“Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“What did he say to that? I mean, at the end. How did he leave it?”
“He said, if those clever buggers were black, I’m a baboon’s uncle.”
It wasn’t immediately that Maria realized the connection had been broken. Almost as soon as she did, the phone rang again.
“Did you hang up?”
“It wasn’t Harold, was it?”
“Did you just hang up on me?”
“It wasn’t Harold?”
“What wasn’t Harold?”
“Told them about this? Go round and lean on my wife. I think she’s lying?”
“He spoke to Harold, yes.”
“He what?”
“But that was outside, before. Right before he came to the house.”
“Then Harold did tell him.”
“Why would he do that?”
“The fact that he found the pair of us …”
“Harold doesn’t give a toss about us, whatever we were doing.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that.”
“What?”
“Give a toss.”
“I’m sorry. Not ladylike. I was forgetting you were the sweet, old-fashioned kind. Only liked women who said please first, thank you afterwards and refused to unbutton their blouses while the lights were on.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“I know.”
“Which doesn’t alter the fact that Harold …”
“Harold has made a deal to fix you up with his drug-pusher. That doesn’t come off, he’s going to be walking round minus his balls. The last thing he wants is for the police to get on to you.”
Silence. Grabianski was thinking.
“Jerry?”
“Yes?”
“It’ll be all right, won’t it?”
“Yes, sure.”
“I mean, there’s no other way they can get at you, is there?”
“They haven’t so far. Not as much as a sniff.”
Maria sighed. “I’m glad.”
“I’ll call you,” Grabianski said. “Tomorrow.”
“You’re not coming round?” “It’s too late.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“I don’t know. I’ll see.”
“You’re not pulling out on me, are you?”
“No.” He said it quickly enough for Maria to believe him.
“Jerry…”
“Um?”
“Be careful, won’t you?”
He made a kissing sound down the line and hung up again and this time he didn’t ring back. Maria didn’t know whether to have another gin or soak in the bath. In the end she found a dog-eared Jackie Collins that she’d read before and decided to do both.
By the time Harold Roy had stopped talking to Resnick he felt twenty pounds lighter and his head, instead of aching, was a whole lot clearer. Walking out at the back of the studios, the light was darkening to purple across the rooftops. The only things Resnick hadn’t done, instructed him to make a perfect act of contrition, say five Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys, hear the final words of absolution.
Those would come.
Twenty-seven
“Lager, please,” Patel said.
“Draught or bottle?”
“Er, draught.”
“Pint or half?”
“Half.”
“Didn’t think your lot drank.”
“Oh, yes, some of us do.”
“Against your religion or something, alcohol.”
Looking over his shoulder, Patel saw the man he had followed, Grice, feeding coins into a gambling-machine that flashed lights and emitted an electronic jingle. “Thanks,” he said, collecting his change, picking his glass off the counter.
Not exactly according to instructions, this, but, mild for the time of year or not, standing around was leaking the cold into his back and shoulders. Three times the elderly woman with the astrakhan collar had been back down to him, when was he going to go and arrest the man who kept looking into her bedroom with his binoculars? She didn’t feel safe taking a bath, getting undressed.
When Grice had come out, standing by one of the parked cars for a few moments, deciding whether to take it or walk, Patel had made up his mind. The target had moved off right and Patel had stayed down behind the phalanx of green bins, calling into the station, before following.
Grice had walked fast, hands jammed into his topcoat pockets, not breaking stride until he reached the pedestrian lights at the head of Castle Boulevard. Behind them, the castle itself, the rebuilt seventeenth-century version of it, held its ground high on weathered rock. Patel followed over and almost immediately right, past the Irish Center where they sold Dublin papers on a Sunday morning, where lines of mostly English students queued on a Saturday night, eager to dance and drink into the early hours.
The pub itself was on the canal, seats outside where later in the year you could watch the barges making their slow passage through the lock. Patel chose a table between the amusement-machines and the main door, the third point of a triangle. A copy of yesterday’s Post had been bunched up against the seat nearby and he opened it out, folding the sports pages to read about the cricket being played in New Zealand. Richard Hadlee, now there was a competitor: Patel had been lucky enough to get a seat on the top deck at Trent Bridge several times during the last couple of seasons, and had watched Hadlee bowl from behind the arm. Patches when the ball was moving both ways, digging in, virtually unplayable.
His man came past him and Patel prepared to finish his lager, get up and leave, but all the target did was go to the bar and order another drink. Sitting back down, he glanced at his watch, not once, twice. All right, thought Patel, he’s waiting for somebody. Good. The cricket report finished, he turned on to the classifieds. Now that house prices were stabilizing, maybe he should think more seriously about moving out from his couple of rooms, buying a place of his own, one of those terraced houses east of Derby Road, close enough so’s he could still walk to work each morning.
Patel could see the knowing smile that would come to his mother’s face, the studied look of approval on his father’s: he was settling down, not a boy any more, marriage, he needed a good woman to look after him, children.
Patel felt his blood quicken as soon as the newcomer came through the door. Medium height, slight build, eyes that were a shade nervous as they picked out the person they were looking for. A low-alcohol lager carried behind Patel and into the corner. Quick shake of hands.
Patel’s finger moved down the page. It was still possible to find something perfectly reasonable for less than forty thousand, and if his mortgage would stretch to a little more …
The new man was wearing a dark double-breasted suit, pale yellow shirt and striped tie. Patel put him at thirty-three or — four. He would have guessed somewhere along the range from car salesman to insurance; estate agent, even. But he didn’t think the hushed conversation had anything to do with surveys or searches, nor that what was passed between them-a padded envelope, the size that would fit down into an inside pocket, a sheet of paper, folded three times-had anything to do with land deeds, options to purchase.
Grice stood abruptly, moving towards the gents. Patel waited, watching the man in the suit, a small dark mustache drawn across his face like a mistake. Suddenly the man’s head turned and he was looking directly at Patel, eyes widening with interest; no, he was looking past him, a woman entering from the street, forties, short skirt and good legs. Grice almost collided with her on his way back.
The two men, both standing now, exchanged a few more sentences before Patel’s target turned towards the door and his friend sat back down.
Options jumped through Patel’s mind and he stayed put, letting Grice go. Initiative or stupidity, time would see. He went back to the property pages-Arnold, New Basford, Bulwell. The man in the suit was more relaxed now; he made a second trip to the bar and said something to the woman in the short skirt, who laughed. Sitting down again, he lit a cigarette and leaned back easily, and Patel thought he was in for a long wait. This time he would ask for a ginger ale. But no. The cigarette was pressed down into the glass ashtray, half-smoked, the glass drained as the man rose to his feet. He was out of the door and on to the pavement before Patel had nodded to the barman, crossed to the floor.