Whip Hand

'I stayed in a hotel. They had throwaway razors, if you asked. What's all this mess?'

'The polish letters.'

'What?'

'You know. The polish letters. Your wife's spot of trouble.'

'Oh…

I stared at it blankly.

'Look,' Chico said. 'Cheese on toast? I'm starving.'

'That would be nice.'

It was unreal. It was all unreal. He went into the kitchen and started banging about. I took the dead battery out of my arm and put in a charged one. The fingers opened and closed, like old times. I had missed them more than I would have imagined.

Chico brought the cheese on toast. He ate his, and I looked at mine. I'd better eat it, I thought, and didn't have the energy. There was the sound of the door of the flat being opened with a key, and after that, my father-in-law's voice from the hall.

'He didn't turn up at the Cavendish, but he did at least leave a message.' He came into the room from behind where I sat and saw Chico nodding his head my direction.

'He's back,' Chico said.

'The boy himself.'

'Hallo, Charles,' I said.

He took a long slow look. Very controlled, very civilised. 'We have, you know, been worried.' It was a reproach.

'I'm sorry.'

'Where have you been?' he said.

I found I couldn't tell him. If I told him where, I would have to tell him why, and I shrank from why. I just didn't say anything at all.

Chico gave him a cheerful grin. 'Sid's got a bad attack of the brick walls.' He looked at his watch. 'Seeing that you're here, Admiral, I might as well get along and teach the little bleeders at the Comprehensive how to throw their grannies over their shoulders. And, Sid, before I go, there's about fifty messages on the 'phone pad. There's two new insurance investigations waiting to be done, and a guard job. Lucas Wainwright wants you, he's rung four times. And Rosemary Caspar has been screeching fit to blast the eardrums. It's all there, written down. See you, then. I'll come back here later.'

I almost asked him not to, but he'd gone.

'You've lost weight,' Charles said.

It wasn't surprising. I looked again at the toasted cheese and decided that coming back also had to include things like eating.

'Want some?' I said.

He eyed the congealing square.

'No thank you.'

Nor did I. I pushed it away. Sat and stared into space. 'What's happened to you?' he said.

'Nothing.'

'Last week you came into the Cavendish like a spring,' he said. 'Bursting with life. Eyes actually sparkling. And now look at you.'

'Well, don't,' I said. 'Don't look at me. How are you doing with the letters?'

'Sid…'

'Admiral.' I stood up restlessly, to escape his probing gaze. 'Leave me alone.'

He paused, considering, then said, 'You've been speculating in commodities, recently. Have you lost your money, is that it?'

I was surprised almost to the point of amusement.

'No,' I said.

He said, 'You went dead like this before, when you lost your career and my daughter. So what have you lost this time, if it isn't money? What could be as bad… or worse?'

I knew the answer. I'd learned it in Paris, in torment and shame. My whole mind formed the word courage with such violent intensity that I was afraid it would leap out of its own accord from my brain to his.

He showed no sign of receiving it. He was still waiting for a reply. I swallowed.

'Six days,' I said neutrally. 'I've lost six days. Let's get on with tracing Nicholas Ashe.' He shook his head in disapproval and frustration, but began to explain what he'd been doing.

'This thick pile is from people with names beginning with M. I've put them into strictly alphabetical order, and typed out a list. It seemed to me that we might get results from one letter only… are you paying attention?'

'Yes.'

'I took the list to Christie's and Sotheby's, as you suggested, and persuaded them to help. But the M section of their catalogue mailing list is not the same as this one. And I found that there may be difficulties with this matching, as so many envelopes are addressed nowadays by computers.'

'You've worked hard,' I said.

' Chico and I have been sitting here in shifts, answering your telephone, and trying to find out where you'd gone. Your car was still here, in the garage, and Chico said you would never have gone anywhere of your own accord without the battery charger for your arm.'

'Well… I did.'

'Sid…'

'No,' I said. 'What we need now is a list of periodicals and magazines dealing with antique furniture. We'll try those first with the M people.'

'It's an awfully big project,' Charles said doubtfully. 'And even if we do find it, what then? I mean, as the man at Christie's pointed out, even if we find whose mailing list was being used, where does it get us? The firm or magazine wouldn't be able to tell us which of the many people who had access to the list was Nicholas Ashe, particularly as he is almost certain not to have used that name if he had any dealings with them.'

'Mm,' I said. 'But there's a chance he's started operating again somewhere else, and is still using the same list. He took it with him, when he went. If we can find out whose list it is, we might go and call on some people who are on it, whose names start with A to K, and P to Z, and find out if they've received any of those begging letters recently. Because if they have, the letters will have the address on, to which the money is to be sent. And there, at that address, we might find Mr Ashe.'

Charles put his mouth into the shape of a whistle, but what came out was more like a sigh.

'You've come back with your brains intact, anyway,' he said.

Oh God, I thought, I'm making myself think to shut out the abyss. I'm in splinters… I'm never going to be right again. The analytical reasoning part of my mind might be marching straight on, but what had to be called the soul was sick and dying.

'And there's the polish,' I said. I still had in my pocket the paper he'd given me the week before. I took it out and put it on the table. 'If the idea of special polish is closely geared to the mailing list, then to get maximum results the polish is necessary. There can't be many private individuals ordering so much wax in unprinted tins packed in little white boxes. We could ask the polish firm to let us know if another lot is ordered. It's just faintly possible that Ashe will use the same firm again, even if not at once. He ought to see the danger… but he might be a fool.'

I turned away wearily. Thought about whisky. Went over and poured myself a large one.

'Drinking heavily, are you?' Charles said from behind me, in his most offensive drawl.

I shut my teeth hard, and said 'No.' Apart from coffee and water, it was my first drink for a week.

'Your first alcoholic black-out, was it, these last few days?'

I left the glass untouched on the drinks tray and turned round. His eyes were at their coldest, as unkind as in the days when we'd first met.

'Don't be so bloody stupid,' I said.

He lifted his chin a fraction. 'A spark,' he said sarcastically. 'Still got your pride, I see.'

I compressed my lips and turned my back on him, and drank a lot of the Scotch. After a bit I deliberately loosened a few tensed-up muscles, and said, 'You won't find out that way. I know you too well. You use insults as a lever, to sting people into opening up. You've done it to me in the past. But not this time.'

'If I find the right sting,' he said, 'I'll use it.'

'Do you want a drink?' I said.

'Since you ask, yes.'

We sat opposite each other in armchairs in unchanged companionship, and I thought vaguely of this and that and shied away from the crucifying bits.

'You know,' I said. 'We don't have to go trailing that mailing list around to see whose it is. All we do is ask the people themselves. Those…' I nodded towards the M stack. 'We just ask some of them what mailing lists they themselves are on. We'd only need to ask a few… the common denominator would be certain to turn up.'