by William Boyd
“I did a straightforward adjust, pure and simple.”
“And you’re fired, pure and simple.”
Lorimer blinked. “On what grounds ?”
“Suspicion.”
“Suspicion of what ?”
“How long have you got ? I suspect you of every nasty, suppurating, corrupt trick in the book, matey, and I can’t afford to suspect a member of my staff for even one second. So you take the prize fucking biscuit, chum. You’re out. Now.” He actually smiled. “Car keys.” He held out a broad palm.
Lorimer handed them over. “By the way, it was stolen this morning.”
“No. We lifted it. You’ll be getting invoiced for the respray. Janice!”
Janice peered nervously round the door.
“Take Mr Black to his office, let him pack up his personal effects and then lock the door. On no account is he to be left alone for one second, or make a phone call.” He offered Lorimer his hand. “Goodbye, Lorimer, it’s been real.”
It was to his credit, so Lorimer told himself later, that he did not shake Hogg’s hand. He merely said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice: “You are making an enormous mistake. You will live to regret it,” turned sharply on his heel, back muscles already in spasm, and managed to walk out.
201. An Old Joke. Hogg told me this joke more than once, it’s a particular favourite. A man goes into a sandwich bar and says, “Can I have a turkey sandwich?” The guy behind the counter says, “We’ve got no turkey.”
“OK,” the man says, “in that case I’ll have chicken.” The guy behind the counter says, “Listen, mate, if we had chicken you could have had your turkey sandwich.”
Since Hogg told me this joke it has perturbed me unduly, as if it contains some deep truth about perception, about truth, about the world and our dealings with it. Something about this old joke disturbs me. Hogg, for his part, could hardly get the words out for laughing.
—The Book of Transfiguration
Lorimer placed the cardboard box containing his personal effects on the hall table and rested his hand on the crown of his Greek helmet. The metal felt cool and pleasingly rough under his hot palm. Give me strength, he thought. He analysed his feelings and came up with nothing concrete: vague outrage, vague worry about the future and, curiously, vague relief.
There was a message to call Bram Wiles on his answer machine.
“Did you see today’s papers?” Wiles asked immediately.
“Yes. What do you make of it?”
“One of the investors in Gale-Harlequin is a company called Ray Von TL—it has just over a fifteen per cent stake. It’s registered in Panama. I suspect that if we could find out who was behind Ray Von TL we’d have a few more answers.”
Lorimer had a few guesses: Francis Home? Dirk van Meer? He would not be surprised. Fifteen per cent of Gale-Harlequin was suddenly worth this morning a nice 48 million. A handsome slice of the pie to call your own. But how did such massive profit-taking impinge on the insignificant lives of Torquil Helvoir-Jayne and Lorimer Black?
“You know Gale-Harlequin was only floated on the stock exchange fourteen months ago?” Wiles asked.
“No, I didn’t. Could it have a bearing?”
“I should think so, wouldn’t you? Somewhere along the line.”
Wiles speculated on possible schemes and plans but they were all guesses. Lorimer asked him to keep on digging, to see if he could find out any more about this Ray Von TL company—it seemed their only lead. Even then, as Wiles reminded him, it might be perfectly legitimate: there were many offshore investors in British companies.
After he hung up Lorimer thought for a while, hard, and with ever-mounting alarm. One of Hogg’s regular maxims nagged away at the edge of his brain—“we set a sprat to catch a rhino”—for the first time in his life he thought it made some kind of perverse sense. He rephrased it along classic Hoggian lines: in difficult times a fool is more use than a wise man.
He found a black tie at the back of a drawer and put it on—it certainly suited his mood. From a position of steady normality—steady job, steady prospects, steady girlfriend—he now found himself adrift in uncertainty and chaos: no job, no car, no girlfriend, insolvent, fatherless, sleepless, loveless…Not the ideal set of circumstances to find oneself in, he reflected, given that he was about to go to a funeral at a crematorium.
He walked down Lupus Crescent, wondering whether his bank card would still work, and was beckoned over by Marlobe. He had a copious stock of lilies in today and even in the dull, chilly, wintry air their perfume was cloying and almost nauseating, Lorimer thought, making his sinuses tickle and catching at his throat. Lilies that fester…How did the line go ? Lilies, daffs, tulips, the omni-present carnations. He bought a bunch of pale mauve tulips for his father’s grave.
“Off to a funeral then ?” Marlobe observed cheerily, pointing at his black tie.
“Yes, my father’s.”
“Oh yeah? Commiserations. Is it burning or under the ground?”
“Cremation.”
“That’s what I want. Burnt to a crisp. Then have my ashes scattered.”
“Over the carnation fields of the Zuider Zee ?”
“Come again?”
“Nothing.”
“Talking about fire…” Marlobe leaned forward, pushing his pale gingery face close to Lorimer’s. “Did you see what happened over at ShoppaSava? Burnt out. They might even demolish the place.”
“Shame. It was a good supermarket.” Fire, Lorimer thought suddenly, occupied a prominent place in his life. Who was the god of fire ? Prometheus ? His life recently seemed to be dogged by some malicious Prometheus, showing him his power in all its protean forms.
“It’s an ill fucking wind…” Marlobe said doomily, like some demotic sage, then grinned, showing his fine teeth. “Won’t be selling any more flowers, though, eh? Ha-ha. Eh? Eh?”
As Lorimer walked away he began thinking about the fire: no, surely, not even Marlobe was that ruthless—to destroy an entire supermarket? Surely not? He sighed loudly in the street. But then he resolved that nothing was going to surprise him any more, not after the events of recent weeks, all anticipations had been well and truly disturbed, his mind would be forever open, always a door ajar to the most outlandish possibility. He slipped his card in the machine and, gratifyingly, it poked out a crisp tongue of new notes.
396. Prometheus and Pandora. Prometheus, a titan and a demiurge, also known as ‘the great trickster’, and a culture-hero. Bringer of fire to earth and man. Stealer of fire from Zeus. Prometheus, fire-stealer, fire-bringer.
Zeus, determined to counterbalance this beneficence, created a woman, Pandora, endowing her with fabulous beauty and instinctive cunning, and sent her to earth with ajar containing all manner of miseries and evils. Pandora duly lifted the lid from the jar and all these torments flew out to punish and distress mankind forever. So, Prometheus brings the blessing of fire, and Zeus sends Pandora with her malign jar. There is too much of Prometheus and Pandora in my life at the moment. But I am consoled by the coda to the legend. Hope was in Pandora’s jar, but Pandora closed the lid before Hope could escape. But Hope lurks somewhere, she must have squeezed out of Pandora’s jar by now. Prometheus and Pandora, my kind of gods.
—The Book of Transfiguration
Once through the gates and away from the the traffic, Putney Vale Crematorium did not resemble, Lorimer saw, all crematoria everywhere. He had assumed that some time in the 1960s one firm of architects had been given the sole contract for the nation. There was no spacious, neatly mown park, no carefully positioned conifers and larches, shrubberies and flower beds, no low brick buildings or featureless waiting rooms with their dusty arrangements of artificial flowers.
Instead, Putney Vale was a gigantic, scruffy, overpopulated graveyard set behind a superstore, dotted with clumps of trees with a dark avenue of shaggy yews leading to a dinky Victorian Gothic church, converted somehow to take the crematorium’s furnace. Despite its idio
syncratic appearance the same mood always seemed to accrue around these places—regret, sorrow, dread, all the soul-sapping mementi mori— except Putney Vale had them loudly amplified: the acres of the encroaching necropolis, the bottle-green unpruned lugubrious yews seeming almost to suck in light out of the air like black holes (trees of death. Why did they plant the wretched things? Why not something prettier?)—all adding up to this atmosphere of municipal melancholia, of standardized, clock-watching obsequies.
But as if to prove him wrong he sensed at once, as he stepped out of his taxi, that his family were in jovial and buoyant mood. As he approached the church he heard a blare of laughter rise above the hum of animated chat. Groups of B and B drivers were gathered on the lawn outside having a smoke, their cigarettes held respectfully out of sight, in cupped hands behind their backs, keeping their distance from the central knot of Blocj family members. He saw Trevor one-five, Mohammed, Dave, Winston, Trevor two-nine and some others he did not recognize. They greeted him boisterously. “Milo! Hi, Milo! Looking good, Milo!”
His family was gathered before the arched doors waiting for their turn: his grandmother and mother, Slobodan, Monika, Komelia, Drava and little Mercedes all looking smarter than normal in new clothes he had not seen before, hair coiffed and combed, make-up prominent. Slobodan was wearing an orange tie and had reduced his ponytail to a sober bun, and Mercy ran up to show him her new shoes agleam with many silver buckles.
Slobodan actually embraced him, in new head-of-the-family mode, Lorimer assumed, slapped him on the back and squeezed his shoulders repeatedly.
“Phil’s on the box,” Slobodan said. “Just got a skeleton crew on. Dad wouldn’t want us to shut down completely.”
“I’m sure he wouldn’t.”
“Everything all right, Milo ?” Monika asked. “You look a bit tired.”
“I am. And I find these places incredibly depressing.”
“Hark at him,” Monika said huffily, as if he were somehow lowering the tone. He turned away and kissed his other sisters, his mother, his grandmother.
“I miss him, Milo,” his mother said briskly, clear-eyed. “Even though he never say a word for ten years. I miss him about the house.”
“We have saying in Transnistria,” his grandmother chipped in. “We say, “A cat may have nine lives and a man may make nine mistakes.” I don’t think Bogdan he even make one mistake.”
What an appalling saying, Lorimer thought, instantly computing the big mistakes in his life. Nine? Why only nine? And after the ninth mistake, then what? Death, like a cat? And how did you define the error or misconception or blunder or slip-up that tipped over into mistake-category? He was still pondering this piece of unsettling Transnistrian lore when a man in a dark suit announced that their time had come and they filed into the chapel.
At once Lorimer realized he had left his tulips in the taxi that had brought him here and the thought depressed him unduly. He had not been concentrating on his father’s funeral. He had been thinking about himself and his endlessly mounting problems. Perhaps that was mistake number nine ? Get a grip, he told himself sternly—this was irrational, panicky stuff.
A young priest who clearly knew nothing about Bogdan Blocj conducted the service and uttered a few weary platitudes. Everyone bowed their heads as the curtains slowly met to obscure the casket—everyone except Lorimer, who kept his eyes fixed on the pale oak hexagon as long as he could. An organist struck up a busy fugue and Lorimer strained his ears to catch the whirr of machinery, of belts moving, of doors opening and closing, of flames igniting.
They filed sheepishly out into the chill of the overcast afternoon, where there followed the ritual lighting of the cigarettes. For the first time the full carnival spirit seemed to have left the mourners and they talked in lower voices, scrutinizing the rows of cellophane-wrapped bouquets with scientific intensity as if they might contain rare species, exotic hybrids, newly discovered orchids.
To Lorimer’s intense consternation the mobile phone in his breast pocket began to chirrup like a hungry fledgling. Everyone looked round at him, impressed, as if to say, see, even here Milo has to be on call, as if he were a surgeon waiting for a vital organ to transplant. He fumbled to remove the phone and walked off some distance to answer it, hearing Trevor one-five’s admiring comment: “Look at him, never stops, amazing.”
“Hello?”
“Black?” It was Hogg.
“Yes?”
“Get your arse down to the junction of Pall Mall and St James’s. Six o’clock this evening. Good news.”
“What’s this all about?”
“Be there.”
He rung off and Lorimer thought: this is most confusing, these are complexities beyond complexities. Hogg just assumed he would be there, he realized, that he would still jump to his command. For a moment he pondered an act of defiance—and decided against it. It was too hard to resist, and Hogg knew he would come, knew in his bones. There was too much shared history for him to refuse—and it was too soon. And Hogg had not merely issued an order: ‘good news’, he had said, that was the lure, that was the invitation, and this was as close to mollifying as Hogg would ever become. Of course what was ‘good news’ to George Hogg wouldn’t necessarily be perceived as such by anyone else. Lorimer sighed: he sensed again his impotence and ignorance, the bystander who can only see glimpses of the race and cannot tell who’s winning or who’s being lapped; he felt the buffeting, burly power of forces he did not comprehend or welcome, pushing at and shaping his destiny.
The front door of number n, Lupus Crescent was open, much to Lorimer’s surprise, and in the hall stood a lanky, red-eyed, sniffing Rastafarian whom Lorimer recognized as Nigel, Lady Haigh’s mulch—and compost-supplier.
He was about to ask him what the trouble was when the door of Lady Haigh’s flat opened and two undertakers appeared, manoeuvering a low gurney upon which lay a thick, rubberized zip-up plastic bag. With sad, professional smiles they swiftly trundled their burden out of the front door.
“Jesus Christ,” Lorimer said. “Lady Haigh.”
“She wouldn’t answer the bell,” Nigel said. “So I went round the back, through a friend’s house, nipped over the fence and saw her lying on the kitchen floor. I broke in, there was a phone number by the phone, and I called this gentleman.” His voice was level but tears shimmered pinkly in his eyes and he sniffed again.
Lorimer turned to see he was referring to a harassed-looking, balding man in his fifties coming through the door, a tuft of his fine thinning hair standing straight up, filaments waving to and fro as he moved. He sensed Lorimer’s gaze upon it so he stopped wiping his hands on a handkerchief and palmed his hair flat across his pate.
Lorimer introduced himself.
“What a terrible shock,” Lorimer said, with absolute sincerity. “I live upstairs. I’ve just come from my father’s funeral. I can’t believe it.”
The harassed man seemed not to want to hear any more depressing statements from Lorimer and looked anxiously at his watch.
“I’m Godfrey Durrell,” he said. “Cecilia’s nephew.”
Cecilia? This was news—and a nephew as well. He felt sad that Lady Haigh had died but also he remembered how she longed for this release. A drip of guilt began to intrude on his shock and upset: how long had it been since he had last seen her, or given a thought to her welfare ? It had been the dog food conversation, which was—when ? Hours, days or weeks ago ? His life seemed currently to be defying the segmented orders of diurnal time, hours lasting days, days compressed into minutes. He thought suddenly of Jupiter’s untypical solitary bark on—good God—Sunday night and wondered if it were as close as he could come to a pealing howl over his dead mistress’s body…
“I’m glad you’re here,” Durrell said. “I’ve got to get back.”
“Where?” Lorimer felt he had a right to know.
“I’m a radiologist at the Demarco-Westminster Clinic. I’ve got a waiting room full of patients.” He re-entered
the flat and emerged moments later in a semi-crouch, his left hand gripping the generous scruff of Jupiter’s neck.
“I believe he’s yours now,” he said. “There are about a dozen notes taped up around the house saying he’s to be delivered to you, in the event, etcetera.”
“Yes. I did promise—”
He was locking the door. “I’ll be back whenever I can,” he said, opening his wallet and handing Lorimer his card. He shook Nigel’s hand, thanked him and, with a nervous smoothing gesture at his hair, quickly left.
Jupiter sat down slowly at Lorimer’s feet, his tongue lolling thirstily. He probably needs a drink, Lorimer thought, all those hours of waiting.
“I was worried about the dog,” Nigel said. “I’m glad you’re taking him.”
“He’s a nice old dog,” Lorimer said, stooping to give him a possessive pat. “Poor old Lady Haigh.”
“She was a great lady, Cecilia,” Nigel said with feeling.
“Did you call her Cecilia?” Lorimer asked, thinking about his own diffidence, feeling obscurely jealous that Nigel should have been so familiar, so easily.
“Sure. I used to sing that song at her, you know: ‘Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily’ .” Nigel’s rasping baritone carried the tune well. “She used to laugh.”
“Fine old lady.”
“But she was tired waiting. She wanted to die, man.”
“Don’t we all.”
Nigel laughed and raised his hand. Unthinkingly Lorimer gripped it, shoulder-high, thumbs interlocking, like two centurions taking their leave at the frontiers of some distant province, far from Rome.
“It gets to you, man,” Nigel said, shaking his head. “Go to pay a visit and find a dead body.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Lorimer said.
“Come on Jupiter,” Lorimer said, after Nigel had sauntered off, and walked upstairs with the old dog obediently following. He gave him a bowl of water and he lapped noisily and splashily at it, heavy drops sprinkling the carpet, so Lorimer fetched a newspaper and put it under the bowl. Life with Jupiter: lesson one. He probably needed food, a walk, a shit…He looked at his watch—ten past five. No, he’d better keep this appointment, he did not want to incur the wrath of Hogg any further. Two deaths in as many days: this was adding new and unknown stresses and strains, life was bearing down on him hard, disturbing all anticipations.