he said cheerily.

  “I don’t think there’ll be a next time.”

  “Oh yeah, definitely,” Terry said. “You made a big impression. I’ve never seen him talk to anybody—apart from Danielle for more than two minutes. You got a card? He liked you, mate. You’re his kinda guy.”

  Lorimer handed him a card, not sure whether to feel flattered or alarmed.

  “Why does he keep calling me a maggot-farmer?”

  “He calls everyone that,” Terry explained. “You know on telly when they run a film with swearing and cursing, effing and blinding? And they re-record it, you know ‘fucking’ becomes ‘frigging’, ‘shit’ becomes ‘shoot’, that sort of thing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, if a character in a film says ‘mother-fucker’ they re-dub it on telly as ‘maggot-farmer’. Honest, you listen the next time He was well taken with that, was David,” Terry said with a smile. “The little maggot-farmer.”

  He drove straight up Holland Park Avenue through Netting Hill Gate and the Bayswater Road to Marble Arch, then down Park Lane, Consti
tution Hill, left at Westminster Bridge and on to the Victoria Embankment. Lorimer could not explain why he decided to turn off the Embankment, but the idea came to him suddenly and he followed it at once.

  The Fedora Palace was half gone, down to three storeys, lorries carting rubble away, the stiff claws of JCBs scratching at the outer walls, the stour of cement dust thickening the air. Lorimer spoke to a foreman in a hard hat who informed him that the site was to be levelled and the hoardings left up. Lorimer paced about, trying to make sense of this new development, trying to play all the angles, but with little success. He called up Torquil on the mobile.

  “Thank God you called,” Torquil said. “I can’t find your washing machine.”

  “I don’t have one. You have to go to the launderette.”

  “You must be joking. Oh yeah, and something’s gone wrong with your bog. It won’t flush.”

  “I’ll deal with it,” he said. “Listen, the Fedora Palace is being demolished, make any sense to you ?”

  “Ah…” Torquil thought. Lorimer could practically hear him thinking. “No,” Torquil said, finally.

  “Hell of a write-off, don’t you think? The thing was practically finished. Why knock it down, even with the fire damage ?”

  “Beats me. Where can you get a decent fry-up around here ?”

  Lorimer directed him to the Matisse and then switched off the phone. He decided to consider the Fedora Palace case closed: he had his bonus, it was pointless stirring matters up any further, and, in any event, he was more worried about what was going on in his flat.

  Chapter 11