Under cover of running repairs to the ceiling a tiny camera was installed high on the wall facing the phone. Randall did not even bother going to bed the following Wednesday, but killed the time until half past midnight (Erroll Garner Concert by the Sea: not one he would be sorry to return) then took himself down to the factory.
They had set up the monitor in a corner of Stylianides’ office, its bluish greys the only artificial light in the room. There were plates of sandwiches under Saran wrap on the desk, two large thermos flasks of coffee and half a dozen mugs: one each for Stylianides, Haddad, Randall (Don had been more than happy to delegate) and the three cops who had arrived a little ahead of Randall wearing boiler suits with the name of a pest control company on the back.
‘You’d be amazed the places these will get you into,’ the cop in charge said. ‘I’ve had people shake my hand and then seconds later they’re on the floor with the cuffs on them.’
At two-fifteen precisely a figure appeared, a man, moving at improbable speed. They all sat forward at once, heads almost meeting in an arc around the monitor. (Mingled breath of coffee and cigarettes and egg salad.)
‘How tall is that guy?’
‘Wait a second, is he…?’
‘What does he have on his feet?’
‘He is: he’s roller-skating.’
He was, and wearing a child’s Stan Laurel mask. He skated out of the picture and a few seconds later skated across it in the opposite direction, and out again. When next he appeared he was balancing on one leg, changing over then to the other on which he performed a passable pirouette before exiting a final time backwards, thumb to Stan Laurel’s nose and fingers wiggling.
Randall didn’t know about the rest of them, it was all he could do to stop himself applauding.
‘You don’t suppose, do you,’ he said instead, ‘he knew he was being watched?’
*
Liz never heard the words counter-surveillance used, but she did on several occasions overhear conversations to the effect that you had to keep an eye on the bosses to make sure that they never found out they weren’t the ones running the factory.
The bomb scares were a breach of that protocol as much as anything else and, worse still, they had drawn attention to the open phone line next to the storage area whose existence to that point close on two thousand people had managed to keep secret from a couple of score.
She had used it herself for the first time a few weeks earlier to phone her sister in Melbourne. It was tantamount to stealing, she knew, but she had been growing more and more concerned about the tone of Vivienne’s letters and couldn’t think when she would ever get the privacy at home to have the conversation they needed to have.
Mind you, half of the conversation they did have was taken up with her having to explain how she was able to phone at all. Vivienne sounded as though she had been drinking. Liz saw her framed in the doorway of the bedroom they had used to share, swaying, as though she had brought the night’s music home with her. Drink had added to her lightness in those days.
No more.
‘What time is it there?’ she asked thickly.
‘Half eleven.’
‘In the morning? I thought you would be in your work.’
‘I am, but it’s OK.’
Ten thousand miles away a cigarette was lit. Liz took the full force of the smoke jet in her ear. ‘What kind of place is that?’
‘Truthfully? I think it might be the best place I have ever in my life worked.’
‘And you have so much to compare it to.’ Liz was nearly grateful for the dig, or the speed with which it was delivered. That was more like her big sister.
‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘But what about you?’ She rested her head against the wall, making sure the circuit was absolutely closed. ‘How are things in your place?’
‘My place?’
‘I just thought from some of your letters that maybe, I don’t know, maybe there was something you wanted to talk about.’
Vivienne laughed sharply — the cheek of you! — then started to cry.
Liz made up her mind the minute she hung up the phone that she was going out there to see her. Later, when the dinner things were all cleared away and the boys had taken their perpetual argument up the stairs, she set a cup of tea on the arm of Robert’s chair, a chocolate digestive balanced on the saucer.
‘Do you remember when the boys were in primary school and that wee P1 boy — Thompson — was knocked down and killed? Do you remember they became obsessed the two of them with dying?’
Robert paused stirring his sugar. Flip, yeah, now that she mentioned it, he did. The father worked in the hardware shop, had a harelip…
‘And do you remember’ — she must not let him stray off the path she was laying — ‘what we said?’
Robert resumed stirring thoughtfully. ‘Probably something like it was a one in a million chance.’
‘Anything else?’
‘They had to make the most of every moment… we all had to.’
‘Exactly,’ she said. (She did love him.)
He smiled and took a bite from the biscuit where it had been softened by contact with the cup.
‘I’m signing up for nights one week in every two. I’m putting the money away to go out and see Vivienne next year, in case the opportunity doesn’t come around again.’
He had practically fed her the line. Anyway, she thought later, that great sex thing worked both ways. He was hardly likely to go and change the locks, was he?
It exhausted her, of course, the work, the switching between the two routines, the near impossibility of a full day’s sleep. A couple of weeks in she didn’t know which end of her was up. By half past ten on her second Tuesday back on days she was dead on her feet, or at least her knees.
She gave the wrench a twist on the last nut of an uncooperative passenger seat and slumped forward in an attitude of prayer.
‘I’m never going to last till my tea break,’ she said into the soft leather.
TC, working on the other side, spoke to her across his seat and hers. ‘Sure, why don’t you take ten minutes now?’ There were no hooters or whistles to work to, you took your break when you needed it, always supposing your workmates could spare you. ‘Me and Anto can manage. Can’t we, Anto?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Ah, no, I couldn’t do that on yous.’
‘It’s not a bit of bother. Tell her, Anto.’
‘It’s not a bit of bother.’
‘Well…’ She had pulled herself up on to her feet. ‘If you’re absolutely sure.’
She walked away wiping her hands on a rag. God, it felt good to be able to turn your back. And to think Robert didn’t trust those fellas. The things they did for her, because actually, now she thought of it, it wasn’t just the comfort breaks, they were forever letting her take a couple of minutes here and there — You go on ahead, save us a seat in the canteen, we’ll just finish tidying up.
She stopped in front of a vending machine full of sweets and chocolate bars. She felt in the pocket of her overalls and found two 10p pieces. It was fate.
TC was standing with his back to the car, looking off in the other direction, when she returned barely two minutes after she had left, a Curly Wurly dangling from each hand.
The seat that had caused her all the grief was on the ground next to Anto’s legs. The rest of him was inside the car, from where a scratching sound was coming — a sound she could not associate with any part of the assembly process that she had ever been involved in — a gouging sound was probably closer to the mark.