The Darkest Day

SIX

The tailor had been cutting suits since the Second World War. He told Victor as much while he waited in the fitting room of the low-ceilinged atelier. The establishment was small but stylish, with a long waiting list of elite clientele. It was owned and run by a single tailor who was so short he had to stand on a rickety three-legged stool to measure Victor’s shoulders.

‘I was a boy cutting fabric for Nazi officers,’ the tailor explained, looking as though he might fall off the stool to his death at any moment. ‘Can you imagine?’

Victor said, ‘I’m not sure I can.’

The tailor snorted. Not quite a laugh, not quite a huff. It sounded to Victor that the man had a chest infection or some persistent pulmonary problem. The tailor did not seem to be any less energetic as a result.

‘I smoke sixty a day,’ he’d bragged. ‘And I’ve outlived all my boyhood friends who did not.’

Victor offered a hand to help the man off the stool, but he batted it away with palpable disdain and dropped down with a creak of floorboards, or maybe knees.

His fingers were stained by the lifetime of smoking he boasted of. Framed black-and-white photographs adorned the walls of the atelier. They showed the old tailor with clients, maybe even celebrities from yesteryear Victor didn’t recognise. In every one the tailor, like his clients, was smoking. One even showed him standing among tobacco plants in some tropical plantation.

The tailor wore a three-piece stone-brown suit complete with pocket square and pocket watch. His glasses were bifocals with thick lenses and the Cuban heels gave him enough height for the top of his shiny scalp to hit five feet if he stood straight-backed, which he did not.

He fetched the bespoke suit from a back room and hung it up on a wheeled rail for Victor to try on.

‘I don’t understand your reasoning, my boy. You already have a charcoal suit. Off the rack, obviously, but of decent enough quality to avoid outright humiliation. Why pay for another?’

‘Do you not want my business?’ Victor asked.

‘I want you to look your best,’ the tailor countered. ‘Is that so hard to comprehend? Is your brain not in proportion to your height?’

Victor couldn’t help but like the man.

‘Charcoal is so unadventurous,’ the tailor said with a tut. ‘It is but the sickly cousin of black. A pauper to be ignored, not a gentleman to be envied. Black is a colour. Charcoal is a shade.’

‘Black is the absence of colour.’

The tailor acted as though he hadn’t heard him. ‘What about it? Black would be more striking. You’ll look good in black.’

‘Everyone looks good in black,’ Victor said.

The tailor looked hopeful. ‘Is that a yes?’

Victor shook his head. ‘I only wear black to a funeral.’

The tailor did his best not to sigh. He looked pained. His face was a spiderweb of deep wrinkles. ‘But of course. Why would you wear black at any other time? Why would anyone want to look his best? What kind of world is it when someone elects to wear what suits him less? What about a nice navy? It’ll be more sophisticated, but still subtle.’

Victor unhooked the jacket and slipped his arms into the sleeves. He said nothing.

The tailor said, ‘I wish you had at least gone for a pinstripe or a colourful lining.’

Suits were important to Victor. He wore one more often than not. A suit gave him an air of authority and respect. In a suit he looked like a man of no small importance while blending in to the masses of office workers, lawyers and bankers found in almost every major city. A suit was ideal camouflage for the urban terrain where he both lived and worked.

Victor buttoned up the jacket and rolled his shoulders.

‘It’s perfect,’ he said, feeling the extra room he had asked for, which made it easier to hide a gun, to fight or climb or run for his life.

The old tailor’s eyebrows rose and arched and a curved fence of closely spaced grooves deepened across his forehead. He wrinkled his nose and blew air out of pursed lips. He did not approve.

‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘That won’t do at all. We need to fix this. It’s terrible. The fit is nothing short of an abomination. I’m ashamed of myself.’

‘I like it the way it is. This is exactly what I asked for.’

‘Then I need to saw open your skull and check you have a brain, my boy. Look here. You don’t need all this room across the chest. Are you planning on getting fat? Are you planning on growing breasts?’

Victor shook his head.

The tailor chewed his bottom lip. He looked stressed. Sweat beaded on his forehead. ‘Let me bring it in a smidgen. It’ll look all the sharper. Please? I can’t let you walk the streets like this.’

‘I prefer it the way it is,’ Victor replied. ‘You’ve done an excellent job.’

‘I’ve embarrassed my name and the name of my father. How about a tiny tuck?’ He held a finger and thumb a few millimetres apart. ‘Just a little? I promise it will still allow you room to breathe. For me. Please.’

‘This is comfortable.’

‘Comfortable? That’s a filthy word if ever I heard one. Barbaric even. If all we cared about was being comfortable then we would be a huge hideous mass of synthetic materials, shapeless and indistinguishable from one another. Sir, if you came in here for comfort then you must have misread the sign above my door. I do not sell comfort here. I sell suits. I sell style.’

Victor remained silent.

‘Fine,’ the tailor said with a heavy exhale. ‘I give up. We’ll do it your way and you can walk out of here knowing I shall live my last years in a state of unhappiness and shame.’

‘I’m glad we can agree.’

The tailor removed a solid silver cigarette case from his inside jacket pocket and thumbed it open. He held it towards Victor, who shook his head.

‘A gentleman should smoke,’ the tailor said as he took out a cigarette for himself. He didn’t light it. ‘And a man who appreciates a tailored suit needs to smoke. He must know his tobacco like he knows his fabrics.’ The tailor held the unlit cigarette beneath his nostrils and inhaled. ‘Suits are my love, but tobacco is my passion.’

‘I quit,’ Victor said.

‘Then start again,’ the tailor implored. ‘Before it’s too late. But only the best. Good cigarettes are like a good suit. Utterly distinct and separate from the mass-produced garbage so commonplace today. No two varieties of cigarette, if made correctly, are the same. They have a range of flavours and feels that titillate the palate. Like a fine wine, almost.’

‘Most wine tastes like vinegar to me.’

The tailor looked at him with disgust. ‘Your barbarism knows no bounds.’

Victor nodded. The tailor helped him out of the jacket. ‘I’m just going to tidy up these threads and the suit will be ready to collect this afternoon. Or you can wait here and I’ll do it now. Your choice.’

‘I’ll wait, if it’s all the same to you.’

The tailor shrugged. ‘Child, it makes no difference to me what you do. Would you like a drink? Or something to read? I’ll be about twenty minutes. I’m assuming a barbarian such as yourself can actually read? I’m probably giving you too much credit, aren’t I?’

He asked as though he expected an answer.

‘I’ll entertain myself,’ Victor said. ‘Take your time, please.’

The old man nodded and went to leave. He stopped and turned around. ‘And a haircut and shave wouldn’t kill you…’

He trailed off, muttering under his breath as he closed the door behind him.

Alone in the measuring room, surrounded by mannequins, hangers and fabrics, Victor stood still, listening to the quieting footsteps of the old tailor as he shuffled away. A moment later, another door clicked open and then closed again. Victor pictured the tailor settling into a comfortable chair to make the final adjustments to the charcoal suit.

He had twenty minutes.

Victor reached into a trouser pocket and withdrew a mini plastic bottle labelled as containing antibacterial hand gel. There was a small amount of ethanol inside, for the appropriate smell, but the bottle contained clear silicone gel. The consistency wasn’t quite the same as alcohol gel, but it was similar enough to pass a cursory examination. Not even an airport security guard had ever done more than sniff the bottle, let alone apply some and compare it to a genuine product.

He squeezed a blob of silicone gel into his palm and spent two minutes rubbing it over his hands, paying particular attention to his fingertips and palms. The gel was cool and oily. It took a further minute to dry. His hands were now coated in a waterproof barrier, invisible to the naked eye, which would prevent the oil from his skin being left behind on any surfaces he came into contact with. No oil meant no fingerprints.

Three minutes to apply the gel meant seventeen remaining.

He replaced the bottle in his pocket and approached the room’s only window. The sash window was open a crack and the semi-transparent white drapes rippled in the breeze. Victor pushed them to one side and heaved open the window until it was high enough for him to bend over and step through on to the balcony outside.