‘Michael?’
I turned.
‘I’ll get a contract in the post for you tonight.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and was about to leave, when something made me stop and say: ‘You hit a bit of a nerve, you know, when you went on about … an element, being lacking in my life.’
‘I know.’
‘Good sex scenes are very difficult to write, anyway.’
‘I know.’
‘Thanks, all the same.’ Another afterthought. ‘We must have lunch together soon, like in the old days.’
‘The firm won’t let me buy lunch for authors any more,’ said Patrick. ‘But still, if you know somewhere cheap, we could always go Dutch.’
He was pouring himself more water as I left.
3
My meeting with Patrick had gone on for much longer than I’d expected, and I was almost late arriving at Vanity House. I’d been hoping to have a meal somewhere on the way, but there wasn’t time, so I had to make do with some more chocolate instead. I tried one of these new bars called Twirls: spirals of flaky chocolate covered in a rich, creamy, succulent coat. Not bad, as a matter of fact, although they did have a bit of nerve describing it as ‘new’, since it clearly owed a large conceptual debt to the Ripple. This one seemed firmer, somehow, though: chunkier and more substantial. I’d bought a packet of Maltesers as well but didn’t feel like opening it.
I was looking forward to visiting the Peacock Press, and partly for a reason which will perhaps seem foolish. The first person I had ever spoken to there — the person who had actually approached me with the idea for the Winshaw book — was a woman called Alice Hastings, and we had, I thought, struck up an immediate rapport. I might as well add that she was also young and very beautiful, and not a small part of the attraction of the whole project lay in the opportunities it promised for further meetings with her. But this was not to be. After that initial encounter, I was passed on to the attention of one Mrs Tonks, a plain-speaking and by no means unfriendly woman of late middle age who subsequently assumed complete responsibility for overseeing the progress of the book. She took her duties seriously and did her best to make me feel well looked after: every Christmas, for instance, she would send me a parcel of her favourite books from the year’s catalogue, wrapped up in gift paper. This was how my library came to be adorned with such choice items as Great Plumbers of Albania, 300 Years of Halitosis, the Reverend J.W. Pottage’s pioneering study, So You Think You Know about Plinths?, and a frankly unforgettable memoir — although its author’s name escapes me — entitled A Life in Packaging — Fragments of an Autobiography: Volume IX — The Styrofoam Years. Much as I appreciated this generosity, it was no substitute for seeing Alice again, and on the rare occasions (no more than three or four) when I had visited the office in person, I had always made a point of asking after her. As luck would have it, though, she had always been out at lunch, or away on holiday, or busy dealing with an author. And yet even now, absurdly, eight years since I had last seen her, I felt a sweet ache of sexual nostalgia as I entered the building, and the thought that I might glimpse her again or even exchange a few words with her put a tiny spring in my step and a flourish in the movement of my wrist as I pressed the lift button for the ninth floor.
Today, in any case, even the unassuming efficiency of Mrs Tonks offered a cheering prospect: doing business with her would be a blissfully uncomplicated affair after my dealings with Patrick. That at least was my expectation, as I stood peering into the mirror and wiping a smudge of chocolate from my lower lip, while the lift carried me smoothly upwards.
I caught a sense that something different was in the air, however, when Mrs Tonks, instead of keeping me waiting in the reception area, hurried out to see me as soon as she heard that I’d arrived. Her stout, businesslike face wore more than its habitual flush, and her fingers fiddled nervously with the heavy wooden beads which hung low over her pendulous bosom.
‘Mr Owen,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to telephone you all morning. I was hoping to save you a journey.’
‘You didn’t manage to look at the manuscript?’ I asked, following her into a large, comfortable office, handsomely decked out with bonsai trees and modern abstracts.
‘I was intending to read it today, before you came in,’ she said, waving me to a chair, ‘but circumstances didn’t permit. The fact is, we’re in disarray. There’s been a little upset. Not to keep you in suspense any longer, we were burgled last night.’
I can never think of anything intelligent to say in response to such statements. My reply was something like, ‘How awful’. Followed by: ‘I hope you didn’t lose anything valuable.’
‘Nothing was stolen at all,’ said Mrs Tonks. ‘Except your manuscript.’
That shut me up.
‘It was in the top drawer of my desk,’ she continued. ‘It doesn’t seem to have taken long for the thief to find it. We haven’t notified the police yet: I wanted to talk to you first. Mr Owen, is there any reason why this should have happened now, so soon after we received it? Have you done anything recently which might have alerted someone to the fact that you’d resumed work on this book?’
I thought for a moment and said, ‘Yes.’ Pacing the room angrily (the anger directed at myself) I explained about the newspaper advertisement. ‘It was meant as a declaration of war, as much as anything else. A coded challenge. Well, someone’s obviously taken me up on it.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said Mrs Tonks. ‘Not given them our address, without consulting us first. Anyway, that leaves the field wide open. It could have been anyone.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ I said, as a suspicion began to take shape within me. ‘There are certain members of the family who’ve already expressed an interest in suppressing this book, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised—’
Mrs Tonks wasn’t listening.
‘I think we’re going to have to bring Mr McGanny in on this,’ she said. ‘Come with me, will you?’
She led me out into reception and for a few moments disappeared into another office, leaving me alone with the secretary. Lulled by the gentle tapping of her computer keyboard, I drifted off into some random speculations as to which of the Winshaws might have pilfered my manuscript (or more probably hired someone else to do it). The obvious candidate was Henry: after all, he had already attempted to burn the thing once. But then none of the others could be entirely ruled out. Whoever was behind it, their objective was unlikely to be the suppression of the book: they would surely have anticipated my taking several copies, so the intention presumably was just to find out how far my investigations had proceeded. I decided not to worry about this until I was in possession of a few more facts. The time was ripe to ask another, more urgent question.
I wandered over to the secretary’s desk and said, with affected carelessness: ‘I don’t suppose … Miss Hastings wouldn’t be here this afternoon, by any chance, would she?’
She stared back at me, her eyes bored, without expression.
‘I’m only temporary,’ she said.
Just then Mrs Tonks re-emerged and beckoned me to follow her. I had never met Mr McGanny, the managing director of the Press, and wasn’t sure what to expect. The sumptuousness of his office took me by surprise, for one thing: it boasted leather armchairs and a huge picture window fronting on to the local park. As for the man himself, I placed him somewhere in his mid fifties: his face made me think of a horse — thoroughbred, perhaps, but slightly on the lean and cunning side — and instead of the Scottish brogue which I’d been anticipating, he spoke in the suave drawl of the Oxbridge- and public-school-educated Englishman.