Gavin smiled at the irony; this was no Adonis.
'Forget you ever saw it.'
Reynolds was at the door. The bleeding had stopped, staunched by an unsavoury rag of a handkerchief pressed to the side of his face. The light of the tiles made his skin bilious: his pallor would have shamed a corpse.
'Are you all right? You don't look it.'
I’ll be fine ... just go, please.'
'What happened?'
'I slipped. Water on the floor. I slipped, that's all.'
'But the noise ...'
Gavin was looking back into the bath. Something about the statue fascinated him. Maybe its nakedness, and that second strip it was slowly performing underwater: the ultimate strip: off with the skin.
'Neighbours, that's all.'
'What is this?' Gavin asked, still looking at the unfetching doll-face in the water.
'It's nothing to do with you.'
'Why's it all curled up hike that? Is he dying?'
Gavin looked back to Reynolds to see the response to that question, the sourest of smiles, fading.
'You'll want money.'
'No.'
'Damn you! You're in business aren't you? There's notes beside the bed; take whatever you feel you deserve for your wasted time - ' He was appraising Gavin.' - and your silence.'
Again the statue: Gavin couldn't keep his eyes off it, in all its crudity. His own face, puzzled, floated on the skin of the water, shaming the hand of the artist with its proportions.
'Don't wonder,' said Reynolds.
'Can't help it.'
This is nothing to do with you.'
'You stole it ... is that right? This is worth a mint and you stole it.'
Reynolds pondered the question and seemed, at last, too tired to start lying.
'Yes. I stole it.'
'And tonight somebody came back for it - '
Reynolds shrugged.
' - Is that it? Somebody came back for it?'
That's right. I stole it...' Reynolds was saying the lines by rote,'... and somebody came back for it.'
That's all I wanted to know.'
'Don't come back here, Gavin whoever-you-are. And don't try anything clever, because I won't be here.'
'You mean extortion?' said Gavin, 'I'm no thief.'
Reynolds' look of appraisal rotted into contempt.
Thief or not, be thankful. If it's in you.' Reynolds stepped away from the door to let Gavin pass. Gavin didn't move.
Thankful for what?' he demanded. There was an itch of anger in him; he felt, absurdly, rejected, as though he was being foisted off with a half-truth because he wasn't worthy enough to share this secret.
Reynolds had no more strength left for explanation. He was slumped against the door-frame, exhausted.
'Go,' he said.
Gavin nodded and left the guy at the door. As he passed from bathroom into hallway a glob of paint must have been loosened from the statue. He heard it break surface, heard the lapping at the edge of the bath, could see, in his head, the way the ripples made the body shimmer.
'Goodnight,' said Reynolds, calling after him.
Gavin didn't reply, nor did he pick up any money on his way out. Let him have his tombstones and his secrets.
On his way to the front door he stepped into the main room to pick up his jacket. The face of Flavinus the Standard-Bearer looked down at him from the wall. The man must have been a hero, Gavin thought. Only a hero would have been commemorated in such a fashion. He'd get no remembrance like that; no stone face to mark his passage.
He closed the front door behind him, aware once more that his tooth was aching, and as he did so the noise began again, the beating of a fist against a wall.
Or worse, the sudden fury of a woken heart.
The toothache was really biting the following day, and he went to the dentist mid-morning, expecting to coax the girl on the desk into giving him an instant appointment. But his charm was at a low ebb, his eyes weren't sparkling quite as luxuriantly as usual. She told him he'd have to wait until the following Friday, unless it was an emergency. He told her it was: she told him it wasn't. It was going to be a bad day: an aching tooth, a lesbian dentist receptionist, ice on the puddles, nattering women on every street corner, ugly children, ugly sky.
That was the day the pursuit began.
Gavin had been chased by admirers before, but never quite like this. Never so subtle, so surreptitious. He'd had people follow him round for days, from bar to bar, from street to street, so dog-like it almost drove him mad. Seeing the same longing face night after night, screwing up the courage to buy him a drink, perhaps offering him a watch, cocaine, a week in Tunisia, whatever. He'd rapidly come to loathe that sticky adoration that went bad as quickly as milk, and stank to high Heaven once it had. One of his most ardent admirers, a knighted actor he'd been told, never actually came near him, just followed him around, looking and looking. At first the attention had been flattering, but the pleasure soon became irritation, and eventually he'd cornered the guy in a bar and threatened him with a broken head. He'd been so wound up that night, so sick of being devoured by looks, he'd have done some serious harm if the pitiful bastard hadn't taken the hint. He never saw the guy again; half thought he'd probably gone home and hanged himself. But this pursuit was nowhere near as obvious, it was scarcely more than a feeling. There was no hard evidence that he had somebody on his tail. Just a prickly sense, every time he glanced round, that someone was slotting themselves into the shadows, or that on a night street a walker was keeping pace with him, matching every click of his heel, every hesitation in his step. It was like paranoia, except that he wasn't paranoid. If he was paranoid, he reasoned, somebody would tell him.
Besides, there were incidents. One morning the cat woman who lived on the landing below him idly enquired who his visitor was: the funny one who came in late at night and waited on the stairs hour after hour, watching his room. He'd had no ,such visitor: and knew no-one who fitted the description.
Another day, on a busy street, he'd ducked out of the throng into the doorway of an empty shop and was in the act of lighting a cigarette when somebody's reflection, distorted through the grime on the window, caught his eye. The match burned his finger, he looked down as he dropped it, and when he looked up again the crowd had closed round the watcher like an eager sea.
It was a bad, bad feeling: and there was more where that came from.
Gavin had never spoken with Preetorius, though they'd exchanged an occasional nod on the street, and each asked after the other in the company of mutual acquaintances as though they were dear friends. Preetorius was a black, somewhere between forty-five and assassination, a glorified pimp who claimed to be descended from Napoleon. He'd been running a circle of women, and three or four boys, for the best part of a decade, and doing well from the business. When he first began work, Gavin had been strongly advised to ask for Preetorius' patronage, but he'd always been too much of a maverick to want that kind of help. As a result he'd never been looked upon kindly by Preetorius or his clan. Nevertheless, once he became a fixture on the scene, no-one challenged his right to be his own man. The word was that Preetorius even admitted a grudging admiration for Gavin's greed. Admiration or no, it was a chilly day in Hell when Preetorius actually broke the silence and spoke to him.
'White boy.'
It was towards eleven, and Gavin was on his way from a bar off St Martin's Lane to a club in Covent Garden. The street still buzzed: there were potential punters amongst the theatre and movie-goers, but he hadn't got the appetite for it tonight. He had a hundred in his pocket, which he'd made the day before and hadn't bothered to bank. Plenty to keep him going.
His first thought when he saw Preetorius and his pie-bald goons blocking his path was: they want my money.