‘Isn’t it odd, Mister Hood? I invited you here to find out about you, and now you’re asking all the questions!’
‘His name,’ said Hood. He stepped close to her and snatched her wrist. He gripped her tightly, twisting it.
‘That hurts,’ she said. Her eyes were bright with pain, but she made no move to resist. Hood said, ‘If you don’t tell me I’ll slash your face so bad you’ll have to give up acting.’
‘You’re a pig,’ she said. ‘You hate women.’
‘I’m liberated,’ he said. ‘I treat women the same as men. And I’ll cut your nose off if you don’t tell me.’ He realized that he was on the point of hitting her. He checked his fury and growled, ‘Wise up, sister.’
‘Let go of my arm,’ she said.
He threw her arm down hard.
She said, ‘Don’t think I’m telling you because you threatened me. I don’t have to protect anyone. They’re bastards. They let me down. They’ll do the same to you.’
‘Spit it out!’
‘Greenstain — from Libya or somewhere. An Arab. He’s in Rotterdam and he’s a pouf. He might fall for you, but he won’t give you anything.’
‘What about your contact in London?’
‘He was just the delivery boy,’ she said. ‘And I don’t remember his name.’
‘Was it Weech?’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ she said. ‘I thought he was the one who burned me.’
‘How do you know he wasn’t?’
She laughed. ‘Because they killed him.’
‘Who did?’
‘Some fink,’ she said lazily.
‘What about Rutter?’
‘Rutter! I don’t have to tell you anything, do I? You know all the punks. That proves you’re either a clever cop or the biggest crook of them all. And I’ve found,’ she went on, smiling now, ‘that they’re usually the same thing.’
‘So Rutter supplies the Provos,’ said Hood. ‘But he stays put and lets guys like Weech take the rap. And you keep them all in business. You were taking a chance going to the Continent. You must have liked that.’
‘How did you know my passport number?’ she said.
‘I provided it. Without me you couldn’t have left the country for the Provos. Only it didn’t work.’
‘It worked,’ she said. ‘But they hated me. They wanted to expel me all along — they were just looking for an excuse.’
Hood said, ‘Then where’s the arsenal?’
‘The arsenal,’ she said. ‘Is that what you call it? Shit, if I knew the answer to that question I’d be Queen of England. Ask your friends the Provos.’
‘They don’t know.’
‘Of course they don’t or they would have started their offensive. And Rutter doesn’t know either, or he would have flogged it long ago — he must be dying to get his hands on it. I’ll tell you something, Mister Hood. I may be wrong but I don’t think anyone knows what happened to the arsenal.’ She tasted the word again and grinned. ‘I saw it, I paid for it, and then it vanished. Maybe it sank in the Channel. It would serve them right if it did.’ She paused a moment, patted her hair, then said, ‘Haven’t you got a theory?’
‘It’s just a theory,’ said Hood.
‘Tell me.’
‘I have to prove it first,’ he said. He saw Lorna returning with the drinks.
‘Shampoo,’ said Lorna, handing Hood a glass of champagne.
‘It’s a little celebration,’ said Araba. ‘I’m opening tomorrow in Peter Pan.’
‘Break a leg,’ said Hood, and he drained his glass in one gulp. Then he said, ‘That’s funny — I’m not thirsty anymore. Let’s go.’
Araba turned to Lorna. ‘Don’t pay any attention to him, darling. Stick with us. You’re the sort of person we’re trying to reach.’ She made a move to take Lorna’s hand.
Lorna stepped aside. She glared at the actress and said, ‘You fucker.’
Murf was asleep on the sofa when they entered. He lay flat, his face up, his mouth open; he was being steamrolled by a narcotic dream; he was flattened, in a posture of surrender. Hearing the door slam he sat up straight, opened his mouth to shout, then said, ‘What’s the time?’ He yawned, flopped down and turned over without waiting for a reply. There was an ashtray on the floor, and a pipe; and in the air the stale perfume of burnt opium.
Hood and Lorna went upstairs. Lorna undressed first, and Hood helped her off with her boots. She got into bed. He crept in beside her. He made a tender appeal with his hands and kissed her eyes. She stiffened, as if resisting, and then began to cry softly, her tears wetting his mouth. He felt the convulsive pressure under his hand and turned her gently.
She said, ‘I can’t help it. I always cry.’ She lifted her breast to his mouth and parted her legs. He slid between, touching her; she was open, hot with liquid, straining to receive him. She reached down, took him urgently in her fingers and helped him enter, but as he did — seeming to move into fathoms of darkness — she cried out.
‘What is it?’ He paused.
‘No,’ she wept, ‘don’t stop. But don’t hold me so tight.’
She still ached from that beating, and the thought of it filled him with rage. But his anger was displaced. He knelt over her, and she lay back, drowning there under him, her skin as luminous as if under water; she was alone, then he embraced her, joined her, and followed her down to a brief death.
In the morning he awoke before she did and went downstairs, where Murf lay asleep, his mouth open, his yellow feet sticking from the blanket.
Hood carried the telephone into the kitchen. He dialled a number and waited, watching the still dawn-green garden whitened in patches with a dew as thick as frost. Clouds were bulked above the nearby roofs.
The ringing ceased.
‘Sweeney,’ he said. ‘It’s Hood.’
‘It’s seven o’clock in the morning. What do you want now?’
Nigh. ‘Just making sure you’re home.’
‘That’s not funny.’
‘And I wanted to hear your voice,’ said Hood. ‘How’s your wife?’
‘I don’t know. Probably with her family. She lost the painting. It’s the only card we have to play at the moment — I told her not to come back without it.’
‘I want to see you.’
‘You know where I am. I don’t make appointments by telephone.’
‘Oh, and something else,’ said Hood. ‘Do you know a guy named Rutter?’
There was a pause; for a moment Hood thought he had hung up. Then Sweeney asked him to repeat the name. Hood said it carefully.
Sweeney said, ‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘I heard he’d been rumbled. The Yard’s on to him.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘I’ll see you,’ said Hood. He hung up.
He listened, but the house was as still as the garden, and as cold. He dialled again, referring to a number in Lorna’s schoolgirl handwriting, holding the wrinkled scrap of paper to the window, the first light of day. The phone range and stopped.
‘Rutter,’ he said. ‘Sweeney.’ And before the man could reply he said, ‘Luck, Ah know whirr ut uz nigh —’
25
The line spluttered and seemed to heat as if it had caught fire. There was a scatter of clicks, no ring, then the sudden honk of a human voice, ‘— don’t really know what to do.’
Mr Gawber moved the receiver away from his ear and hid his face, shielding himself from the thing’s eye-like holes.
Another voice, younger, said, ‘But it can’t get any worse.’
‘I feel sure it will.’
‘Depend on it,’ said Mr Gawber, from his stomach, woefully.
‘What did you say?’
‘That wasn’t me.’
‘The market’s firming up.’