The Grin of the Dark

THIRTY-FOUR - NO ROOM

As the Shogun leaves the car park I begin to think the Hallorans have taken a vow of silence until Warren thanks the attendant for his change. The word is enough to release some of mine. 'Would somebody have a phone I could borrow?'

Bebe turns with a slowness that I could take for reluctance to look at me. 'We thought you were meant to be sufficient now.'

'I've left mine at home.'

'Home.'

'Natalie's.'

I can see that her response is going to be pointed, but I don't expect 'Let me guess. You need to call a lawyer.'

'No, the bank.'

'I won't ask why,' Bebe says, but might as well. 'Don't tell us you're in money trouble.'

'Not for any longer than it takes me to talk to them.'

'What are you figuring on fixing?' says Warren.

'Some fool has put me in the red.'

'Maybe you want to check your account before you throw a fit,' he says and hands Bebe his mobile, presumably to pass to me. 'If it's online it's on here.'

I have to thrust my hand between the front seats before she yields up the phone. By now the Shogun is racing past Heathrow. Its speed is subtracted from a take-off, so that the airliner appears to hang motionless in the black air as if a film has been paused while I wait for the Internet to load. The vehicle feels cramped and dark with hostility, and chilled as much by it as by the night, in which the edges of the pavements are fat with cleared snow. We've reached the motorway stretch of the Great West Road by the time I type my identification. My tiny portfolio page appears, and I bring up the details of the deposit account. I peer at the shrunken transactions in one kind of disbelief and then another. 'Idiots,' I hiss.

'Gee, there seem to be a lot of those around,' Bebe says. 'Which ones now?'

'The bank. They've gone and paid my publisher twice as much as the publisher paid me.'

'Isn't that called vanity publishing?'

This reminds me so much of Smilemime that for a crazed instant I'm tempted to discover what he has been saying about me since I was in the Pot of Gold. 'No,' I say and take the phone offline. 'It's mismanagement. Bungling. Ineptitude. Incompetence. Cack-handedness. That's what you're suffering from if your hands are full of cack.'

Bebe emits a small prim gasp, and Warren advises 'I wouldn't say all that to your bank.'

I wait for the message to finish exhorting me to select keys. At last I'm connected with an agent, or at least with an assurance that the bank values my call even though every one of its operatives is busy elsewhere. This is repeated so often that it's begun to sound like a lullaby, however little it alleviates my tension, when a slightly less automatic voice says 'Tess speaking. May I take your name?'

'You've already taken a lot more than that.' I don't know if she hears this, but I ensure she hears 'Simon Lester.' I tell her my account number and the sort code and my date of birth and my mother's maiden name and the recipient of a standing order from my current account, but when she asks for the amount I've had enough. 'I couldn't tell you. There's a limit to the stuff I keep in my head. Believe me, if I wasn't who I say I am I wouldn't be this pissed.'

Bebe tuts and Warren shakes his head as Tess says 'How may I help you, Mr Lister?'

Does she really say that? It sounded as if there was a gap where the vowel should have been. I hope the connection isn't breaking up, but rather that than my consciousness. 'Lester,' I say with just a fraction of my rage. 'You've paid out an insane chunk of my money to LUP, that's London University Press. Tell me why.'

I could take the silence for an admission of guilt until she says 'We must have received an instruction.'

'Not from me. Who from?'

'From whom,' Bebe murmurs as Tess breaks the silence, fragments of which are embedded in her answer. 'We don't see to ha a re or, Mr L ster.'

'You're coming apart. You bet there's no record. What are you going to do about it?'

'It does loo a i there may ha bee an e or. If you cou pu i in iting – '

'I'll email you, that's fastest. You're damn right there's an error, and you need to deal with it now.'

'Ple ho on whi I spe to – '

I assume she's consulting her supervisor. The gap at the end of her sentence is followed by Mozart on a synthesiser, music whose jollity I find inappropriate. It splits into a run of random samples, and I hold the mobile away from my face until Tess interrupts the performance. 'We ca cre it your a ount be or you ut i in wri ing.'

'I should bloody well think so too.' Instead of this I say 'Thank you for your help. I'll email you tomorrow at the latest.' As I pass the phone to Bebe while the car speeds onto the Hammersmith Flyover I say 'I think this needs recharging. I only just got the message.'

She avoids touching my fingers as she takes the phone. 'Everything's satisfactory otherwise, is it?'

'Pretty well. You sound as if you don't think it should be.'

'You usually get escorted out of airports by security, do you?'

'He took me through Customs so I wouldn't be delayed any more. I'd drawn some attention because a handler damaged my case, you saw, and then they insisted on going through my things.'

'We've been waiting for hours because Natalie asked.' Yet more accusingly Bebe enquires 'What was he saying to you?'

'Just about their procedures. Nothing to do with me.'

'Maybe you're the biggest innocent we ever met,' says Warren.

'We thought you might be held up because you'd brought back something you shouldn't,' Bebe says and spies on me in the mirror.

'Anything special?'

'Try drugs. We know you were in Amsterdam.'

'Only because I was taken.'

'Like I said, the biggest innocent,' says Warren. 'Sounds like you've no control over where you go or what happens when you get there.'

'I've plenty,' I protest, though for a moment his formulation seems far too accurate. 'Do you honestly think I'm such a fool I'd bring drugs back from Amsterdam?'

The Hallorans are silent all the way to Hyde Park Corner. They seem preoccupied, and I am by the meagre traces of snow along the route. How could it have been bad enough to close the airports? I'm about to wonder aloud as the Shogun veers up Piccadilly, and then Warren says 'Anything else you're planning on denying?'

'What else have you got?'

This time the silence lasts as far as Trafalgar Square, from which pigeons rise like discoloured remnants of snow. I take my question to have concluded the interrogation until Warren says 'How did you get on in Hollywood?'

'Well, it wasn't quite Hollywood. It – '

'So we understand,' Bebe says, and the lights along the Strand lend her eyes a piercing gleam.

'It was a film archive, and very useful too. I've brought back plenty of ideas.'

'Maybe you should keep them to yourself.'

I'm attempting to interpret this when Warren says 'And how did you find your director?'

'Pretty useful.'

'Pretty,' Bebe repeats.

'Very, if you like.'

'This isn't about what we like. Useful how?'

'As a source of information.'

'Gee, you must be some writer,' Bebe says. 'You stayed in their house for a week – '

I find this needlessly disconcerting when my sense of time is at the mercy of jet lag. 'It wasn't a week.'

'Nearly a week if it's so important to you, and all you did was talk to them.'

Fleet Street flourishes giant mastheads of newspapers at me, and I feel as if I'm under investigation. Before I can respond to Bebe's comment she says 'What was their name again?'