In the Evil Day

19

…HAMBURG…

In the morning, Anselm spread out the family tree his great-aunt had drawn up on pieces of paper, taping pages together as the record widened and lengthened. He had found it, carefully folded, in a desk drawer in the small sitting room. Unfolded, it was half the size of a single-bed sheet.

Pauline had traced the family back into the German primeval forest. The Hamburg branch had come to the city in 1680. From then on, she had recorded in her minute script the occupation of every member who achieved some distinction. Here a senator, here a consul, aldermen, physicians, a writer, a judge, attorneys, scholars, a composer. The rest were presumably just merchants. There was a French connection too, Anselm noticed. Pauline had written Huguenot in parentheses after the French names of people two Anselms married in the late 1600s.

Anselm found his grandfather, Lucas, and siblings Gunther, Pauline and Moritz. The birth dates, marriages and offspring of the first three were recorded, as were Lucas’s death in 1974 and Gunther’s in 1971. For Moritz, there was only his date of birth: 1908.

What became of Moritz, who looked like Count Haubold von Einsiedel? Did he marry? Were there children? When did he die?

Anselm remembered his father talking about Gunther. In 1940, the three children had been sent to live with Gunther and his American wife in Baltimore and they never really went home to Hamburg. But his father had never mentioned Moritz.

Time to go to work. Beginning to run in the morning was like starting an old machine, like pulling the cord of a lawnmower never oiled, the moving pieces reluctant, grating.

When he was warm, moving without pain, Manila came to his mind: Angelica Muir, the side-on look of her, the small nose, her teeth, the taste of her.

After the first lunch, he had many meals-lunches, dinners, late breakfasts, early breakfasts-with O’Malley, Angelica and Kaskis. They went to all kinds of gatherings and parties, everything seemed to turn into a party. O’Malley floated in the culture, spoke fluent Tagalog, knew everyone from millionaire Marcos cronies to penniless hardline Communists. He never stopped paying, no one else was allowed to pay. And, when things were moving at some party, he broke into song-country amp; western songs, Irish songs, operatic arias, songs from the War of Independence against the Spanish, Neil Diamond’s greatest hits, Cuban revolutionary songs.

O’Malley had called himself a financial adviser. His firm was Matcham, Suchard, Loewe, two secretaries and an elegant crew-cut Filipino with an American accent and a wardrobe of Zegna suits.

After he had filed his last story from the Philippines, Anselm had dinner with O’Malley and Angelica and Kaskis. She was wearing a green silk dress that touched her only on the shoulders, her nipples, her sharp hipbones. By midnight, fifteen people were in the party. At 4 a.m., they were in a garden, smoking the weed from the mountains, drinking out of the bottle, San Miguel, vodka, anything, fifty or sixty people, talking politics, breaking off to join O’Malley in songs about heartbreak, revenge, and dying for freedom. Around 5 a.m., under a tree in the heady night, he told Angelica that he was in love with her, it had come to him suddenly, no, a lie, from the moment he met her.

In the shadows, she kissed him, his head in her hands, her tongue in his mouth, touched his teeth with her perfect teeth, moved them, a silken abrasion felt in the bones of his face. It went on for a long time.

That kiss was in Anselm’s mind as he ran down the home stretch, a cold wind coming over the Alster, his eyes watering. He remembered the soft, damp night, the feel of the tropical tree against his back, against his spine, Angelica’s hipbones, her pubic bone on his, that he wanted to kiss her forever. If necessary, they could be fed intravenously while they kissed.

And then, at 5.30 a.m., he had to leave, the day already opening, a sky streaked from edge to edge with pale trails as if some silent armada of jets had passed in the darkness. Angelica put her hands into the taxi, ran them over his face like a blind person, said, ‘You should have spoken.’

She put her head in, one last kiss, their lips bruised, puffy, like boxers’ lips.

O’Malley appeared. ‘The right thing now, boyo,’ he said. ‘Go home and tell them to pull the plug on the miserable old cunt.’

Taking off, looking down at the hopeless tilting shanties, children, dogs, his numb fingers trying to direct the nozzle’s airstream onto his face, his eyes, it came to Anselm.

On the first night in the Tap Room, the Rotary harlot with the hand that lay on him like a big spider, O’Malley had believed that he was CIA and he had never changed his mind.

Years later, on that morning in Cyprus, two clean men, soaked, scrubbed, shampooed, cleaner than they would ever be again, after the doctors took off their gloves and left, Riccardi said something.

‘Why me?’ Riccardi said, not looking at Anselm. ‘Why am I the one they didn’t hurt?’

A hundred metres to go to the gates, no wind left, aching.

He couldn’t run it out, stopped, stood with his hands on his hips, feeling sick. Walked the rest of the way, trying to regain composure.

Eyes on him. He felt them and he looked.

Inskip was on the balcony, black T-shirt, shaking his head. He drew on a cigarette. A second, then smoke came out of him like his spirit escaping.

20

…LONDON…

Security rang and she went to the bare, functional room and looked at the man downstairs. The equipment was good quality, big colour monitor, and there were two angles, full frontal, close up, and full length, left profile.

He was tall, dark hair flat on his head, cut short. He looked French, Mediterranean, a long nose, broken, no twitches or quick eye movements, that was a good sign, coat with a leather collar.

‘Bag?’ said Caroline Wishart.

‘All okay metalwise,’ said the security man.

‘Send him up.’

He was standing when she came into the interview room, nodded at her, eyes grey-green, the colour of the underside of poplar leaves, the poplars at the bottom of her grandmother’s garden.

‘Caroline Wishart,’ she said. ‘I’ve only got a couple of minutes.’

He took a video cassette out of a side pocket.

‘Sit down,’ she said.

She took the tape. A slip of paper was taped to the side with numbers written on it in a strong vertical hand: 1170. Slotted it into the machine, and found the remote control. She switched the set on, pressed the play button. Just static. She pressed again, pressed anything. Numbers appeared at the bottom of the screen.

‘Fuck this,’ she said. She looked at him. He was sitting with his hands on his stomach. Most men would have been twitching to intervene. Either he was different or he was even more technologically incompetent that she was.

He said nothing. He didn’t look at her.

‘Can you do this?’ she said, hating to have to say it.

He held out his hand. She gave him the remote. He switched off the set, switched on, pressed a button, pressed another.

The film began.

The sub-tropical plain, dark.

When she saw the bodies, Caroline felt sweat start in her hair and she began to feel sick, a small wave of nausea, a ripple. She glanced at the man, Mackie. He had laced his fingers.

At a certain point, Caroline closed her eyes. She turned her head slightly so that Mackie couldn’t see.

‘That’s it,’ he said.

She opened her eyes and watched him retrieve the tape. He didn’t sit down again, stood looking at her. She didn’t know what you did with something like this. This wasn’t politicians fucking rent boys. That was simple, just an extension of the story that got her to London, her breakthrough story: Mayor Denies Brothel Payoff. She should get Halligan in…no, he’d simply take over, it wouldn’t be her story anymore.

‘They tried to kill me,’ he said.

‘Who?’

He shrugged. ‘Sent people to my hotel.’

‘And?’

Another shrug. ‘I’m here.’

She realised. ‘You offered it to someone else?’

‘And now I’m offering it to you.’

‘Could be faked,’ she said because she couldn’t think of any other response. Distrust, suspicion-they were always sound responses in journalism. ‘I’d have to show it to other people here, they’d check it out…then we could talk about money.’

He said nothing, just picked up his bag and walked. She hadn’t expected that, he was going. She felt something slipping out of her hands, got up, went after him, touched his sleeve, grabbed his arm.

‘Settle down, hold it,’ she said. ‘Just hold on for one second, will you, I’m not…’

Mackie stopped, turned his head. ‘What?’

‘I don’t have the authority to buy something like this.’ She stood close to him, still holding his sleeve, looked into his eyes, it often worked. ‘I’m sorry I said that about, about being faked. I’m sorry. Will you leave the tape with me? A copy? I promise I’ll give you an answer today.’

He moved away from her, just a small distance. ‘No,’ he said, ‘this was a mistake.’

Caroline knew she should plead. There was a time for pleading. It was any time you saw the shimmer of a story that would go on the front page without argument, would require no exercise of editorial judgement by any drink-befuddled executive prat, would speak for itself in short headline words an eight-year-old could understand.

‘Listen,’ she said, holding on to his arm. ‘I don’t need a copy, an hour, two hours, that’s it, two hours, that’s all I need, I’ll talk to people. An answer in two hours. No bullshit. Give me a number.’

He looked at her for so long that she let go his arm and blinked.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Trust me.’

‘One o’clock,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring you at one. Just say yes or no.’

His accent wasn’t Scottish now. It was South African.

‘Mr Mackie, we might need a contract, a legal document, you know, we could do this through lawyers, you’d be protected and we’d…’ ‘Just say yes or no. Twenty thousand. I’ll tell you where to send it.’

When he was gone, she went to her tiny cubicle, her first day in it.

She rang security and asked for prints of Mackie, sat back and thought for a long time about what she should do. This was her story: the man had come to her because of her byline on the Brechan story. But it was too big for her. He wanted cash for something that might be worthless.

It wasn’t. She felt it in her marrow. Her instinct said this was a big story. And her instinct was good. It had taken her to three big stories in Birmingham.

But Halligan would take it away from her. The story would disappear into the inner sanctum without her.

She had to deliver it personally, the way she’d delivered Brechan. Brechan had been the most wonderful luck. She would be writing lifestyle crap now, ten hottest pick-up bars in the City, if someone hadn’t decided to give her Brechan’s rent boy.

‘We know your work from Birmingham,’ the gaunt man in the pub in Highgate said. ‘We think you’re the person to expose this.’

Luck, just pure luck.

It didn’t happen twice.

Who to go to now? Who to trust? Who could get the money?

Colley. He was the only one. She’d been introduced to him in the pub and he’d bought her drinks and made lewd suggestions. Her boss in the permanent catfight that was the Frisson section had told her that Colley ran his own mini-empire. He kept his own hours, only came to conferences when he felt like it.

She went to his office, not a cubical, a proper office with floor-to-ceiling walls, and knocked.

‘Enter,’ shouted Colley.

He was sitting at a large desk covered with files and newspapers looking at a laptop, a cigarette burning in an old saucer. She thought he looked like someone who had lost a large amount of weight quickly.

‘Caroline Wishart,’ she said. ‘We met in the pub?’

‘I remember. Some things I remember.’

‘I need help.’

Colley looked at her. His eyes were heavy-lidded and he was squinting as if caught in a spotlight. ‘First you pinch the Brechan story from under my nose,’ he said, ‘now you come crawling for help.’ He pointed downwards. ‘Under the desk, you upper-class slut. Unzip me with your teeth.’

Caroline sat down. She had to tough this out. ‘I thought your generation still had button-ups,’ she said. ‘Button-up flies are hard on teeth. All I need is the benefit of your experience.’

He smiled, thin lips, yellow teeth. ‘All? Took me thirty years to get where I am. Cost me my liver and my hair, most of my brain. You ruling-class gels walk in, you pout and shake your little tits and they make you editor of some new fucking rubbish section. Grovel to me.’

‘I’ve just seen a film. Soldiers killing civilians. White soldiers killing blacks. A man wants to sell it.’

She told him about Mackie, about the tape labelled 1170.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘probably South Africans, won’t surprise anybody.

Killed blacks like flies. That’s not news anymore.’

‘He says the soldiers are American. They’re shooting people lying on the ground. Seems like a whole village. It’s like an execution. Kids too.’

Colley moved his head around, light catching his dirty glasses. ‘What was the name again?’

‘Mackie.’

‘And he says people tried to kill him in his hotel in London?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s he want?’

‘Twenty grand.’

‘That’s it? Comes in, shows you the film, says he wants twenty grand?’

‘Yes.’

‘Generally, there’s a bit more mystery and foreplay. What’s your feeling about the film?’

‘Real. And awful. Some of the people might be identifiable.’

‘Soldiers?’

‘There’s a group near helicopters. Might be two civilians. He says someone who wanted to buy the film tried to kill him. When I said I needed time, he walked.’

‘Bluff.’

‘He was walking,’ said Caroline. ‘He was going. No doubt in my mind.’

‘Well, the walk. I’ve had walkers. Let them piss off, get to the lift.

Where’d you let him get to?’

‘Okay, I’m learning,’ Caroline said. ‘He’s ringing at one, he wants a yes or no. Should I take it to Halligan?’

She watched Colley scratch his head, a delicate operation. He’d had two kinds of hair transplants and a surgical procedure involving strips of his scalp being moved around, with strange results.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My view is that the proper thing to do is take this to Halligan immediately.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘if that’s your advice.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not. Twenty grand’s nothing. Is this a joint venture then?’

‘It is.’

‘Give me an hour. We can deliver this without Halligan and the fucking lawyers.’