badly damaged,' she said, with sincerity
'And capable?'
'Have to be, wouldn't he? Or he wouldn't have come this far.'
'He should be a bellwether to you – a sheep that leads and others follow, know what I mean? That island, Polly, is where you should be.'
The phone purred in her ear.
The van in the driveway had a logo of an antenna on its side and below, in printed paintwork, the slogan
'Better Satellite TV Reception Throughout Your Residence'. Two men carried boxes of equipment into the travel agent's home.
He said to his wife, 'I don't know what it's for, but they have me by the balls and if they twist it will hurt.'
'The Rahmans are only new rich, unimportant to us,' his wife said.
They stood in the hall, their children dismissed to their bedrooms, and watched the boxes taken past them, up the stairs and left on the landing. The two men came down again, went outside and returned with a collapsible ladder and tools. The loft hatch in the ceiling above the landing was opened, and they manoeuvred the boxes through the gap.
He said, 'They are from the organized-crime unit – they would make bad enemies, the worst.'
'The Rahmans are Albanians. We owe them nothing.'
Later, one of the men came down, went again to the van and returned with two galvanized buckets. The travel agent asked him why they were needed. He was told, matter-of-fact, that two roof tiles would be moved. From one hole there would be a view for the camera lens down on to the back garden of the adjacent home, from the other there would be a view of the drive at the next-door house and the front door under the porch. When rain dripped down between the shifted tiles, the buckets would catch it. He noted, and she did, that neither man had wiped his feet on the inside mat, and that the dirt from their shoes had made a track up the stair carpet. He did not complain, nor did she. Because they have me by the balls and if they twist it will hurt, neither dared to protest at the mess tramped into their home.
She held his arm. 'What would happen to us if Rahman knew what we have agreed to?'
'I thought of him as a businessman who had done well – but he is the target of the organized-crime unit.'
Any man in the city who read, daily, the Hamburger Abendblatt was familiar with the blood vendettas and feuds of the Albanians and the viciousness of their response when crossed. 'I don't know what would happen to us,' he lied.
Later the men came down the stairs with their empty boxes and their ladder, and one said that if the equipment worked satisfactorily they would be back within two weeks to change the batteries. The travel agent's wife now found halting courage. What about the buckets? If it rained, and the forecast said it would, for the next several days, who would empty the buckets when they were full and overflowed?
But the men shrugged in disinterest. They went out into the evening and left their trail of dirt behind them. There was the crunch of tyres on the drive. The act of betrayal of a neighbour was marked by the roar of a vacuum-cleaner on the carpets of the hall, stairs and landing, and above the replaced hatch in the roof, two lenses beamed down on the Rahman house.
The club on the Reeperbahn – across the wide street from the dour brick-built police station – was sandwiched between an Italian restaurant and a shop, now closed, that sold sex aids. The club advertised itself in neon as providing a bar, dancing girls and kino booths for single or multiple occupancy. Timo Rahman had acquired the club nine years before. The last conscious act of its previous owner, a Russian from the Dnieper region, had been to sign away the deeds in the belief that the transfer would save his life: with the ink not dry on the paper, he had been clubbed, then dragged out and thrown into the boot of his own car. It had been driven to the quayside by the Fish Market. As the effect of the clubbing had worn off he had kicked frantically at the tomb he was in as the car had been manhandled forward and had toppled into the oiled water. The club now provided some four per cent of the annual turnover of the Rahman empire.
'You will enjoy the show, Ricky,' he said.
He treated the mouseboy as an honoured guest. The best table, the best view of the girls on the stage, the best service. He was an attentive host. As a cosmetic blonde danced, and her implanted bosom bounced, he explained the history of the Reeperbahn street, the quarter where rope was made for the docks and the rigging of sail-powered trading ships, but the mouseboy was distant from him, seemed not to hear him and fidgeted with the stem of his glass. When the girl, naked now, finished her dance and stood full-frontal to accept the applause, he smiled with warmth.
'I am told by Enver that you have bars at home, Ricky, in London. But I think they are different from those in Hamburg. Let me show you what we offer.'
He had raised an eyebrow, the merest gesture. The manager hovered close to him and passed a padded envelope to the Bear.
'The speciality of the club, Ricky, is in the kino booths
– explicit videos…' In his own tongue he murmured a question to his manager, heard out the reply and turned again to the mouseboy. 'Many customers are satisfied sufficiently to return here, perhaps each year. The one I would like to show you is being watched by a party of factory workers, from Essen, where they make toothpaste. They are always satisfied and come each March.
We should see what they are enjoying.'
He led. Ricky Capel followed, and a pace behind was the Bear with the envelope.
They crossed the bar and he held back a curtain.
They were in a corridor lined by doorways in which were set small glass windows. He heard the baying laughter, as his guest would have, of the factory workers from Essen.
He took his guest to the far door of the corridor, the source of the laughter.
Timo Rahman peered through the window in the door. He saw a dozen men, in jeans and casual shirts, some balding and some grey-haired, some standing and some hunched forward on chairs, all of them, as they rocked in laughter, gazing at the wide screen on the far wall. The good boy, his best nephew, Enver had said the video was high quality, and the sound.
'Here, Ricky, look and enjoy.'
Because the Bear was behind him, pressed against him, his guest was nudged forward, pushed close enough for his nose and eyes to be against the glass.
Where he stood, Timo could see the screen. He saw Ricky Capel flush, his eyes widen. Around them, in the corridor, was a cacophony of laughter from the booth and the ever louder grunting from the girl on the screen. She rode her man. The man's head rolled, swayed, and he seemed to cry out but the noise of his little yell was drowned by the girl's grunts. He saw the curse slip from Ricky Capel's lips, but soundless.
More of the factory workers from Essen stood and now they clapped in the rhythm of the girl's down thrusts and some, bent with laughter, grunted with her, as she did. The Bear's weight was against Ricky Capel and he could not have extricated himself from the viewing window had he tried to. On the screen, in a crescendo, she thrust down and he thrust up, and now the grunting overwhelmed the laughter and the clapping – then they both sagged. She rolled off him and there was a long, collective gasp of disappointment from the audience, like a moan. She moved from the camera's view, and the mouseboy was left on the bed and in the moment before his stiffness fled him, he reached up – a kid at a football game who has scored a goal – and punched the air. The factory workers beat their hands together above their heads as if they were on the terraces of a stadium, and the screen went black.
Timo led them back up the corridor, but he paused at the curtain. He took the envelope from the Bear and held it in front of his guest. He let him read the address. The envelope was large enough to take a video cassette and he had written on it: Mrs Joanne Capel, 9 Bevin Close, London SE, England. Beside him, Ricky Capel panted and the colour had gone from his face, as if he was about to vomit.
'I think, Ricky, we do not have a problem.'
'No, Mr Rahman, we don'-t.'
'I think, Ricky, it is unnecessary for that envelope to go in the post.'
'Yes, Mr Rahman, I'll take him.'
