On Rayner, the effect was pretty much as advertised, because he shifted involuntarily to one side, easing the grip on my arm for about a twelfth of a second. I threw my head back into his face as hard as I could, feeling the gristle in his nose adjust itself around the shape of my skull and a silky wetness spreading across my scalp, then brought my heel up towards his groin, scraping the inside of his thigh before connecting with an impressive bundle of genitalia. By the time the twelfth of a second had elapsed, Rayner was no longer breaking my arm, and I was aware, suddenly, of being drenched in sweat.
I backed away from him, dancing on my toes like a very old St Bernard, and looked around for a weapon.
The venue for this pro-am contest ofone fifteen -minute round was a small, inelegantly furnished sitting-room inBelgravia. The interior designer had done a perfectly horrible job, as all interior designers do, every single time, without fail, no exceptions - but at that moment his or her liking for heavy, portable objetshappened to coincide with mine. I selected an eighteen-inch Buddha from the mantelpiece with my good arm, and found that the little fellow’s ears afforded a satisfyingly snug grip for the one-handed player.
Rayner was kneeling now, vomiting on a Chinese carpet and improving its colour no end. I chose my spot, braced myself, and swung at him back-handed, plugging the corner of the Buddha’s plinth into the soft space behind his left ear. There was a dull, flat noise, of the kind that only human tissue under attack can make, and he rolled over on to his side.
I didn’t bother to see whether he was still alive. Callous, perhaps, but there you go.
I wiped some of the sweat from my face and walked through into the hall. I tried to listen, but if there was any sound from the house or from the street outside I would never have heard it, because my heart was going like a road drill. Or perhaps there really was a road drill outside. I was too busy sucking in great suitcase-sized chunks of air to notice.
I opened the front door and immediately felt cool drizzle on my face. It mingled with the sweat, diluting it, diluting the pain in my arm, diluting everything, and I closed my eyes and let it fall. It was one of the nicest things I’ve ever experienced. You may say that it’s a pretty poor life I’ve been leading. But then, you see, context is everything.
I left the door on the latch, stepped down on to the pavement and lit a cigarette. Gradually, grumpily, my heart sorted itself out, and my breathing followed at a distance. The pain in my arm was terrible, and I knew it would be with me for days, if not weeks, but at least it wasn’t my smoking arm.
I went back into the house and saw that Rayner was where I’d left him, lying in a pool of vomit. He was dead, or he wasgrievously-bodily-harmed, either of which meant at least five years. Ten, with time added on for bad behaviour. And this, from my point of view, was bad.
I’ve been in prison, you see. Only three weeks, and only on remand, but when you’ve had to play chess twice a day with a monosyllabic West Ham supporter, who has ‘HATE’ tattooed on one hand, and ‘HATE’ on the other - using a set missing six pawns, all the rooks and two of the bishops - you find yourself cherishing the little things in life. Like not being in prison.
I was contemplating these and related matters, and starting to think of all the hot countries I’d never got around to visiting, when I realised that that noise - that soft, creaking, shuffling, scraping noise - was definitely not coming from my heart. Nor from my lungs, nor from any other part of my yelping body. That noise was definitely external.
Someone, or something, was making an utterly hopeless job of coming down the stairs quietly.
I left the Buddha where it was, picked up a hideous alabaster table lighter and moved towards the door, which was also hideous. How can one make a hideous door? you may ask. Well, it takes some doing, certainly, but believe me, the top interior designers can knock off this kind of thing before breakfast.
I tried to hold my breath and couldn’t, so I waited noisily. A light switch flicked on somewhere, waited, then flicked off. A door opened, pause, nothing there either, closed. Stand still. Think. Try the sitting-room.
There was a rustle of clothing, a soft footfall, and then suddenly I found I was relaxing my grip on the alabaster lighter, and leaning back against the wall in something close to relief. Because even in my frightened, wounded state, I was ready to stake my life on the fact that Nina Ricci’s Fleur de Fleurs is just not a fighting scent.
She stopped in the doorway and looked around the room. The lights were out, but the curtains were wide open and there was plenty of light coming in from the street.
I waited until her gaze fell on Rayner’s body before I put my hand over her mouth.
We went through all the usual exchanges dictated byHollywood and polite society. She tried to scream and bite the palm of my hand, and I told her to be quiet because I wasn’t going to hurt her unless she shouted. She shouted and I hurt her. Pretty standard stuff, really.
By and by she was sitting on the hideous sofa with half a pint of what I thought was brandy but turned out to be Calvados, and I was standing by the door wearing my smartest and best ‘I am psychiatrically A1’ expression.
I’d rolled Rayner on to his side, into a kind of recovery position, to stop him from choking on his own vomit. Or anyone else’s, if it came to that. She’d wanted to get up and fiddle with him, to see if he was all right - pillows, damp cloths, bandages, all the things that help to make the bystander feel better - but I told her to stay where she was because I’d already called an ambulance, and all in all it would be better to leave him alone.
She had started to tremble slightly. It started in the hands, as they clutched the glass, then moved to her elbows and up to her shoulders, and it got worse every time she looked at Rayner. Of course, trembling is probably not an uncommon reaction to discovering a mixture of dead person and vomit on your carpet in the middle of the night, but I didn’t want her getting any worse. As I lit a cigarette with the alabaster lighter - and yes, even the flame was hideous - I tried to take in as much information as I could before the Calvados booted her up and she started asking questions.
I could see her face three times in that room: once in a silver-framed photograph on the mantelpiece, with her in Ray Bans, dangling from a ski-lift; once in a huge and terrible oil portrait, done by someone who can’t have liked her all that much, hanging by the window; and finally, and definitely the best of all, in a sofa ten feet away.
She couldn’t have been more than nineteen, with squareshoulders and long brown hair that waved and cheered as it disappeared behind her neck. The high, round cheek-bones implied Orientalness, but that disappeared as soon as you reached her eyes, which were also round, and large, and bright grey. If that makes any sense. She was wearing a red silk dressing-gown, and one elegant slipper with fancy gold thread across the toes. I glanced around the room, but its mate was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she could only afford one.