was simply a good man wounded by a friend’s violent death; he was trying to reach out, trying to do the right thing. The opposite, in fact, to all those refined, carefully worded Foreign Office snakes who took the world for idiots and betrayed everything but their own good name.
‘Do you have any idea who could have done this?’ Ben asked. He had trusted Bone immediately, fallen straight into his decency.
‘Later, son,’ the American replied, ‘Later.’ And finally he took his hand from Ben’s shoulder. A car had pulled up behind them. ‘I better go, not block these people in. Mark gave me your address in London. I’ll be sure to write you both just as soon as I get back home.’
21
‘I know what’s needed, Keeno. We need to get you out, mate. A night on the tiles. Something to relax you.’
Thomas Macklin was hunched forward at his desk, rubbing his hands vigorously together. His cheeks were puffy and flushed red, eyes like sockets of concentrated ambition. Roth’s lawyer, his confidant and right-hand man, was wearing a dark, single-breasted moleskin suit, a blue silk shirt and an off-gold cashmere tie. Enough money invested in designer clothes to make an unattractive man look passably stylish.
‘I don’t mean to sound insensitive, mate, but fuck it, where’s the harm? It’s good to see you backin the office. What’s it been, three weeks? Everyone admires the way you’ve handled this thing. But I wanna see a smile backon Keeno’s face. There’s this new place we’ve been going, lap-dancers that can’t get enough of you. Cocktails, music, stage acts, the lot. Couple of birds there you wouldn’t believe. Tits like freeze-dried mangoes and Happy New Year. We can take one of the Russian crowd along, write it off on expenses. Mr-Sebastian-Roth-does-not-have-to-know. If Seb wants to spend his nights hob-nobbing in art galleries with New Labour while his mates are out having a good time, well that’s his prerogative. You and me are gonna have some fun.’
Mark smiled. There was something touching about Macklin’s fantastic insensitivity. The last time they had been to a lap-dancing club was in New York two years before, while overseeing the opening of the club’s site in Manhattan. Five executives on the company credit card and Mark the only one not drunk and groping girls. One of the dancers, a Costa Rican, had kept giving him the eye; she had asked Mark more than once if he wanted her to dance for him and, even when he had said no, stayed beside him at the table, just talking. Meanwhile Macklin and his friends had stuffed fifty-dollar bills into her G-string and begged her to come back to their hotel. At the end of the night she had slipped Mark her number and they had got together a couple of times before he flew back to London.
‘Sure,’ Mark said. ‘It’s a nice idea.’
‘Fuckin’ right it’s a nice idea.’ Macklin stood up, backing away from his desk. He was heavily built and in the grip of a big idea. ‘Tell you what, we should get your brother along. How does young Benjamin feel about topless birds nibbling his earlobes?’
‘Not really his cuppa tea,’ Mark replied. His accent had assumed the work Cockney.
‘No,’ Macklin muttered quickly, ‘no.’ Against the grey London sky visible through the closed window of his office, he looked colourful, even vibrant. ‘I suppose he wouldn’t go in for that, would he? Can’t imagine his wife being all that chuffed. Tends to make herself heard, doesn’t she? What’s her name again?’
‘Alice,’ Mark said quietly.
‘That’s right. Alice. Lovely looking girl. He’s done well there, your bro. Real ballbreaker, though, isn’t she? They always are, the fit ones.’
Mark nodded awkwardly and looked down on to the street. A Bangkok cycle-taxi was passing below the window, ringing its bell. ‘Yeah, I suppose Alice can be a bit tricky,’ he conceded, talking into the glass so that it steamed up with his breath.
He might have added that he felt Ben had settled for the first girl that had fallen in love with him, out of an understandable desire for the stability of marriage. He might have said that he feared Alice would one day up and leave, lured by the connections and money of a less troubled man. He might have said that Ben had not spoken to him since the reading of the will, in which it had been revealed that Keen had left everything to Mark: the flat, the money, the car. But he was not a person given to discussing family issues at work. Instead he hummed a tune under his breath until Macklin said, ‘What was that?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Right.’ Macklin stretched until a bone cracked in his arm. ‘Anyway, it was just an idea. I’ll give Vladimir a call, see if he wants to join in.’
‘Who’s Vladimir?’
Very quickly Macklin said, ‘One of the crew from Moscow. Vlad Tamarov. Big fucker. Rolex and leather. He’s handling a few things for Seb on the legal side.’
‘He’s a lawyer?’
‘You could say that, yeah. More of a specialist in our line of work. Helping out with contracts, security, that kind of thing. He’s come over for a few days, see how we operate.’
‘Is he mafia?’
Macklin made a loud snorting noise and dismissed the question with a shrug.
‘Well, who is and who isn’t out there, eh, Keeno? Half the time I don’t even know myself.’
‘So how come you didn’t mention it?’
‘Well, you’ve been out of the loop, haven’t you, mate? Had a shite few weeks. Didn’t think it was necessary to fill you in.’ Macklin had slapped his hand on to Mark’s back and was rubbing it in abrupt circles. ‘Now old Tom wants to help you out, see? Wants to put a smile back on his mate’s face. So are you on for this thing or you after doing something else?’
‘It all sounds fine.’ Mark picked up a copy of GQ from a low, glass-surfaced table at the edge of the room. He began flicking backwards through the pages, male models and sports cars, taking none of it in. ‘There’s just something I have to do beforehand. Some stuff I have to collect from Dad’s flat.’
‘Course you have,’ Macklin told him. ‘Course you gotta do stuff like that. So when will you want to leave?’
‘Just tell me where it is and I’ll meet you there.’ Mark put the magazine down. ‘I don’t know how long I’m going to be.’
Macklin wrote down the address. ‘I might bring Philippe along as well,’ he added, apparently as an after thought.
‘Club Philippe?’
‘The very same. Night off from running his beloved ristorante. We’re having a pint after work.’
‘Oh.’
‘So,’ Macklin said, ‘around ten suit you?’
‘Around ten sounds fine.’
It was the last thing he felt like doing. A night out with Macklin, d’Erlanger and a Russian Mr Fixit, characterized by Tom’s gradually deteriorating behaviour, the four of them just another set of suits in early middle- age ogling girls and stinking of booze and fags. Vladimir probably wouldn’t speak much English, so the evening would consist of shouted, stop-start conversations about ‘Manchester United’ and ‘Mr Winston Churchill’. Slowly, Macklin would lose what few moral scruples he possessed and demonstrate the full range of his aggressive sexism, culminating in their inevitable ejection from the club at two or three in the morning. Then one of them — Macklin, most probably — would pass out on the street before Mark had a chance to put him in a cab. Why had he agreed to go? So that Tom wouldn’t thinkhe was boring? It was something to do with the aftermath of his father’s death; Mark just didn’t have time for this kind of thing any more.
He took a taxi to the Paddington flat. The heating was on high in the back of the cab and when Mark stepped out to pay the driver a January wind caught him like a blast of ice in the face. He took out a set of keys — the ones his father had used — and opened the door to the lobby.
Grey, bleak light was leaking in from the street. Ahead of him, Mark could barely make out the stairwell or the entrance to the lift. He pressed the white plastic timer switch on the wall beside the door, blinking as the foyer
