‘And so?’
‘Naturally I went out to look for one. The pubs were shut, by now, but just a few streets away from my flat there is a public convenience which, thanks to an uncharacteristically enlightened decision on the part of our council leaders, provides a haven at all hours of the day and night for anyone seeking relief, in its various forms. I’d been trying to stay away from the place for weeks, ever since I was last hauled up in front of a judge and told that one more slip would land me behind bars — only for a couple of months, he said, but who knows what effect even a brief confinement might have on the constitution of a frail and feeble-hearted relic such as myself. Last night, however, the majesty of the law seemed to hold no terrors, and I found myself unable to resist an approach to this sink of delicious iniquity. I had been there for only a few seconds when a man (man! what am I saying! — an apparition, Michael, a perfectionist’s fantasy sprung to life: Adonis himself, in bomber jacket and sky-blue jeans) emerged from one of the cubicles.’ Findlay shook his head, rapture and regret seeming to vie for precedence in his thoughts. ‘Needless to say, he was to be my undoing. And vice versa.’
‘Vice versa?’
‘Precisely: I undid his shirt, I undid his trousers, I undid the buttons on his fly. I won’t offend your breeder’s sensibilities, Michael, with a detailed account — a blow-by-blow account, one might almost say — of the pleasantries which ensued. I ask you only to imagine my shock, my outrage, my sense of betrayal, when he suddenly introduced himself as a detective superintendent, no less, of the Metropolitan Police, clapped a pair of handcuffs on me, and whistled for the accomplice who had been waiting out by the doorway. It all happened so very quickly.’ He bowed his head and we both fell silent. I struggled for words of consolation but couldn’t find any; and when Findlay spoke at last, there was a new note of bitterness in his voice. ‘It’s the hypocrisy of these people I can’t stand, you know. The lies they tell themselves and the rest of the world. The little shit was enjoying himself every bit às much as I was.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Please, Michael,’ he said, with an indulgent glance. ‘Either that, or it was his truncheon I’d had between my teeth for the last ten minutes. Allow me some credit for my reading of the situation.’
Chastened, I waited a moment or two before asking: ‘So then what happened?’
‘I was brought back here, and now it appears they can have me banged up in a day or two. Which is why I wanted to see you as soon as possible.’
There were footsteps in the corridor outside. Findlay waited until they had gone by, then leaned towards me conspiratorially. ‘I have made,’ he said, in a low voice, ‘some startling discoveries. You will be pleased to hear — though not especially surprised, if you are at all acquainted with my rate of success in these matters — that my hunch has proved to be accurate.’
‘Which hunch is that?’
‘Cast your mind back, Michael, to that discussion we had the last time we met. At one point, I seem to recall, you made an assertion to the effect that you had merely “drifted in” to this business, and I ventured to suggest that it may have been a little more complicated than that. I was right.’ He left an impressive pause. ‘You were chosen.’
‘Chosen? Who by?’
‘By Tabitha Winshaw, of course. Now listen carefully. Hanrahan will give you a spare set of keys to my flat, and you will find all the relevant papers in the top drawer of my desk. You should go up there as soon as you can and take a good look at them. The first thing you’ll find is Tabitha’s letter to the Peacock Press, dated the twenty-first of May, 1982, putting forward the idea of a book about her family. Immediately, then, a question comes to mind: how had she found out about these particular publishers?
‘Answering this question turned out to be simple enough, and involved nothing more devious than some research into the chequered history of McGanny’s entrepreneurial career. I found documents suggesting that he had, over the last thirty years, been involved in the formation of no less than seventeen different companies, most of them having gone into receivership and several having been the subject of criminal proceedings under the tax laws. He had run night clubs, drug companies, dating agencies, insurance firms, correspondence courses and had set himself up, finally, as a literary agent: no doubt it was this which gave him the idea of establishing the Peacock Press — having learned that if there is one class of person, out of all of society’s most naive and defenceless members, who is simply crying out to be conned, it’s the aspiring but untalented writer. Now it seems that one of McGanny’s enterprises, in the mid 1970s, was a chain of bingo halls which ran foul of the authorities in Yorkshire, among other places: and who should have taken charge of his defence on that occasion but our old friend Proudfoot — solicitor to none other than Tabitha Winshaw herself — who continued to provide him with legal representation until meeting with an untimely end, so I gathered, in 1984. So there we have our connection. Tabitha approaches Proudfoot, asking him to locate a suitable publisher, and Proudfoot, miraculously, is able to produce just the man.
‘He would also have known that Tabitha’s proposal had a good chance of being accepted, because the state of the company finances at that time was fairly desperate. You will be able to see that yourself from the year’s accounts, which I took the precaution of including in my haul. Add financial insecurity, then, to McGanny’s proven willingness to engage in unscrupulous transactions, and you will see that he could hardly be expected to refuse Tabitha’s generous terms. And he would not even have baulked, as most men would have done, at her one extraordinary precondition.’ He looked up at me sharply. ‘You can guess what it was, of course?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’
Findlay permitted himself a dry laugh. ‘Well, from her letter, it seems that she insisted—insisted, mind — that the book could only be written by you.’
This made no sense at all.
‘But that’s ridiculous. I haven’t even met Tabitha Winshaw. Back in 1982 we didn’t even … know of each other’s existence.’
‘Well, she obviously knew of yours.’
Findlay sat back against the wall, examining his fingernails and clearly relishing the confusion into which his information had thrown me. After a while — and, I suspect, more out of mischief than anything else — he speculated coolly: ‘Perhaps news of your literary reputation had reached her, Michael. She may have read a review of one of those widely admired novels of yours, and decided that here was a man whose services she could not afford to do without.’
But I scarcely heard this remark, because a number of new questions, distinctly uncomfortable ones, had just occurred to me.
‘Yes, but look, I told you how I came to be offered that job. There was this woman called Alice Hastings, and I met her on the train, quite by chance.’
‘Quite by arrangement, I think you’ll find.’ Findlay had produced a toothpick from somewhere and was now scraping out the dirt from beneath his thumbnail.
‘But I’d never seen her before in my life.’
‘And have you seen her since?’
‘Well no, I haven’t — not to speak to, anyway.’
‘That’s rather curious, isn’t it, in — what? — eight years of dealing with the firm.’
‘Actually,’ I said, on the defensive, ‘I caught a glimpse of her outside the office only a few months ago, getting out of a taxi.’
‘I seem to remember,’ said Findlay, now pointing at me with the toothpick, ‘that when you first told me this story, you furnished me with a brief description.’
‘That’s right: long dark hair, long thin neck —’