There was a knock at the door. Mayo never knocked. It was Murf.
‘You busy?’
Hood pulled the pipe out of his mouth and blew a grey-white cone of smoke at the lamp, watching it untangle in the light. ‘Come in, squire. Where’s Brodie?’
‘Watching telly. She thinks you’re narked. She said she’s sorry.’ Murf bobbed nervously and pushed at his ears. ‘I don’t know what that old girl told you, but she’s lying. She didn’t see nothing.’
‘It’s okay. But you can tell Brodie she’s got some pretty hot-shit friends.’ Hood puffed the pipe. He felt high, happy, a buzz inching down his ears like a centipede with sparking feet. ‘Don’t let me catch you bringing any lords and ladies down here, squire, or I’ll have to change my socks.’
‘I hated her,’ said Murf, who had started to sweat. ‘I wanted to brick her.’
‘No kidding. What for?’
‘She was laughing at me.’ He pushed at his ears again, a combing motion with his palms. Hood had noticed how he did this when he was upset, made self-conscious by a stranger. But the ears, as if exercised with brushes, sprang out wider. ‘Just standing there, laughing like a fucking drain. I could have smashed her face.’
‘I know the feeling,’ said Hood. ‘Don’t let it get you down.’
‘Hood?’ Murf sighed, whacked at his ears and shook his head. ‘There was something else. I said she didn’t see nothing. Well, maybe she did. But it wasn’t my fault. She come up here while I was changing. I caught her on the stairs. Laughing, she was. I don’t know for sure, but maybe she come in here.’
‘Maybe,’ said Hood. ‘You couldn’t help it.’
‘Honest, I couldn’t. Brodie was supposed to be watching her. Maybe she seen your picture. Anyway, she didn’t nick it, did she?’
‘It’s still here,’ said Hood. Murf leaned and looked at it, cocking his head to the side as if trying to understand it better. ‘What do you think of it?’
Murf said, ‘It’s a bloke, ain’t it? Old-fashioned bloke — them boots, them clothes. Yeah, I like it. First time I seen it I thought it was poxy. Who’s this flaming great tit, I says. Then Arfa sees it and he says it’s a antique, it’s worth something, they’re paying for them up the West End. He’s got ready money, he says. I thought maybe I could do you some kind of favour, flog it to Arfa. Sorry about that. Anyway, I had a crafty look at it. Later, this was. I’m knocked over! It’s all shiny, sort of moving and blowing up in me mush. Bloke’s looking at me, yeah, like he’s going to jump out and kick me in the goolies.’
Hood loved him for that. He had despaired of ever changing Murf. The boy was unaffected by the afternoon concerts on the radio Hood had listened to before he began spending his afternoons with Lorna. No symphony, not the finest phrase had altered those blaring ears, and nothing Hood had ever shown him — the Chinese scroll, the carvings from Hué — had worked his eyes wider than a squint. He had given Murf a Chinese treasure and Murf, making a claw of his fingers, had handled it like a turd. The silk shirt from Vientiane, his present to Murf for helping shift the arsenal and the loot, had become a rag on his skinny shoulders; the pocket bulged and drooped where he kept his stash of tobacco. He carried himself like an ape, with his arms hanging loose. He had one skilclass="underline" the clock-legged bomb. But a sense of loyalty had brought him to the room tonight; he had told the truth; his response to Lady Arrow was crudely accurate — Hood himself had wanted to smash her in the face. And his description of the painting — how civilizing a thing it was! — had insight. In that small crooked boy Hood saw a shy friend.
Hood poked his pipe-stem at the painting. He said, ‘I’ve been trying to figure out who it is.’
‘Funny bloke.’ Murf scratched his head. ‘Sort of smiling and sad at the same time.’
‘And look at his eyes.’
‘You think he’s going to say something,’ said Murf. ‘Yeah, I like it.’ He caught his lips with his fingers in embarrassment and pinched them. He said, ‘Reminds me of you, he does.’
‘No.’ But Hood peered at the painting.
‘Maybe not,’ said Murf. ‘He’s posh like you, but not only that. Yeah, I think he does. Straight.’
Hood said suddenly, ‘What do you want, Murf?’
‘Nothing.’
Nuffink. ‘I want to give you something, squire. Anything.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Murf carefully. ‘But there’s one thing.’
‘Name it.’
‘Just don’t,’ Murf began and caught his lips again with his fingers. ‘Just don’t laugh at me.’
Hood waited for more. Was this a warning, a condition to prepare him for the wish — or the wish itself? Murf fidgeted and said no more, and Hood saw that it was all he wanted, to be free of ridicule. The woman’s laughter had wounded him and made her his enemy. Hood said, ‘Okay.’
‘Me mates don’t laugh at me.’
‘Then we’ll be mates.’
Murf grinned, filling his cheeks, as if he had food in his mouth; and he put out his hand, offering it as an equal. He said, ‘Shake.’
Hood reached up and wrung his hand — Murf’s palm was damp with nervousness — and he said, ‘Now I’m going to hit the sack.’
Murf hesitated. ‘Mayo didn’t show.’
‘No,’ said Hood. ‘Maybe it’s something big.’
‘Yeah.’ Murf sniggered. Something big: now it was a private joke they could both share. ‘Are you going to tell her about the old girl?’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘She’ll laugh at me.’
‘I can say I was here the whole time.’
‘Right.’ Murf brought up another gobbling grin. ‘And she’s bending your ear, this old girl. Then you’re out of the room, you’re having a wash. You don’t know nothing. Then she goes sneaking upstairs. You hear this fucking laugh of hers.’
‘And I caught the bitch in this room.’
‘Beautyful.’
‘That’s what I’ll tell her then.’
Murf said, ‘Goodnight, mate.’
Mayo did not arrive until the next morning, and showing her face at that early hour, with an over-brisk apology but no explanation for her lateness, and yet with a guilty pallor made of smugness and fatigue — the satisfied smile and yawn — she had the cagey adulterous look of a woman returning to her husband and children after spending the night with her lover. Romance: if not actual, then a metaphor, since she had always treated her political involvement like an affair, her energy hinting at brief infatuation.
Brodie stirred her bowl of cornflakes with a spoon and said, ‘There’s no more milk.’
‘I’ve had my breakfast,’ said Mayo. ‘I was up hours ago. I’ll just have a coffee. Any post?’
‘A letter from the National Gallery,’ said Hood. ‘They want their picture back.’
‘That’s not funny.’
Murf looked at Hood and laughed.
‘Look, sugar,’ said Hood, touching Brodie on the arm, ‘why don’t you and Murf do the dishes. I’ve got a bone to pick with the klepto.’
‘I always have to do the dishes,’ said Brodie, complaining.
Murf rose and began gathering empty cups. ‘You heard what he said.’
‘Go to it, squire.’
In the parlour, Mayo said, ‘I’m exhausted.’ Hood didn’t react. ‘The meeting went on for hours.’
‘The offensive,’ said Hood lightly, as if repeating a familiar joke.
‘That was part of it,’ she said. ‘And we expelled someone.’
‘Do I know him?’
‘Her,’ said Mayo. ‘I doubt it.’
‘We had a visitor yesterday.’
‘Not the police,’ Mayo held her breath.