about looking for the missing girl, Sandra. And they were on to him. Paul was sure of that. If he were staying he would have to get shot of everything. Couldn’t leave it in the room. They’d find it all and that would be that. End of story. Checkmate, mate! You could guarantee they’d make another search, find a hair from his ex-cell mate, or some blood between the floorboards. DNA, that’s the word. Right? They’d find the DNA and that would be that, without passing go. They’d blame him for everything. Even Sandra. He’d be lucky to get out with a walking frame. Still, he wasn’t hanging around for that to happen. No way. Time to retreat. Like Dunkirk. Like the old soldiers… like…like the colonel, but not to the same place. Legging it, innI?
It had been a funny sort of day. Special days always were – the days of weddings and funerals and court appearances where you’re stood up in front of a beak. Colours seemed different, darker, and sounds seemed different, louder. It started early, he remembered, earlier than most, before the sun was up, before it was…light. It was still dark when Laura came in. Her eyes were sleepless and her legs were shaking and a little bandy and she looked altogether exhausted. That was the night shift for you, he supposed. It did you no good at all. Mr Lawrence made her some tea and forced her to drink it. He looked after her. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow. Only halfundressed. Or dressed. But they completed the undressing anyway, so she wouldn’t… You know?
Strangle or something.
Mr Lawrence gave her bottom a little pat and Paul gave it a little stroke, little gestures of endearment, perhaps parting gestures, for their leave-taking was fast approaching.
But Paul had important things to do.
First he had to go to Boots. Mr Lawrence had spelt it out. He had to visit the booth and have his photograph taken. He spent some minutes admiring the image of the girl looking back at him. Then he had to take the strip of photographs along with a brown envelope that Mr Lawrence had given him across town to a small backstreet shop where a thin grey man named Arnold took the strip of photographs and the brown envelope and told him to wait. He waited for almost an hour before Arnold appeared again and gave him yet another envelope. He didn’t look inside but he knew that the envelope contained two passports. He’d guessed that all by himself. Maybe they were going to Scotland or some other place where the law couldn’t find them. He nodded. Mr Lawrence had it all in hand.
Arnold said, “Anything else I can do for you – firearms, bomb-making equipment, recipes? I’ve got a nice line in Iraqi headgear, only slightly smoke-damaged – call them seconds.”
“No,” Paul stuttered. “No, thank you.”
He needed to get out of there. It was too heavy for him. He hit the pavement, still stuttering.
Then he was on the move again, back to the High Road where he knew his way around.
In the travel agency a woman wearing thick foundation whose hair was thinned and split by too many perms in the seventies gave him a funny look along with the tickets. He’d noticed that women of a certain age, like, maybe forty or fifty, looked at other women differently, threateningly.
He’d noticed that. He got a bit flustered by the threat, said Paul instead of Paula, that sort of thing. Easy mistake. But he wouldn’t make it again. Probably forgot to wiggle his behind as well. Such is life. And what was more, the tissue fell out of his left breast as he bent to sign. When that happened the woman behind the desk was immediately sympathetic and fingered a little pink ribbon she’d pinned to her cardigan. Amazing how, once the threat was no longer relevant, girls stick together. Men weren’t like that. The glue that held men together was only temporary, just for the moment, made up of alcohol. It wasn’t lasting. Men didn’t have friends, as such, only opponents. They promised they would stay in touch because words were cheap, boozy words cheaper still, but they never did. At the end of the day men were destined to be alone even in a crowd. It was the nature of things, probably because they couldn’t have babies. Yeah.
He made himself scarce for an hour or two, following Mr
Lawrence’s instructions. Timing, remember? Timing’s important, Paul!
“It’s Paula, Mr Lawrence. It’s Paula now, innit?”
“Yes, you’re right. I see it now. Silly of me not to have noticed.” After picking up the tickets he kept to the backstreets. The filth were in the High Road, in force, stopping people in the street and showing them pictures of Sandra. It was like the war, like the cold, cold war, like Moscow, like Berlin or something, that’s it, hiding in dark doorways, running across streets, dodging traffic, in high heels, keeping your back to the wall. A dangerous game. An excellent game. You knew you were, like, alive. Like the old soldiers used to say – like the colonel used to say, when he was alive – there was nothing more exhilarating than a game of hide-and-seek. And the dress riding up all the time. Like a king pawn opening, he’d say. Like the bloody King’s Gambit and, that was bloody dodgy.
Darkness crept in mid-afternoon, but that suited him. The old four o’clock was growing through the foundation. Another hour or two and he’d look like a Spanish housewife. Sod that for a living. He crept back to the shop. It was closed. The old man was in his studio and Laura was still sound asleep. He climbed under the stairs. Wanted a last look. Kneeling down in a tight dress proved a right game. He had to pull it to his waist. In the darkness the studio light flooded through the crack in the wall. He adjusted his eyes. He loved cracks.
The old geezer was still there, standing behind his easel like Vinny Gough. Dab-dabbing, mixing, squinting, a knife here, a brush there, the whole game. A serious bloody painter, Paul would say. But hold on! Hold on just a minute! Forget the painting. Paul couldn’t believe his eyes. Not the Indian! Not the Paki! That sort of thing was against their religion, or so he thought. Paul’s mouth dropped open.
Bombay duck! Holy Fuck! It was like a brown liquorice allsort, brown and brown with a streak of black running through the middle. This was the Golden Gate, mate, the Grand Canyon, Niagara bloody Falls no less. This was cowboy country and he, Paul, wanted to mount up. Talk about excitement. Talk about Basic Instinct. Sharon Stone is on the phone. Hit the pause, Santa Claus. Christmas is coming and so is Paul Knight.
Even the voice was getting excited and he could hear the excited words. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
And she was giving him the come-on. Not much. Paul could see it all right. But the old man didn’t seem to notice. Maybe the angle was wrong for him. But he noticed. Paul didn’t miss a trick like that. And the dress was raised. No kidding. Paul’s dress was raised. And the soft lace was tightening by the moment. The old lingerie was wonderful. No wonder the catalogues were full of it. Paul reached down. No option, really.
In the narrow road behind the shop the red glow from the High Road painted the sky above the rooftops. The sky groaned. It was going to unload, rain or, more likely, snow. It was certainly cold enough. The red light poured like lava down the sloping slates and curled around the thick clumps of crawling moss. It seemed to cling to everything as it edged down the walls to the narrow pavement.
The filth was there, waiting for him. Mr Lawrence had been right. You had to give it to the old guys. If they’d left it another day, another hour, it would have been too late. When Mr Lawrence told him, Paul didn’t believe it at first. Just goes to show. Experience, all that. Paul crept up to the filth. He had the car window down and was listening to the radio. Paul could hear Mr Lawrence’s voice, then the woman’s. The woman from India. She was wired. Mr Lawrence was right about that too. Clever old geezer. Just goes to show. You couldn’t dismiss the old geezers out of hand. That’s why they won the war, he supposed. Paul could still learn a thing or two.
The hammer was in his handbag until he took it out. Just an ordinary hammer with a wooden shaft and steel head. The steel glinted red. The filth didn’t know what hit him, just above the ear. Phut! A dull thud. Like the noise you got when you stuck a knife into a white leather sofa.
Paul looked about. The road was still empty. He turned off the filth’s radio and straightened his breasts. On the way out of the narrow road, on the way to the station, he picked up the suitcase he’d left just inside the back gate. Now he was going. Trains and boats and planes. All that. Defensive play. Don’t try and win a drawn game. Life’s like that: a game of chess – winning, losing, but mostly Stalemate. You only lost at the end of it. Like…at the…end of it. He started down the steps of an underpass, taking care in his high heels. And that’s when he noticed a woman following him. A blonde. A blond spiky-haired woman in a short burgundy shift with matching painted toenails – every year’s colour.
Chapter 33
The first guest to arrive for the party had stayed till the end even though his plans had been unexpectedly modified. It meant a change in venue for the last dance. Auld Lang Syne had to be played away from the Square, somewhere else, on another crowded street where one pretty face was lost among others. His encounter with the big guy had probably been a mistake and still he wasn’t sure who he was and why he had been following. He hadn’t
