With ten yards still to go, he smiled at me and held out a hand, and kept it there as he came so that before I’d realised it, I was on my feet, ready to receive him like an old friend.
His grip was hot but dry, and he clasped me by the elbow and steered me back on to the sofa, sliding down next to me so that our knees were almost touching. If he always sat this close to visitors, then I have to say he was simply not getting his money’s worth out of his room.
‘Murder,’ he said.
There was a pause. I’m sure you’ll understand why. ‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.
‘ Naimh Murdah,’ he said, then watched patiently while I readjusted the spelling in my head. ‘A great pleasure. Great pleasure.’
His voice was soft, his accent educated. I had the feeling that he’d be just as good in a dozen other languages. He flicked some ash from his cigarette vaguely in the direction of a bowl, then leaned towards me.
‘Russell has told me a lot about you. And I must say, I’ve been cheering for you very much.’
Close up, there were two things I could tell about Mr Murdah: he was not the major-domo; and the sheen on his face was money.
It wasn’t caused by money, or bought with money. It simply was money. Money that he’d eaten, worn, driven, breathed, in such quantities, and for so long, that it had started to secrete from the pores of his skin. You may not think this possible, but money had actually made him beautiful.
He was laughing.
‘Very much indeed, yes. You know, Russell is a very considerable person. Very considerable indeed. But sometimes I think it does him good to become frustrated. He has a tendency, I would say, towards arrogance. And you, Mr Lang, I have the feeling that you are good for such a man.’
Dark eyes. Incredibly dark eyes. With dark edges to the lids, which ought to have been make-up but wasn’t.
‘You, I think,’ said Murdah, still beaming, ‘you frustrate many people. I think perhaps that is why God put you here among us, Mr Lang. Wouldn’t you say?’
And I laughed back. Fuck knows why, because he hadn’t said anything funny. But there I was, chuckling away like a drunk simpleton.
A door opened somewhere, and then suddenly a tray of whisky was between us, borne by a maid dressed in black. We took a glass each, and the maid waited while Murdah drowned his in soda, and I just got mine slightly damp. She left without a smile, or a nod. Without uttering a sound.
I took a deep slug of Scotch and felt drunk almost before I’d swallowed.
‘You’re an arms dealer,’ I said.
I don’t know quite what reaction I expected, but I expected something. I thought he might flinch, or blush, or get angry,orhave me shot, tick any of the above, but there was nothing. Not even a pause. He continued as if he’d known for years what I was going to say.
‘I am indeed, Mr Lang. For my sins.’
Wow, I thought. That was extremely cute. I am an arms dealer for my sins. That was every bit as rich as he was. He lowered his eyes with apparent modesty.
‘I buy and sell arms, yes,’ he said. ‘I must say, I think, successfully. You, of course, disapprove of me, as do many of your countrymen, and this is one of the penalties of my profession. Something that I must bear, if I can.’
I suppose he was making fun of me, but it didn’t sound that way. It really did sound as if my disapproval made him unhappy.
‘I have examined my life, and my behaviour, with the help of many friends who are religious people. And I believe I can answer to God. In fact - if I can anticipate your questions - I believe I canonlyanswer to God. So do you mind if we move on?’ He smiled again. Warm, charmingly apologetic. He dealt with me like a man who’s used to dealing with people like me - as if he was a polite film star, and I’d asked him for an autograph at a tricky moment.
‘Nice furniture,’ I said.
We were taking a tour of the room. Stretching our legs, filling our lungs, digesting some huge meal we hadn’t eaten. To finish the picture, we really needed a couple of dogs mucking about at our ankles, and a gate to lean on. We didn’t have them, so I was trying to make do with the furniture.
‘It’s a Boulle,’ said Murdah, pointing at the large wooden cabinet under my elbow. I nodded, the same way I nod when people tell me the names of plants, and politely bent my head to the intricate brass inlay.
‘They take a sheet of veneer and a sheet of brass, glue them together, then cut the pattern right through. That one,’ he pointed towards an apparently related cabinet, ‘is a contre Boulle. You see? An exact negative. Nothing wasted.’
I nodded thoughtfully, and looked back and forth at the two pieces, and tried to imagine how many motorbikes I’d need to own before I decided to start spending money on stuff like this.
Murdahhad done enough walking, apparently, and peeled off back towards the sofa. The way he moved seemed to say that the pleasantries box was almost empty.
‘Two opposite images of the same object, Mr Lang,’ he said, reaching for another cigarette. ‘You might say, if you like, that those two cabinets resemble our little problem.’
‘I might, yes.’ I waited, but he wasn’t ready to expand. ‘Of course, I’d need to know roughly what you’re talking about first.’
He turned to me. The sheen was still there, and so were the indoor good-looks. But the chumminess was dying away, sputtering in the grate and warming nobody.
‘I’m talking, Mr Lang, about Graduate Studies, obviously.’ He looked surprised.
‘Obviously,’ I said.
‘I have an involvement,’ said Murdah, ‘with a certain group of people.’
He was standing in front of me now, his hands held wide in that welcome-to-my-vision gesture that politicians like to use these days, while I lounged on the sofa. Otherwise little had changed, except that someone was cooking fishfingers near by. It was a smell that didn’t quite belong in this room.
‘These people,’ he continued, ‘are, in many cases, friends of mine. People with whom I have done business over many, many years. They are people who trust me, who rely on me. You understand?’
Of course, he wasn’t asking me if I understood the specific relationship. He just wanted to know if words like Trust and Reliability still had any meaning down where I lived. I nodded to show that yes, I could spell them in an emergency.
‘As an act of friendship towards these people, I have taken something of a risk. Which is rare for me.’ This, I think, was a joke, so I smiled, which seemed to satisfy him. ‘I have personally underwritten the sale of a quantity of merchandise.’ He paused and looked at me, wanting some
reaction. ‘I think perhaps you are familiar with the nature of the product?’
‘Helicopters,’ I said. There didn’t seem to be any point in playing stupid at this stage.
‘Helicopters, precisely,’ said Murdah. ‘I must tell you that I dislike the things myself, but I am told that they perform some functions extremely well.’ He was starting to go a little fey on me, I thought - affecting a distaste for the vulgar, oily machines that had paid for this house and, for all I knew, a dozen more like it - so I decided to try and blunt things up a bit, on behalf of the common man.
‘They certainly do,’ I said. ‘The ones you’re selling could destroy an average-size village in under a minute. Along with all its inhabitants, obviously.’