What a Carve Up!

by Jonathan Coe

  her small, pert breasts

  her perfectly proportioned breasts

  her averagely proportioned yet somehow surprising breasts

  her deformed breasts

  All right. Forget that. More wine. Now think carefully. Imagine these two young, attractive people, alone in a room with only their own bodies for amusement. Picture them in your mind.

  Now choose your words with confidence, and precision. Be fearless.

  as he buried his face in her bountiful breasts, she pulled the shirt from his shapely shoulders

  he sank to his knees and nuzzled her navel with his nose they fell on to the bed and he lay on top of her, their lips boring greedily into each other in a long, moist kiss

  they fell on to the bed and she lay on top of him, their moist lips meeting hungrily in a long, boring kiss

  Oh, to hell with it.

  she was panting with desire

  he was bursting from his pants

  she was wet between the thighs

  he was wet behind the ears

  she was just about to come

  he didn’t know whether he was coming or going

  And it was at this climactic juncture, just as I had managed to work myself into a state of rather desperate excitement, that the telephone rang. I sat up in surprise and looked at the clock. It was two-thirty in the morning. Irrationally, I felt obliged to tidy up my desk and make sure that the sheets of paper were positioned face down before I went to answer. Then, when I picked up the receiver, I heard an unfamiliar voice.

  ‘Mr Owen?’ it said.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘I’m sorry to be disturbing you at this time of night. I hope I didn’t get you out of bed. Hanrahan’s the name. I’m ringing on behalf of one of my clients, a Mr Findlay Onyx, who claims to be an acquaintance of yours.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘I’m his lawyer, you see. Findlay sends his apologies for not being able to speak to you directly, but he’s being held at Hornsey police station, and isn’t allowed to make any more phone calls. He is, however, very anxious to meet with you personally at the earliest opportunity. He asked me to say that you should come round to the station first thing tomorrow morning, if it’s at all possible.’

  ‘Well, it’s … difficult,’ I said, thinking of Fiona and her outpatients’ appointment. ‘I suppose if it’s absolutely necessary … I mean, what’s going on? Is he in trouble?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. I really think it would be best if you could make the effort.’

  I gave him a tentative assurance and he said, ‘Good. Findlay can count on you, then,’ and hung up. The whole conversation had taken place so quickly that I scarcely knew what had happened. For a start I hadn’t even managed to ask him why Findlay was being held by the police – unless, of course (and suddenly this seemed the obvious, the only solution), he was the one who had broken into Mr McGanny’s house and stolen the documents relating to my book. I went into the bedroom, lay down on the bed and pondered the likelihood of this. Could they have caught up with him already, if the burglary had only taken place last night? It was possible. He was old and infirm, and might well have left a trail of careless evidence. But if that was the case, why the sudden urgency? Surely he would be let out on bail, and our meeting could have been deferred until he was back in the privacy of his flat. There was no way of knowing, anyway, and I spent the rest of the night mulling over this new development in an uneasy half-sleep which was broken after only a few hours by the first shafts of wintry sunlight.

  2

  It seemed to take most of the morning to get to the police station by bus. Fiona wouldn’t have that problem, at any rate: I’d booked a minicab for her before setting out. I’d done this to salve my conscience as much as anything else, because she’d looked so suddenly vulnerable when I left her: she’d put on her smartest work clothes, the way people do when gripped by that strange sense of propriety which insists that, if they are to meet their doom, they should at least be properly dressed. (But then again, I suppose, it gives them a kind of strength.) Having me with her wouldn’t have made a lot of difference, anyway. That’s what I tried to believe as the bus stopped and started on its throttled course across London, carrying me ever closer towards the next stage in a mystery from which I was, to tell the truth, beginning to feel more and more detached. It was a good feeling, too, this detachment: quite a relief, after all those years of puzzlement and struggle. It never occurred to me that I would have lost it by the time the morning was out.

  I was kept waiting for only a few minutes by the desk sergeant, and then taken to a bright but grubby cell on the ground floor. Findlay was sitting rigidly on a bench, his raincoat again draped over his shoulders, his white hair turned to a halo by beams of light from one small window high up in the wall.

  ‘Michael,’ he said, taking my outstretched hand. ‘You do me an honour. I could only wish our second meeting had not been fated to take place amid such squalor and uncleanness. The fault, I’m afraid, is entirely my own.’

  ‘Entirely?’

  ‘Well, you can probably guess what has brought me here.’

  ‘I have – let’s say an inkling.’

  ‘Of course you have, Michael. A man of your discernment, your intuition. You know the frailties an old man is subject to, when his resolve is weak but his desires – alas – remain strong. Strong as they ever were.’ He sighed. ‘I think that I mentioned, the last time we met … the bender?’

  I nodded uncertainly. To be honest, I had lost his drift.

  ‘Well, I’m in breach of it. That’s the sad fact of the matter, and I have only myself to blame.’

  Light began to dawn. ‘You mean your suspended sentence?’

  ‘Quite. Once again I find myself flattened by the demands of a reckless libido. Once again the power of flesh over the spirit –’

  ‘So it wasn’t you who broke into McGanny’s house the other night?’

  He looked up sharply, hissed me into silence and shot a warning glance towards the door. ‘For Heaven’s sake, Michael. Do you want to make things even worse for me?’ And then, in a whisper: ‘Why do you think I brought you here, if not to discuss that very matter?’

  I sat down on the bench beside him and waited for enlightenment. After a while I realized that he was sulking.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I prompted.

  ‘Apart from anything else,’ he said, ‘you impugn my professional competence, if you think that I’m incapable of carrying out such a routine little assignment without getting caught. I slipped in and out of that house, Michael, with the grace and the lithe energy of a jungle cat. The great Raffles himself might have stood back and gasped in envy.’

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘Sheer loss of control, Michael. Lack of will-power, and nothing else. I spent the whole of yesterday sifting through the documents which I had borrowed – borrowed, I repeat, for I have a scrupulous regard for property – and by the evening, I was quite satisfied that they provided everything I might have required to forge the missing links in the chain of this most perplexing investigation. Imagine my exhilaration, Michael. Imagine the surge of adrenalin and the rush of blood, coursing through my ancient veins in a torrent of pride and excitement. Suddenly I felt like a young man of thirty.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘Naturally I went out to look for one. The pubs were shut, by now, but just a few streets away from my flat there is a public convenience which, thanks to an uncharacteristically enlightened decision on the part of our council leaders, provides a haven at all hours of the day and night for anyone seeking relief, in its various forms. I’d been trying to stay away from the place for weeks, ever since I was last hauled up in front of a judge and told that one more slip would land me behind bars – only for a couple of months, he said, but who knows what effect even a brief confinement might have on the constitution of a frail and feeble-hearted relic such as myself. Last night, however, the majesty of the law seemed to
hold no terrors, and I found myself unable to resist an approach to this sink of delicious iniquity. I had been there for only a few seconds when a man (man! what am I saying! – an apparition, Michael, a perfectionist’s fantasy sprung to life: Adonis himself, in bomber jacket and sky-blue jeans) emerged from one of the cubicles.’ Findlay shook his head, rapture and regret seeming to vie for precedence in his thoughts. ‘Needless to say, he was to be my undoing. And vice versa.’

  ‘Vice versa?’

  ‘Precisely: I undid his shirt, I undid his trousers, I undid the buttons on his fly. I won’t offend your breeder’s sensibilities, Michael, with a detailed account – a blow-by-blow account, one might almost say – of the pleasantries which ensued. I ask you only to imagine my shock, my outrage, my sense of betrayal, when he suddenly introduced himself as a detective superintendent, no less, of the Metropolitan Police, clapped a pair of handcuffs on me, and whistled for the accomplice who had been waiting out by the doorway. It all happened so very quickly.’ He bowed his head and we both fell silent. I struggled for words of consolation but couldn’t find any; and when Findlay spoke at last, there was a new note of bitterness in his voice. ‘It’s the hypocrisy of these people I can’t stand, you know. The lies they tell themselves and the rest of the world. The little shit was enjoying himself every bit às much as I was.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Please, Michael,’ he said, with an indulgent glance. ‘Either that, or it was his truncheon I’d had between my teeth for the last ten minutes. Allow me some credit for my reading of the situation.’

  Chastened, I waited a moment or two before asking: ‘So then what happened?’

  ‘I was brought back here, and now it appears they can have me banged up in a day or two. Which is why I wanted to see you as soon as possible.’

  There were footsteps in the corridor outside. Findlay waited until they had gone by, then leaned towards me conspiratorially. ‘I have made,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘some startling discoveries. You will be pleased to hear – though not especially surprised, if you are at all acquainted with my rate of success in these matters – that my hunch has proved to be accurate.’

  ‘Which hunch is that?’

  ‘Cast your mind back, Michael, to that discussion we had the last time we met. At one point, I seem to recall, you made an assertion to the effect that you had merely “drifted in” to this business, and I ventured to suggest that it may have been a little more complicated than that. I was right.’ He left an impressive pause. ‘You were chosen.’

  ‘Chosen? Who by?’

  ‘By Tabitha Winshaw, of course. Now listen carefully. Hanrahan will give you a spare set of keys to my flat, and you will find all the relevant papers in the top drawer of my desk. You should go up there as soon as you can and take a good look at them. The first thing you’ll find is Tabitha’s letter to the Peacock Press, dated the twenty-first of May, 1982, putting forward the idea of a book about her family. Immediately, then, a question comes to mind: how had she found out about these particular publishers?

  ‘Answering this question turned out to be simple enough, and involved nothing more devious than some research into the chequered history of McGanny’s entrepreneurial career. I found documents suggesting that he had, over the last thirty years, been involved in the formation of no less than seventeen different companies, most of them having gone into receivership and several having been the subject of criminal proceedings under the tax laws. He had run night clubs, drug companies, dating agencies, insurance firms, correspondence courses and had set himself up, finally, as a literary agent: no doubt it was this which gave him the idea of establishing the Peacock Press – having learned that if there is one class of person, out of all of society’s most naive and defenceless members, who is simply crying out to be conned, it’s the aspiring but untalented writer. Now it seems that one of McGanny’s enterprises, in the mid 1970s, was a chain of bingo halls which ran foul of the authorities in Yorkshire, among other places: and who should have taken charge of his defence on that occasion but our old friend Proudfoot – solicitor to none other than Tabitha Winshaw herself – who continued to provide him with legal representation until meeting with an untimely end, so I gathered, in 1984. So there we have our connection. Tabitha approaches Proudfoot, asking him to locate a suitable publisher, and Proudfoot, miraculously, is able to produce just the man.

  ‘He would also have known that Tabitha’s proposal had a good chance of being accepted, because the state of the company finances at that time was fairly desperate. You will be able to see that yourself from the year’s accounts, which I took the precaution of including in my haul. Add financial insecurity, then, to McGanny’s proven willingness to engage in unscrupulous transactions, and you will see that he could hardly be expected to refuse Tabitha’s generous terms. And he would not even have baulked, as most men would have done, at her one extraordinary precondition.’ He looked up at me sharply. ‘You can guess what it was, of course?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Findlay permitted himself a dry laugh. ‘Well, from her letter, it seems that she insisted – insisted, mind – that the book could only be written by you.’

  This made no sense at all.

  ‘But that’s ridiculous. I haven’t even met Tabitha Winshaw. Back in 1982 we didn’t even … know of each other’s existence.’

  ‘Well, she obviously knew of yours.’

  Findlay sat back against the wall, examining his fingernails and clearly relishing the confusion into which his information had thrown me. After a while – and, I suspect, more out of mischief than anything else – he speculated coolly: ‘Perhaps news of your literary reputation had reached her, Michael. She may have read a review of one of those widely admired novels of yours, and decided that here was a man whose services she could not afford to do without.’

  But I scarcely heard this remark, because a number of new questions, distinctly uncomfortable ones, had just occurred to me.

  ‘Yes, but look, I told you how I came to be offered that job. There was this woman called Alice Hastings, and I met her on the train, quite by chance.’

  ‘Quite by arrangement, I think you’ll find.’ Findlay had produced a toothpick from somewhere and was now scraping out the dirt from beneath his thumbnail.

  ‘But I’d never seen her before in my life.’

  ‘And have you seen her since?’

  ‘Well no, I haven’t – not to speak to, anyway.’

  ‘That’s rather curious, isn’t it, in – what? – eight years of dealing with the firm.’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, on the defensive, ‘I caught a glimpse of her outside the office only a few months ago, getting out of a taxi.’

  ‘I seem to remember,’ said Findlay, now pointing at me with the toothpick, ‘that when you first told me this story, you furnished me with a brief description.’

  ‘That’s right: long dark hair, long thin neck —’

  ‘– and a face like a horse.’

  ‘I can’t believe those were my exact words.’

  ‘Equine, then. That was the detail that stuck in my mind. Or rather, that was the detail which came back to me when I broke into the house the other night and first saw a photograph of’ (bringing the toothpick even closer to my face) ‘McGanny himself.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Did you know that Hastings is the maiden name of McGanny’s wife?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘And that he has a daughter called Alice – an actress?’

  ‘Yes, I did, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘You knew her name was Alice?’

  ‘I knew she was an actress. She phoned him up the last time I was in there, a few months –’

  I stopped short.

  ‘The same day,’ Findlay suggested, ‘that you thought you’d seen Miss Hastings getting out of a taxi?’

  I didn’t reply to this; just got up and walked to the window.

&
nbsp; ‘If the name Alice McGanny,’ Findlay continued, ‘is not one which is widely known in theatrical circles, this is because the young lady’s career has, from what I was able to piece together of her CV, obstinately refused to take off. She’s understudied, she’s dressed, she’s ASM-ed, she’s had walk-on parts, one-line parts and no-line parts, and in between these triumphs she’s been in and out of a drug rehabilitation centre and posed naked for one of the sleaziest magazines in the business. (There was a copy in McGanny’s safe, which I was considerate enough to retrieve on your behalf: it did nothing for me, I’m afraid, but they tell me that this sort of thing can sometimes provide a small frisson to those who share your rather sad and routine inclinations.) And so it’s hardly surprising, given all of this, that she’s repeatedly been obliged to borrow large sums of money from her father; and I dare say that on this occasion she was willing enough to undertake a little role-playing on his behalf, if the price was right.’

  I stayed over by the window. It was too high up in the wall for me to be able to see anything, but that didn’t matter: my mind’s eye was focused on our meeting in the railway carriage all those years ago. I replayed it again and again, fast-forwarding, rewinding. They must have found out my address somehow – from Patrick, maybe, or from my literary editor at the newspaper – and then she must have kept watch on the flat for hours, perhaps even a day or two, while I sat inside writing my precious review … Followed me to the tube station, followed me to King’s Cross, and then that stupid story about going to visit her sister in Kettering, and not needing her own suitcase. How could I have fallen for it: what, precisely, had been blinding me?

  ‘Well, you’re not the only man who would have walked into that trap, I’m sure,’ said Findlay, appearing to read my thoughts. ‘She is rather attractive, after all; even I can see that. Still, they were taking a bit of a gamble, when you think about it, if her looks were all they had to rely upon. I’m surprised they didn’t try to bait the hook with something else while they were about it.’