Open Writing

I was heading down the stairs towards the square's sunlight when suddenly there was an eclipse. I looked up. Walsh was waiting, between me and the sun, and for that matter the door.

'Ah, glad I bumped into you,' he said.

'I'm glad you didn't,' I said. As far as I could see, the doorway was a pretty tight fit on him. The only way past him was tunnelling.

Then, as I got used to the reduced light, I saw it wasn't the same Walsh who'd tried browbeating me. His thunder had been turned down to a hoarse whisper, and his face looked white and worried.

'Sorry if I lost my rag in there,' he said. He didn't sound like a man who'd had a lot of practice at apologising. 'I'm a bit liverish today, I'm afraid.'

He hung on to the brass rail and adjusted his weight. The staircase moaned in pain.

'I was wondering,' he said, into my unhelpful silence, 'if it had all been resolved.'

'It hasn't.'

'Oh. I see. I was hoping that Kentish could perhaps present it all to you in a more sympathetic light.'

'I imagine he's hoping that too.'

'Ah. Good. So perhaps it won't be necessary to drag the Home Office into what is essentially a local business.'

'Perhaps not.'

He tried to smile but it didn't take. He reached out a hand to pat me on the shoulder, then let it fall.
'My experience is,' he went on, 'that once you begin to dig up the past you can't always get it to lie down again.'

'I wouldn't know. My past is open to the public two-till-four most afternoons.'

'Jolly good,' he said, in a weak voice. 'Look, perhaps I shouldn't say this, but if you're out of pocket over this business at all, or if I can help in any way to make your stay here a pleasant one, perhaps ...'

His left hand was inside his jacket in the fast bribe position.

'Sure, it'd only be wasted on a cheap little snooper like myself,' I said, and I manoeuvred him to one side and slid past.

It was mid-morning, a humid day, and in the distance heavy clouds were still heaped on the hills.

I'd got a day off, until the evening at least, and I wondered what a young hawk like Cringle would expect his expendable employees to do in these circumstances. Broaden their minds, I decided, and I got a map and my car and shuffled around for a couple of hours in second gear.

First, I ran around the countryside. For someone who isn't accustomed to seeing green grass without a bandstand, those bare hills looked unfinished. And the sheep were having a long lunch hour even by City standards, instead of getting on with laying eggs or whatever it is sheep do.

Driving around the town, I saw gardens with dark shrubberies, houses with heavy black gables, wrought-iron gates protecting pale gravelled drives, and hedges without a hair out of place.
And I thought perhaps I wasn't so easy in this town after all.

In London, you can see those at the top of the money mountain, impregnable in their vast arrogance. The rest scrabble around in the foothills as best they can. But here they were all halfway up the cliff face, hanging on by their fingernails and hoping to God they didn't slip.

The loudest noise round here wasn't Striker hitting the bell. It was Britannia screaming when the grasping hands grabbed the pennies.

Back at the hotel, I had a sauna. A sauna with lots of ice, a hint of vermouth and enough gin to ruin the entire Mothers' Union.

'But we don't even have a sauna,' Eileen protested, noting it for the bill.

'I know. But my boss is very fastidious about personal hygiene -he'll like it.'

'You're a one, you are,' she said, her eyes rolling in a face like an unbaked loaf. 'Let's hope you're in heaven half an hour before the divil knows you're dead.'

'Now what would I want up there with a bunch of strangers?'

I took another sauna up to my room in case I suddenly started feeling unhygienic, and as soon as I walked in I saw the carrier bag on the bed.

Most people like to get a surprise present from a well-wisher. People who've worked in Northern Ireland, however, don't. It could be from an ill-wisher.

So I walked gently around the bed to have a good look at it. And it looked like a plain paper carrier bag.

I took out my pocket knife and, very delicately, slit open the side of the bag. I was careful not to cut across any seams. That's where the breaker wires are usually hidden. It fell open without taking the roof off, and inside was a white jacket. It was the one they'd told me about on the phone.

It was white, it was cashmere, and it would've turned heads on the harbourside at Antibes.

I put it on. It was so light I had to look in the mirror to be sure. It told me quite a bit about the bloke who'd bought it.

First, either he had so much money it didn't matter, or he wanted it so much he didn't care. Second, we had the same measurements — my chest and his inside leg. Whoever he was, he'd eaten up his porridge when he was young.

Striker. It was only then I realised. He'd had the room before me, and the shop had identified me by room number.
.
Nightclub bouncing obviously paid a lot better than nursing pop stars, unless he was doing a little light bank robbery on the side.

I put it on a hanger. For once, it was a hanger that wasn't welded into the hotel's substructure. The Drawbridge trusted its clients, which was a quaint old-fashioned idea if you like.

Then I lay on the bed, knocked my brain into neutral, and let it all swim past.

Who the hell was Victoria Finch? Both Walsh and Brassington were convinced I was working for her.
As a boss, she couldn't be worse than me. And the salary was bound to be an improvement. But I still wondered who she was and why she'd want to employ me to play at detectives.

And I thought about Kentish and the way he'd hooked me with his talk of Michael. There was a thin-lipped primness about the man that I didn't like. Then I got to thinking yet again of little Mike trapped in those cars and Tiger Tomkins crumpled up in the road. Friends and relatives of mine didn't seem to have a lot of luck.

And I wondered why Cringle was so determined to have Tiger. That was why he'd put me in. Like you put a ferret in after a rabbit. Only he was no rabbit, not even now, and any way you looked at it I was a failed ferret.

But perhaps that was it. Perhaps they thought the unpaid debt between us would somehow resolve it. That would be typical of them, juggling with other people's emotions.

If that was it, what was Tiger supposed to have done? Killed a blacksmith's assistant? Why? What on earth could he hope to gain from that?

And why would he tell me? I was the man who nearly killed him. That night in Deny. I'd filed it away in an attic in my memory and closed the door long ago. Now I'd have to dust it off and get it out. It wasn't going to be fun.

**

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