‘George will be here, Charlie. I always wanted to travel on a sleeper – sounds so romantic.’
The rain was fine and filmy; blowing along the river like smoke.
‘I know a pub we can hide in for a couple of hours. We have a card game to play.’
I could see from her face that that was a metaphor too far.
‘What kind of card game, Charlie?’
‘The kind where we take the cards we’re holding too close to our chest, and lay them down one by one, honey.’ I hadn’t actually wanted to be reminded of her chest, but there you go.
I took her to the Printer’s Devil up behind Fetter Lane. I loved the place because you could come to it via alleys and small lanes. After I had hung our coats on the pegs close to the fire I got us a couple of pints. Doris said, ‘Kinda early in the day for me, Charlie, but I’ll sip this to keep you company.’
I let a silence hang about for a minute, and watched the fire before telling her, ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, honey, but the police are on to you. They’ve been watching you ever since clever old George tried to get the hotel to change a year’s pay in small dollars. Something to do with exchange control.’
She made a fist, and her knuckles went white. ‘Damn! I warned him about that.’ Then she said, ‘All that money is legal. We’re just funding the trip, that’s all.’
‘Even if it is’ – I wanted her to realize that I wouldn’t necessarily give them the benefit of the doubt – ‘if they know George is out of the country, the customs could well pick him up for questioning as soon as he touches down. Where’s the money?’
‘I still have it. The hotel arranged for a man from a bank to come round and change a grand for us – the rest is in a briefcase in the hotel safe.’
‘We’ll have to see what we can do about that.’
She took a deep pull at the beer, gave me the old eye bite and asked, ‘How did you know the police were interested? Who told you?’
‘They did, when they picked me up after our supper.’
‘What did you tell them?’
‘That you and George are Mr and Mrs Ordinary American looking to invest your hard-earned savings in a regular British airfreight company.’
‘Did they buy it?’
‘I haven’t got a clue,’ I told her. There; I was doing it again.
‘I’ll have to call George.’
‘Yes, you do that. But not from the hotel.’
‘I have an old school friend at the consulate. Maybe he’d let me call from there. When will you stop talking to me like you stepped on a snake?’
‘When you tell me what you’re up to.’
‘I’ve already told you. I promised Mom I’d put some flowers on Petey’s grave.’
‘And George?’
‘George is my husband; he’ll do whatever I ask him.’
‘And me?’
‘My friend in the consulate said you’d experience of these high-ground wrecks, and had been in the RAF. He thought you were the man to facilitate the operation.’
‘Operation?’
‘That’s the way to look at life’s little difficulties, Charlie – as operations, just like in the war. You won’t let me down now, will you?’ She was wearing plain black trousers – not showy – and a thick cable-knit sweater which covered the rest of her. When she covered up her body it was her hair which spoke to you, but for once I didn’t listen: I pulled my hand back, and gave my brain a shaking. I knew that she was playing me the way an angler plays a fish: it was like being hypnotized against your will.
Later I showed her the map I’d smuggled out of the Ordnance Survey office at Chessington. The climb up to her brother’s wreck looked absolutely bloody horrible. Why weren’t Tenzing and Hillary ever around when you needed them?
The last thing I asked her before we split was, ‘How much money is in that bloody case anyway?’
‘Something above ten thousand dollars.’
‘Strewth! . . . and it’s clean?’
‘Of course. My family came up with it to fund the trip, I told you.’
‘What’s the matter with you people? Haven’t you heard of banks?’
‘Nobody in my family’s trusted a bank since the Wall Street Crash, Charlie. A banker will steal you blind if you’ll let him, although no one will believe you if you tell them that.’
‘What does your family do? Where does the money come from?’
‘We own half a casino in Las Vegas. Uncle Joey runs it, and most of us work there in the summer.’
‘Who owns the other half?’
‘The Teamsters.’
I’d heard of them. They were a trade union. Some people had said they were also gangsters; my late mate Tommo among them. Great.
‘What part of the line-up are you? The Grand Witch or someone as important?’
‘Don’t be silly, Charlie. Nothing like that. The Teamsters are very nice men. Sometimes I dance for them at their convention – I used to be a cheerleader.’
‘I’ll bet you did.’
‘So what’s the problem with her?’ I’d used Flash Harry’s business card, and met him in the Castle on the Old Kent Road. It was just past noon – dinnertime in a shady pub with shady customers; now I was one of them.
‘I can’t believe that she’s as dumb as she seems. Whenever you ask her a serious question she just breathes in and out, and sticks her tits in your face.’
‘And you’re complaining? You sound tetchy, Charlie. Are you sure this money’s clean?’
‘Of course it isn’t clean, is it? It just walked into the country in a suitcase, and the exchange-control laws are supposed to prevent that. What gets my goat is that I helped them. But I see what you mean – apart from that, she says it comes from a family whip-round to pay for this trip to lay the ghost of little brother.’
‘And you buy
