Mouse now brought four pints of ale to the table. Two for each of us. “You look bloody horrible, Nick.”
“Thank you.”
“Never thought I’d see you again.”
“You could have visited me in hospital.”
“Don’t be so fucking daft. I spent bloody hours outside your door, didn’t I? But you were being coy. What’s the matter? Do we wear the wrong perfume for you? Cheers.” He downed the best part of his first pint. “Saw your ugly face in the papers. Who beat you up?”
“Friend of Anthony Bannister’s. South African.”
“Well, well, well.” He looked at me with interest, sensing a story.
“But you can’t say that,” I said hastily, “because if you do I lose my boat.”
He closed his eyes, clicked his fingers irritably, then gave me a look of triumph. “Sycorax, right?”
“Right.”
“Three bloody years and I haven’t forgotten.” I remembered how Micky prided himself on his memory. “God,” he went on, “but you were boring about that bloody boat. Still afloat, is it?”
“Only just.”
“How come you lose her if I say that you were beaten up by a mate of Bannister’s?”
“Because I need Bannister’s money to repair it.” Micky gave me a long and disbelieving look. “If I recall correctly, which I bloody well do, us taxpayers gave a hundred thousand quid to everyone who got badly wounded in the Falklands. Didn’t you qualify?”
“I got stitched up by a divorce lawyer.”
“Bloody hellfire. A hundred grand?”
“Damn nearly.”
“Jesus, mate. You need a bloody nanny, not a newspaper reporter.
So tell me all.”
I told him about Sycorax. I also told him about Bannister, Jill-Beth, Kassouli and the Honourable John. I told him everything. I told him how I had let myself be suckered into Kassouli’s house and how, as a result, I now had a problem. I wanted to head Kassouli off, not because I was on Bannister’s side, but because it was impossible to do nothing when so many jobs were threatened. It had become a matter of patriotism. Micky grimaced when I used the word. “So why don’t you just play shtum?” he asked. “Clearly the fucking Government’s happy for Bannister to get knocked over, the jobs get saved, and you keep your boat. What do you need me for?”
“Because there’s no proof that Bannister did kill his wife.”
“Oh. You want to be honourable as well, do you?” He said it in friendly mockery, then lit a cigarette and stared at the smoke-stained ceiling. He was a big man with a coarse tongue and a battered face and a mind like a suspicious weasel. He gave me an overwhelming impression of world-weariness; that he had seen everything, heard everything, and believed very little of any of it. Now he looked dubious. “It’s the word of a convict’s son versus the British Government and one of the world’s richest men?”
“That’s about it.”
“The VC will help, of course—” he thought about it some more—“but Kassouli will deny talking to you?”
“Utterly.”
“And the Government will say they never heard of you?”
“I’m sure.”
“Dodgy.” He went silent again for a few puffs of his cigarette.
“Do you think there’s a chance Bannister did it?”
“I haven’t the first idea, Mouse. That’s the whole point about a perfect murder. It’s so perfect you don’t even know if it was murder.”
“But if we say it was murder, Nick, or if we even bloody hint at it, Bannister will slap a bloody libel writ on us, won’t he?”
“Would he?”
“Of course he would. Worth hundreds of thousands, that libel.
Tax-free, too.” He shook his head. “It just can’t be proved that he murdered his wife, can it?”
“No.”
“It would be the perfect bloody murder.” He said it admiringly.
“And a damn sight cheaper than divorce.” He lit another cigarette.
“I want it. It’s a lovely little tale. A stinking rich Yank with a wog name, a murdering Brit bastard, a pusillanimous government, a copper-bottomed war hero, and a corpse with big tits. Just right for a scummy lowlife rag like mine. Cheers, Nick.”
“So can you help?” I felt the relief of a weight being lifted, the relief that I was no longer alone between the rock and a hard place. If the British Government would not take on Kassouli’s obsession, then the press certainly would. Kassouli’s threats would disappear in the face of publicity, for he would surely not dare acknowledge that he was trying to blackmail a government or plan revenge on the high seas. I would let the newspapers stir up the sludge and make a huge stench. The stench might even give Kassouli what he wanted; another enquiry into Nadeznha’s death. The stench would also release me from the whole mess. I had wanted help, and now I had it from the very people I’d been avoiding for over two years.
“I’ll help,” Micky said grimly, “but I need proof.” He wrinkled his face as he thought. “This Jill-Beth Kirov-like-the-fucking-ballet.
She’s coming back to talk to you?”
“She said so. But I’m planning to move my boat tomorrow. I’m not going to be around to be talked to.”
“You have to move the boat?”
“Bloody hell, yes. Bannister’s threatening to repossess it, and I’ve had enough.”
“No.” Micky shook his head. “No, no, no. Won’t do, Nick. You’ll have to stay there.” He saw my unwilling expression, and sighed.
“Look, mate. If you’re not there, then the American girl won’t talk to you. If she doesn’t talk to you, then we haven’t got any proof.
And if I haven’t got proof then we don’t have a story. Not a bloody dicky-bird.”
“But how does her talking to me provide proof?”
“Because I’ll wire you, you dumb hero. A radio mike under your shirt, an aerial down your underpants, and your Uncle Micky listening in with a tape-recorder.”
“Can you do that?”
“Sure I can do it. I have to get the boss’s permission, but we do it all the time. How do you think we find all those bent coppers and kinky clergymen? But what you have to do, Nick, is go along with it all, understand? Tell Bannister you’d love to navigate his bloody boat. Tell Kassouli you’re itching to help him trap Bannister. String them along!”
“But I don’t want to stay at Bannister’s,” I said unhappily.
“In fact I’ve already told them I’m through with their damned film.”
“Then bloody un-tell them. Eat crow. Say you were wrong.” He was insistent and persuasive; all his world-weariness sloughing away in his eagerness for the story. “You’re doing it for Queen and Country, Nick. You’re saving jobs. You’re staving off some Yankee nastiness. It won’t be for ever, anyway. How long before this American bint turns up with the hundred thousand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Within a month, I’ll wager. So, are you game?” Bannister had not been able to persuade me to stay on to be filmed, nor had Kassouli, nor even the Honourable John, but Micky had done it easily. I said I’d stay. But only till the story broke, and after that I would rid myself of all the rich men into whose squabble I had been unwillingly drawn. “Of course we’ll pay you for the story,” Micky said.
“I don’t want money for it.”
He shook his head. “You are a berk, Nick, you are a real berk.” But I was no longer alone.
I took the train to Devon next morning. It was raining. Wildtrack had left the river, either gone back to the Hamble marina or else to her training runs. Mystique had also disappeared; probably reclaimed by an angry French charter firm.
But Sycorax was still at my wharf. I had half expected to find her missing, but she was safe and I felt an immense relief.