“I forgive you,” she said. “First one up tomorrow goes for milk and bread, right?”
“Right, Fliss.”
“Good night, then.” She showed no sign of moving from the doorway. Reeve had pulled off his blue cotton sweater and was wearing a long-sleeved white T-shirt. She appraised his body for a moment, and gave a smile and a noise that was halfway between a sigh and humming, then turned and walked away.
He found it hard to sleep. He was too tired; or rather, he was exhausted but not tired. His brain wouldn’t work-as he discovered when he tried carrying on with Jim’s notes-but it wouldn’t be still either. Images flitted through his mind, bouncing along like a ball through a series of puddles. Snatches of conversations, songs, echoes of the two films he’d watched on the flight, his trip on the Underground, the taxicabs, the Indian restaurant, surprising Fliss in the kitchen. Songs… tunes…
Row, row, row your boat.
He jerked from the sofa, standing in the middle of the floor in his T-shirt and underpants, trembling. He switched on the TV, turning the sound all the way down. Nighttime television: mindless and bright. He looked out of the window. A halo of orange sodium, a dog barking in the near distance, a car cruising past. He watched it, studied it. The driver was staring straight ahead. There were cars parked outside, solid lines of them on both sides of the street, ready for tomorrow’s race.
He padded through to the kitchen on bare feet and switched on the kettle again. Rooting in the box of assorted herbal tea bags, he found spearmint and decided to give it a try. Back in the hallway, he noticed that Fliss’s bedroom door was ajar. More than ajar in fact: it was halfway open. Was it an invitation? He’d be bound to see it if he used the kitchen or the bathroom. Her light was off. He listened for her breathing, but the fridge in the kitchen was making too much noise.
He waited in the hall, holding the steaming mug, until the fridge switched off. Her breathing was more than regular-she was snoring.
“Morning.” She came into the kitchen sleepy-faced and tousling her hair. She wore a thick tartan dressing gown and fluffy pink slippers.
Reeve had been out and purchased breakfast and newspapers. She slumped into a chair at the table and grabbed a paper.
“Coffee?” he asked. He’d bought a packet of coffee and some paper filters.
“How did you sleep?” she asked without looking up.
“Fine,” he lied. “You?”
As she was folding a page, she glanced up at him. “Soundly, thanks.”
He poured them both coffee. “I’ve found out what OPs are.”
“Oh?”
“I’ve been doing some more reading.”
“You were up early. So, what are they?”
“Organophosphorus treatments.”
“And what are those when they’re at home?”
“Pesticides, I think. Marco and others think the Spanish cooking oil thing was all to do with pesticides.”
She drank greedily from her mug and exhaled. “So what now?”
He shrugged.
“Are you going to talk to Marco?”
Reeve shook his head. “He’s got nothing to do with it. He’s just a catalyst. Jim wasn’t researching the Spanish incident, he was looking at BSE.”
“Bovine spongiform thingy.”
“Encephalopathy.”
“How did he make the leap from cooking oil to BSE?”
“He remembered something he’d heard.”
So I phoned Joshua Vincent, and told him he probably wouldn’t know me. He said I was correct in that assumption. I explained that some time ago the paper had received a press release from his organization, the National Farmers’ Union, concerning BSE. He told me he wasn’t working for the NFU anymore. He sounded bitter when he said it. I asked him what had happened.
“They sacked me,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because of what I said about BSE.”
And I began to sniff my story. Now if only I can persuade Giles to fund me…
“So what are you doing today?” Fliss asked. She’d had a shower, dried her hair, and was dressed.
“Trying to find Joshua Vincent.”
“And if you can’t?”
Reeve shrugged again; he didn’t want to consider failure, though really it should be considered. With any plan, there should be a fallback position.
“You could talk to Giles Gulliver,” she suggested, dabbing crumbs of toast from her plate.
“That’s an idea.”
“And then?”
“Depends what I learn.”
She sucked at the crumbs. “Don’t expect too much from Giles, or anyone like him.”
“What do you mean?”
She grabbed the newspaper and opened it to a full-page ad-vertisement, placed by Co-World Chemicals. “Don’t bother read-ing it,” she said. “It’ll put you back to sleep. It’s just one of those feel-good ads big corporations make up when they want to spend some money.”
Reeve glanced at the ad. “Or when their consciences are bothering them?”
Fliss wrinkled her nose. “Grow up. Those people don’t have consciences. They’ve had them surgically removed to make room for the cash-flow implants.” She tapped the paper. “But as long as Co-World and companies like them are throwing money at advertising departments, publishers will love them, and the publishers will see to it that their editors never print anything that might upset Sugar Daddy. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
She shrugged. “Will you be here this evening?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’ll have to see how it goes.”
“Well, I’ll probably be late. There’s a second Giannini’s opening in Covent Garden and I’m invited.”
“Giannini’s?”
“The designer.”
“Hold the front page,” he said. She scowled and he held up his hands. “Just a joke.”
“I want to know what you find, no matter what. Even if it’s only a phone call from Scotland, let me know.”
“Sure, it’s the least I can do.”
She left the kitchen and returned again wearing a coat and carrying a briefcase. She made show of adjusting the belt on the coat. “Just one thing, Gordon.”
“What’s that?”
“What are you going to do about the flat?”
He smiled at her. “It’s yours for as long as you want it.”
Finally she looked at him. “Really?” He nodded. “Thanks.”
Maybe he’d found his fallback position. If he didn’t get any further with Jim’s story, he could always track down her ex-boyfriend and make a mess of the rest of his life. She came over and pecked him on the cheek.
Which was payment enough in itself.
He found a telephone number for the NFU, but nobody could give him a forwarding address for Joshua Vincent. A woman who had tried to be helpful eventually passed him on to someone who had more questions than answers, wanting to know who he was and what his connection was with Mr. Vincent.
Reeve put down the telephone.
Maybe Vincent lived in London, but there were several Vincent J’s listed in the phone book. It would take a while to talk to them all. He went to Jim’s notes again. They were a hodgepodge of the detailed and the rambling, of journalistic instinct and alcoholic excess. There were jottings on the backs of some sheets. He hadn’t paid them much attention, but laid them out now on the living-room floor. Doodles, circles, and cubes mostly, and a cow’s warped face with a pair of horns. But there were names and what looked like times, too, and some telephone numbers. There were no names beside the numbers. He tried the first one and got a woman’s answering machine. The second just rang and rang. The third turned out to be a bookmaker’s in Finsbury Park. The fourth was a central London pub, the one Fliss and her journalist colleagues used.
The fifth was another answering machine: “Josh here. Leave your message and I’ll get back.”