The black curtain still open on the fourth floor. The light still on.
Dusk came down. Lights in the café now.
Peach suddenly realised how visible he was. A fat man in a lit window. His watching had become conspicuous. He should leave. Move closer. Adopt a more strategic position.
As he paid the bill he noticed the weight of the case in his hand. An inconvenience. Removing his diary and his binoculars, he asked the owner of the café if he would mind looking after the case, just for half an hour or so. The owner said he closed at nine. ‘Fine,’ Peach said.
Outside the café he paused just to one side of the window and hung his binoculars round his neck. When the West Indian was looking the other way, he walked off down the road. He crossed about two hundred yards below the nightclub and began to work his way back. Facing the nightclub, on the same side of the road, stood a fish and chip shop. Wood-veneer tables, red plastic chairs with spindly black legs, white neon lighting that showed every crease and vein in your face. No cover there. But just this side of the fish and chip shop window, Peach found a garage doorway. A low brick wall reaching out across the pavement hid him from the waist down. Shadow did the rest.
He now stood less than forty feet from the West Indian. Even without his binoculars, he could see the built-up heels of the man’s boots. He could also see the side-door of the nightclub — Moses’s front door, in effect. It was ideal.
He checked his watch. Exactly 7.30.
He took his diary out and turned to the page where he had jotted down the times of trains. Trains left Victoria for Haywards Heath at twenty-three minutes past the hour. He had to connect with the local train which would take him to within eight miles of New Egypt. The last local train left Haywards Heath at 10.35. If he caught the 9.23 from Victoria, he would get into Haywards Heath at 10.16. The 9.23, then, was the last train he could catch. A taxi to Victoria would take half an hour, perhaps less. That left him with just under an hour and a half. It ought to be enough. It would have to be.
Twenty minutes passed.
Then the black door opened and Moses appeared. He had changed into a dark suit. Light slid off his wet hair. As he started towards his car, the West Indian called out. Moses paused, turned, walked over. The two men seemed to know each other well. They compared jackets and ties, pushed each other around. They both tilted their heads back when they laughed. They lit cigarettes, and smoke poured from their fingers like slow water. The damaged neon sign above their heads — FLOR AN’s — lit them both in the sharpest detail.
Peach raised his binoculars and focused on Moses. Neither the eyes (hooded, grey) nor the nose (long, slightly crooked) seemed familiar. The mouth, though. The smile that kept forming there. A smile he had seen too often in the past. It belonged to George Highness. The son had inherited his father’s smile.
Now the two men were separating. But when Moses had almost reached his car, he turned, ran back, embraced, smothered, all but crushed the West Indian. Peach lowered his binoculars. Curious behaviour.
Moses returned to his car. He got in, slammed the door. He turned the ignition and the Rover fired first time, engine shuddering. He roared away in a cloud of blue exhaust. Two blasts on the horn. The West Indian shook his head. He straightened his clothes, retouched his hair. Then he settled back against the wall and lit another cigarette. He seemed to be smiling to himself.
And there Peach should have left it, he realised afterwards. That smile had clinched it. No question as to the young man’s identity now. And yet he couldn’t tear himself away. He still had an hour or so and he wanted to exploit this opportunity to the full. After all, he wouldn’t have another. He left the shadows and crossed the side-street. He walked up to the West Indian.
‘Nice evening,’ he said.
The West Indian flicked his cigarette into the gutter. He dusted his jacket with a casual right hand. When he said, ‘Yeah,’ he was looking not at Peach but at his own lapel.
Peach slid his hands into his pockets, leaned back on his heels. ‘I thought you might be able to help me.’
The West Indian looked along his cheekbones at Peach. ‘Don’t know about that.’
Peach studied the tight black curls on the man’s head, sparkling and dense, he looked into the slightly yellow whites of his eyes, he noted the hint of red in the pigmentation of his skin, he saw his lips, ridged like shells, peel back to reveal gums that were pink and grey. Perhaps he stared just a fraction too long, or just a fraction too closely.
‘What’re you looking at?’ The gap between the West Indian’s two front teeth looked dangerous. Like the barrel of a gun.
‘I’m looking for a friend of mine,’ Peach began. ‘His name is Moses. Do you know him?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Me?’ jocular now, ‘I’m an old friend of the family.’
The West Indian’s top lip rolled back over his teeth. He glanced down at his hand. It curled, uncurled, against his thigh.
‘You know what I smell?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Pig.’ The West Indian smiled into Peach’s eyes. ‘I smell pig.’
Peach didn’t understand. Not right away.
‘And that’s not a smell I particularly like, you know?’
Peach could feel the evidence, his badge, cold and heavy in his shirt pocket. Still he insisted: ‘I’m a friend of the family, that’s all.’
‘Yeah,’ said the West Indian, pointing at the binoculars, ‘and those are for birdwatching.’
‘Moses lives here,’ Peach said, ‘doesn’t he?’
The West Indian lit another cigarette. Dunhill King Size. New York Paris London. The gold lighter snapped shut. ‘Does he?’
‘I’m asking you.’
‘I should clear off if I was you.’
‘Listen,’ Peach said, ‘I’m not being unreasonable. All I want to know is if Moses lives here or not.’
‘You heard what I said.’
‘Just tell me,’ Peach said. He was sounding, he realised, less and less like an old friend of the family and more and more like a policeman. Only a policeman would persist like this. And the West Indian knew it.
‘If you don’t fuck off right now,’ the West Indian said, ‘I’m going to have to mess up that nice fat face of yours — ’
Peach hit him hard in the solar plexus. It was a precision punch. It came out of nowhere. It even surprised Peach. He hadn’t hit anybody for five years. The West Indian went down gasping.
Peach looked round for a taxi. There weren’t any. He swore viciously. He only had a few seconds before the West Indian was up again and pulling a knife on him or something. He hastened off down the road. When he was fifty yards away he turned and saw the West Indian climbing to his feet. Peach began to run. In his youth he had been an exceptional dancer. He and Hilda had won the New Egypt Dancing Trophy six years in a row. The rumba, the polka, the foxtrot — they had mastered them all. And even now, at the age of seventy-two, he could still show a remarkable lightness of foot.
As he rounded the curve in the road he heard uncanny jangling music. Not one music, but many, all mixed up, mingling. The lights of the fun-fair came into view.
The fun-fair. Crowds. Safety in numbers.
He crossed the main road and plunged into the park.
Saturday night. It was packed. Children brandished candy-floss and balloons. Strings of naked light-bulbs looped from tree to tree. The Big Wheel soared overhead. A girl’s shoe landed with a slap at his feet, the strap still fastened. He looked up. Hair flew. Screams. The glint of teeth. He pushed on into the crowd.