1998 - Armadillo

by William Boyd

  “I hope I wasn’t interrupting anything,” Watts said, signing his name on two leaves of writing paper. “Love in the afternoon, sort of thing.”

  “No, no, we’d finished,” Torquil said. “In fact, you’ve got to be going, haven’t you, Irina? Got to go, yes? Go?”

  “What? Oh, yes, I must go.” She collected her handbag, said shy goodbyes (Lorimer noticing there was no further physical contact between her and Torquil) and left. Watts accepted one of Torquil’s cigarettes.

  “I’m amazed she knew who you were,” Torquil said. “Irina, I mean. She’s Russian, you see.”

  “Everybody in Russia knows David Watts,” said David Watts. “Sell millions there. Millions.”

  “Really? Tell me, is the Team ever going to get back together?”

  “Over my dead body, mate. They’re thieves, robbers. I’d rather bite my tongue off. I’d rather rip out my windpipe with my bare hands.”

  “Not what you’d call an amicable parting of the ways, then? What’s happened to Tony Anthony?”

  Watts did not stay much longer, he seemed troubled by Torquil’s rehashing of the former band’s past history. Lorimer lent him a couple more CDs—a singer from Guinea-Bissau and a predominantly brass band from Sierra Leone. He said he would record them and have Terry drop them back the next day and then asked politely, as if he were a dowager or a maiden aunt, if Lorimer could walk him to his car. Terry saw them coming and heaved himself out of the driver’s seat to open the door.

  “This insurance hassle,” Watts said, flicking away the butt of his cigarette. “I’ve been talking to my people and I think there’s going to be the mother of all law suits if it isn’t paid. Twenty, thirty million. ”

  “Fine,” Lorimer said. “We like these matters aired in court.” That should please Hogg, he was thinking, dolefully.

  “Nothing personal,” Watts said, “but it just doesn’t look good, David Watts being jerked off by a bunch of suits. It doesn’t look cool.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’ll get these discs back to you tomorrow, mate,” Watts said stooping into his car. “Much obliged, Lorimer—can I call you Lorimer? Could be fruitful. Serendipity. Be in touch.”

  The car moved off soundlessly, it seemed, on its wide tyres. People in the street stopped to marvel at it. Lorimer remembered from a recent survey in a Sunday newspaper that David Watts was the 349th richest person in the country.

  Lady Haigh was waiting for him in the hall. She was smartly dressed in a green tweed suit, wearing a turban skewered with a ruby-tipped hat pin. Jupiter peered out at him, panting evenly, from behind her legs.

  “Your friend brought a girl back with him this morning.”

  “I can only apologize, Lady Haigh.”

  “He makes a terrible din, clumping around all hours of the day and night.”

  “I’ll tell him to keep quiet.”

  “I find him very uncouth, Lorimer.”

  “So do I, Lady Haigh, so do I.”

  389. Serendipity. From Serendip, a former name of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. A word coined by Horace Walpole, who had invented it based on a folktale, whose heroes were always making discoveries of things they were not in quest of. Ergo: serendipity, the faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident.

  So what is the opposite of Serendip, a southern land of spice and warmth, lush greenery and humming birds, sea-washed, sun-basted? Think of another world in the far north, barren, ice-bound, cold, a world of flint and stone. Call it Zembla. Ergo: zemblanity, the opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design. Serendipity and zemblanity : the twin poles of the axis around which we revolve.

  —The Book of Transfiguration

  That evening Torquil told him eagerly and in some detail what he and Irina had done in Lorimer’s bed (sheets already off to the launderette) .They watched a violent sci-fi thriller on a cable channel (Torquil’s choice) before Torquil called out for pizza and chips. Torquil smoked a pack of cigarettes and finished the whisky before he became maudlin—“Oh Binnie, Binnie, Binnie”—and then angry, inveighing against Oliver Rollo in particular. Binnie had been invited to Oliver and Potts’s wedding but not Torquil—it was a vivid indication of his pariah status and Lorimer could see that it hurt. He started talking fondly of South Africa, Eastern Europe seemingly no longer on the fortune-making agenda. “If I could just get some capital together, Lorimer,” he moaned frustratedly. “It’s like the old days out there, Happy Valley, Pioneer Spirit, gin and polo…All you need to do is buy a golf course or a vineyard. Money’s pouring in. But you’ve got to have something to sell—a game reserve, a marina. Brits—people like you and me—are making staggering sums of money in South Africa. Obscene amounts.”

  “Why don’t you have a snoop around ? Fly out. Pick up a bargain ?” Lorimer encouraged.

  “Oh sure. I’ve got to pay that hard-hearted bitch fifteen hundred quid tomorrow and I possess exactly—” he emptied his pockets on the table—“seventeen pounds and some change. This isn’t a pound coin, it’s a hundred fucking pesetas. Sixteen pounds, some change and a hundred pesetas.”

  Lorimer felt despair grip him as Torquil ran through all the possible retail outlets he had visited and that could have perpetrated this pound/peseta subterfuge. This could go on no longer, Lorimer realized; his own life—its careful security, its deliberate order—was being so undermined that he could foresee a serious collapse. He had to find a way of expelling this interloper. The cuckoo was in the nest and growing more comfortable daily; there was only limited time before the fledgling Lorimer would no longer be able to cope.

  “The trouble is I can’t get on top of things,” Torquil said, the self-pity immense. “I’ve got no time. Everything’s piling up. I have to find a way of being paid in cash—in advance or at once.” He set his jaw. “I know it’s immoral, but I don’t think there’s any choice, Lorimer. I have to do it.”

  “What?”

  “Sell drugs—ecstasy, heroin, crack. I don’t care any more, I’m at the end of my tether. Society is forcing me into this. It’s society’s fault, and Binnie’s, not mine.”

  Of course. Lorimer suddenly saw the answer with absolute clarity, marvelling at how the mind worked independently of instructions, sometimes.

  “Listen, Torquil, if I could get you a well-paid job, cash, that would solve your immediate financial problems, but that involved an eighteen—to twenty-hour day, would you take it?”

  “Would I take it? I’d work a twenty-four-hour day if necessary. Tell me where and when.”

  “I just have to make one phone call.”

  Lorimer punched out the numbers on the phone in the kitchen, feeling his heart lighten at the prospect of the cuckoo, if not expelled, at least absent for most of the time.

  “Yeah?” said the voice at the end of the line.

  “It’s Milo. Is your Cortina still in running order? Good. I’ve got a driver for you.”

  390. Origin of the Name ‘David Watts’. Torquil told me this. One of the few interesting facts Torquil ever told me.

  “Know why he calls himself David Watts?” No, why? “It’s that song by the Kinks.” Never heard of them. “Jesus Christ, you must have, one of the legendary rock bands of the 1960s.” Rings a bell, I said, now you mention it.

  Torquil stood up as if he was performing and sang in a throaty tenor and cod-cockney accent: “FAH-fuh-fah-FAH-FAH, FAH-FAH-FAH.” He sang the whole song, word-perfect, which is narrated by ‘a dull and simple lad, who cannot tell water from champagne’ and who fantasizes about David Watts, a truly heroic schoolboy, epic scrapper, rich, captain of the team, head boy, whom all the girls in the neighbourhood fancy something rotten. The chorus, the refrain, repeated wistfully, “I wish I could be like David Watts, I wish I could be like David Watts, I wish I could be like David Watts.” It was a song about someone who could do no wrong, someone who was revered and worshipped by his peers, someone who, to all intents and purp
oses, was perfect. I began to understand a little more clearly: this was how Martin Foster became David Watts.

  —The Book of Transfiguration

  Chapter 13

  Hogg sauntered into Lorimer’s office without knocking. He was wearing a short sheepskin car-coat and a flat tweed cap and looked like a bookie, or a farmer on a day trip up to town for the agricultural fair.

  Lorimer pushed his chair back and put on his most winning smile.

  “Morning, Mr Hogg.”

  Hogg pointed at him. “Bite of lunch, me old china?”

  They taxied west, to Lorimer’s surprise, to Tottenham Court Road, then walked a few blocks with the Telecom tower looming ever nearer until they reached a restaurant called O ‘Riley’s, a low-ceilinged establishment with velveteen banquettes in darkwood booths and William Morris wallpaper. The owner, a Moroccan called Pedro, greeted Hogg effusively and led the two of them through the entirely empty restaurant to a booth at the rear.

  “The usual, senor Hogg?”

  “Grassyarse, Pedro. And bring one for senor Black, here.” Hogg leant forward. “Best Welsh rarebit in town. I highly recommend it, Lorimer. Apple pie’s not half bad either.”

  Pedro brought them two large schooners of amontillado and they scrutinized the menu. ‘Eclectic’ was the word that came to mind and Lorimer realized he was in a form of classic English restaurant that was fast disappearing—it had been many years since he’d seen the choice of ‘tomato juice, orange juice or grapefruit juice’ offered as an entree. Hogg ordered the Welsh rarebit and lamb souvlaki while Lorimer opted for stuffed vine-leaves and a breaded veal cutlet with a selection of vegetables. The wine of the day was a Hungarian Bull’s Blood and Lorimer’s request for a large Perrier was rebuffed at once. “Nonsense. Bring him a glass of honest-to-goodness Thames water, Pedro.”

  Lorimer needed water badly because the amontillado had given him an instant headache above the eyes. Sherry had this effect on him, as well as inducing a general sense of melancholy. But he was also tense, he realized, he could feel the muscles knotting in the nape of his neck and braiding tightly across his shoulders.

  Hogg talked with enthusiasm about the good year GGH Ltd was enjoying. Last quarter had been a cracker, he said, but this one was shaping up to beat all records.

  “No small thanks to you, Lorimer,” he said, emptying his schooner and calling for another. “I’m thinking of expanding, adding another member or two to our little family, take some of the load off your shoulders.”

  “I’m not complaining, Mr Hogg.”

  “I know, Lorimer. But you’re not the complaining type.”

  Lorimer was uneasy: Hogg’s tone of voice seemed to imply that he should have been complaining. He tackled his stuffed vine-leaves (what in God’s name had made him order those?) with only half his mind on the job, the other half searching for reasons to explain this invitation to lunch.

  “So,” Hogg said, sawing a chunk off his lifejacket-orange Welsh rarebit. “How goes the David Watts adjust?”

  “Very tricky,” Lorimer said. “As tricky as I’ve ever encountered.”

  “And why’s that, Lorimer?”

  “Because the guy is an off-his-trolley, barking, out-of-his-tiny-Chinese, grade-A nutter, Mr Hogg.”

  “You made him an offer?”

  “It won’t work. He’s not interested in the money. If his manager had still been around it would have been a straightforward deal, I’m sure. But Watts is controlling everything, now, doing his own management, and, I tell you, it follows absolutely no logic. He threatened, or rather, he mentioned a £30 million law suit if we didn’t settle.”

  “We’d take him to the cleaners.” Hogg looked at Lorimer’s sceptical expression. “What’s your professional advice, Lorimer?”

  “Pay. This one’s a ticker if I ever saw one.”

  “Going to blow up in our face ?” Hogg was stabbing the cheesy skin on his rarebit, making crude patterns with the tines of his fork. He looked up, his face drained of all his previous false bonhomie.

  “I see they’ve pulled down the Fedora Palace.”

  “I passed by the other day.”

  “What’s the game, Lorimer? That was an expensive building. Damaged, but still very expensive.”

  “I haven’t the faintest.”

  Hogg filled their glasses to the brim with Bull’s Blood. The wine was so darkly red it was almost black. Lorimer raised it carefully to his lips, inhaling, expecting a reeking pong of abattoirs, offal, lights, organs, sawdust and faeces, but it was resolutely neutral—offering no more to the nose than a faint smell of grapes. He drank avidly as Pedro whisked their starters away and replaced them with their main courses. Service was impressively speedy, Lorimer thought, until he recalled they were O ‘Riley’s only customers. His breaded veal sat in a small lake of gravy contesting the plate space with roast and boiled potatoes, cauliflower, carrots and some olive green peas—fresh from the can.

  “This stinks,” Hogg said, stuffing his mouth full of lamb—he was not referring to the cooking. “The whole rancid bollocks stinks to high heaven. And I think you know why.”

  “I don’t, Mr Hogg.”

  Hogg pointed his knife at him, chewing vigorously. “Then you’d better find out, my blue-eyed boy. Everything’s on hold until you do.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you, your job, your future, your bonus.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “You’re sucking on hind tit here, Lorimer. Life’s not fair. You should know that, you work in insurance.”

  Lorimer felt no hunger for his meal; in fact he felt the opposite of hunger—not replete, not nauseous, but suddenly food-phobic, in a curious way, as if he wanted nothing more to do with nutrition, ever. He was still very pro-alcohol, though, decidedly keen on the idea of getting drunk. He gulped Bull’s Blood—give me strength, he prayed, give me the strength of a Hungarian bull. Hogg was tearing into his lamb, knife and fork flashing, as if the beast had once done him personal injury. Lorimer covertly topped up their glasses.

  “What have we got exactly?” Hogg said. “A serious fire, deliberately started in a new, nearly complete luxury hotel. A disgusting bit of insurance work that leads to a £27 million claim. Then a loss adjustment to kill for, of positively dreamlike beauty. A week later said hotel is being levelled to the ground. A massive write-off in investment terms—where’s the sense ?”

  Lorimer admitted there appeared to be none but something Hogg had said had inadvertently set an alarm bell ringing, some flaw in his reasoning somewhere. He would have to think it over later, Hogg was in full stride.

  “And worse,” he continued, “the tenth-rate prat who wrote the insurance is foisted on me days before the whole caboodle goes down the toilet at the personal request of Sir Simon Sherriffmuir himself. I fire this useless wanker as soon as is decent and what does he do? He ends up staying in my favourite loss adjuster’s flat, the very loss adjuster who did the diamond job on Gale-Harlequin. How do you think that looks to me ?” Hogg pushed his plate aside. “It looks to me, Lorimer, that someone’s trying to ream George Hogg up his arse and George Hogg doesn’t like it one little bit.”

  “It’s pure coincidence—pure malevolent coincidence that Helvoir-Jayne’s staying with me, Mr Hogg.” He wanted to tell him about zemblanity, how this was a perfect example of its sinister influence on one’s life, but Hogg was still analysing recent events.

  “How well do you know Sherriffmuir?”

  “I’ve only met him once. You don’t think he’s—”

  “He wanted shot of Helvoir-Jayne, pronto. Why land him on me, though? Because you worked for me and you were going to do the Gale-Harlequin adjust—”

  “It makes no sense, Mr Hogg. This is wild speculation.”

  Hogg took out and lit a knobbly panatella.

  “Be that as it may,” he said cryptically, through wreaths of bluey smoke. “I hear the sound of roof tiles falling.”

  “There has
to be an explanation. Who’s being exploited? Ripped off? The only ones entitled to complain are Gale-Harlequin.”

  “Somebody got ten mil.”

  “Only forty per cent of what they were due.”

  “But why tear down their hotel?”

  “Beats me.”

  “Somebody, somewhere, has used or is using us and is making a dirty deal.”

  “But what? Who?”

  “That’s your job, Lorimer. You make sense of it and come and explain it to me in words of one syllable. Everything’s off till you tell me what this has been about.”

  “I really need that bonus, Mr Hogg, I’m over-extended, financially.”

  “Tough shit. Now, try some of this apple pie.”

  392. Hogg, once, in his convivial days, in a pub after work, over a schooner of Bristol Cream and a pint of lager chaser, said, “Know how you got this job, Lorimer?”

  ME:

  Because I was a good loss adjuster for Fortress Sure.

  HOGG:

  No.

  ME:

  Because I was well-qualified.

  HOGG:

  The world is full to the gunwales of well-qualified people.

  ME:

  Because I’ve got a sunny demeanour?

  HOGG:

  Think back to the interview. One answer you gave swung it.

  ME:

  I can’t remember.

  HOGG:

  I remember. It was like an ice-water enema. I thought, this boy’s got what it takes, he’s got co-johns.

  ME:

  Cojones. It’s Spanish.

  HOGG:

  Nonsense, it’s Belgian. It’s a Belgian expression. Flemish for ‘guts’.

  ME:

  It’s not pronounced ‘co-johns’, Mr Hogg.

  HOGG:

  I don’t give a gerbil’s dick how it’s pronounced. I’m trying to tell you, matey, how you wound up in this public house sharing a libation with me. I asked you a question right at the end of the interview, remember?