Without moving his head, O’Malley caught the man’s eye. He pointed at his glass, signed for two.
‘So, what are these blokes talking about?’
‘We got an earlier conversation. With the Israeli. The
O’Malley finished his sherry. ‘That’s extra, is it?’
‘Well, yes. Five hundred, that’s in the basement. We’ll throw in the pictures.’
‘And steak knives?’
The barman arrived with the sherries. He said to O’Malley in English, Irish in his English, ‘You must try the dry oloroso, it’s exceptional, very nutty.’
‘I have no doubt I will,’ said O’Malley. ‘Again and again. Thank you, Karl.’
When the man had gone, Anselm said, ‘You’re a stranger here, then.’
‘He’s a computer bloke, made a few quid in Ireland, now he’s realised his dream, come home, opened this little bistro.’
‘German?’
‘Certainly. From Lubeck.’
‘Ireland. Isn’t there something wrong with that story?’
O’Malley shook his head. ‘Change, John, the world’s changed. Narratives don’t run the same way any more. All the narratives are at risk.’ He drank some sherry. ‘Of course, you’re in the cyberworld most of the time, that’s not real. How are my blokes?’
‘They’re worried. This Spence who is actually Richler is threatening them. The deceased Lourens in Johannesburg apparently left something dangerous behind. Kael is agitated. May I ask what you actually want from these people?’
O’Malley looked at him for a while, rolling sherry around his mouth, his cheeks moving. He swallowed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you may not. But since you take secrets to the grave, I’ll tell you. My clients are looking for assets, thirty, forty million US Serrano and Kael handled in the early nineties. Falcontor. Did they say that name?’
‘Yes. Richler.’
O’Malley looked interested. ‘Richler?’
Anselm tried the sherry, drank half the small flute. He remembered the British embassy in Argentina when the Falklands business was beginning, his first war, standing in a high-ceilinged room in Buenos Aires, drinking sherry with the press attache. She had narrow teeth and she talked about the international brotherhood of polo. ‘It’s so unfortunate because of course we’re both polo-playing nations so there’s always been a real affinity…’
Later she made a pass at him. He took the pass. Her husband was an art dealer, that was all he remembered. That and the bites on his chest, tiny toothmarks like the attack of a crazed ferret.
‘Whose money?’ Anselm said.
O’Malley smiled, the canines showing. ‘Well, that’s an awkward one, boyo. This is money without provenance, without parentage. Conceived in sin, sent out to make its own way in the world. It doesn’t belong to Serrano, that much is certain.’
He chewed a cashew nut, picked up the bowl, turned it in a big hand. ‘They found bowls like these in a Chinese galleon lying on the bottom of the sea, hundreds of years old, I forget how many. Amazing, no?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Anselm. ‘Amazing’s not what it used to be. I presume these people are all lying to each other.’
‘It’s a way of life for these blokes. Their relationships are based on porkies. Darling, promise me you’ll never tell me the truth.’
Four people came in, three young women, tall, anorexic, bulemic too probably, and a small man, plump, no trouble keeping food down. It was all shrill laughter, hair moving, hands moving, waving, shrieks, going over to the owner and kissing him on both cheeks. Anselm felt the need to be outside. Not an urgent need, just a strong wish to be in the open.
He put the small tape case on the table. ‘I suppose we can skip the condom routine here. If you want to go on, tell me tonight. This isn’t getting easier. It may have to be on Kael and he’s hypochondriac.’
‘I’ll ring,’ said O’Malley. ‘I’ll have a little listen and ring. And since when do you know who’s a
‘Everyone knows.’
Anselm walked to Fahrdamm and the luck was his again, the ferry was coming in, nosing in to the jetty, a bump, two bumps. He sat on deck and smoked, cold wind wiping the smoke from his lips. The dark came suddenly and the shore lights came through the trees and lay on the water like strips of silver foil, bending, turning.
33
…LONDON…
The man opened the door within seconds. She knew he had heard the gate’s small noise, not so much a screech as a scratch. It was not a timid opening. He opened the door wide.
‘Yes?’
‘Good evening. Sorry to bother you,’ said Caroline.
‘Well then don’t.’
Nothing of the courtly doorman about him, not a smiling doorman this. Just a big bald man in shirtsleeves, a wide man, downturned mouth, pig-bristle grey eyebrows.
Caroline had her card ready. She offered it to him. He looked at it, held it up to his face, looked at her, no change in expression.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Mr Hird?’
‘It is.’
‘Could we talk? It won’t take long.’
‘About what?’
‘Something that happened at the store yesterday.’
‘Don’t talk about what happens at work. That’s company policy. Goodbye.’ Hird didn’t move.
Caroline took the chance. ‘Can I bribe you?’
He touched his nose with a finger, pushed it sideways, sniffed. ‘No.’
‘Is that a no or a maybe?’
‘It’s a no. Come inside.’
They went down a cold short passage into a cold room that looked unchanged for fifty, sixty years, a sitting room from around World War Two. The armchairs and the sofa had antimacassars and broad wooden arms. Two polished artillery shells flanked the fireplace. Above the mantelpiece was a colour photograph of the Royal Family- King, Queen and the two little Princesses. A collection of plates and small glass objects stood on mirror-backed glass shelves in a display cabinet with ball-and-claw feet.
‘Havin a glass of beer,’ he said. ‘Want one?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Sit down.’ He left and came back with two big glasses of beer, tumblers that bulged at the top.
‘Well, what?’ he said, sitting down.
Caroline sat and drank a decent mouthful. She moved to put he glass down, didn’t for fear of marking the chair arm.
‘Put it down,’ Hird said. ‘Not a museum. Looks bloody like it but it’s not.’
She put the glass down, opened her bag. ‘A man was shot in the store yesterday. On the third floor.’
Hird looked at her, drank beer. It left a white line on his upper lip and he didn’t remove it. ‘Entirely possible,’ he said, ‘I’m down on the ground, noddin and smilin.’
A black cat came in, fat, gleaming, silent as a snake, glided around the room, around chair legs, around Hird’s legs, brushed Caroline’s ankles. She failed some feline test and it left.
Caroline took out the security camera photographs of Mackie, held them out. ‘He might have left through your door,’ she said, she didn’t know that. ‘Can you remember seeing him?’
