Lang’s Theory, which amounts to much the same thing at a fraction of the cost, is that you punch the other chap’s face before he has a chance to get it out of the way.
I came up behind the Ford on the left-hand side, and stopped level with it, looking up at the Woolfs ’ house. The man in the Ford didn’t look at me. Which he would have done if he’d been a civilian, because people do look at people when they’ve got nothing else to do. I bent down and
knocked on his window. He turned and stared at me for a long moment before he wound it down, but I could tell he hadn’t recognised me. He was in his forties and liked his whisky.
‘Are you Roth?’ I snapped, in the best American accent I could manage - which is actually pretty good, though I say so myself.
He shook his head. ‘Roth been here?’ I said.
‘Who the fuck is Roth?’ I’d expected him to be an American, but he sounded extremelyLondon.
‘Shit,’ I said, standing up and looking towards the house. ‘Who are you?’
‘Dalloway,’ I said, frowning. ‘They tell you I was coming?’ Again he shook his head. ‘You been out of the car? Missed the call?’ I was pushing hard, speaking fast and loud, and he was puzzled. But not suspicious. ‘Heard the news? Seen a newspaper, for Christ’s sake? Three dead men, and Lang wasn’t one of them.’ He stared up at me. ‘Shit,’ I said again, in case he hadn’t heard me the first time.
‘What now?’
Cigar for Mr Lang. I had him. I chewed my lip for a while, then decided to take a chance.
‘You here alone?’
He nodded towards the house.
‘ Micky’sinside.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘We change over in ten minutes.’
‘You change over now. I have to get in. Anybody show so far?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Phone?’
‘Once. Girl’s voice, about an hour ago. Asking for Sarah.’
‘Right. Let’s go.’
I was inside his Boyd Loop, that was obvious. Amazing what you can make people do if you get the first note right. He clambered out of the car, eager to show how quickly he could clamber out of cars, and followed at my shoulder as I strode over to the house. I took the keys to my flat out of my pocket and then stopped myself.
‘Have you got a knock?’ I said as we reached the front door.
‘Pardon?’
I rolled my eyes with impatience.
‘A knock. Signal. I don’t want Micky blowing a hole in my chest as we go through the goddamn door.’
‘No, we just… I mean, I just shout " Micky".’
‘Gee, that’s really neat,’ I said. ‘Who worked that one out?’ I laid it on a bit, trying to make him bristle so he’d be all the keener to show how efficient he was. ‘Do it.’
He put his mouth to the letter-box.
‘ Micky,’ he said, and then glanced up, apologetically. ‘It’s me.’
‘Oh, I get it,’ I said. ‘That way he knows it’s you. Cool.’ There was a pause, and then the latch turned and I pushed straight into the house.
I tried not to look at Micky much, so he’d know straightaway he wasn’t the point at issue. But a quick glance told me he was also in his forties, and as thin as a very thin stick. He wore leather backless gloves and a revolver, and probably some clothes as well, but I wasn’t really paying attention to them.
The revolver had a Smith Wesson nickel finish, a short barrel, and an enclosed hammer, making it good for firing from inside a pocket. Probably a Bodyguard Airweight, or something similar. A sneaky kind of a gun. You may ask whether I could name an honest, decent, fair-minded kind of gun, and of course I can’t. All guns throw lead at people with a view to causing harm, but, given that, they tend to have more or less distinct characters. And some are sneakier than others.
‘You Micky?’ I said, looking busily round the hall.
‘I am.’ Micky was a Scot, and was trying frantically to get some sign from his partner as to who the hell I was. Micky was going to be a problem.
‘Dave Carter sends his regards.’ I was at school with a Dave Carter.
‘Oh. Yeah,’ he said. ‘Right.’
Bingo. Two Boyd Loops in five minutes. In a giddy whirl of triumph, I walked over to the hall table, and picked up the phone.
‘ Gwinevere,’ I said, enigmatically. ‘I’m in.’
I put the receiver back on the cradle and moved towards the stairs, cursing myself for having so massively overdone it. They couldn’t have fallen for that one. But when I turned, they were both still standing there, meek as lambs, with a pair of ‘you’re the guv’nor ’ looks on their faces.
‘Which one is the girl’s bedroom?’ I snapped. The lambs exchanged nervous glances. ‘You checked the rooms, right?’ They nodded. ‘So which is the one with the lacy pillows and the poster of Stefan Edberg, for Chrissakes?’
‘Second on the left,’ said Micky.
‘Thank you.’
‘But…’
I stopped again. ‘But what?’
‘There’s no poster…’
I gave them both a fair rendition of a withering look, and carried on up the stairs.
Mickywas right, there was no poster of Stefan Edberg. There weren’t even that many lacy pillows. Eight, maybe. But Fleur de Fleurs was in the air, one part per billion, and I felt a sudden, physical stab of worry and longing. For the first time I realised how much I wanted to protect Sarah from whatever it was, or whoever they were.
Now maybe this was just a lot of old damsel-in-distress nonsense, and perhaps, on another day, my hormones might have been busy on another subject entirely. But at that moment, standing in the middle of her bedroom, I wanted to rescue Sarah. Not just because she was good, and the bad guys weren’t, but because I liked her. I liked her a lot.
Enough of that kind of talk.
I went to the bedside-table, lifted the phone receiver and tucked the mouthpiece under a lacy pillow. If either one of the lambs started to regain some courage, or just curiosity, and felt like trying Dial-An-Explanation, I’d hear it. But the pillow ought to stop them from hearing me.
I ran through the cupboards first, trying to guess whether a sizeable chunk of Sarah’s clothes had gone. There were a few empty hangers here and there, but not enough to indicate an orderly departure to a far-away place.
The dressing-table had a scattering of pots and brushes on it. Face-cream, hand-cream, nose-cream, eye-cream. I wondered for a moment how serious it would be if you ever got home drunk and accidentally put face-cream on your hands or hand-cream on your face.
The drawers of the dressing-table contained more of the same. All the tools and lubricants necessary to keep a modern Formula 1 woman on the road. But definitely no file.
I closed them all and walked through to the adjoining bathroom. The silk dressing-gown Sarah had worn when I first saw her was hanging on the back of the door. There was a toothbrush in the rack over the basin.
I walked back through to the bedroom and looked around, hoping for a sign of something. I mean, not an actual sign - I wasn’t expecting an address scrawled in lipstick on the mirror - but I’d hoped for something, something that should have been there and wasn’t, or shouldn’t have been there and was. But there was no sign, and yet something was wrong. I had to stand in the middle of the room and listen for a while before I realised what it was.