'It couldn't be worse than the South Middlesex deal,' Arny goaded him.
'Couldn't it? Ha!' Evans face was slightly flushed now, and the glass trembled in his hand. He spoke slowly and deliberately. 'He has instructed me-instructed, mind you-to clear a rubber check for a million pounds.' He set down his glass with a flourish.
'But what about Threadneedle Street?'
'My exact words to him!' The two solicitors looked around, and Evan realized he had shouted. He spoke more quietly. 'My very words. You'll never believe what he said. He said: 'Who owns the Cotton Bank of Jamaica?' Then he put the phone down on me.'
'So what did you do?'
Evan shrugged. 'When the payee phoned up, I said the check was good.'
Arny whistled. 'What you say makes no difference. It's the Bank of England who have to make the transfer. And when they discover that you haven't got a million-'
'I told him all that.' Evan realized he was close to tears, and felt ashamed. 'I have never, in thirty years of banking, since I started behind the counter of Barclays Bank in Cardiff, passed a rubber check. Until today.' He emptied his glass and stared at it gloomily. 'Have another?'
'No. You shouldn't, either. Will you resign?'
'Must do.' He shook his head from side to side. 'Thirty years. Come on, have another.'
'No,' Arny said firmly. 'You should go home.' He stood up and took Evan's elbow.
'All right.'
The two men walked out of the wine bar and into the street. The sun was high and hot. Lunch-hour lines were beginning to form at cafe's and sandwich shops. A couple of pretty secretaries walked by eating ice-cream cones.
Arny said: 'Lovely weather, for the time of year.'
'Beautiful,' Evan said lugubriously.
Arny stepped off the curb and hailed a taxi. The black cab swerved across and pulled up with a squeal.
Evan said: 'Where are you going?'
'Not me. You.' Arny opened the door and said to the driver: 'Waterloo Station.'
Evan stumbled in and sat down on the backseat.
'Go home before you get too drunk to walk,' Arny said. He shut the door.
Evan opened the window. 'Thanks,' he said.
'Home's the best place.'
Evan nodded. 'I wish I knew what I'm going to tell Myfanwy.'
Arny watched the cab disappear, then walked toward his office, thinking about his friend. Evan was finished as a banker. A reputation for honesty was made slowly and lost quickly in the City. Evan would lose his as surely as if he had tried to pick the pocket of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He might get a decent pension out of it, but he would never get another job.
Arny was secure, if hard up: quite the opposite of Evan's plight. He earned a respectable salary, but he had borrowed money to build an extension to his lounge, and he was having difficulty with the payments. He could see a way to earn out of Evan's misfortune. It felt disloyal. However, he reasoned, Evan could suffer no more.
He went into a phone booth and dialed a number.
The pips went and he thumbed in a coin. 'Evening Post?'
'Which department?'
'City Editor.'
There was a pause; then a new voice said: 'City desk.'
'Mervyn?'
'Speaking.'
'This is Arnold Matthews.'
'Hello, Arny. What goes on?'
Arny took a deep breath. 'The Cotton Bank of Jamaica is in trouble.'
22
Doreen, the wife of Deaf Willie, sat stiffly upright in the front of Jacko's car, clutching a handbag in her lap. Her face was pale, and her lips were twisted into a strange expression compounded of fury and dread. She was a large-boned woman, very tall with broad hips, and tending to plumpness because of Willie's liking for chips. She was also poorly dressed, and this was because of Willie's liking for brown ale. She stared straight ahead, and spoke to Jacko out of the side of her mouth.
'Who've took him up the hospital, then?'
'I don't know, Doreen,' Jacko lied. 'Perhaps it was a job, and they didn't want to let on who, you know. All I know is, I get a phone call, Deaf Willie's up the hospital, tell his missus, bang.' He made a slamming-the-phone- down gesture.
'Liar,' Doreen said evenly.
Jacko fell silent.
In the back of the car, Willie's son, Billy, stared vacantly out of the window. With his long, awkward body he was cramped in the small space. Normally he enjoyed traveling in cars, but today his mother was very tense, and he knew something bad had happened. Just what it was, he was not sure: things were confusing. Ma seemed to be cross with Jacko, but Jacko was a friend. Jacko had said that Dad was up the hospital, but not that he was ill; and indeed, how could he be? For he had been well when he left the house early this morning.
The hospital was a large brick building, faintly Gothic, which had once been the residence of the Mayor of Southwark. Several flat-roofed extensions had been built in the grounds, and tarmacadamed car parks had obliterated the rest of the lawns.
Jacko stopped near the entrance to Casualty. No one spoke as they got out of the car and walked across to the door. They passed an ambulance man with a pipe in his mouth, leaning against an antismoking poster on the side of his vehicle.
They went from the heat of the car park into the cool of the hospital. The familiar antiseptic smell caused a nauseous surge of fear in Doreen's stomach. Green plastic chairs were ranged around the walls, and a desk was placed centrally, opposite the entrance. Doreen noticed a small boy nursing a glass cut, a young man with his arm in an improvised sling, and a girl with her head in her hands. Somewhere nearby a woman moaned. Doreen felt panicky.
The West Indian nurse at the desk was speaking into a telephone. They waited for her to finish; then Doreen said: 'Have you had a William Johnson brought in here this morning?'
The nurse did not look at her. 'Just a minute, please.' She made a note on a scribbling pad, then glanced up as an ambulance arrived outside. She said: 'Would you sit down, please?' She came around the desk and walked past them to the door.
Jacko moved away, as if to sit down, and Doreen snatched at his sleeve. 'Stay here!' she commanded. 'I'm not waiting bloody hours-I'm stopping here until she tells me.'
They watched as a stretcher was brought in. The prone figure was wrapped in a bloody blanket. The nurse escorted the bearers through a pair of swing doors.
A plump white woman in sister's uniform arrived through another door, and Doreen waylaid her. 'Why can't I find out whether my husband's here?' she said shrilly.
The sister stopped, and took the three of them in at a glance. The black nurse came back in.
Doreen said: 'I asked her and she wouldn't tell me.'
The sister said: 'Nurse, why were these people not attended to?'
'I thought the road-accident case with two severed limbs looked sicker than this lady.'
'You did the right thing, but there's no need for witticism.' The plump sister turned to Doreen. 'What is your husband's name?'
'William Johnson.'
