Armadillo Read online

  Lorimer sat at his desk for an aimless ten minutes, pushing his blotter about, selecting and rejecting various pens before deciding that perhaps a memo to Hogg was a bad idea. He hated memos, Hogg. Face to face was what he liked. Nose to nose, even better. Hogg must surely understand in this case: everyone had a topper sometime, it was a risk in this job. People were at their weakest, their most fallible and unpredictable – Hogg was always telling you that – going over the edge was an occupational hazard.

  He drove home to Pimlico, turning off Lupus Street into Lupus Crescent and finally finding a parking space a mere hundred yards from the house. It had grown decidedly colder and the rain now had a heavy spittley look as it angled through the tangerine glare of the street lights.

  Lupus Crescent was not crescent-shaped, though the street of standard basement and three-storey, cream stucco and brown brick terraced houses did have a slight bend in it, as though it had aspired to crescenthood but did not have the energy to go the full distance. When he’d bought his flat in number 11 he had been put off by the name, wondering why anyone would want to christen a street after a particularly unpleasant ailment, a ‘disease of the skin, usually tubercular or ulcerous, eating into the substance and leaving deep scars’, according to his dictionary. He was relieved when his downstairs neighbour, Lady Haigh – a slim, spry octogenarian, genteelly impoverished – explained that Lupus had been the family name of an Earl of Chester, something to do with the Grosvenor family, who had owned the whole of Pimlico at one time. Still, Lupus was an unfortunate surname, given its medical connotations, Lorimer considered, and was one he would have thought seriously about changing, had he been the Earl of Chester. Names were important, which was all the more reason for changing them when they didn’t suit, or irked in some way or gave rise to unpleasant associations.

  Lady Haigh’s television set mumbled loudly through her front door as Lorimer sorted through the post in the hall. Bills for him and one letter (he recognized the handwriting); Country Life for Lady H; something from the Universität von Frankfurt for ‘Herr Doktor’ Alan Kenbarry up top. He pushed the magazine under Lady Haigh’s door.

  ‘Is that you, Alan, you jackanapes?’ he heard her say. ‘You woke me up this morning.’

  He changed his voice. ‘It’s, ah, Lorimer, Lady Haigh. I think Alan’s out.’

  ‘I’m not dead yet, Lorimer, darling. No need to worry, my sweet.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. Night-night.’

  The magazine was tugged effortfully inside as Lorimer padded up the stairs to his flat.

  As he closed the door behind him, hearing the new aluminium and rubber seals kiss shut, he felt an immediate sense of relaxation rinse through him. He laid his palm ritually on the three helmets that stood on the hall table, feeling their ancient metal cool beneath his skin. Buttons were pressed, switches flicked, low lights went on and a Chopin nocturne crept through the rooms following him, his feet soundless on the rough charcoal carpet. In the kitchen he poured himself two fingers of ice-cold vodka and opened his letter. It contained a polaroid photograph and on its reverse side, scrawled in turquoise ink, the following message: ‘Greek Helm. c. 800 BC. Magna Graecia. Yours at a very special discount – £29,500. Sincerely, Ivan.’ He studied the picture for a moment – it was perfect – then he slipped it back into the envelope and tried not to think about where he could lay his hands on £29,500. Glancing at his watch, he saw he had at least an hour to himself before he would need to prepare for the party and head off to the Fort. He slid The Book of Transfiguration out of its drawer, spread it on the counter and, taking a tiny, lip-numbing sip from his glass and selecting a pen, he settled himself down to write. What pronoun should he use, he wondered? The reproachful, admonitory second person singular, or the more straightforwardly confessional first? He moved between ‘you’ and T as his mood took him, but today, he considered, he had done nothing untoward or recriminatory, there was no need for harsher objectivity – T it would be. ‘379’, he wrote, in his tiny, neat hand. ‘The Case of Mr Dupree’.

  37g. The Case of Mr Dupree. I had spoken to Mr Dupree only once, when I called to make the appointment. ‘Why isn’t Hogg coming?’ he had said immediately, neurotically, like a lover, disappointed. ‘Had enough fun, has he?’ I told him Mr Hogg was a busy man. ‘Tell Hogg to come himself or the whole thing’s off,’ he said and then hung up.

  I relayed all this to Hogg, who made a sick-looking face, full of contempt and disgust. 7 don’t know why I bothered, why I took the trouble,’ Hogg said. ‘He’s squatting in the palm of my hand,’ he said, holding out his broad palm, callused like a harpist’s, ‘with his trousers around his ankles. You finish it off, Lorimer, my lad. I’ve got bigger fish to fillet.’

  I did not know Mr Dupree, which is why my shock was so short-lived, I suppose – still disturbing to think about, but not profoundly so. Mr Dupree had existed for me only as a voice on the telephone, he was Hogg’s case, one of Hogg’s rare sorties into the market, as he liked to put it, to sample the wares and the weather, just to keep his hand in, and then passed him on to me, routinely. That’s why I felt nothing, or, rather, what genuine shock I felt was so brief The Mr Dupree I encountered had already become a thing, an unpleasant thing, true, but had a flayed cow carcase been hanging there, or, say, I had been confronted by a pile of dead dogs, I would have been equally upset. Or would I? Perhaps not. But Mr Dupree, the human being, had never impinged on me, all I had to go on was the importunate voice on the phone; he was merely a name on a file, merely another appointment as far as I was concerned.

  No, I don’t think I am a cold person, on the contrary I am too warm and this, in fact, may be my problem. But why am I not more shattered and distressed by what I found today? I do not lack empathy but my inability to feel anything lasting for Mr Dupree disturbs me rather. Has my job, the life Head, given me the emotional responses of an overworked stretcher-bearer on a crowded battlefield blankly noting and enumerating the dead only as potential burdens. No, I’m sure of it. But the case of Mr Dupree was something that should never have happened to me, should never have become part of my life. Hogg sent me there on his business. But did he know something like this might occur? Was it his insurance to send me there instead?

  The Book of Transfiguration

  He cabbed to the Fort. He would drink too much, he knew, they all would, they always did at these rare gatherings of the entire team. Sometimes if he drank a lot he slept at night but it didn’t always work, though, otherwise he would have embraced alcoholism with a convert’s zeal. Sometimes it kept him up, jangled and alert, mind going like a train.

  Getting out of the cab, he saw that the Fort was agleam, all aglow tonight, spotlights picking out its full twenty-four floors. Three swagged, gilded commissionaires stood at the porte cochère below the aquamarine neon sign. Solid, emphatic, classical roman font – FORTRESS SURE. Something grand must be going on in the boardroom, he thought, all this is not for the likes of us. He was checked, saluted and directed across the lobby to the escalators. Second floor, Portcullis Suite. There was a full-sized catering kitchen on the twenty-fourth, he had been told, and a chef. Someone had said it could have doubled as a three-star restaurant: it probably did, for all he knew – he had never risen to those heights. He smelt cigarette smoke first, then heard the ebb and flow of too-loud conversation and chorused male laughter, feeling the transient electricity of excitement that free drink always provoked. He hoped some canapés had made their way down here to the proles. Mr Dupree had made him miss lunch, he realized, and he was hungry.

  Dymphna’s breasts were momentarily visible as she stooped to stub out her cigarette. Small with pale pointy nipples, he noticed. She really shouldn’t wear such low –

  ‘– He’s fucking livid,’ Adrian Bolt was saying to Lorimer with enthusiastic relish. Bolt was the oldest member of the team, an ex-police inspector, a Mason and an aspiring martinet. ‘Steam coming out of his ears. Course, you can’t tell with Hogg. That control, that disc
ipline –’

  ‘Isn’t the steam a bit of a giveaway?’ Dymphna said.

  Bolt ignored her. ‘He’s impassive. Like a rock, Hogg. A man of few words, even when fucking livid.’

  Shane Ashgable turned to Lorimer, his square face sagging with false sympathy. ‘Wouldn’t like to be in your shoes, compadre.’

  Lorimer turned away, a sudden acid sting of nausea in his throat, searching the busy room for Hogg. No sign. He saw that a microphone was being attached to the moulded pine dais at the far end and thought he could make out the oiled grey-blond hair of Sir Simon Sherriffmuir, Fortress Sure’s chairman and chief executive, in the midst of a cluster of beaming acolytes.

  ‘Another drink, Dymphna?’ Lorimer asked, needing something to do.

  Dymphna handed him her warm, empty, smeared glass. ‘Why thank you, lovely Lorimer,’ she said.

  He pushed and eased his way through the drinking throng, all drinking avidly, quickly, glasses held close to their mouths, as if someone was likely suddenly to snatch them away, confiscate the booze. There were very few he knew here any more, just a sprinkling from his own days at the Fort. They were a young crowd, early to mid-twenties (trainees?), newly suited, loudly tied, flushed, cheery faces. Friday evening, no work tomorrow, arse-holed by midnight, rollocked, well bevvied. The women were all smoking, confident in their minority status, laughing as the males grouped and regrouped about them, sure of themselves, sought-after. Lorimer ruefully reflected that he hadn’t really been fair to –

  His elbow was gripped, hard. He barely had the strength to hold on to Dymphna’s glass. He felt obliged to utter a small gasp of pain as he was wheeled round, effortlessly, as if on a dance floor, being masterfully led.

  ‘How’s Mr Dupree?’ Hogg asked, his big, lumpy face bland, and very close to Lorimer’s. His breath smelt most odd, a mix of wine and something metallic, like Brasso, or some other powerful cleansing agent, or as if every cavity in his teeth had been freshly filled an hour ago. Hogg had also, improbably, tiny ruby jewels of shaving cuts on his left earlobe, his upper lip and another two centimetres down from his left eye. He must have been in a hurry.

  ‘Mr Dupree in the pink, is he?’ Hogg went on. ‘Tip top, hale and hearty, full of piss and vinegar?’

  ‘Ah,’ Lorimer said weakly, ‘you heard.’

  ‘From the fucking POLICE,’ Hogg said in a throat-grating whisper, his big simple features looming ever closer, almost out of focus. Lorimer held his ground: it was important not to flinch in the brunt of Hogg’s verbal batterings, even though, if he thrust his face any further forward, they might as well be kissing. Hogg’s mineral breath wafted off his cheeks, fanned his hair gently.

  ‘I had no idea,’ Lorimer said, resolutely. ‘He agreed to meet. I figured I’d have it tied up –’

  ‘– Nice choice of vocabulary, Black.’ He prodded Lorimer in the chest with some force, hitting his right nipple square on, as if it were a bell-push. Lorimer winced, again. Hogg stepped back, his face a mask of loathing, of profound, metaphysical disgust. ‘Sort it out. And keep it squeaky.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hogg.’

  Lorimer swiftly gulped two glasses of wine at the bar, inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times, before heading back towards Dymphna and his colleagues. He saw Hogg across the room pointing him out to a fleshy-looking man in a hand-made pin-stripe suit with a pink tie. The man began to make his way towards him and Lorimer felt his throat tighten suddenly – What now? Police? No, surely not in bespoke tailoring? – and he ducked his head to suck at some of his wine as the fellow approached, smiling a thin, insincere smile. The face was puffy, strangely weather-beaten with the roseate, burny glow of burst capillaries around the cheeks and nostrils. Small, bright, unfriendly eyes. Closer to he saw that the man was really not that old after all, not much older than he was, he just seemed older. The motif on the man’s pink tie, he noticed, was of tiny yellow teddy bears.

  ‘Lorimer Black?’ the man said, raising his deep voice, a lazy patrician drawl, to compete with the babble around them. Lorimer noticed that his lips barely moved, he spoke through his teeth, like an inept ventriloquist.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Stalk hilly virgin.’ His mouth had opened a slit and these sounds had issued forth. These were the words Lorimer aurally registered. He proffered a hand. Lorimer juggled glasses, slopped wine, managed a brisk, damp shake.

  ‘What?’

  The man looked at him fixedly and the insincere smile grew marginally wider, marginally more insincere. He spoke again.

  ‘Thought we’ll heave the gin.’

  Lorimer paused for the briefest of moments. ‘Excuse me. What exactly do you mean?’

  ‘Torn, we’ll lever chain.’

  ‘Look, I don’t know what –’

  ‘TALK, OR WE’LL LEAVE HER, JANE.’

  ‘Jane who, for God’s sake?’

  The man looked about him in angry incredulity. Lorimer heard him say – this time quite distinctly – Jesus fucking Christ.’ He fished in his pocket and produced a business card which he offered to Lorimer. It read: Torquil Helvoir-Jayne, Executive Director, Fortress Sure PLC.

  ‘Tor-quil-hell-voyre-jayne,’ Lorimer read out loud, as if barely literate, realizing. ‘I’m so sorry, the ambient noise, I couldn’t –’

  ‘It’s pronounced “heever”,’ the man said contemptuously. ‘Not “hellvoyre”. Heever.’

  ‘Ah. I get it now. Torquil Helvoir-Jayne. Very pleased to –’

  ‘I’m your new director.’

  Lorimer handed Dymphna her glass, thinking only that he had to leave this place now, pronto. Dymphna did not look drunk but he knew she was, knew in his bones that she was deadly drunk.

  ‘Where’ve you been, mein Liebchen?’ she said.

  Shane Ashgable leered over at him. ‘Hogg was here looking for you.’

  There was the sound of a gavel being beaten vigorously on a wooden block and a stertorous voice bellowed. ‘A-ladies and a-gentlemen, pray silence for Sir Simon Sherriffmuir.’ Genuinely enthusiastic applause appeared to break out from those crowded round the dais. Lorimer glimpsed Sir Simon stepping up to the podium, slipping on his heavy tortoiseshell half-moons and peering over them as he held up one hand for silence, the other producing a tiny slip of notepaper from a breast pocket.

  ‘Well…’ he said – pause, pause, theatrical pause – ‘It’s not going to be the same old place without Torquil.’ Energetic laughter greeted this modest sally. Beneath its reverberations Lorimer edged towards the twin doors of the Portcullis Suite only to have his arm gripped at the elbow for the second time that evening.

  ‘Lorimer?’

  ‘Dymphna. I’m off. Must dash.’

  ‘D’you fancy supper? Just the two of us. You and me.’

  ‘I’m dining with my family,’ he lied quickly, still moving. ‘Another time.’

  ‘And I’m going to Cairo tomorrow.’ She smiled and raised her eyebrows as if she had just provided the answer to a ridiculously easy question.

  Sir Simon started talking about Torquil Helvoir-Jayne’s contribution to Fortress Sure, his years of tireless service. Lorimer, filled with despair, gave Dymphna what he hoped was a forlorn, hey-life’s-like-that smile and shrug.

  ‘Sorry’

  ‘Yeah, another time,’ Dymphna said, flatly, and turned away.

  Lorimer requested that the taxi-driver actually raise the booming volume of the football match that was being broadcast on his radio and was thus driven – thunderously, stridently – through an icy and deserted City, over the black, surging, tide-turning Thames, south of the river, his head echoing and resonant with the commentator’s raucous tenor voice detailing the angled crosses, the silky skills of the foreigners, the scything tackles, the grip on the game loosening, the lads giving it one hundred and ten per cent all the same. He felt alarmed, worried, stupid, embarrassed, surprised and achingly hungry. And he realized he hadn’t drunk nearly enough. In such a state, he knew from past experience, the melancholy silent
cell of a black cab is not the best place to be. Then a new and welcome sensation stealthily infiltrated itself into his being – as the sands of time drew to a close and the final whistle beckoned – drowsiness, lassitude, languor. Perhaps it would work tonight, perhaps it really would. Perhaps he would sleep.

  II4. Sleep. What was his name, that Portuguese poet who slept so badly? He called his insomnia, if I remember correctly, ‘indigestion of the soul’. Perhaps this is my problem – indigestion of the soul – even though I’m not a true insomniac? Gérard de Nerval said, ‘Sleep takes up a third of our lives. It consoles the sorrows of our days and the sorrow of their pleasures; but I have never felt any rest in sleep. For a few seconds I am numbed, then a new life begins, freed from the conditions of time and space, and doubtless similar to that state which awaits us after death. Who knows if there is not some link between those two existences and if it is not possible for the soul to unite them now?’ I think I know what he means.

  The Book of Transfiguration

  ‘Dr Kenbarry, please,’ Lorimer said to a suspicious porter. He always over-articulated the name, unused as he was to referring to Alan in this way. ‘Dr Alan Kenbarry, he’ll be in the Institute. He’s expecting me, Mr Black.’

  The porter pedantically consulted dog-eared lists and made two phone calls before he allowed Lorimer any further into the Social Studies Department of the University of Greenwich. Lorimer rode the scuffed and litter-strewn lift to Alan’s demesne on the fifth floor, where he found Alan waiting for him in the lobby, and then they walked together through the dim passageways towards the double swing doors blazoned with the inscription (in a lower-case Bauhaus-style font) ‘the institute of lucid dreams’, and on through the darkened lab towards the shrouded cubicles.