“No, Johnny. No, my lord. Honest! I didn’t!” I was driving the stick into his belly, making his waistcoat distend about the bulging and displaced flesh. “On my mother’s grave, Johnny, I didn’t!”
I believed him, because I was sure by now that it had been Elizabeth who had guessed that I’d make for George’s junk yard. That wasn’t the question I’d come to ask George, but it was a good way of softening him up for my real query. I released the stick and George scrabbled in a drawer for a bottle of pills and quickly swallowed two of them. “I didn’t say a word, Johnny, I wouldn’t. You’re a friend!”
“So where do I find them, George?”
He gaped at me. “I don’t know.” He flinched from the raised stick. “I mean, they could be anywhere! It depends who they’re working for!”
“So who do they work for, George?”
He shrugged. “Anyone, of course.”
I slammed the stick down again, spilling pills across the naked girl’s photograph. “Who, you bastard?”
“Anyone who’s got property troubles, of course.”
“Name them.”
He was saved the need to answer by the arrival of Rita carrying a tray of tea and biscuits. She must have overheard my angry voice and the noise of the walking stick hitting the desk, but she only beamed a happy smile and said it looked like being another fine day. I waited till she had left. “Who do they work for, George?”
He gave me the names of two men who owned discos and pubs in Union Street, but then warned me against those men. I had enough sense to heed his warning. Every maritime city has a Union Street, a place for homecoming sailors to get drunk and laid, and the men who ran such streets were harder than steel. If I limped down Union Street with naive questions then I would be lucky to leave alive. Harry Abbott could have done it, but I guessed Harry had already exhausted the names George had just given me.
“I haven’t seen hide or hair of them in weeks,” George said miserably. “I’d tell you if I had, Johnny, you know that.”
“They tried to kill me,” I told George.
“Harry told me.” George tutted disapprovingly to show that his sympathies were with me.
“Not just that night in your yard, but last week. They filled my boat with gas, and like a fool I didn’t check.”
“Jesus.” He gaped at me.
“That’s why I want to find them, George, so I can cut out their livers.”
“I wish I could help you, Johnny. You know that! I’d help you if I could!”
I’d drawn a blank. I swore. I crossed to the window and stared down into the dock. It could make a very nice business, I thought, a most splendid business. I could store boats in the winter, have two covered repair shops, and a permanent berth for whatever boat I ended up buying for myself. Except to buy George’s yard would take more money than I was ever likely to have.
“Have a drink,” George said soothingly. “It might help.”
“Not this early.” I sounded annoyed.
“I’ll do anything to help,” George said pleadingly, “you know that, Johnny! I’ll do anything.”
“Then drive me to the train station.”
He drove me to the station, and I’d learned nothing.
I caught a train to London. I had a piece of personal business to transact before I resumed Harry’s trail. The business was with Jennifer. I wondered if I’d be refused entry into the hospital, but evidently Sir Leon’s prohibition either carried no weight or had yet to be pronounced.
Jennifer had been taken off the air bed, and now lay belly down on a high, metal-sided bed. I couldn’t see how badly she was burned for her body was covered with a kind of plastic tent. Tubes had been poked into her nostrils. Other tubes disappeared under the tent. Her scalp was smothered with a wig made of some pale liquid over which had been pasted small squares of cotton gauze. Lady Buzzacott had said her face had been spared, but it was patched with the same small squares of cotton. The truth was that she looked dreadful. “Hello, gorgeous,” I said.
“Hello.” Her voice was very hoarse.
“Where can I kiss you?”
“You can’t. Mummy kisses one of the drip bottles.”
I kissed one of the drip bottles.
“I hoped you’d come,” she said.
“I came to apologise.”
She made a tiny shaking motion with her head. “No need.”
“I feel like a shit, and everyone’s being so nice.” I could feel the tears pricking my eyes. “It was my fault. I should have checked the gas. I’m sorry.”
“But you’re all right?” she asked. “You look tired.”
“I’ve been sleeping badly. And I limp a bit, but it’ll pass. They tell me you’re going to be fine.”
“They say that.” Her voice was very laboured, the effect, I guessed, of all the fumes she’d inhaled. “But they would, wouldn’t they?”
“No,” I said. “They’ll tell the truth.”
Again there was the little shaking motion of the head. “It’s going to take a long time. My front isn’t too bad, but my back is pretty foul. My hands are the worst. My hair is beginning to grow again. The doctors say I was lucky, that the fire blew past me, but I don’t feel very lucky.” She gave another tiny shake of her head, almost in resignation. “It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it did, but it’s still pretty bloody.”
“I’m sorry,” I said helplessly.
“They tell me it will be all right,” she went on, “but when it’s all done I know I’ll still look horrid.”
“No,” I said, though looking at her I could not see how they could possibly put her beauty back together. “I should have brought you some grapes.”
“You’d have had to mash them up and put them in a tube.”
“Actually,” I said, “I brought you something else.”
“What?”
“This.” I could not give it to her, so I opened the box and showed it to her. It was an engagement ring. It wasn’t a very fine ring, not a chunk of diamond like Hans had bought her, but it was the best I could find in the jewellery shop closest to the hospital.
“Oh, John,” she said, and sounded rather sad.
“It isn’t a very good ring,” I confessed, “but your stepfather is trying to buy me off and gave me a chunk of cash, so I blew most of it on the ring. I didn’t blow it all, because I need a bit for bus fares, but it isn’t a bad little ring. It glints in all the right places. Look!”
She smiled at me under the cotton pads. “You’re mad, John.”
“So marry me.” She didn’t say anything, so I burbled on. “Your stepfather disapproves. He thinks you should marry Hans because Hans is sensible and steady, and the Buzzacott millions will need a bore to run them. So I have to tell you that you’ll be upsetting your stepfather when you marry me, but I think he’ll get over it. I suspect your mother will approve, and I imagine she can usually get her own way with him?”
Jennifer nodded very slightly.
“Is that acceptance?” I asked.
“No, it isn’t. I can’t marry you.”
“Why not? I’m eligible.”
“I shall be ugly.”
“Good. I don’t want other men lusting after you. I shall do all the lusting you’ll ever need.”
She watched me with her dark eyes; the only recognisable things left of her. “You’re being foolish,” she said.
“I love you.”
“That’s what I mean.” She took a rasping breath. “Anyway, there’s Hans.”
“Bugger Hans,” I said. “He’ll just put you down as a bad business investment and find himself a little Swiss bird with big tits and skier’s thighs.”
