‘Doing?’ he slurred. ‘Didn’t do anything, old chap. Started off at the Haworth and went on from there.’
‘Where did he get the money?’
‘Pension cheque and… donations.’
‘Street donations, or did he knock on doors?’
‘Had a theory, Leon. Principle really-charity begins at home. Didn’t care too much for foreign relief in India, if you take my meaning. Used to call in where he saw signs of charity being dispensed and claim his share. Had a wonderful line of chat.’
‘You don’t know specifically where he went that day?’
‘No, sir. Saw him in the street in the afternoon.’ He tipped up his mug. ‘Do you know, I think he was very close to sober. Disgraceful, I said. Pale, he was, and shaking. Suppose he was sick. Suppose that’s how he fell. Negotiated those stairs myself many times, drunk as a lord, never fell.’
‘It could have been that,’ I said. But I was thinking of the ‘give’ poster outside the ashram and wondering what it took to make a confirmed drunkard sober in the late afternoon.
The booze was reaching the celebrants’ motor centres; the accordionist had put his instrument down and was sitting quietly, smoking one of Ann’s cigarettes. One man was slumped in a corner, snoring. The woman in pink stared fixedly at a paper cup in front of her and poured small amounts into it from the variety of bottles on the table. The front of Rose Jenkins’s dress was soaked with tears or wine or both; she was talking to Ann, who smiled and nodded in reply. A tall, thin man slid down against the wall and the beer bottle in his hand smashed on the cement floor. No-one took any notice.
Edgar held the brandy bottle up to the light and read from the label in a loud, stagey voice. ‘Product of Australia,’ he intoned. He closed his eyes as if great pain had gripped him. ‘Australia. God.’
I looked across and caught Ann’s eye. She nodded and patted Mrs Jenkins’s vast upper arm.
‘Thanks for coming, dear,’ the woman said mournfully.
We went towards the door, stepping over the man in the corner, who was sitting oblivious in a pool of beer. Halfway down the passage, a question occurred to me and I told Ann to wait while I hurried back to the kitchen. Rose had her nose in a cup of brandy that Edgar had given her; he was leaning over her and touching his fingertip to her ear in a parody of sexual play.
‘Mrs Jenkins,’ I said. ‘Were there any strangers in the house yesterday?’
‘Stranger?’
‘Yes; anyone wearing yellow, for example?’
‘White, did you say? No, yellow-no-one in yellow.’ She hiccoughed and wheezed.
‘Was there someone in white?’
She slurped the brandy. ‘Don’t remember. Go ‘way.’
Edgar Montefiore put his index finger with its black-rimmed nail into her ear. I went away. Back in the hall, Ann was pinned back against the wall by a big man with an Ulster accent who was haranguing her about Ireland. He wasn’t drunk or sober and he was pressing closer, making the attack physical as well as verbal. I put my hand on Ann’s shoulder and gently eased him back. I had an elbow ready for his ribs if he turned nasty, but he said something uncomplimentary about Protestants and moved off towards the grog.
The encounter upset Ann more than I’d have expected. She was pale and the shoulder muscles under my hand were knotted and tense as we went out to the street.
‘I hate that,’ she said fiercely.
‘What?’
‘Needing to have a man around to rescue me.’
There was nothing to say to that-chivalry is chauvinism, protection is paternalism. She was five foot ten and weighed ten stone; with tae kwon do, she’d be a terror on the mat. But tae kwon do is no good if you’re upset and, like it or not, that’s how most women react to a physical threat. I’ve talked it over with them, especially Hilde, and they argue that male violence makes them react that way. So they win the argument and still lose the fight. I took my hand away.
‘Did you have an interesting time?’ Her voice was edged with irony and hostility.
‘Yes. You?’
‘Poor cows,’ she said. ‘I asked Pearl, she was the one in the pink, about your Mr Whatsit. She reckons she knows a lot about them, the Singers. I think she meant the wife, too.’
‘What’s her name, that woman?’
‘Well, she’s going by the name of Spenser right now, I think. She’s had other names. Names are a bit fluid in this crowd. Some people have a couple. For the pension, you know?’
‘I’ve heard of it. I thought it got stamped out.’
‘No way.’
‘I should talk to her.’
‘Not much point now; she’s too pissed.’
‘Would you go back and ask? There’d be some money in it for her.’
She shrugged. ‘If you like.’ She turned and walked away very straight, the way you do when you’ve had enough drinks to care about how you walk.
The car was up ahead. I took a few very straight steps and suddenly there was a pain in my arm and I wondered why. Then there was a whole lot of pain, a flood of it, and some very loud noises. My feet left the ground and my head swooped down towards it and there was nothing after that.
12
When I could feel things again, I wished I couldn’t. I was lying still and yet moving, there was a constant sound and also a deep silence and my head felt as if it was flapping loose and I couldn’t move my body. I was very confused. After a while I worked out that I was on the back seat of a big car. My hands and legs were tied, my shoulders were on the seat but my head was hanging half off it. I wriggled and thrashed until I got some support for my head. It still hurt, but at least it felt attached to my body.
‘Hey,’ I said, feebly. ‘Hey!’ I twisted and pushed until I forced my head up far enough to see two heads and two pairs of shoulders. I could excuse the driver for not responding; you need to concentrate on your driving when you’ve got someone trussed up on the back seat, but it was just plain rude of the other guy to ignore me. Still, that’s what he did and kept on doing. It was dark and I couldn’t see much out of the windows except the odd light. To judge by noises I wasn’t in the city, but I wasn’t on the Nullarbor Plain either.
I fought to control the panic that the thought of an unsolicited trip to the country with strangers is apt to bring on. I tried to think of any reasons why anyone should be thinking of a shallow grave in the bush for me. There was nothing pressing. I thought I could risk a little resistance so I drew my legs up to my chest and pushed them back hard to thump against the door. A hand came over with a big black gun in it. The metal slammed down hard on my shinbone and I yelped.
‘Don’t,’ a voice said.
I closed my eyes and tried for some of that displacement of body and spirit that Jack London wrote about in The Jacket. His hero travelled in time, fought off pirates and fired flintlocks at circling Indians from the cover of a wagon. I think he got girls every time. Nothing happened and I began to worry about Ann. Was she in a car, too, or had she been around the corner when they took me? Then I thought: Why, again, and who? Good questions, no answers.
I could see the moon through the window but I couldn’t tell the time by the moon. Who can? The car stopped, turned and followed what felt like a rough, unmade road for a while and then it stopped again. The man with the gun got out, the car moved forward a few yards, stopped and he got back in. Private property.
I bounced and rolled around on the seat and tried to work out how far we were going from the road. I couldn’t; it might have been one mile or six. When the car stopped, the gunman opened the back door and looked at me. The interior light was on and I looked back: he had a meaty face with a dimple in his chin. He would have been handsome in an overblown way except for small, close-set eyes that gave him a slightly piggy look. When he was satisfied that I was still tied up, he pulled my legs and tumbled me out inelegantly onto the ground. He put his
