‘Happy burp-day,’ I say, handing him my present.
‘What is it?’
‘It’s an ant farm,’ I explain. ‘Where ants live.’ I help him remove the wrapping paper to reveal the plastic window through which ants may be seen running up and down tunnels with small objects in their mouths, occasionally stopping to flail antennae with other ants. The resemblance to the Financial Services Centre seems to me indisputable.
‘Is Roland in there?’ Remington asks.
‘Hmm, there are certainly some ants that might be related …’
‘Let’s take them out!’
‘Maybe later,’ his father says hastily, removing the box from the boy’s hands and putting it on a high shelf. Remington shrugs and rejoins the anarchy. ‘So I have news,’ Paul says to me.
‘Oh yes?’
‘Yeah. Dodson called.’
The first thing I think of is Banerjee. ‘He’s pressing charges? Or — my God, he’s not dead, is he?’
‘Relax, Banerjee’s fine, they’re all fine. No, he was calling about the book.’
‘What book?’
‘My book. He thinks it’s got legs. He wants to publish it.’
‘He wants to —?’ I feel a soar of elation, though also a certain amount of confusion: there do seem to be a number of loose ends to this news, for example that there is no book.
‘There’s no book now,’ Paul corrects me. ‘But after hearing our proposal that night Robert says it’s all right there.’ His voice takes on a loftier tone, adding, ‘He says it’s the book I was born to write.’
‘He says Anal Analyst is the book you were born to write?’
‘He’s not 100 per cent sure about the title,’ Paul concedes.
‘Well,’ I say, attempting to take this in. ‘And you don’t … that is, in the past you have had some doubts about writing. The modern audience, competing technologies, that kind of thing.’
‘Cold feet, that’s all that was,’ Paul says dismissively. ‘Does the blackbird sing for an audience? Does the sun rise in the hope that some douche’ll take a picture of it on his phone? I just needed someone to believe in me. That’s what I’ve been waiting for, all this time.’
‘I believed in you,’ I remind him.
‘I know, I know.’
‘Clizia believed in you.’
‘Yeah, well, someone who’s professionally qualified to believe in me, I mean.’
It strikes me that Robert Dodson believed in him the last time, and he just never submitted the book, but I decide not to press the point. ‘And he will give you some money, as well as belief?’
‘He needs a couple of pages first — just the basic set-up, to show the finance people. But once that’s done, he’s pretty sure he can scrap the previous advance and set up a whole new deal.’
‘Debt forgiveness, eh?’
‘They won’t pay much. But get this. Just a few days after I saw you, I got an email from this investment company, asking about buying the apartment for cash.’
‘This apartment?’
‘Yes! I told them straight up it’s got structural problems. They didn’t seem to care. Cyrano Solutions, you ever heard of them?’
‘No, but there are all kinds of foreign investors in town, buying up property.’
‘I couldn’t find anything about them online. It sounded kind of shady to me. But then the next thing I know we get this huge whomp of money into our account! I mean just like that! And these people say we can wait and move out whenever. Isn’t that crazy? Like I wouldn’t say our troubles are over, exactly, but I’ll be able to keep writing full-time, at least till I’ve got a first draft. After that maybe I can get a few gigs on the side, reviews, that kind of thing — you know, now that I’ve got my bona fides again.’
‘That is wonderful.’ I clink his plastic glass. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks. We were sailing pretty close to the wind this time. Sometimes I even thought … well, why dwell on it. Suffice to say, it’s nice to have some good news for a change. And a lot of it’s down to you.’
‘Me?’ I say, through a mouthful of butterfly cake.
‘You assaulting Banerjee did me no harm at all. He didn’t say it, but I got the distinct impression Dodson’s been wanting to hit him with a sculpture for a long, long time. I reckon I could have given him the ABC after that and he still would have published it.’
‘Au contraire, it is your talent.’
‘So the question now is how to end it,’ Paul says, as in a far corner of the room a synthesizer polka starts up and the children dance around. ‘Dodson thinks he’s got to rob the bank.’
‘The banker?’
‘He says it’s the only ending that makes sense. After everything that happens.’
‘I see,’ I say, a cold spiral of metal coiling up from my gut.
‘So I wanted to run something by you. I know you said robbing an investment bank was basically impossible. But I’ve been reading about this guy in France, this Pierrot — you’ve heard of him?’
‘Of course.’
The children are jumping up and down now, the noise so thunderous it almost drowns out the music.
‘He breaks into the back office in the middle of the night, forges some papers, transfers his clients’ money into his own account. Couldn’t that work here?’
The music stops abruptly: the children freeze.
‘Pierrot got caught,’ I say.
‘He got greedy. He did it over and over. What if our guy only does it once? And he takes the money from some really evil client, so it wouldn’t seem so much like stealing?’
I stroke my chin; my fingers feel like ice. ‘It’s true, if he put the money into a third party’s account it would be almost impossible for the bank to get back,’ I say, forcing the words through numb lips. ‘And maybe, if he was lucky, the client wouldn’t find out till their end-of-year returns. Still, it would only be a matter of time.’
‘In theory, though, you could have it so that by the time the client finds out they’ve got away?’
‘ “They”?’
‘The banker and the waitress.’
I feel a curious jolt, as if the world has slipped from its wheel. ‘What about her boyfriend?’
‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend,’ Paul says, erasing him with a single wave of the hand. ‘Maybe the banker thinks she has a boyfriend. And that’s what makes his sacrifice authentic? But then he finds out the truth, using a bespoke waitress surveillance system. Although Dodson’s not 100 per cent about that part either,’ he confesses.
‘Dad, we need you for pass-the-parcel …’ Remington appears at his father’s elbow.
‘Oh, right — but in principle, that’d work? The back-office thing?’
They get away; a happy ending. ‘Yes, I think that would work very well.’
‘Dad.’
‘All right, all right. Hey, try the dinosaur cake, Claude, it’s unbeatable!’
He is pulled away. Left by the table, nibbling on dinosaur cake, I think about what he said. Could they really escape, the banker and the waitress? Is there still somewhere in the world the bank wouldn’t find them?
‘You look like one of the musical statues.’
I turn around. Clizia has materialized beside me. ‘Just daydreaming,’ I tell her. ‘Enjoying the party?’
‘I should get back to the office. But I’m worried that if I move I will stand on somebody.’
‘They’re tougher than they look,’ she says with a laugh. Her hair is tied back, and instead of her usual micro-skirt she wears a tracksuit, liberally adorned with food smears and tiny fingerprints; the bruising around her eye has faded almost to nothing.
‘Things are better?’ I say.