'Charlie?'
'Mmm.'
'Thanks, love. And be careful.'
The town centre was crowded with groups of young people, singing and swaying, spilling into the road as they toured the pubs. Some wore funny hats or strands of streamers round their necks. Nobody wore a coat. They breed 'em tough, these days. The wind had swung again, away from the Pole, but it was still thinner than orphanage custard.
Fortunately, alcohol is a good antidote. Tests have shown that vast quantities of it slopping around in the stomach are equivalent to wearing two vests and a jumper.
I eased the car through the crowd, towards the Tap and Spile. The sexes were still segregated, but the time for mass pairing-off was rapidly approaching. A group of giggling girls sharing hardly enough clothes for one staggered into the road. I stopped and waved them across, and the one who got the blouse blew me a kiss. A party of young men in T-shirts shouted at them. Love was in the air, empathy was running high, but it could all change at the drop of a lager bottle or a misunderstood come-on. It was just a matter of time.
Darryl's silver Mondeo wasn't in the Tap's car park. If he had any sense he'd have used a taxi, tonight of all nights. I eased out into the street again and worked my way round most of the town-centre pubs, without finding him. Uniform branch were out in force, but I didn't speak with them.
Once I was clear of the throng I hot-wheeled it to the fancy canal-side development where Darryl lived. It had started life as a wool warehouse, a century and a half ago, when buildings were made to last but there was still something in the budget for ornamentation. It escaped the vandals in the town hall by the thickness of a small bundle of tenners and was now a highly desirable block of up market apartments, complete with security gates and private moorings. Most of the parking spots were occupied, but not by Darryl's car. I noticed that some of his neighbours were doing a lot better than he was.
I telephoned the nick and asked for all cars to look out for him. If anyone radioed in with a contact, tell them, I said, to check if he was with a woman. If he was, they had to ruin his chances. I can be a heartless so-and-so. If Charlie's not getting it, nobody gets it.
I drove back to the Tap. The streets were quieter, with everybody inside the pubs, pouring the last desperate drinks down their throats, as if prohibition came in on the chime of midnight. A minibus of women pulled out, leaving a big parking space for me.
I'd forgotten how crowded pubs could be. Did I once enjoy this? I couldn't believe I ever had. It was shoulder to shoulder, with a pall of smoke hugging the ceiling. At my height I was getting a super dose I looked around and started to fight my way to one of the anterooms that branched off the main saloon, in search of a drink, or some air.
The landlord was behind the main bar, serving drinks to the four-deep throng like a robot. An order would be shouted at him or one of his staff and a tenner passed across. Pints were pulled and a handful of coins given back. Then on to the next customer. Nobody checked their change. The sumo wrestler was dressed in red, her hair piled impossibly high. She looked as if she should have been standing at the far end of a bowling alley.
It was marginally quieter in the far room, except for the constant procession to the toilets. I yelled an order for a pint of lager over someone's head. He turned indignantly, found himself staring at my chest and decided to wait. The barman passed me a can.
'We've no glasses,' he shouted. 'Does that make it cheaper?' 'No.'
I handed him a pound coin and said: 'Call it right.' 'It's eighty pence short,' he replied. 'They're only seventy- five pence in Safeway's,' I protested.
'Then go do your drinking there,' he told me. I gave him another pound and turned away. A bunch of women were filing into the ladies', handbags at the ready. I stood back for them and found a piece of wall to lean on. Darryl might have been there, but I couldn't see anyone who fitted the picture I'd formed of him in my mind. Sometimes, that's a misleading thing to do. I wiped the top of the can with my shirt cuff and took a swig. It was warm.
The first of the women emerged from the loo and stood waiting for her friends, so they could form a united assault on the wall of bodies they had to negotiate. I looked, then looked again. She had the kind of figure and face that turn brave men into quiche eaters. I sidled towards her, noting that she looked nervous, out of her natural habitat, in that crowded place.
'Anyone would think it was New Year's Eve,' I said, pulling up alongside her. Might as well go straight into the clever stuff.
She gave me a little smile. 'I saw you come in,' she replied 'How did you manage to get served so quickly?'
'Influence,' I replied. I waved my free hand expansively and glanced around. 'I, er, just happen to own the place.'
'Don't tell me,' she laughed. 'You're Pete Stringfellow '
She had a large face, with shoulder-length wavy hair streaked with blond. Her eyes, nose and lips were all extravagant, giving her an earthy appearance, but her shoulders, bare apart from the thin straps of her dress, were narrow and delicate. It wasn't really a dress, more like an under slip in a silken material that clung to her curves as if by static electricity.
'His son, actually,' I said. 'If you'll let me buy you a drink I could demonstrate how I did it.'
'Thanks, but I'm all right. We're just leaving ' 'That's life,' I said, resignedly.
'We're going to a party. Well, it's not really a party. Just a few girls having a laugh, sort of thing.' After a pause she added: You could always come to let the New Year in. '
It was tempting, but I heard myself saying: 'Thanks all the same, but I'd probably spoil your evening.'
'Yes, you probably would,' she replied, smiling.
'Is this your local?' I asked, choosing my words carefully to avoid the oldest chat-up line in the world.
'No. First time I've ever been in. Is it yours?'
'Similar. My third time in about twenty years Probably my last, too.' y One of her friends came out of the loo, retrieved a champagne glass with a cherry in it that she'd left on a table, and joined us. She had wild frizzy hair and spectacles with luminous green frames. 'You're a dark horse, Jackie,' she said. 'So who's this you've been keeping a secret, hey?'
Jackie of the generous lips stared into my eyes with a pair that looked as if they'd been sculpted from porcelain and glass by a mad scientist.
Eyes like that are not just windows to the soul, they are an expression of the glory of creation — like the first buds of spring, or the Milky Way seen through a telescope. The lashes that framed them were long and heavily mascaraed, but they were all her own.
'Oh,' she said, 'he's just an old friend. He's called, er, Hugo.'
'Hello, Hugo,' Green Specs said. 'I don't suppose you've another friend for me, have you?'
I decided to play it strong and silent. I said: 'No.'
There was a crash and a scream from the other room, and we all turned to look. A youth came barging towards us, chased by several others, fighting their way through the crowd that was parting like the Red Sea.
They dragged him down and fists and feet started going in. The first youth's buddies rallied to his support with chairs and bottles and soon the air was filled with flying missiles and the screams of women.
Jackie's friends coming out of the ladies' came up against another bunch trying to get in, away from the violence. I pushed open the door to the gents' and said: 'In here,' propelling Green Specs and Jackie through it. I held it open until all the women were inside and followed them.
The blokes shaking the drops off were bemused by the sudden influx of talent into their sacrosanct space. 'Come to help me, luv?' one of them said.
'Who do you think I am,' a girl replied, 'Tinkerbelle?'
I leaned on the door, holding it closed against the hammering on the other side. A toilet flushed and a big chap, about six-six, came out of one of the stalls, stuffing his shirt into his waistband. His first thought when he saw the women was that he'd been in the wrong toilets, and his expression of panic reduced us all to a mass fit of helpless giggling. Jackie fell shaking against me and I wrapped my arms around her and sobbed with laughter into her hair. I enjoyed that bit.
When the thunder of war had rolled away I took a tentative peek out, then pulled the door wide open. The place looked as if it had been hit by a pre-emptive strike by the Sandinistas. Every table and chair was overturned
