He came to the head of the stairs and scowled down at the vulcanite spitting noise through the quiet house.
"The trouble is," he said aloud, as if he were rehearsing a speech to Pinkie and the others, "I'm getting too old for this game. I got to retire. Look at my hair. I'm grey, ain't I? I got to retire." But the only answer was the regular ring, ring, ring.
"Why can't someone answer the bloody blower?" he shouted down the well of the stairs. "I got to do all the work, have I?" and he saw himself dropping a ticket into the child's bucket, slipping a ticket under an upturned boat, tickets which could have hanged him. He suddenly ran down the stairs in a kind of simulated fury and lifted the receiver* "Well," he bellowed, "well, who the hell's there?"
"Is that Billy's?" a voice said. He knew the voice now. It was the girl in Snow's. He lowered the receiver in a panic and waited, and a thin doll's voice came out at him from the orifice: "Please, I've got to speak to Pinkie." It was almost as if listening betrayed him.
He listened again and the voice repeated with desperate anxiety: "Is that Billy's?"
Keeping his mouth away from the phone, curling his tongue in an odd way, mouthing hoarsely and crookedly, Spicer in disguise replied: "Pinkie's out.
What do you want?"
"I've got to speak to him."
"He's out, I tell you."
"Who's that?" the girl suddenly said in a scared voice.
"That's what I want to know. Who are you?"
"I'm a friend of Pinkie's. I got to find him. It's urgent."
"I can't help you."
"Please. You've got to find Pinkie. He told me I was to tell him if ever " The voice died away.
Spicer shouted down the phone. "Hullo. Where you gone? If ever what?" There was no reply. He listened, with the receiver pressed against his ear, to silence buzzing up the wires. He began to jerk at the hook, "Exchange. Hullo. Hullo. Exchange," and then suddenly the voice came on again as if somebody had dropped a needle into place on a record. "Are you there? Please, are you there?"
"Of course I'm here. What did Pinkie tell you?"
"You got to find Pinkie. He said he wanted to know.
It's a woman. She was in here with a man."
"What do you mean a woman?"
"Asking questions," the voice said. Spicer put down the receiver; whatever else the girl had to say was strangled on the wire. Find Pinkie? What was the good of finding Pinkie? It was the others who had done the finding. And Cubitt and Dallow: they'd slipped away without even warning him. If he did squeal it would be only returning them their own coin. But he wasn't going to squeal. He wasn't a nark.
They thought he was yellow. They'd think he'd squeal. He wouldn't even get the credit... a few tears of self-pity came pricking out of the dry ageing ducts.
I got to think, he repeated to himself, I got to think.
He opened the street door and went out. He didn't even wait to fetch his hat. His hair was thin on top, dry and brittle over the dandruff. He walked rapidly, going nowhere in particular, but every road in Brighton ended on the front. I'm too old for the game, I got to get out, Nottingham--he wanted to be alone, he went down the stone steps to the level of the beach--it was early closing and the small shops facing the sea under the promenade were shut. He walked on the edge of the asphalt, scuffling in the shingle. I wouldn't grass, he remarked dumbly to the tide as it lifted and withdrew, but it wasn't my doing, I never wanted to kill Fred. He passed into shadow under the pier, and a cheap photographer with a box camera snapped him as the shadow fell and pressed a paper into his hand.
Spicer didn't notice. The iron pillars stretched down across the wet dimmed shingle holding up above his head the motor-track, the shooting booths and peep machines, mechanical models, "the Robot Man will tell your fortune." A seagull flew straight towards him between the pillars like a scared bird caught in a cathedral, then swerved out into the sunlight from the dark iron nave. I wouldn't grass, Spicer said, unless I had to.... He stumbled on an old boot and put his hand on the stones to save himself: they had all the cold of the sea and had never been warmed by sun under these pillars.
He thought: that woman how does she know anything what's she doing asking questions? I didn't want to have Hale killed--it wouldn't be fair if I took the drop with the others; I told 'em not to do it. He came out into the sunlight and climbed back onto the parade. It'll be this way the bogies will come, he thought, if they know anything; they always reconstruct the crime. He took up his stand between the turnstile of the pier and the Ladies' Lavatory. There weren't many people about: he could spot the bogies easily enough if they came. Over there was the Royal Albion; he could see all the way up the Grand Parade to Old Steyne; the pale green domes of the Pavilion floated above the dusty trees; he could see anyone in the hot empty midweek afternoon who went down below the Aquarium, the white deck ready for dancing, to the little covered arcade where the cheap shops stood between the sea and the stone wall, selling Brighton rock.
The poison twisted in the Boy's veins. He had been insulted. He had to show someone he was a man.
He went scowling into Snow's, young, shabby, and untrustworthy, and the waitresses with one accord turned their backs. He stood there looking for a table (the place was full), and no one attended to him. It was as if they doubted whether he had the money to pay for his meal. He thought of Colleoni padding through the enormous rooms, the embroidered crowns on the chair-backs. He suddenly shouted aloud: "I want service!" and the pulse beat in his cheek. All the faces round him shivered into motion, and then were still again like water. Everyone looked away. He was ignored. Suddenly a sense of weariness overtook him.
He felt as if he had travelled a great many miles to be ignored like this.
A voice said: "There isn't a table." They were still such strangers that he didn't recognise the voice, until it added: "Pinkie." He looked round and there was Rose, dressed to go out in a shabby black straw which made her face look as it would look in twenty years' time, after the work and the child-bearing.
"They got to serve me," the Boy said. "Who do they think they are?"
"There isn't a table."
Everyone was watching them now with disapproval.
"Come outside, Pinkie."
"What are you all dressed up for?"
"It's my afternoon off. Come outside."
He followed her out and suddenly taking her wrist he brought the poison onto his lips: "I could break your arm."
"What have I done, Pinkie?"
"No table. They don't like serving me in there, I'm not class. They'll see one day "
"What?"
But his mind staggered before the extent of his ambitions. He said: "Never mind they'll learn "
"Did you get the message, Pinkie?"
"What message?"
"I phoned you at Billy's. I told him to tell you."
"Told who?"
"I don't know." She added casually: "I think it was the man who left the ticket."
He gripped her wrist again. He said: "The man who left the ticket's dead. You read it all." But she showed no sign of fear this time. He'd been too friendly. She ignored his reminder.
"Did he find you?" she asked, and he thought to himself: she's got to be scared again.
"No one found me," he said. He pushed her roughly forward. "Come on. We'll walk. Ill take you out.'*
"I was going home."
"You won't go home. You'll come with me. I want exercise," he said, looking down at his pointed shoes, which had never walked further than the length of the parade.
"Where'll we go, Pinkie?"
"Somewhere," Pinkie said, "out in the country.
That's where people go on a day like this." He tried to think for a moment of where the country was: the racecourse, that was country; and then a bus came by marked Peacehaven, and he waved his hand to it.