His hand was gripping his glasses, clouding them.
‘You’re right, Eddie. You’re not on my social calendar. I don’t like you. You’re like a permanent flu virus in everybody else’s life. You leave them vulnerable. But Mason’s cancer. I’m going to cut that bastard out. You can be part of the operation or part of the tumour. No other choice.’
I made to sip my coffee but it was getting cold. I took out a cigarette and lit it. I knew Eddie didn’t smoke these days. Maybe it was so that he would be there when his grandchildren came. I had said what I had to say. The way he took it was the way he took it. I would be going on from here, whatever. I smoked for a time.
‘I’m not agreeing with anything,’ Eddie said. ‘But could you be more specific?’
‘There’s a way I can do this where you’re not directly involved. Only you and me’ll know. And maybe a colleague that I know I can trust.’
‘What if I don’t trust him?’
‘Hey, Eddie. I’m making this contract. You sign it or don’t. That’s all. Who told you you had rights here? You gave them up when you took them off other people. You’re with me or I’ll fuck up your neat life permanently. The way you’ve helped to fuck up other people’s. Like to the death.’
He looked at his coffee. He looked at his newspaper.
‘So what would be involved?’ he said.
‘I don’t know yet. For the next two or three days, we keep in touch. You give me your number. If David Ewart leaves a message, that’ll be me. You don’t get back on it soon, I’ll know you’ve renegued. But when you get back, you phone me in my own name at the Grosvenor.’
‘What kinda deal is that?’
‘It’s the only one I know how to make just now.’
‘But Ah don’t even know what ye’re askin’ me to do.’
‘Neither do I. I just want you there in case I need you.’
‘For what?’
‘Whatever it is, it’ll meet the terms I’ve stated. Nobody’ll know that you’re involved.’
‘How can you say that if you don’t know what ye’re askin’ me to do?’
‘Because when I ask you, you can judge. You don’t like it, you get out. I’ll just have to waste your life. You’re covered.’
‘Oh, thanks. David Ewart?’
‘David Ewart. It’s a harmless name.’
He put his glasses in their case, put them in his pocket. He took the glasses back out and put them on. He reached for the newspaper at the end of the table. He tore off a piece of the margin. He wrote his telephone number on it and passed it to me. I checked it and folded the paper neatly and put it in the ticket pocket of my blazer. Eddie replaced his glasses in his pocket. We sat together, feeling apart.
I wasn’t fooling myself about what had happened. So far, this meant nothing. All Eddie had done was play for time. All he had given me was a phone number. I could have found that in the book. He had made a gesture that was either a handshake or a wave but nobody knew which yet, not even him. But at least I’d caused a draught in his safe house. There was a broken window somewhere he hadn’t known about. He would be wandering around his premises for a time, trying to work out where it was and if there was anything he could do about it.
‘What about Matt Mason?’ I said. ‘What’s happening just now?’
Eddie’s look told me to back off. He wasn’t working for me just yet.
‘He’s in Glasgow?’
‘He’s not in Thailand.’
‘Nothing happening?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Eddie said. ‘There’s a big caper on tomorrow.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A children’s party.’
‘A what?’
‘A children’s party. Matt’s got twin nieces. They’re eight tomorrow. He’s very fond of them. So he’s havin’ a big party for them in the house. He’s got more room than their parents. Millie’s going.’ Millie was Eddie’s wife. ‘It’ll be her first time in the house.’
‘You not going?’
‘Ah’m supposed to go to the football. Ah haven’t seen a game for a while.’
‘A children’s party? Nice.’
‘It will be,’ Eddie said. ‘It’ll be great fun for the kids. All the twins’ friends. Some of their parents. It’ll be quite a houseful. You’re not plannin’ to raid it, are ye?’
I put out my cigarette.
‘Okay for you to get the bill, Eddie?’
‘Ah thought that was the idea.’
We looked at each other.
‘Eddie,’ I said. ‘I know what’s happened here. Between us. You can go away from here and tell Matt Mason everything. Tell him to protect himself. It’s your choice. But that would be a foolish one. You know why? Either I’m serious about this or I’m not. If I’m serious and you don’t tell him, you can save your family’s peace of mind. If I’m serious and you do tell him, your life’s over as you know it. If I’m not serious, who needs to know about this anyway? This conversation might never have happened. One last tip. I’m serious, Eddie. I didn’t know Dan Scoular. I wish I had. But I like people who liked him. That’ll do me. I’ll take their word for it. Dan Scoular’s dead. I’m going to lay Matt Mason’s future at his grave like a bunch of flowers. It’s up to you to be part of the bouquet or not. Thanks for the coffee.’
As I came out, Jennifer called goodbye and waved. I was sure Eddie would give her a good tip. He was generous that way.
29
Hunting is largely waiting, I suppose, whether you’re hunting animals or people or understanding. I remember Tom Docherty telling me how he went about writing. It was in a letter, the only one he ever wrote me. He suffers from what he jocularly calls epistolary paralysis. That time he was living in Paris and experiencing the moody glooms.
‘Writing? Who needs it? When you write, here’s what you do. You go alone. You build your hide round yourself from whatever is available — broken relationships, gathered hurts, remembered joys, wilful routine. You wait. You try many different baits. You let everything escape — no matter how good it looks or what praise the catching of it would bring you — but the one you’re waiting for, the one you know you must get. You’re prepared to lose yourself rather than it. Meantime, you feed on whatever scraps there are to hand, iron rations of the self.’
I was thinking of him as I came back to the hotel. One of the pleasures of his presence in my life has been that he is a great completer of half-thoughts. You offer him a vague perception and he takes it from you, cleans off the gunge and gives you it back, having shown you how it works. He clarifies you to yourself.
Here he was, doing it again, even if he didn’t know it. For I saw in his description of where he had been a clarification of where I was. Eddie Foley was part of the bait. But what he was designed to catch wasn’t really the quarry I was after. I wanted Matt Mason all right. But he was just a stop along the route, not the destination. If we caught him, he was for Brian and Bob. He was what they were hunting. Let them take the credit.
I was waiting for something bigger, at least bigger in my terms. I was looking not just to catch whoever had snuffed out two lives but whatever it was that had snuffed out a lot of lives, though it might have left them still moving around. I wanted to locate the source of the defeat in David Ewart’s eyes, the remorseless hardness in Dave Lyons’, the avid self-interest in Anna’s. Had the death of Scott’s idealism been suicide or murder?
As I ate my lunch in the downstairs restaurant of the hotel, I also experienced an echo of the loneliness Tom had been writing about. There had been a message left by Brian Harkness that they had some leads on Marty Bleasdale. Instead of making me feel part of a team, the communication had left me feeling more isolated. I thought of Bob and Brian doing what they do and knew that they were pursuing ends different from my own. False proximity becomes a measure of real distance.
That feeling had been intensified by my call to Jan before I sat down to eat. I had phoned her at the restaurant and she was there and able to talk, though not for long. We agreed that we would meet at the Bona Sospira tonight for dinner.