I was not in love with her, you understand. How could I be? After all, I’d only spent a couple of hours in her company, and none of those had been under very relaxing circumstances. No. I was definitely not in love with her. It takes more than a pair of bright grey eyes and pillows of dark-brown, wavy hair to get me going.
For God’s sake.
Atnine o’clock the next morning I was pulling on the Garrick tie and the under-buttoned blazer, and athalf past nine I was ringing the enquiries bell at the National Westminster Bank in Swiss Cottage. I had no clear plan of action in mind, but I thought it might be good for morale to look my bank manager in the eye for the first time in ten years, even if the money in my account wasn’t mine.
I was shown into a waiting-room outside the manager’s office, and given a plastic cup of plastic coffee which was far too hot to drink until, in the space of a hundredth of a second, it suddenly became far too cold. I was trying to get rid of it behind a rubber plant when a nine-year-old boy with ginger hair stuck his head out of the door, beckoned me in, and announced himself as Graham Halkerston, Branch Manager.
‘So, what can I do for you, Mr Lang?’ he said, settling himself behind a young, ginger-haired desk.
I struck what I thought was a big business pose in the chair opposite him, and straightened my tie.
‘Well, Mr Halkerston,’ I said, ‘I am concerned about a sum of money, recently transferred to my account.’
He glanced down at a computer print-out on the desk. ‘Would that be a remittance on the seventh of April?’
‘Seventh of April,’ I repeated carefully, trying hard not to muddle it up with other payments of thirty thousand pounds I’d received that month. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That sounds like the one.’
He nodded.
‘Twenty-nine thousand, four hundred and eleven pounds and seventy-six pence. Were you thinking of transferring the money, Mr Lang? Because we have a variety of high-yielding accounts that would suit your needs.’
‘My needs?’
‘Yes. Ease of access, high interest, sixty day bonus, it’s up to you.’
It seemed strange somehow, hearing a human being use phrases like that. Until that point in my life, I’d only ever seen them on advertising billboards.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Great. For the time being, Mr Halkerston, my needs are simply for you to keep the money in a room with a decent lock on the door.’ He stared back at me blankly. ‘I’m more interested to know the origins of this transfer.’ His face went from blank to highly blank. ‘Who gave me this money, Mr Halkerston?’
I could tell that unsolicited donations were not a regular feature of banking life, and it took a few more moments of blankness, followed by some paper-rustling, before Halkerston was back at the net.
‘The payment was made in cash,’ he said, ‘so I have no actual record of the origin. If you’ll hold on a second, I can get a copy of the credit slip.’ He pressed an intercom button and asked for Ginny, who duly trundled in bearing a folder. While Halkerston browsed through it, I had to wonder how Ginny could hold her head up under the weight of cosmetics smeared all over her face. Underneath it all, she may have been quite pretty. Or she may have been Dirk Bogarde. I will never know.
‘Here we are,’ said Halkerston. ‘The name of the payer has been left out, but there is a signature. Offer. Or possibly Offee. T Offee, that’s it.’
Paulie’s chambers were in theMiddleTemple, which I remembered him telling me was somewhere near Fleet Street, and I got there eventually with the help of a black cab. It’s not the way I usually travel, but while I was at the bank I decided there was no harm in withdrawing a couple of hundred pounds worth of my blood money for expenses.
Paulie himself was in court on a hit-and-run case, playing his part as a human brake-pad on the wheels of justice, so I had no special entree to the chambers of Milton Crowley Spencer. Instead, I had to submit to the clerk’s interrogation on the nature of my ‘problem’ and by the time he’d finished, I felt worse than I’ve ever done in any venereal clinic.
Not that I’ve been to a lot of venereal clinics.
Having passed the preliminary means test, I was then leftto cool my heels in a waiting-room filled with back numbers ofExpressions, the journal for American Express cardholders. So I sat there and read about bespoke trouser-makers in Jermyn Street, and sock-weavers in Northampton, and hat-growers in Panama, and how likely it was that Kerry Packer would win the Veuve Cliquot Polo Championship at Smith’s Lawn this year, and generally caught up on all the big stories happening behind the news, until the clerk came back and raised a pert couple of eyebrows at me.
I was ushered into a large, oak-panelled room, with shelves ofRegina versus The Rest Of The World on three walls, and a row of wooden filing cabinets along the fourth. There was a photograph on the desk of three teenage children, who looked as if they’d been bought from a catalogue, and next to it, a signed picture of Denis Thatcher. I was chewing on the peculiar fact that both these photographs were pointing outwards from the desk, when a connecting door opened, and I was suddenly in the presence of Spencer.
And quite a presence it was. He was a taller version of Rex Harrison, with greying hair, half-moon spectacles and a shirt so white it must have been running off the mains. I didn’t actually see him start the clock as he sat down.
‘Mr Fincham, sorry to keep you, do have a seat.’
He gestured around the room, as if inviting me to take my pick, but there was only one chair. I sat down, and immediately jumped to my feet again as the chair let out a scream of creaking, tearing wood. It was so loud, and so agonised, that I could picture people in the street outside stopping, and looking up at the window, and wondering about calling a policeman. Spencer didn’t seem to notice it.
‘Don’t think I’ve seen you at the club,’ he said, smiling expensively.
I sat down again, to another roar from the chair, and tried to find a position which might allow our conversation to be more or less audible above the howling woodwork.
‘Club?’ I said, and then looked down as he gestured at my tie. ‘Ah, you mean the Garrick?’
He nodded, still smiling.
‘No, well,’ I said, ‘I don’t get up to town as often as I’d like.’ I waved my hand in a way that implied a couple of thousand acres in Wiltshire and plenty of labradors. He nodded, as if he could picture the place exactly, and might pop over for a spot of lunch the next time he was in the neighbourhood.
‘Now then,’ he said, ‘how can I help?’
‘Well, this is rather delicate…’ I began.
‘Mr Fincham,’ he interrupted smoothly, ‘if the day ever comes when a client comes to me and says that the matter upon which he or she requires my advice is not delicate, I shall hang up my wig for good.’ From the look on his face, I could see that I was meant to take this as a witticism. All I could think was that it had probably cost me thirty quid.
‘Well, that’s very comforting,’ I said, acknowledging the joke. We smiled comfortably at each other. ‘The fact is,’ I went on, ‘that a friend of mine told me recently that you had been extremely helpful in introducing him to some people with unusual skills.’
There was a pause, as I’d rather suspected there might be. ‘I see,’ said Spencer. His smile faded slightly, the glasses came off, and the chin lifted five degrees. ‘Might I be favoured with the name of this friend of yours?’
‘I’d rather not say just at the moment. He told me that he needed… a sort of bodyguard, someone who would be prepared to carry out some fairly unorthodox duties, and that you furnished him with some names.’