He fell to one side, lifting his hands away to save his own eyes with his face streaked with soil and dog dirt. The earth smelt of vomit. Thomas’s high voice was shrieking anxiety. He was kicking ineffectually at the torso of the man as the man rolled away, yelling at him bizarrely, YOU PIG, YOU GREAT FAT PIG, GET OFF… the figure rolled free, out on to the path, heaved itself upright, staggering with his face covered by his hands, and stumbled away. Someone else had stopped to watch, but no one prevented him. Lincoln’s Inn Fields had its share of drunks and addicts, better leave them alone.
A woman’s face loomed over Hen’s. Other sounds came into focus, another taxi, Thomas twittering, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Are you all right down there? the woman said, and it seemed to Hen such a strange question to ask of a person sitting in a municipal flowerbed in a busy London square at a still innocent time of day. She had a great desire to giggle as well as release a long delayed scream from her burning throat. Instead she said, yes I think so and to Thomas, no, don’t touch me, you’ll get dirty. Thomas helped her to her feet, pulling her by the coat rather than touching any part of her skin. They moved into the light. He was in his shirtsleeves and shivering. The scarf was still round her neck. They moved to the nearest bench and sat apart while she unwound it. Looped, not knotted, easy to remove, even with shaking hands. The air in her lungs felt wonderful. Thomas was proffering a handkerchief. It made her want to cry.
‘Do you want me to call the police?’
The instinctive answer was no. She said so. Thomas seemed relieved.
‘You’d better come back in,’ he said. They got up, stiffly, moved in the direction of the office. Another jogger puffed by, oblivious to another daily drama. Thomas stopped.
‘Where’s the bag?’ he asked.
‘There. Over there.’
It was stuck in the branches of a shrub by the side of the entrance gate, looking as if it was waiting for collection. She could not imagine how it had got there, tried to remember herself trying to hit him with it. Wanted to think she had done something to resist, satisfied with the thought she might have made him bleed, but doubting that her short, practical nails had done much damage. The dog dirt was the real weapon, and oh, she must stink. Once inside, Thomas locked the door behind them, and when back in his room, he pulled the blinds down against the view. Hen spent some time in the office lavatory and came back with a cleaner face and hands, but the smell still lingered. Vomit, dog faeces, urban sewer in urban flowerbed. Above all, she wanted to go home. So did he. He was still in shock, as much as from what had actually happened in front of his very eyes as from his own response.
‘Thank you for saving me, Mr Noble,’ she said. ‘You were incredibly brave. I wouldn’t have been brave enough to wade in like that. Thank you for saving me.’
Thomas preened slightly, still in shock, moved to be the subject of gratitude for doing something that had taken him by surprise. He knew he had no physical courage and he knew very well that he had hesitated for a second before running out of the office and over the road, hoping someone else would get there first. Just as he knew she had saved herself. The whisky glasses knocked together noisily as he put them on the table untidily, but yes, perhaps on the whole, he had not done too badly. Peter Friel could not have done better, surely. What a silly thought.
‘Shall I try and raise Peter Friel?’ he asked. ‘He has gallant instincts.’
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. He has plenty enough to do. And more, tomorrow.’
She was quite irritatingly almost peaceful, as if she had merely tripped and fallen. It infuriated him. The whisky slopped from the bottle on to the desk.
‘For God’s sake, woman, what’s the matter with you? You’re supposed to be weeping and wailing and screaming and… not like you are. Did you know who that was? Why are you just so… together?’
She took the glass he offered her with a steadier hand than his.
‘How very kind you are. I’m fine, Mr Noble, really I am. I’m fine because I know who it wasn’t. It wasn’t Rick Boyd. That’s all that matters.’
‘All? He tried to strangle you.’
She nodded agreement.
‘Yes, I suppose he did. With a knitted wool scarf. It would never have worked. Or taken too long. Too much stretch in it, you see. Entirely the wrong material.’
Thomas could only admire her, while remaining full of wonder for what he himself had done. Kicked a client; how often had he wanted to do that?
Maybe later he would be brave enough to go back for the scarf.
The wrong material. Who would have thought?
She placed the unblemished carpet bag by the side of her chair, ready to depart.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ Thomas said, pointing towards it. ‘But I still can’t take care of it. Are you sure you’re all right to get home? I’ll come with you, get you a taxi.’
The client needed a drink.
‘The bitch,’ he kept repeating. ‘The bitch.’
‘Yes, but,’ Rick was saying soothingly, ‘yes, but why did you do it?’
‘Has she poisoned me?’
They were standing by the basins in the urinal belonging to a Fleet Street pub with an interior so old and dark that no one would notice what anyone else looked like, even less the state of their clothes. A pub favoured by builders, shapeless tourists on the history trail, clandestine lovers in the interval between work and home, no dress code to speak of. A place of authentic, centuries-old gloom, extending back as far as the gents’, the atmosphere issuing an invitation to plot and conspire. Rick Boyd dabbed at the very minor scratches on Frank Shearer’s face as if the man were his innocent son, offering words of comfort and genuine wonder.
‘What made you fly off the handle like that, Frank old son? I mean, like what were you doing there in the first place? We were meeting here, weren’t we?’
Frank had been crying when he called from his mobile. Come and get me, Rick, I can’t see. Where the fuck are you? In the lav, end of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. I just hit this bitch, and she, she… the bitch.
No, you come here. Turn right outside, down that narrow road at the end and you’re in Fleet Street. Go left, it’s down on the left. You know where it is. No one’ll notice. Promise.
If Frank had turned up in a state bad enough to be embarrassing and pursued by a copper, Rick would have melted away and left him to it. As it was, Frank was a bit bruised and battered and dirty and smelly, with the reek of three days’ drink on him mixed with the rest, but not as bad as a tramp. It was not anything like the pervasive scent of someone who had not washed for weeks. Frank had not been entirely sober since he met Rick and the days blurred. Took a day off work yesterday and spent it with him, getting smashed and angry, had not slept the night before, and a few extra supplements, provided by Rick, made him delusional. So terrified of being a loser again that he saw shadows in the light and despair in the shadows, fit to fight a dog and kill a ghost. Even a pretend ghost. If Rick had pity in him, he might have felt it, but since he did not know what that was like, he did not feel it now. All he felt was the sense of triumph that came when he conned someone so completely, amazement that it worked mixed with alarm when it worked as quickly and comprehensively as this. Plus caution, because things had to be worked out all over again. You could never stick to plan A when the vic was smitten. Didn’t matter what they were smitten with, whether it was with himself, or with their own insecurities or with fear of loss, with sex, with anything. It was the way they just lay down and invited you to fuck them as soon as they were filled with dreams, new fears, new insecurities and unaccustomed pleasures. Amazing. As if they had not lived before they met him. Frank was like that.