The order seemed so impossible to carry out that I said to Tupra straight out: 'What do you mean, take him there? On what pretext? And what for, what are you going to do?' 'Tell him you're going to suck him off.' Reresby had lost patience with me, but only for a second: the look of surprise on my face must have been so intense (my anger would have shone through, irrepressible, immediate) that he doubtless read it as potential rebellion or even as a possible threat. And so he immediately added, suppressing his previous crude words (perhaps Reresby was the only foul-mouthed one, not Tupra or Ure or Dundas, and maybe each night he was who he was, to all intents and purposes and regardless of the consequences): 'Ask him if he wants a line of cocaine, top-grade stuff. He'll be bound to wait for me then, with his nose watering. He won't mind at all.’
'How do you know?' I asked. Then it occurred to me that this was a pointless question to ask Tupra, one to which any answer would be redundant. He devoted his life principally to knowing, or so I thought, and to knowing in advance, to recognising future faces; and unlike myself or Mulryan and Rendel, or possibly, occasionally, Jane Treves and Branshaw (although probably not Perez Nuix), he did not need to be guided towards that knowledge or to have the path ahead pointed out to him. He was the one who led us, who decided which aspects of people were of interest or concern to us, the person who questioned us about those particular areas: for example, if the singer Dick Dearlove would be capable of killing and in what circumstances, or if an anonymous man had any intention of returning a loan, all kinds of situations on all kinds of occasions. He had never asked me if I thought De la Garza was into cocaine or glue or opium, in fact, I couldn't recall his ever asking me anything about him. It was only now, therefore, that I stopped to consider. And when I thought about it, it seemed to me probable that De la Garza would be into everything: he was so eager, so arrogant and impetuous, as well as highly excitable.
'Yes, just tell him and you'll see,' Tupra answered, while he delicately offered his arm to Mrs Manoia and they set off together for the Ladies' toilet. They would doubtless find a queue. ‘I’ll be back within about seven minutes. I'll join you there. Keep him entertained until then.' And with that same finger, like the short barrel of a gun, he pointed at the hook painted on the door, and I could not help thinking of Peter Pan.
So I told Rafita, who, like Flavia, had been rendered temporarily speechless. My words made him recover, revive; he seemed interested, or, rather, somewhat over-eager.
'All right, let's go,' he said at once, and off we went through the door bearing the sign of the hook. Once we were inside the toilet for the mutilated, which was as deserted as it had been a short while before, he could not conceal a certain impatience at the prospect, he must have thought the cocaine might mitigate his drunkenness, he had started feeling slightly dizzy, fortunately nothing very grave, he was unlikely actually to throw up, but he was not in full command of his feet during the short walk with its many human obstacles, I put this down in part as well to his demented dancing and, of course, to his consequent breathlessness, then I realised that his shoelaces were undone, both of them, he could have had a really nasty fall and been left for dead on the dance floor, the hordes would have finished him off and saved us a few problems. 'So you haven't got it, then?' he wanted to know.
'No, Mr Reresby has it,' I replied, and it occurred to me that Reresby could as easily have some as none at all; it wouldn't be difficult for someone like him to get hold of it, being able to hand around a bit of cocaine can prove very useful these days and he knew how to handle himself in any territory. 'He said he wouldn't be long. He was going to see if he could do something about the whipping you gave our bit of pussy with that whacko string bag you've got on your head, that basket.' At this point, I had no hesitation about telling him off, besides, when abroad one acquires a rapid and baseless intimacy with one's compatriots, usually to ill or even worse effect, but it has the advantage that, when necessary, you can come straight to the point. De la Garza was causing me too many problems, all of which, and this was the worst of it, had been entirely avoidable. I had instantly adapted my speech to his customary brand of fake slang (normally, I would never myself use words like 'whacko' or 'pussy'); in terms of gaining familiarity, this was the equivalent of the hundred-yard dash. 'I mean imagine wearing a ridiculous thing like that and then whipping your dance partner across the face with it, I dread to think how her husband will react when he sees that welt on her face.' Horrified, I suddenly remembered one of the words Manoia had asked me about – 'uno sfregio'. 'We're going to return her to him with a kind of sfregio, if, that is, I understood his gesture correctly, the thumbnail drawn across his cheek; this could be very tricky, he's not going to like it one bit, although it would have been worse if the scratch had been on her bazza rather than on her guancia, then Manoia might have taken it as an allusion, a joke, a revenge on my part for his rudeness, although poor Flavia's chin isn't at all protuberant and so isn't properly speaking a bazza.' – 'He'll crucify you, De la Garza. I told you the guy had a lot of influence at the Vatican, well, in the whole of Italy really, including Sicily.' -I myself was surprised to find myself using that expression (about crucifying), one I would never normally use, it must have been an association of ideas with the Vatican, I suppose, which must be crammed with crucifixes, at least one in every room – 'You wouldn't want to cross him, he's a real snake in the grass' – I was clearly still making associations, and slipping into the mode of speech, part crude, part high-flown, of that terrible perfumed boor – 'I just hope Reresby can explain it away: that it wasn't deliberate, that you didn't realise. You didn't do it on purpose, did you, Rafita?' – I had never before, it seemed to me, addressed him like that directly; in fact, I had first heard Peter use the diminutive form of his name only after the attache had left his house that night empty-handed and without dipping his wick, to drive off and crash his car on the road somewhere, along with the Mayor and Mayoress of Thame or Bicester or Bloxham or Wroxton (except that we did not have such luck).
'Of course I didn't do it intentionally, come off it, I don't I want to miss out on dipping the old wick, you know, I don't want to ruin my chances of a quick fuck. I hope you two haven't screwed things up for me, you've broken my concentration, you have, all that hard work down the drain, you arseholes. I was just going in for the kill too.' – That's what he said, he had a real knack for mingling vulgarity and prissiness, 'dipping the old wick' and 'broken my concentration', and 'down the drain' and 'going in for the kill', that terrible jumble of registers and references so typical of Spanish nowadays, and much in vogue with many Spanish writers, including certain depressingly old-fashioned young people, who positively reek of the old days, perhaps because contemptible traditions are so easy to adopt, they're very tenacious. I wasn't prepared to go that far, to adapt to such a fashion, to join in: imitating such an affectation would be a concession too far.
'What quick fuck are you talking about? God, De la Garza, you're obsessed with dipping your wick. Just forget it, will you? It doesn't make any difference to you who it is, does it? It could be your old aunt, for all you care – and I warned you that her husband was watching. Why don't you just go to a prostitute now and again, I'm sure your salary would stretch to that. I mean the idea wouldn't even have occurred to her. And then, to top it all, you lash her face with that hairnet of yours. She won't even want to say goodbye to you.’