‘Nasty little Commie,’ he said.
‘He’s a bit left, but hardly a Communist.’
‘Well, I think insurance assessors are a very strange breed of people.’
‘I doubt that he thinks too highly of metal brokers. Come on, Alex, let’s not talk about him; you’ve won, haven’t you? Why be bitter about him? He didn’t try and take me away from you — I’d been going out with him seven months before I met you. What have you got to gripe about? He’s the one that’s doing the griping — and I can assure you, he is griping.’
‘Does he know who I am?’
‘No, he most certainly doesn’t, and I’m going to make sure he doesn’t find out.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s very strange. He has an almost vicious streak in him — I don’t know how to describe it, quite — it’s weird.’
‘Terrific.’
‘I wouldn’t worry,’ she smiled.
‘I’m not worried,’ he said.
Rocq remembered that conversation now. He stopped the Porsche at the red traffic lights at Westminster Bridge. On his left was a young man, about his age, in a shiny Mazda sports car. He was dressed flashily, and obviously thought highly of himself and his motor car, judging by the amount of bolt-on goodies attached to himself and to his vehicle. Rocq could see him out of the corner of his eye, attempting to study the Porsche and its occupant without giving any impression of envy. On Rocq’s right was a massive white Rolls Royce, with smoked-glass windows and a vast television aerial on the roof. It made him think of Elleck, and the vast empire he owned. Rocq was thirty-one now; he had, at the very most, another ten years of broking before he moved into management, and there was no opportunity to earn commission in management. For most brokers, management was a welcome release from the tension of broking — as well as paying better — but for Rocq it was different. His broking commission was far higher than he could ever earn in management.
He thought hard; it was something that was troubling him more and more just recently. For the past three years he had been lucky and done extremely well. He had paid good deposits on the flat in Redcliffe Square, the cottage in Clayton and the Porsche, but they all cost a lot of money; he had two mortgages plus the H.P. on the car and, in addition to that, the alimony to Pauline. He needed every penny of his income just to stay afloat, and he didn’t just want to stay afloat. He wanted to be rich, like Elleck, and he knew there was a gap that would take a bridge bigger than the Golden Gate of San Francisco to span between the likes of Sir Monty Elleck and himself, and if he was going to do something about spanning that gap, then he was going to have to get on with it and start now.
He took Amanda out to dinner to the Grenouille, and spent forty-five pounds on a bottle of 1957 Pouget. The wine smelt of stale tea, tasted of old dusters, and they both decided it was delicious and got very drunk on it.
He drove her to Tramp, and ordered a bottle of Krug and fresh orange juice. They sat back in the leather bench, in the far corner of the room, under the chandeliers and the soft lighting and the opulence, watching lazily as a particularly frenetic dance took place, and he put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her. ‘Happy?’
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘And you?’
‘Very.’
‘Are you really?’ she quizzed.
‘Can’t hear you!’ The noise of the music made conversation, even at close quarters, a shouting match.
‘I said, are you really?’
‘Yes, I am.’
She looked at him. ‘What do you want most in life, Alex?’
‘Next to you, do you mean?’
She grinned, and nodded happily. ‘Do you want to be a millionaire?’
He was silent, for a long while, thinking. ‘No,’ he said, finally. ‘I don’t want to be a millionaire: I want to be a billionaire.’
She paused, reflecting; ‘You know, it’s funny,’ she said. ‘I really am not interested in money.’
‘You would be if you didn’t have any.’
She stubbed out her John Player Special. ‘Shall we make tracks?’
At four o’clock in the morning, a cheese-knife sliced through Rocq’s head; a few seconds later, it plunged through again. He opened his eyes and closed them; the alarm clock was ringing, and so was his front door bell. The cheese-knife sliced through his head once more. He put his hand out to switch off his alarm clock; a glass of water on his bedside table fell over, rolled off the edge, and fell onto the carpet.
‘Blast!’
There was a dull clank and a tin of Mazola cooking oil began disgorging its contents onto the already sodden objects on the table top.
‘Shit!’
The candle, which had still been burning, fell over, pouring hot wax over his hand. He fumbled further for the alarm clock, and then he remembered that he did not have an alarm clock. The bell persisted. His hand came to rest on a large plastic object; it clattered and fell into the rest of the mess with a thump; the bell stopped.
‘Telephone!’
He fumbled for the object he had just dropped, grasped it with some difficulty in his slippery fingers, and brought it to the side of his head.
‘Hallo?’ he mumbled, feebly.
‘Rocky! How are yah?’ The voice boomed down the telephone, like thunder.
‘Who’s that?’ Rocq knew full well who it was; it was easier to ask the question than to return the enthusiasm.
‘Theo! I’m in New York, and I’m with a gorgeous girl who wants to meet you. She’s gonna say hallo!’
The voice of a very drunk girl with a strong Californian accent, came down the phone: ‘Hi, Rocky, how are you?’
‘Fine, just fine,’ groaned Rocq.
‘Theo told me all about you; I feel like I’m talking to an old friend.’
‘Then do an old friend a favour, sweetheart, and let him get some sleep.’
‘Okay, Rocky, it’s been beautiful talking to you; you sound like a beautiful guy. Next time Theo comes over here, I’ll make sure he brings you with him. Nighty night!’
‘Grnight.’
‘It’s me, Theo, back now,’ boomed the thick Italian accent.
‘Did you say you’re in New York?’ Rocq mumbled to the Italian commodity broker and Globalex’s largest Italian client, not only in money, but also in girth; Theo Barbiero-Ruche was a good pair of cement shoes the wrong side of twenty stone. Barbiero-Ruche used Globalex for some of the many transactions he did not want the Italian Revenue to know about.
‘Got a horse running at Sandown, Thursday, thought I might come over.’
‘Nice of you to call me, you fucking fat wop. Do you know what time it is here?’
‘Do I know what is what? I can’t hear you too good.’
Amanda stirred and grunted.
‘Forget it,’ said Rocq. ‘Why don’t you stay the weekend — bring your friend.’
‘Okay! I bring her husband too!’ the Italian roared with laughter down the phone.
‘Thanks for calling, fat man. Call me when you get to England.’
‘Okay, Rocky. Hey? What you doing this evening? Going out with some broads?’
‘I’ve already had this evening — several hours ago.’
‘Ciao, Rocky.’
‘Bye, fat man.’
Rocq tried to hang up the phone, and missed. The receiver clattered to the floor; as he lunged after it, the entire telephone fell off the table.
‘Who was that?’
‘Bloody Italian client; been travelling the world for the last fifteen years and still hasn’t figured out the time zones yet.’
Amanda went straight back to sleep. The cheese-knife sliced through Rocq’s head once more; he lay there, wondering how long he could prolong getting up and going to the bathroom in search of some Paracetamol. He felt very wide awake, now. Elleck and the events of the afternoon came back into his mind. He thought about Elleck, in his palatial office, and thought about the wealth of the Elleck family, and he tried to compare it with his own wealth. The Ellecks had a house on the St John’s Wood side of Little Venice, overlooking the canal; they had a mansion and a couple of thousand acres of land near Stroud, in Gloucestershire. Their villa on the Costa Smeralda was permanently staffed, as were their Miami duplex and their Gstaad chalet, and these were just their private residences. There were, in addition, sumptuous and permanently staffed company apartments in Park Avenue in New York, in Chicago, in Hong Kong and in Zurich, as well as one hundred and thirty feet of company yacht. These small company perks were used by one employee only: Sir Monty Elleck. For transport, Elleck had a Mitsubishi Solitaire twin-engined plane, an Elvstrom helicopter, a bronze Rolls Royce Silver Spirit, a burgundy Mercedes 500 SEL, plus a fleet of lesser vehicles for purposes ranging from driving up the unmade tracks around his estate to negotiating parking meters outside Harrods.