‘There won’t be much time for sightseeing,’ I warned her now.
‘Don’t worry,’ she snapped back, ‘I’m here to work. What’s that?’ She was pointing to my ‘works’. They were lying on the bed, syringes and all. I started loading them back into the holdall.
‘Are you on drugs?’
‘No, I just... sometimes I need an injection. I’m a haemophiliac.’
‘That means you bleed a lot?’
‘It means when I bleed, sometimes it won’t stop without help.’
‘An injection?’ I nodded. ‘But you’re all right?’
I smiled at her. ‘I’m fine.’ She decided she’d take my word for it.
‘So where are you taking me for dinner?’
‘How about a burger?’
‘We had burgers for lunch.’
This was true. We’d stopped at a motorway service area, where the burgers had looked the most appetising display. Bel deserved better, especially on her first night in London. That makes her sound naive, a country bumpkin, which she wasn’t. But she hadn’t been to London in five years, hadn’t been out of Yorkshire for the best part of a year. I wondered if I’d been right to bring her. How much of a liability might she become? I still didn’t think there’d be any real danger, except of arrest.
‘Well, you decide: Italian? Indian? Chinese? French? Thai? London can accommodate most tastes.’
She flopped down on my bed and assumed a thoughtful pose.
‘So long as it’s between here and Tottenham,’ I added, ‘but then you can find most things between here and Tottenham.’
I was all for taking a cab to Tottenham, but Bel wanted to ride on the tube. We’d dropped the XR3i back at its shop, and I’d settled for it in cash. There was no point hanging on to it; I thought we’d be in London for a few days. One thing about Bel, she surely did look like a tourist, wide-eyed and unafraid and ready to meet a stranger’s eyes, even to smile and start a conversation. Yes, you could tell she was new in town. I couldn’t help but be a bit more worldly, even though I was a tourist too. We got off the tube at Seven Sisters and ate at a Caribbean restaurant, where Bel had to have a second helping of the planter’s punch and was nearly sick as a result. She didn’t eat much though, apart from the dirty rice and johnny cakes. The fish was too salty for her, the meat too rich.
There was an evening paper in the restaurant, and I flicked through it until I found the latest on the Ricks assassination. The diplomat from the Craigmead was causing a stink, talking about lax security and an MI5 plot against him. According to his version, MI5 and some country neighbouring his own were in cahoots.
‘Keep muddying the water, pal,’ I told his grainy photograph. There was a more interesting snippet further down the page, added almost as an afterthought. It talked about a ‘mystery call’ to the Craigmead Hotel, a summons Eleanor Ricks had ignored. It intrigued me. Had my paymaster got cold feet and tried to warn her? And being unable to reach her, had he then phoned the police instead? I’d heard stories about employers changing their minds. I wouldn’t mind if they did, so long as they weren’t looking for a refund. If they wanted their money back, well, that was a different proposition entirely.
We walked up the long High Road, looking into a few of the less salubrious pubs. I’d already explained to Bel who I was looking for, and she seemed glad of the fresh air and exercise. The traffic was blocked all the way up the High Road to Monument Way, and all the way down Monument Way too. We stopped in at the Volley, but there was no one there I knew. I always had to be careful in Tottenham. There were people I might meet here who might assume I was either after something or being nosy. For example, sometimes I bought plastic explosives and detonators from a couple of Irishmen who lived here. They weren’t really supposed to sell the stuff on, and they were always nervous.
Then there was Harry Capaldi, alias Harry Carry, alias Andy Capp, alias Harry the Cap. It was true he sometimes wore a cap. It was true, too, that he was always nervous. And if Harry got the fright and went into hiding, I wouldn’t be very happy. So I was being careful not to ask for him in any of the bars. I didn’t want word getting to him before I did. Somewhere in the middle of the Dowsett Estate, Bel started complaining about her feet.
‘We’ll take a rest soon,’ I said. I led her back to the High Road and the first pub we went into, she sat down at a table. So I asked what she was drinking.
‘Coke.’ I nodded and went to the bar.
‘A coke, please, and a half of bitter.’ While the barmaid poured our drinks, I examined the row of optics. I’d been close to ordering a brandy. Close, but not that close. Harry the Cap wasn’t in the bar. Maybe he stayed home on a Monday night. I didn’t want to go calling on him. I knew he owned a couple of guns, and the people in the flat upstairs from him were dealers. It would only take one shot, and the whole building might turn into Apocalypse Now. I took the drinks back to our table. Bel had taken off her shoes and was rubbing her feet. The men at the bar were so starved of novelty that they were watching her like she wasn’t about to stop at the shoes. When she took her jacket off I thought one of them was about to fall off his stool.
‘New shoes,’ Bel said. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have brought them.’
‘And they say townies are soft.’
She glared, then smiled. ‘Cheers,’ she said, lifting her glass. She crunched on a piece of ice and looked around the bar. ‘So this is the big bad city? How do we find your friend?’
‘We keep looking. You’d be surprised how many pubs there are between here and White Hart Lane.’
‘And we go into every one of them?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Couldn’t you just phone him instead?’
‘He’s not on the phone.’
‘Then I suppose we keep walking.’ She took another drink.
‘Speaking of phoning, have you called Max?’
‘Give me a break, I only left him this morning.’
‘He’ll be worried.’
‘No, he won’t. He’ll be watching reruns of Dad’s Army and laughing his head off.’
I tried to visualise this, but failed.
‘Look, Michael, do you mind me saying something?’
‘What?’
‘Well, we’re supposed to be together, right? As in a couple. Look at you, you look more like my minder.’
I looked down at myself.
‘I mean,’ Bel went on, ‘you’re sitting too far away from me for a start. It’s like you’re afraid I’ll bite. And the way you’re sitting, you’re not comfortable, you’re not enjoying yourself. You’re like a flick knife about to open.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. I slid closer to her on the bench-seat.
‘Better, but still not great,’ she said. ‘Relax your shoulders and your legs.’
‘You seem to know a bit about acting.’
‘I watch a lot of daytime TV. There, that’s better.’ We were now touching shoulders and thighs. I finished my drink.
‘Right, we better get going.’
‘What?’
‘Like I say, Bel, a lot of pubs still to go.’
She sighed and slipped her shoes back on. The men at the bar turned their attention to the television. Someone by a riverbank was gutting a fish.
We were in a pub on Scotland Green, the one people use after they’ve signed on at the dole office across the road. It was always busy, and was all angles and nooks. It might be small, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t hide in it. Harry the Cap was hiding round the corner beside the fruit machines. He was seated on a high stool, wearing a paisley-patterned shirt intended for someone three decades younger, jeans ditto, and his cap. It struck me I should have brought him the one I’d bought; he’d have appreciated it more than Bel.