‘What do they call him, Neil?’
‘Really Cunning.’
‘Sounds like an understatement,’ Jimmy said.
Neil nodded grimly.
Jimmy had to pretend to be scared, so as not to stand out, so as to blend. Deep down, though, he couldn’t help but see the arrival of Raleigh Connor as a stroke of luck. In the three and a half years since leaving university, Jimmy had, to use his own words, done all right. Within a week of graduation, for instance, he had won a place on the prestigious Proctor & Gamble Marketing Course, and no sooner had he completed the course than he was taken on as Brand Manager by a leading manufacturer of biscuits and snacks. Then, just over a year ago, he had been headhunted by ECSC UK. It was a good job with exciting prospects, and he was earning more money than any of his friends, but there were days when a sense of unreality descended, as if he hadn’t, as yet, made much of an impression, as if he didn’t quite exist, somehow. During the summer months this phantom insecurity had taken on a human form. Twenty years older than Jimmy, Tony Ruddle wore colourful bow-ties and lived somewhere in Middlesex. According to McAlpine, he had been influential in the seventies. For some reason, Ruddle had taken an instant dislike to Jimmy — which was unfortunate because he was one of three Marketing Managers to whom Jimmy was expected to report. In August Jimmy’s contract had been reviewed by the board. At ECSC, an employee’s performance was rated on a scale of 1–5, each number having an adjective attached to it. Jimmy had received a 4, and the adjective that went with 4 was ‘superior’, but whenever he stood in the lift with Tony Ruddle he felt like a 2: he felt ‘incomplete’. Ruddle just didn’t like him. And because the feeling was personal, a kind of chemical reaction, Jimmy could do nothing about it. Connor represented a whole new challenge, however, and what was more, he had been brought in over Ruddle’s head (to Ruddle’s evident disgust). Maybe Ruddle could be sidestepped, overlooked. Maybe he could even be removed from the equation altogether. Jimmy realised that he had identified an opportunity. His only concern was how best to exploit it to his own advantage.
Robot Jelly
Jimmy was just mixing his first vodka-and-tonic of the evening when the doorbell rang. Zane, he thought. It was Friday night, and Zane had told him there were some parties that were probably worth going to — one in a photographic studio, another in a warehouse in King’s Cross. He buzzed Zane in, then reached for the ice-cubes and began to mix a second drink. He was down in the basement, a large square space that doubled as a kitchen and a dining-area. The only window in the room looked at a blank white wall draped in filthy cobwebs and a pair of outdoor cupboards that might once have hidden dustbins. If you peered upwards through the smeared glass you could just see the spear-like iron railings that separated the front of the house from the street. Jimmy had painted the walls a kind of burgundy colour. The furniture had been kept to a minimum: one long oak table, eight straight-backed chairs with leather seats, black wrought-iron light-fittings and candlesticks. The effect was medieval — or, as Zane himself had once put it, ‘dungeonesque’.
Zane sat down at the table, pushed one hand through his messy black hair. He had been away, three weeks in South-East Asia, and his face and arms were tanned. He looked garish, artificial. Like those silk flowers you see in restaurants sometimes.
Jimmy handed Zane a vodka. ‘Good holiday?’
‘Great.’ Zane reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag full of grass, a lighter and some skins. ‘You still working on that orange drink? What’s it called? Squelch?’
Jimmy laughed. ‘It’s Kwench!. K-W-E.’
‘Whatever. How’s it going?’
‘I can’t say. It’s confidential.’
Zane nodded.
‘We’ve got a new boss,’ Jimmy said. ‘He’s from Chicago.’
While Zane rolled a joint, Jimmy told him about Raleigh Connor and the rumours that had been circulating.
‘He used to be special-operations man for this multi-national soft-drinks company. During the seventies something happened at one of their bottling plants in South America. Two workers drowned in syrup, and everyone walked out in protest. It was the safety regulations. They didn’t have any. Anyway, so Connor flew down there to sort things out. Three days later, back to full production.’
Zane lit the joint. ‘Drowned in syrup?’
‘The syrup they make the drink out of. They fell into a giant vat and drowned.’
‘Jesus.’
‘They made ten thousand litres out of that syrup, apparently. Sold it all. Didn’t bother telling anyone two men had died in it.’ Jimmy paused, thinking. ‘That’s thirty-three thousand cans.’
Zane offered Jimmy the joint. He dragged on it twice, then handed it back.
‘So this American,’ Zane said, ‘what’s he like?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jimmy said. ‘I haven’t really talked to him.’
He had followed Connor down a corridor one morning and he remembered Connor’s movements, how they seemed to be made up of parts of circles rather than straight lines, his head pushed forwards, his shoulders rounded — the shambling, almost disconsolate walk of a wrestler who’s just lost a fight. He remembered the slow, indulgent smile he received when he caught up with Connor at the lift and introduced himself.
‘It’s strange.’ Jimmy shifted in his chair. ‘He looks sort of — kind.’
Zane watched the red glow at the end of his joint.
‘No one seems to know what he’s doing here,’ Jimmy went on. ‘They’re all scared they’re going to be fired. Walking round like they’re in the middle of a minefield or something.’
‘Not you, though.’ Zane smiled lazily.
Jimmy smiled back.
‘I almost forgot.’ Zane dipped a hand into his jacket pocket. ‘I brought you a present.’
He slid a cellophane bag across the table. The size of a crisp packet, it had the words ROBOT JELLY printed on the front in futuristic, brightly coloured capital letters. Inside the bag were sweets. Like jellybabies, only robot-shaped.
‘It’s from Bali,’ Zane said.
But Jimmy hardly heard him because he had just remembered something else. On his way home that evening, on the Northern Line, he had sat opposite two secretaries. They had looked flushed, almost windswept, as if they had been walking in the countryside in winter. They must have had a few drinks together in a wine bar after work. He could imagine the blackboard on the street outside, the names of cocktails scrawled in coloured chalk. He could imagine the bright-orange fin-shapes of the tortilla chips in their terracotta bowls. Both girls wore slightly transparent white blouses and carried copies of the Evening Standard. Classic Oxford Street, they were. Cannon fodder for the office blocks. Shoot fifty down and another fifty would spring up in their place. He doubted he would have noticed them at all if he hadn’t heard one of them say spaceship. She had dark hair, and she was wearing deep red lipstick, which was fashionable that autumn, and as she leaned forwards, enthusiastic suddenly, a delicate gold chain slid past the top button on her blouse and trembled in the air below her throat, as if divining something. After listening for a few moments, he realised she was using the word spaceship to describe the packaging of a new beauty product. She was telling her friend that it was better than anything she’d come across before. You should try it, she was saying. And her friend probably would try it, Jimmy thought, because she had been told about it by somebody she knew. There was nothing interesting or unusual about their conversation. It was the kind of conversation people had all the time. That was the whole point.