Brock sat on the sofa, occasionally glancing at his fingernails, and nodded his youthful way through the story of the intrepid James Fincham, friend of the family, staying in the spare-room on the first floor. Heard noises, crept downstairs to investigate, nasty man in leather jacket and black polo-neck, no never seen him before, fight, fall over, oh my god, hit head. Sarah Woolf, d.o.b.29th August, 1964, heard sounds of struggle, came down, saw the whole thing. Drink, Inspector? Tea? Ribena?
Yes, of course, the setting helped. If we’d tried the same story in a council flat in Deptford, we’d have been on the floor of the van in seconds, asking fit young men with short hair if they wouldn’t mind getting off our heads for a moment while we got comfortable. But in leafy, stuccoedBelgravia, the police are more inclined to believe you than not. I think it’s included in the rates.
As we signed our statements, they asked us not to do anything silly like leave the country without informing the local station, and generally encouraged us to abide at every opportunity.
Two hours after he’d tried to break my arm, all that was left of Rayner, first name unknown, was a smell.
I let myself out of the house, and felt the pain creep back to centre stage as I walked. I lit a cigarette and smoked my way down to the corner, where I turned left into a cobbled mews that had once housed horses. It’d have to be an extremely rich horse who could afford to live here now, obviously, but the stabling character of the mews had hung about the place, and that’s why it had felt right to tether the bike there. With a bucket of oats and some straw under the back wheel.
The bike was where I’d left it, which sounds like a dull remark, but isn’t these days. Among bikers, leaving yourmachine in a dark place for more than an hour, even with padlock and alarm, and finding it still there when you come back, is something of a talking point. Particularly when the bike is a Kawasaki ZZR 1100.
Now I won’t deny that the Japanese were well off-side atPearl Harbor, and that their ideas on preparing fish for the table are undoubtedly poor - but by golly, they do know some things about making motorcycles. Twist the throttle wide open in any gear on this machine, and it’d push your eyeballs through the back of your head. All right, so maybe that’s not a sensation most people are looking for in their choice of personal transport, but since I’d won the bike in a game of backgammon, getting home with an outrageously flukey only-throw 4-1 and three consecutive double sixes, I enjoyed it a lot. It was black, and big, and it allowed even the average rider to visit other galaxies.
I started the motor, revved it loud enough to wake a few fat Belgravian financiers, and set off for Notting Hill. I had to take it easy in the rain, so there was plenty of time for reflection on the night’s business.
The one thing that stayed in my mind, as I jinked the bike along the slick, yellow-lit streets, was Sarah telling me to drop ‘that shit’. And the reason I had to drop it was because there was a dying man in the room.
Newtonian Conversation, I thought to myself. The implication was that I could have kept on holding that shit, if the room hadn’t had a dying man in it.
That cheered me up. I started to think that if I couldn’t work things so that one day she and I would be together in a room with no dying men in it at all, then my name isn’t James Fincham.
Which, of course, it isn’t.
TWO
For a long time I used to go to bed early.
I arrived back at the flat and went through the usual answerphone routine. Two meaningless bleeps, one wrong number, one call from a friend interrupted in the first sentence, followed by three people I didn’t want to hear from who I now had to ring back.
God, I hated that machine.
I sat down at my desk and went through the day’s mail. I threw some bills into the bin, and then remembered that I’d moved the bin into the kitchen - so I got annoyed, stuffed the rest of the post into a drawer, and gave up on the idea that doing chores would help me to get things straight in my mind.
It was too late to start playing loud music, and the only other entertainment I could find in the flat was whisky, so I picked up a glass and a bottle of The Famous Grouse, poured myself a couple of fingers, and went into the kitchen. I added enough water to turn it into just a Vaguely Familiar Grouse, and then sat down at the table with a pocket dictaphone, because someone had once told me that talking out loud helps clarify things. I’d said would it work with butter? and they’d said no, but it would work with whatever is troubling your spirit.
I put a tape in the machine and flicked the record switch.‘Dramatis Personae,’ Isaid. ‘Alexander Woolf, father of Sarah Woolf, owner of dinky Georgian house in Lyall Street, Belgravia, employer of blind and vindictive interior designers, and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Gaine Parker. Unknown male Caucasian, American or Canadian, fiftyish. Rayner. Large, violent, hospitalised. Thomas Lang, thirty-six, Flat D, 42 Westbourne Close, late of the Scots Guards, honourable discharge with rank of Captain. The facts, insofar as they are known, are these.’
I don’t know why tape recorders make me talk like this, but they do.
‘Unknown male attempts to secure employment of T. Lang for the purpose of committing unlawful killing of A. Woolf. Lang declines position on grounds of being nice. Principled. Decent. A gentleman.’
I took a mouthful of whisky and looked at the dictaphone, wondering if I was ever going to play this soliloquy back to anyone. An accountant had told me it was a sensible thing to buy because I could get the tax back on it. But as I didn’t pay any tax, have any need for a dictaphone, or trust the accountant as far as I could spit him, I looked upon this machine as one of my less sensible purchases.
Heigh ho.
‘Lang goes to Woolf’s house, with the intention of warning him against possible assassination attempt. Woolf absent. Lang decides to instigate enquiries.’
I paused for a while, and the while turned into a long while, so I sipped some more whisky and laid aside the dictaphone while I did some thinking.
The only enquiry I had instigated had been the word ‘what’ - and I’d barely managed to get that out of my mouth before Rayner had hit me with a chair. Beyond that, all I’d done was half-kill a man and leave, wishing, pretty fervently, that I’d other-half-killed him too. And you don’t really want that sort of thing lying around on magnetic tape unless you know what you’re doing. Which, amazingly enough, I didn’t.
However, I’d just about known enough to recognise Rayner, even before I knew his name. I couldn’t say he’d been following me exactly, but I’ve a good memory for faces - which makes up for being utterly pathetic with names - and Rayner’s was not a difficult face. Heathrow airport, the public bar of some Devonshire Arms on the King’s Road, and the entrance toLeicester Square tube had been enough of an advertisement, even for an idiot like me.