cover his burnt bits up, for God’s sake? He seemed to be lying uncomfortably, and not on proper bedclothes either. Didn’t they give sick folk a proper mattress? Hell flaming fire.
“Anything you want me to do, Jan?”
“I haven’t got a brother.”
Barely audible. I found myself looking about guiltily, but the night nurse wasn’t in earshot. “I lied. They wouldn’t have let me in otherwise.”
An arm moved—well, some place the limb should have been shifted slowly. Tubes trailed with it.
I said, a bit apologetically, “Stop frigging me about with this Jan the Critic gunge. You’re from Tooting Bec.”
“How did you find out?” No laughter, but I felt he’d be amused if they lifted the hospital off him.
“I phoned the newspaper. Said I was your doctor. They told me your address. I phoned the girl there. Lysette, isn’t it?”
Astonishingly, I saw an eye open to hold me in its gaze. Not such a nerk after all, lying here with that alert bright orb steady on me.
“Why’re you digging, Lovejoy?”
This was the hard part. I hesitated. “I have to know what happened after they took you out of the barn that night down in the harbour.”
Silence. No feeling of a would-be smile now. More like would-be fright.
“Listen, Jan. I’ll guess. You just tell me if I go wrong.” I licked my lips, planning ahead. “The hoods threatened you. You got scared, decided to make a run for it. You commissioned Steve Yelbard as a decoy, didn’t show. You got your motorized caravan, and heading through Archway had an unexpected accident—”
“Accident.” The limb moved.
“Was it Corse’s men?”
“Not even a crash.” He sounded so tired. “They made me watch while they burned it. They threw me in the door. I heard them laughing. I hit my head and couldn’t move. It was all afire. Some passing football supporters pulled me out, the nurse told me.”
“I’m scareder than you, Jan. I’ll say nowt, and do less.” But I’d had to know. I mean, I’ve worked for Big John Sheehan quite a few times. “Was it Corse, or Sheehan’s lot?”
“Neither. They set me running, Lovejoy, but they wouldn’t care where I went.”
Odd. “Where were you going?”
“Back to Geneva. I thought I’d be…”
“That’s enough, Charles,” the night nurse said, quietly interposing. She looked ready to deal with a million tubes in a million horrid ways. I’d learned enough. I thought.
“So long, Jan. Keep going, eh?”
“Lovejoy.” I bent my head to hear the whisper in spite of the nurse’s tutting. “My address, my —”
“Safe with me, Jan. Cheers.”
On the way out, I almost bumped into a bonny dark-haired girl. She was hurrying towards the ward from the lift’s cacophony of clashing doors. She didn’t spare me a glance, just hurried on past. Lysette? I’d bet a quid.
Sometimes, I wonder if everybody doesn’t go through life desperately trying to avoid being seen. It’s as if we’ve all committed a murder, and have a nagging terror we might get spotted. Oh, I know we go about pretending the opposite, wearing fashionable clothes, sprucing ourselves up to catch the eye. But that’s only surface ripples. Deep down, we strive for anonymity. At least, some do. Like me. I’m a chameleon in search of a colour against which to stand and vanish.
Especially to Cissie.
Yonks since, I mentioned a wife I once had. Cissie’d become a half-remembered dream. I couldn’t even recall her face, not that I’d tried. Like a pillock I drove obediently through Lavenham, wondering why the hell I was bothering. Marriage isn’t what folk say it is. Bonding’s pretty loose stuff, and marriage knots aren’t. In the first place, it’s hard to find any spouse who behaves as if morality’s there in strength. Second, married couples never agree on what marriage actually is. For me, I simply hadn’t understood that getting married to Cissie did not constitute a proper introduction. Mind you, who can fathom birds? Why, for instance, was the Marquis de Sade’s missus Renee unswervingly faithful to him all the years he was in the Bastille, only to leave him the minute he got sprung? You tell me.
Their house is enormous. I’d only ever been there once before, to deliver her share of the belongings. She’d banished me, her belongings and all, threatened me with the police if I ever showed again. I’d been delighted to comply.
“My usual Tuesday visit, Katta,” I said to the maid.
She emitted a brief tubular screech, her signal of humour. A vast emporium of a maid, is Katta. She never stops spreading across your field of view. She’s been with Paul—more about him in a sec—since he went to school on the Continent. Probably rescued her from Castle Perilous, and kept her on ever since.
“Oh, you!” she gave back, wittily. It’s all she’s ever said to me. It comes out. O keeyoo.
“Announce Lovejoy, Katta, if you will.”
She rolled ahead like a billowing cloud fast-forwarded in a nature film. You have to admire a bird who grapples anorexia to a frazzle.
