‘That’s right.’
‘I was wondering if I could see your husband.’
‘I don’t know. Can you?’
The man laughed a short impatient laugh. ‘It’s a business matter,’ he said.
‘My husband’s not here.’
‘Oh.’
‘He’s gone off for a couple of days.’
The man seemed almost heartbroken. Suddenly he looked more tired than dangerous. He looked as though he might collapse on her doorstep. She was about to offer them coffee when she remembered what Miles had drummed into her: never let in strangers, never, even if they look official — especially if they look official. She stood her ground.
‘A couple of days, you say?’
‘That’s right. Good day.’
And with that she closed the door slowly but firmly on Jim Stevens’s hopes and prayers. Still, a couple of days. It was nothing. He could wait. What choice did he have?
‘Told you so,’ said Janine. ‘I told you he’d left, suitcase and all.’
‘Clever little bugger, aren’t you?’ said Stevens, wondering how the hell he could afford to pay her next month. He had little enough money as it was. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you can buy me lunch.’
‘Around here?’ she cried, flabbergasted. ‘It’d cost a week’s rent for a bacon buttie. There’s a café in Camden, though, dead cheap. I’ll treat you to a salami sandwich.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘Come on, then,’ she said, flitting down the steps. ‘It’s called Sixes and Sevens.’
3
Sixes and Sevens
Nineteen
‘Ah yes, Mr. Scott.’
And with that the courier ticked his name off the list. Belfast airport was near empty, which was fine by Miles; it was also, to his surprise, very modern and very clean. He didn’t know quite what he had been expecting, an old RAF-style hangar perhaps, ringed by steel. But this was not like arriving in a country at war. No soldiers paraded their weapons. The atmosphere was... well, ordinary. Perhaps he would have an uneventful few days after all. If only he could get away from Mrs. Nightingale.
‘Coo-ee, Mr. Scott! Over here!’
And here she was, in the ample flesh, wading toward him as though through water, her hand waving like a distress signal.
‘Coo-ee!’
She had been sitting next to him in the Trident, humming along to Handel’s Fireworks Music and crunching barley sugars with real ferocity. To her questions, he had decided that he was a widower and a civil servant. Wrong answers both: she was a widow (her wedding ring had tricked him) and a civil servant too, executive officer, Inland Revenue. He wondered now why he had not played the old card of pleading homosexuality. Perhaps he still could. What he could not do was retrieve the past excruciating hour of tales about the tax collector’s office. His head throbbed like a gashed thumb. When, oh when, was he supposed to slip away?
‘Mr. Scott, have you asked him about the baggage?’
‘Not yet, Mrs. Nightingale.’
‘No, silly, call me Millicent.’
‘Millicent.’
‘Well, go ahead and ask.’
The courier, however, saved him some small embarrassment by answering the unspoken question.
‘We’ll go and collect it now, shall we?’
‘We’ll go and collect it now, Mr. Scott,’ repeated Mrs. Nightingale, putting her arm through his. Miles wondered if the courier were in on the deception. Everything that had seemed so well planned in London now seemed tenuous and half baked. He might yet end up on a tour of Ireland. Seven days and nights with Mrs. Nightingale.
Outside, baggage collected, they boarded a minibus. The country around them was darkening, as though the wattage of the bulb were fading. On their way out of the airport, Miles noted a checkpoint where every second car was being stopped and searched. Speed bumps bumped the minibus out onto a main road. There were no signs visibly welcoming them to Northern Ireland, but pasted onto a road sign was a Union Jack poster with the legend ULSTER SAYS NO printed in large black letters. Miles closed his eyes, hoping to feign sleep. Mrs. Nightingale, a little later, placed her hand on his.
The hotel was unpromising. His room was a single (giving Mrs. Nightingale a whole range of options), the bar was dowdy and full of nonresidents, and the view from his window was of a flat rooftop where the matted carcass of a cat lay as though it had died of boredom. It might have been London. In fact, it was much quieter than London, for not even the wailing of a police siren could be heard.
There was a knock at his door. Not Mrs. Nightingale, for he doubted very much whether she would have bothered to knock.
‘Come in.’
It was the courier.
‘Mr. Scott, sir. You’ll be leaving us first thing in the morning, so get an early night if you can. Someone will be here with a car for you. They’ll come to the door, so make sure you’re alone, eh?’ The courier gave an exaggerated wink. He was the sort of despairingly jolly fellow so beloved of holiday-package groups. He did not look like a member of the services.
‘Do me a favor, will you?’
‘Yes, Mr. Scott?’
‘Try and keep Mrs. Nightingale out of my hair.’
The courier smiled and nodded. ‘Understood,’ he said, and was gone.
Miles settled back on the creaking bed and flipped through a magazine which, having noticed that every traveler was carrying some sort of reading matter, he had bought at Heathrow. It was filled with book reviews. Not a word on Coleoptera, though. He supposed that he could try the bar again, but was afraid of what he might find there. He recalled Mrs. Nightingale’s clammy hand on his, and he shuddered.
There was no telephone in the bedroom, but there was a battered pay phone at the end of the hall. He would call Sheila. He slipped out of the room in his stocking feet and padded through the deserted corridor. He had only the one ten-pence piece, but that would be sufficient to reassure himself that Sheila was all right... Did he mean all right, or did he mean chaste? He wasn’t sure. He dialed his home number, but there was no reply. Well, she could be anywhere, he supposed. He dialed his own number, the one for his study telephone. Still no answer. Finally, he decided to call Billy Monmouth, just, so he assured himself, to hear a friendly voice. This time the call was answered. Miles pushed home the coin. It stayed in, but nothing connected.
‘Blast this thing.’ He slapped the front of the apparatus. ‘Damn and blast it.’ The telephone went dead. He had lost his only coin.
‘Mr. Scott!’
‘Mrs. Nightingale.’
‘Millicent, Mr. Scott. You must call me Millicent. Who were you phoning?’
‘Trying to reach my son.’
‘You didn’t tell me you had a son, Mr. Scott!’
‘Oh?’
‘Let’s go down to the bar and you can tell me all about him.’
She was already tugging at his arm.
‘I don’t have any shoes on, Millicent.’
She looked down at his feet, then laughed.
‘In that case,’ she said, ‘we’ll just go along to your room and you can put your shoes on. I’ve been dying to see your room anyway. Come on.’
In the small, smoky lounge bar, the hotel guests were being treated to jokes and songs by a local, who, unshaven, his cap askew on his sweat-beaded head, seemed irrepressible. Miles noticed, however, that the man’s eyes remained as sharp as a fox’s. He was working hard and methodically to win the free drinks which were his right, and he wasn’t about to let any of the pale-faced guests escape. He swayed before them like a snake before its prey, seeming to entertain when in fact it was already digesting its victims.