The Loo Sanction

'I'm not sure yet. But I'll have to do something bold—some grand gesture that will blind them with its obviousness. By the way, I'll need some of that money for grease and baksheesh.'

'How much?'

'All of it?'

Strange laughed. 'Really, Dr. Hemlock!'

'Just thought I'd try. I suppose ten thousand pounds would do it.'

Strange's pale eyes evaluated Jonathan for a long moment. 'Very well. The money will be ready for you when you leave.'

'Good.'

'Ah-h, Dr. Hemlock... Don't think of doing anything foolhardy. Please remember that unfortunate fellow who was found impaled in the belfry of St. Martin's-In-The-Fields.'

'I get the picture. Is there more coffee?'

'Certainly. Leonard did that business at my request, not that the impulsive devil didn't get pleasure from it on his own. The informer was drugged and brought to the church, where the stake had earlier been set in place. They lifted the fellow to just above it, the point lightly touching his anus. Then Leonard jumped down and swung his weight from his ankles, driving him well on. Gravity did the rest. But with that unhurried pace characteristic of natural forces.' Strange laid his hand on Jonathan's arm and squeezed it paternally. 'I hope you understand why I am burdening you with the lurid details.'

'Yes, I understand.'

'Good. Good.' He patted the arm and withdrew his hand.

Jonathan's eyes were clouded with his gentle combat smile when he said, 'Tell me. Would you mind passing the marmalade?'

Covent Garden/Brook Street/The Vicarage

The lone painter who worked with tunnel concentration before a vast canvas in MacTaint's converted fruit warehouse was the ragged, furious man with long skinny arms who had come to assume over the years that the space, the stove, and the tea were his by squatter's right. He snapped his head around angrily as Jonathan pushed open the corrugated metal door, allowing a gust of wind to enter with him. The painter continued to fix Jonathan with a wild stare until the door had been slid to, guillotining the offending shaft of blue daylight that had intruded on the yellow pool of tungsten light from the naked bulb hanging from a long frayed cord.

Jonathan's light greeting was parried by a rasping growl as the painter used the interruption as an opportunity to heap another shovelful of coal into the large potbellied stove. As a final gesture of impatience, he kicked the stove door closed violently, almost immediately regretting that he was not wearing shoes.

Receiving no answer to his light knock on the inner door, but hearing a voice from within, Jonathan pushed the door open and looked in. Lilla was sprawled in a deep wing chair before the television, a half-empty glass of gin dangling from her pudgy hand and the crumbs of some earlier feast decorating the front of her feathered dressing gown. In a self-satisfied drone of BBC English, a commentator was summing up the industrial situation which, it appeared, was not so bad as it might be. True, the gas workers were on strike, as were the train drivers, the teachers, the hospital workers, the automotive workers, and the truckers; but the dockers might soon return to work, and there was a chance that the threatened strikes of the civil servants, the electricians, the printers, the construction workers, and the miners might be delayed if the government conceded to their demands.

'Hello?'

She turned her head and peered in his general direction, her eyes watery and uncertain. 'Now, don't tell me, young man. I never forget a face.'

'Is MacTaint around?'

'He's gone beyond. To relieve his bladder, as we used to say in the theatre. Come in. Entrez. I was just havin' my mid-afternoon pick-me-up. Care to join me?' She gestured toward the bar with her half-full glass of gin, slopping the contents in a discrete arc.

'No, thank you, Lilla. I just wanted to see—'

'You know my name! So we have met before. I told you I never forget a face. It was in the theatre, of course. Now let me see...'

Just then MacTaint came shuffling in, wearing his long overcoat and mumbling to himself. 'Ah, Jonathan! Good to see you!'

'The gentleman and I was just havin' a chat about the old days in the business, if you don't mind.'

'What business was that?'

'The theatre, as you know perfectly well.'

'Oh yes, I remember now. You used to sell chocolates in the aisle and your ass in the alley out back. The chocolates went better, as I recall.'

'Here! That will be enough of that, you stinking old fart.' She turned her wobbling head to Jonathan. 'Do excuse the diction.'

'Right, now get along with you. We have business to talk over.'

'Don't exercise that tone of voice in my presence, you dinky-cocked son of a bitch!'

'Slam a bung in it, you ha'penny flop, and get your dripping hole upstairs!'

'Really!' Lilla drew herself up, fixed MacTaint's general area with a stare of quivering disdain, and swept to her exit.

MacTaint scratched at his scruffy beard, his lower teeth bared in painful pleasure. 'Sorry about her, lad. Of late she's been nervy as a cat shitting razor blades. But she's a good old bitch, even if she does take a sip now and then.'

'I could use a drink, if there's any left.'

'Done.' Eddies of ancient sweat were almost overcoming as MacTaint brushed past on his way to the bar, moving with his characteristic shambling half trot. He returned with two glasses of Scotch and handed one to Jonathan, then he sprawled heavily in a fainting couch of rosewood, one ragged boot up on the damask upholstery, his chin buried in the collar of his amorphic overcoat. 'Well, here's to sin.' He swilled it off with a great smacking of lips. 'Now! I suppose you're needing your two hundred quid.'

'No. You keep it. For your trouble.'

'That's very good of you. But holding it's been no trouble.'

'I'm talking about future trouble.'

'I was afraid you might be.' The old man's eyes glittered beneath his antennal eyebrows. 'What future trouble?'

'I'm still not in the clear, Mac.'

'Sorry to hear that.'

'I need help.'

MacTaint pursued an itch from his cheek to his shoulder, then down his back inside the greatcoat, but it seemed just out of reach to his fingertips. 'What kind of help?' he asked after scratching his back against the chair.

Jonathan sipped his whiskey. 'The theft of the Chardin. Is it still on?'

Instantly Mac's voice was flat and tentative, and the leprechaun facade fell away. 'It is, yes.'

'And it's still scheduled for Tuesday night?'

'Yes. Why do you ask?'

'I want to go with you.' Jonathan placed his glass carefully on the parqueted side table.

MacTaint examined a new tear in his canvas trousers with close interest. 'Why?'

'Can't tell you, Mac. But it's tied up with the trouble I'm in.'

'I see. Why didn't you lie and make up some convincing story?'

'I would never do that, Mac.'

'Because we're such great friends?'

'No. Because you'd see through it.'

MacTaint enjoyed a good laugh, then a short choke, then a long racking cough that ended with his spitting on the carpet. 'You're a proper villain, Jonathan Hemlock. That's why I like you. You con a man by admitting you're conning a man. That's very fine.' He wiped his eyes with his fist and changed tone. 'Tell me this. Will taking you