‘Flitting to and fro, you should open an office here,’ said Anselm. It was warm in the car and there was the smell of leather and newness. ‘Think of the fares you’d save.’
O’Malley shook his head. ‘What would save some real money, mate, is buying your business. But I’m not flitting, I’m having a little stay, a sojourn. Did I not say that? No? Before the courts tomorrow, trying to get the attention of some naughty Poles. They have products we wish to render immobile. In a warehouse down by the river. Your beer, your ballbearings, your smoked hams, your binoculars, your pickled cucumbers, beetroot, artichokes. Even your Polish condoms, a container-load. In packs of fifty, the weekend packs they’re called.’
‘For football teams, surely?’
‘Aimed at the single male. These people are not called Poles for nothing. The brand is
Anselm put his head against the headrest. ‘The old-fashioned Polish condom makers. I didn’t know there were any left. Knew their Latin, history of the Peninsular Wars. Craftspeople in rubber.’
‘Latex. Moving on, another task.’
A police car was coming towards them, slowly, no hurry, a shift to get through. Both occupants, men, gave them the lingering eye.
‘Ceaselessly vigilant in the interests of the rich,’ said O’Malley. ‘Whereas out in the gloomy industrial hinterland, the lower orders have to beg and beseech the
‘I didn’t realise you were familiar with the conditions of the German working class.’
‘A lifelong interest. Like Engels in England.’ He looked at Anselm’s shirt. ‘Winter’s setting in. I could probably find an old coat to send you.’
‘I’d be grateful.
O’Malley was getting a slim notecase off the back seat. ‘Mine wouldn’t be Zegna. It would be hand sewn by my little man. Crouch is his name.’ He opened the leather box, flipped through papers. ‘Doesn’t have the ring of Zegna, Crouch. Ermenegilda Crouch. No. This matter concerns something called Falcontor. Remember?’
Falcontor. Richler on the tape:
O’Malley found an A4 envelope. ‘From Serrano’s case, at the station. Your excellent if expensive work. We can’t make much sense of this stuff. The cross-trained bloodhounds you employ may have more luck.’
‘I thought you said Serrano was still in the paper era?’
‘He is. But the places he parks the ill-gotten stuff may not be.’
‘What do you want?’
O’Malley scratched an eyebrow. ‘Well, you know. Anything. The main interest is assets. But anything. Don’t spook anyone, that’s paramount. And speed. And the name Bruynzeel. Keep an eye out for that.’
‘Flemish, I presume?’
‘I would too. Sounds like a nasty symptom the nanny should report.’
A couple appeared on the jetty, began to take off the cover of a boat.
‘I was like that once,’ said O’Malley. ‘Weather was no impediment. Serrano, the hotel, can you keep that running?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good on you. How many ways do I love a crisp affirmative? Concludes the business. Oh, and notice I’ve got a new number. The old one was boring me.’
Anselm put his hand on the door latch. ‘You won’t forget the coat?’
‘No,’ said O’Malley. ‘Consider it in the mail. And this coincidence will amuse you. An email in my box from Angelica. The American bore. It’s over. Taken his Egyptian artefacts, gone. She’s holding on to the apartment in the Marais pending the legal nastiness. Sadly, the chef ’s been terminated.’
‘I’m sure you can arrange food parcels. When you say speed?’
O’Malley looked at him. ‘Yes. We’d be grateful. Things that are solid can melt into air.’
‘I wouldn’t be too hopeful.’
‘In me, the hopeful genes. In all the O’Malleys. Globally. The O’Malley diaspora of optimistic genes.’
‘Probably inherit the earth,’ said Anselm. ‘O’Malleys and cockroaches. Still, the evolutionary day has only just begun. Give us a few hours.’
‘Hours, certainly. Not even units of time in the evolutionary day.’
Anselm felt the pressure fight the car door as he pushed it closed. It was even colder now. It felt like snow, the air still, the feeling of something pendant. Waiting for its time. But it was much too early in the year. Its time was nearer Christmas, when it would fall at night, the magic flakes hushing the discordant city.
In the blue gloom, Carla was at her workstation, text on her right-hand screen, green code on the black screens to her left. She saw Anselm coming and swivelled, her useless leg thrust out. He showed her the case folder.
‘Some time?’ he said. ‘It’s a priority.’
She nodded. He gave it to her. She read the cover sheet, opened it and looked at the pages inside, flipped them. Two columns to the page. Letters, numbers, names handwritten in ink.
‘This has meaning?’
‘Not to the client. Serrano, remember Serrano? These are his notes. The client is interested in something called Falcontor. Also the name Bruynzeel.’
He wrote them on her pad. ‘Something might occur to you. I promised a preliminary report soon.’
She put the file down and laced her fingers, turned the palms outward. He heard her knuckles crack, a sound that always disturbed him, for no reason that he knew.
He went back to his office and the paperwork. Jonas was a happy agent. He had paid the bill, plus the $25,000 bonus. Pizza baron Charlie Campo and his runaway wife Lisa were reunited at last. In romantic Barcelona. All forgiven-a terrible, impulsive mistake. Sherry and tapas in a little bar off the Ramblas. Soft light, the bottles on the shelves glowing blood and oranges and rust. Glances. Touches.
Anselm thought of a woman with tape over her mouth, tied to a bed. Screaming through her eyes.
He went back to work, wrote an authorisation for Herr Brinkman to pay Inskip and Carla the equivalent of $6250 each.
Blood money. They were bounty hunters. The woman could be dead. He could find out, but he didn’t want to.
Through his slice of vision, Anselm looked at the sky, the lake, both still. The day was darkening. Perhaps it would snow. An early snowfall. It wouldn’t be a proper snowfall, though, just tiny flakes that turned into slush when they touched the ground. The earth wasn’t cold enough yet. When he was about twelve, he had been in the garden helping his grandfather fork over the vegetable patch.
‘Weather experts, they know nothing,’ the old man said. His hair was the colour of the sky. ‘The earth tells the clouds when it’s time for snow.’
Thinking about his grandfather, about cold earth, a day came into his mind like a ghost. He remembered the hotel, the down mattress that buried you, folded over you. Rising early, long before first light, walking down the creaking corridor to the bathroom where the pipes shrieked and keened and moaned and hammered. Hours later, climbing, climbing in the elderly Mercedes, first gear most of the way, they came around the side of a mountain. Suddenly they were above the mist. It lay below them, seething, stretching away, a savage sea, and, poking out of it, dark mountaintops like steep and inhospitable islands.
Where was that?
A cough from the doorway. Carla.
‘You look…distant,’ she said.
‘Visions from the past. Come in, sit down.’
Unusually, she did. She kept her bad leg straight when she sat down, took her weight on one arm, then the other. ‘This is difficult,’ she said. She did not quite meet his gaze.
Anselm nodded. ‘Nothing easy from Bowden.’
‘I can find a Luxembourg bank. That is it so far.’
Carla had the sad, lip-biting air of a child who thought she had disappointed. Bad marks, failed to win the
