London and the South-East

19

IN HIS BLUE uniform, Paul is towing a pallet of products onto the shop floor. The pallet is wrapped in cling film, so thickly that the whole thing is shiny, white, opaque. It crashes and rattles as he pulls it over the uneven concrete of the warehouse — then is suddenly quiet, only whispering on the smooth shop floor. He shoves it into its aisle, and wanders unhurriedly back to the warehouse. Passing from the shop floor to the warehouse always feels to him like exiting a stage; it must be even more like this, he supposes, during the day when the shop is open and the customers, like an audience, are there.

The warehouse is parky enough to turn olive oil opaque in its bottles. In the loading bay it is parkier still. The four-metre-high folding doors are open to the night sky, and outside a fine drizzle is falling through the orange light. The pallets, unloaded from the lorry, stand around and quickly Paul tries to estimate their weight. He does not want one full of pet foods, or detergent, or bleach. Heavy things. (The heaviest ones, of course — the wines and spirits, the mineral waters — cannot be moved without the hydraulic pallet truck, which makes them light work, like pulling an empty; but only Gerald is trained to use that.) Through a tear in its film wrapping, he sees that one of the pallets is loaded with packet soups and noodles — not too bad. His gloved hand grasps the side grille, and with a brief strong tug to start it moving, walking sideways with his pulling arm outstretched, he steers it noisily out of the warehouse. The shop floor seems warmly lit by comparison. Temperate, and almost plush. Posters over the aisle tops show pictures of tasty-looking food and happy-looking people. Everything here is presentation, and precisely fabricated effect.

On Wednesday morning Watt is on duty. From seven o’clock, Paul spies him on the shop floor, wearing a grey suit — a suit the colour of a dark miserable dawn. Looking harassed and slightly irate, he prowls the aisles with one hand stuffed into his suit pocket. Watt never speaks to the night-shift staff himself; whatever he has to say he says to Graham, who passes it on in his squeaky voice. Paul is not in non-foods — he has been sent to help a novice in trouble with the pasta. And he is there, slinging penne onto the shelves, when Watt and Graham walk into the aisle, Graham’s leather jacket shining like wet tar. Watt whispers something to him, and Graham shouts, ‘Move it, move it.’ Looking up, Paul nods — and for a moment, his eyes meet Watt’s. Stuck in his irritable stare, Paul is suddenly unsure of himself. The letter is in his hip pocket — it was dawn when he finished it, and switched off the electric light, leaving the lounge ashen. Watt moves on. Of course he moves on. Why wouldn’t he move on? Nevertheless, the moment unsettles Paul. Watt does not seem the sort of man to take seriously improbable tip-offs; nor to suffer nonsense sympathetically. He seems an unimaginative institutional type to his sturdy bones. Most probably, he would pass the letter straight to Macfarlane, and suggest a thorough investigation to unmask the sender.

Mounting the linoleum stairs on eight o’clock, Paul is more or less persuaded of the wisdom of taking it home and disposing of it. Then he notices who he is following. Ten steps further up, he sees the square heavy-seated form, one hand still stuck in his suit pocket. Quietly, Paul follows him along the windowless corridor — past the locker room, where he had been headed. Past the notice-boards. Past two girls, teenagers, laughing in their blue uniforms, smelling of cigarette smoke. Watt mutters good morning to them. Then he pushes through the swing door into the staff canteen. Paul stops. Through the pane of strengthened glass in the door, he can see that the canteen is quite full. Watt goes over to the managers’ table — it is exactly the same as all the other tables, and its status is entirely unofficial, but no one except managers ever sits there. And managers never sit anywhere else. Taking off his suit jacket, Watt places it over the back of one of the moulded plastic chairs. Then he moves to the food servery, takes a brown tray, and in an egalitarian spirit joins the line of staff queuing for breakfast. There is no one else sitting at the managers’ table, which is in the sun, near the windows.

Paul waits outside in the corridor. He does not know what to do. (In the queue, Watt is laughing with some hair-netted girls from the bakery.) The jacket is there — he simply has to stuff the letter into one of its pockets. There will never be a more propitious opportunity. (Now Watt is talking to the serving woman, telling her not to give him too much scrambled egg.) Paul seems unable to move. Some people — men from the meat counter with brown bloodstains on their aprons — stand up from a table, tucking their tabloids under their arms, and walk towards him. He will have to move, one way or the other … The door swings open. The men are pushing past him, and at the same time, without thinking what he is doing, he is pushing past them, into the canteen. It is the first time that he has been in there in the morning and it feels foreign to him, the levels of light and noise much higher than he is used to. Taking the letter from his pocket, he forces himself towards the managers’ table. The thing is not to try and be too subtle about it — is just to do it quickly. Quickly, and then walk — at an ordinary pace — straight to the smoking room. No one will notice if he does it like that. He is already there. He feels very prominent in the white sunlight. And already he is fucking it up. He has stopped. He is standing next to the jacket, looking out of the window. Why? No one ever looks out of the canteen window; there is nothing to see except car park and sky. And then into the car park slides the yellow Saab.

With quickening urgency, Paul turns, and sweating freely starts to fumble with the jacket. He cannot find the pockets … He cannot find the pockets! How is that possible? How is it …

He finds one — it is heavy with objects — and shoves the damp letter in.

Then he sees Watt. Preceded by his tray, he is only a few metres off, his face fixed in an expression of incredulity. No longer smiling, standing stock still in the warm sunlight, Paul is mute. ‘What are you doing?’ Watt says. ‘What have you taken?’

Paul shakes his head.

There is a strange quiet in the canteen.

Watt puts his tray down on the table, and with his eyes still on Paul stoops slightly and pulls his jacket from the back of the chair. Still staring at Paul he searches slowly through the pockets. ‘What did you take?’ he says again.

‘Nothing.’ The sun is surprisingly strong. Frozen peas of sweat slide down Paul’s sides. With a look of distaste — pulling something nasty from a plughole — Watt produces the envelope. He looks at Paul, and someone laughs. Without putting his jacket down, Watt tears open the envelope, and unfolds the letter. When he looks up, his expression — a sort of suspicious outraged squint — seems to precipitate more widespread laughter. Paul is silent, sweating in the sunlight like a suddenly illuminated herbivore. Seemingly oblivious to the surrounding laughter, Watt feels his jacket for something. A pen — a proper ink pen. Unsteadily, using his left arm as a writing surface, he scribbles something on the letter and holds it out. Paul’s mouth is very dry. Watt has written Call me (underlined) and a mobile number. He is already in his seat, having a sip of sour orange juice and eyeing his wet slices of scrambled egg with a shrunken appetite. Paul takes a step towards the smoking room; then — suddenly remembering who and where he is — performs a U-turn, and heads for the exit as the volume of voices swells.

For a few minutes, he hides in the locker room, pulling himself together. Then, on the lookout for Martin, he slips out into the morning. With shivering hands he lights up. He did not want to involve himself in the situation — that was the whole point of the letter. Now that Watt knows his identity, however, he is terrified that he will take it to Macfarlane — or worse, to Martin himself.

His first plan is to phone him at noon. He does not. Tonight, he tells himself, as he undresses, tonight when I get up. Heather’s presence in the lounge provides all the inhibition he needs to prevent him from following through on this second plan, and he leaves for work with an unpleasant sense of omission. It is mainly to disperse this feeling that, when he finds himself with a few minutes at the bus stop, he tries the scrawled number. With his eyes on the murky point where the bus will appear, he listens to the pulses, hoping for voicemail. If it is voicemail he will not leave a message …

‘Roy Watt.’

For a second or two Paul says nothing. ‘Who is this?’ Watt says.

‘It’s … Paul Rainey.’

‘Who?’

‘You know — the letter …’

‘Oh.’ Watt pauses. ‘Yes. What’s your name?’

‘Paul Rainey.’

‘Well, Mr Rainey,’ Watt says. Paul sees the bus in the twilight, two stops away. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

‘Okay.’

‘Not in the store, of course.’

‘No.’

‘So …’ There is a short silence, then Watt makes an uneasy suggestion: ‘Perhaps if I could buy you a drink?’

The Stadium is a sprawling pub on the Old Shoreham Road. On Friday night the car park out front is full, and a cobwebbed yellow garden spot stares up at the swaying sign. Inside, Paul feels vague and sleepy. He has not had breakfast. The hubbub of the pub sounds muffled to him, and he experiences his own presence there as something strange. He has never been in the Stadium — an unusually large local — until today; having to pass through the foot tunnel under the railway line, and over the mini-motorway of the Old Shoreham Road, makes it seem further from Lennox Road than it is. It is only for this reason that he feels safe meeting so near the houses — his own and Martin’s. He wanted somewhere within walking distance — and both he and Watt wanted somewhere where they were unknown, and unlikely to be seen. He yawns — a huge, hollow, face-twisting yawn.

Watt is standing at the bar. When he turns he is smiling like a maniac, showing the wide spaces between his teeth. He is wearing a concrete-coloured jacket with a brown corduroy collar and shapeless, high-waisted, low-seated jeans. His hands shaking, he sets the drinks — his pint of Guinness and Paul’s Bloody Mary — down on the table.

‘Thanks,’ Paul says.

‘That’s okay.’

Paul is sitting on a padded bench. There are no other seats, and with a sort of desperation, Watt scans the room for a moment, and then — unleashing a strange little laugh — sits down next to him. Paul pretends to move up, but there is nowhere to move to. ‘Well,’ Watt says, still smiling, ‘here we are.’ An ex-ex-smoker, he takes a pack of ten Silk Cut from his pocket, leaning ostentatiously out to the side as he does so. While he lights his cigarette — seemingly out of practice, he puffs at it furiously, as if it might not take, singeing it halfway to the filter in the lighter flame — Paul tastes his Bloody Mary. The vodka and tomato flavours seem separate in his mouth; the vodka very unpleasant, the tomato squash only slightly less so. Watt inspects the Silk Cut now smouldering satisfactorily in his hand. He seems to have mastered the worst of his nerves, and is more like the man Paul sees in the supermarket. ‘So …’ he says, looking up, straight ahead over the small oblong of the table. ‘What makes you think Martin’s been using unlisted suppliers then?’

‘It’s what I’ve been told,’ Paul says, with his elbows pressed into his sides.

‘Who told you?’

‘Who told me? Bloke who works with me.’

‘What bloke?’

‘Just … a bloke.’

‘A bloke,’ Watt says. ‘A bloke who works on the night shift?’ A frown of scepticism enters his voice. ‘How does he know?’

‘Um. I’m not sure.’

Watt, it seems, was hoping for something more than this — something more impressively sourced — and Paul says, ‘To be honest … I want to be honest, yeah.’

‘Yes?’

‘To be honest, I don’t know it’s true. What I said.’

Watt sighs. ‘I see.’

‘I’m sorry …’

Watt wrinkles his nose and takes a moody gulp of Guinness.

‘So you have no information? Nothing?’

‘Only what I was told …’

‘I mean proper information!’ His voice is suddenly peevish. ‘Not what your mate might have told you on the night shift.’ Points of irritated sweat shine on his hair-poor pate. ‘I mean, how does he know?’

Paul does not speak for a few moments. ‘Why don’t you have a look at the paperwork?’ he suggests. ‘There must be paperwork …’

‘I have looked at it.’

‘And?’

‘No. There’s nothing. I mean, there are …’

He stops, perhaps feeling unable to speak freely to someone who is a supermarket employee, and of the lowliest kind.

‘There are?’ Paul prompts him.

‘There are things which …’

‘Which?’

‘Which don’t quite add up,’ Watt snaps. With a dozen fierce stabs he stubs out his cigarette. Unsuccessfully — it persists in smoking feebly in the ashtray for a whole minute of sulky silence. Though Watt’s irritation has made him feel unimpressive, Paul is nevertheless pleased that the situation too seems to be smouldering out. His worry, of course, is that Watt will mention it to Martin, and he says, ‘Are you planning to mention —’ Watt interrupts him. ‘On their own they’re not enough.’

‘What aren’t?’

‘The things that don’t quite add up.’

‘Not enough for what?’

‘Not enough to take to the south-east manager.’

‘No.’

And then Watt says, ‘We need evidence.’

We need evidence. The implication — that he and Paul are somehow involved in something together. Paul has a slurp of Bloody Mary, wipes his mouth and says, ‘What do you mean?’ For the first time, Watt turns to look at him with his small eyes. ‘If I’m to go to the regional manager,’ he says, ‘I need some real evidence.’

‘Sure.’

‘Otherwise it’s just hearsay. It’s just gossip.’

‘Yes,’ Paul says. And then, ‘Maybe there is no evidence.’

Watt is having a second stab at putting out his cigarette. ‘What do you mean “no evidence”? There must be.’

‘I mean maybe it’s not true, what I was told.’

‘I think it is true.’

Surprised, Paul says, ‘You think it’s true?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Watt huffs and waves his hand. ‘Well … Those questionable items, those invoices … You know. It’s not like I didn’t suspect something.’

Paul tips his glass to his mouth, but there is no Bloody Mary left and only the ice cubes slide down and strike his teeth. Seeing this, Watt immediately says, ‘Another?’

‘Um …’

He is already up, and shoving his way to the bar.

To start his day with a Bloody Mary in the Stadium with Roy Watt is making Paul feel weird. In the din of the pub he feels like he is underwater; everything muffled, the sounds shapeless sub marine noise.

Setting the second Bloody Mary down on the table, Watt says, ‘So. We need some proper evidence.’

Paul does not particularly want to be involved in whatever scheme Watt is envisaging — and from his unsophisticated salesman’s smile, it is obvious that he is envisaging some sort of scheme. ‘Like what?’ Paul says, without enthusiasm.

‘Well — what would be the best sort of evidence to have?’

Paul pouts, tastes the Bloody Mary — a double this time. ‘Dunno,’ he says.

‘Well, the best evidence would be this, wouldn’t it.’ Watt is still smiling, his straight lip drawn up from his yellow, horse’s teeth — and what he says is so surprising that Paul wonders whether it is a joke. He inspects Watt’s eyes for a moment. Watt laughs — he has a solid, percussive, forced-sounding laugh. ‘That would be evidence,’ he says. ‘If I could go to the regional manager with that …’

‘I don’t understand,’ Paul says. ‘How would we —’

‘Look.’ Watt has turned on the padded bench so that he is facing him. ‘We get someone to pretend to be an unlisted fresh-produce supplier …’

Paul shakes his head. ‘Who?’

‘Whoever. It doesn’t matter. We get them to fix up a meeting with Short, offering to sell him something, some produce. We fix them up with a hidden camera, and get the whole thing on tape.’

That’s insane, Paul thinks. However, he says, ‘What if Martin doesn’t go for it?’

‘Let’s see, shall we?’

For a few moments, Paul says nothing. Then, trying to sound as if he is enquiring only out of politeness, he says, ‘Who are you going to get to be …’

‘The supplier?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You have to do that,’ Watt says. He starts to light another Silk Cut. ‘You have to find someone.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes.’

Paul shakes his head. ‘No, you see … I don’t know if I want to …’

‘You don’t want to what?’

‘I don’t know if I want to get involved in something like this …’

‘Then why did you send me the letter?’

Paul shrugs. Watt offers him a Silk Cut, and after a moment’s pause he takes it. ‘I’ve been wondering about that,’ Watt says, as Paul lights it. ‘What have you got against Martin?’

Paul pretends to be immersed in lighting the cigarette. Then he says, ‘What have you got against him?’

‘I think that’s well known, isn’t it? Even on the night shift.’

‘Is it?’

‘Do your wife, did he?’ Watt says, with a smutty laugh. ‘Something like that?’ He is joking — isn’t he? — and Paul tries to smile. ‘Nothing like that.’

‘What then?’

Paul takes an unhappy swig of Bloody Mary.

‘The fact is,’ Watt says, ‘if you don’t help me get some evidence, I’ll just have to put the whole thing to Jock, and that means telling him who told me. Martin too, of course. I’m sure they’ll want to talk to you about it. You can’t just go around making accusations like that. Not if you can’t back them up …’

‘I don’t understand,’ Paul says. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘I want you to find someone to pretend to be a fresh-produce supplier.’

‘Who?’

‘Whoever! Doesn’t matter. Look,’ Watt says, his tone softening, ‘it’s important I don’t know the person. That’s all. In case something goes wrong. My name can’t get mixed up in this. You must be able to understand that …’

‘What about my name?’

‘It’s the hardly the same. You just need to find someone.’

‘Yeah, find someone, find someone. And how am I going to persuade them to do something like this?’

For a moment, Watt looks shocked. Paul’s tone was insolent, mutinous — he seemed to have forgotten that he is a night-shift warehouseman speaking to a senior member of the store management. It is, however, a highly unusual situation, and Watt lets it pass. ‘Tell you what,’ he says, swallowing a mouthful of Guinness. ‘I’ll pay them …’ He pauses, looking very earnest. ‘Two hundred quid. If you can find someone,’ he says, ‘I’ll pay them two hundred quid. All right?’

‘You’ll pay them two hundred quid?’

‘I will. So … That should make it easier to find someone, shouldn’t it?’

Paul sighs. ‘I don’t know about suppliers … I don’t know how these things work …’

‘You don’t need to. I’ll explain everything. You find someone, and I’ll explain exactly what they have to do. All right?’

‘I don’t know …’

‘What don’t you know?’

‘If I can find someone.’

‘Well, you just try,’ Watt says, more menacingly. ‘See how you get on. I’m sure you’ll be able to — two hundred quid for a few hours’ work’s not bad. And I’ll sort out the equipment as well.’

‘What equipment?’

‘The hidden camera and all that. I’ll sort that out. You can leave that to me …’

He notices that Paul is staring at something on the other side of the room, and following his eyes, sees a young woman sitting with some other people.

Paul says, ‘Doesn’t she …?’

Work in the supermarket. A junior manager. Paul does not know her name — he sees her sometimes on the margins of his shift. She is in her late twenties, and her face, throat, arms and hands are entirely covered with fawn freckles — slightly strange-looking but not ugly, and Paul often wonders, with a tingle of excitement, whether they extend over the whole surface of her skin. ‘Who is she?’ he asks, in a quieter voice. Watt has turned on the bench so that he is almost facing the beige wall. ‘She’s … Her name’s Hazel,’ he says.

‘Do you think she’s seen us?’

‘How should I know? Look, I’ve got to leave.’

‘All right …’

‘Is she looking at us?’

‘No. If you’re leaving, I’ll come with you —’

‘No! We’ve got to leave separately.’

‘Why?’

‘What if we’re seen? Wait here for a few minutes. Just five minutes. Please. We mustn’t be seen together.’ He stands up — keeping his back to the part of the room where Hazel is sitting — and says, ‘I’ll call you next week.’ And then, pointedly, ‘I expect you’ll have found someone by then.’ Paul drains the last of the Bloody Mary — watery with melted ice — and stares obtusely at the tabletop.

When he looks up, Watt is no longer there.

Walking home through Amhurst Crescent, he thinks, What the fuck have I got myself mixed up in? He sighs, entering the smelly foot tunnel under the train tracks. And he is mixed up in it. Mixed up in something with someone who does not seem entirely sane. He emerges from the tunnel. Payne Avenue — not in fact an avenue, merely a quiet street — is empty and silent, except for some muffled music from the Kendal Arms. It seems extraordinary that Watt is prepared to shell out two hundred quid — more, with the equipment — on something so speculative, so shadowy, so impetuous, so wild. Of course, his whole professional life is on the line. Perhaps, Paul thinks, it is not surprising that he should be in such a state, that he should be so willing to use methods outside his normal pen-pushing modus operandi — twenty-five years of patient work and supermarket politics, store manager the prize, and just when it seems his, Martin Short sweeps past, and he is left with a modest pension, and years of senescence in which to savour the poisons of his failure.

On Saturday night Paul is still wondering who to sound out for the part of the produce supplier. His first thought was of the snooker hall. There would, however, be a possibility of Heather finding out somehow — and none of those lot would be able to persuade Martin that they were bona fide fruit wholesalers. What’s more, he might have seen them in town. A stranger then? Someone from a transients’ pub in Brighton? Paul imagines sidling up to a travelling salesman in the saloon of a two-star hotel and saying, ‘Hello, mate. I’m looking for someone to …’

And then his mind fastens onto the word ‘salesman’. A salesman. He knows a few of them. They would surely be well qualified for this sort of thing. They are all from out of town — from London and other parts of the south-east. And the subject of the impersonation is himself a sort of salesman. It is obviously the solution, and Paul immediately starts to think of the salesmen he knows, and wonder which of them to speak to. The first two he thinks of are Murray and the Pig, and there is no question, of course, of using them. Nor the likes of Wolé and Marlon. So who else? He looks through the numbers in his phone and finds others there. Some of them he has not seen or spoken to for years — their numbers probably obsolete — such as Mundjip from the Northwood days, and Nick and Paddy from Archway. Pax Murdoch is in prison in Thailand … In fact, for multifarious reasons, the options are more limited than he had hoped. In the end there is only one who properly fits what he is looking for, and that is Neil Mellor, one of his fellow managers at Park Lane Publications. Fortyish, worldly, quite well spoken, Neil would make a plausible fruit wholesaler. And he might like the look of a quick two hundred quid, too — PLP has surely folded, and who knows where he has washed up. Moreover, he did not know Eddy or Murray, and is unlikely to have stayed in touch with the Pig.

Paul phones him on Monday morning.

The first surprise — it seems utterly extraordinary — is that Park Lane Publications has not folded. It is still struggling on. Neil is on the sales floor there when he and Paul speak. He sounds slightly prickly — and this prickliness, obviously linked to what happened in December, is the second surprise. ‘Well, well, well,’ Neil says. ‘Rainey, you fucker.’

‘All right, mate …’

‘You’ve got a nerve, phoning us up here.’ It is said with a sort of smile — even so, it is not very friendly. They are still exchanging these pleasantries when Neil suddenly says, ‘Look, Lawrence is about. Can I call you back later?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’ll call you back later.’

When, the next morning, Neil has still not done so, Paul tries him again.

This time he seems to be in the smoking room, and Paul gets as far as saying that he has an ‘offer’ for him. Neil evidently assumes that this ‘offer’ will involve joining Paul at whichever outfit he is now working for, and is nonplussed when Paul starts saying that he needs someone to pretend to be a fruit wholesaler. ‘Sorry?’ he says, as though he must have misheard.

‘I said, I need someone to come down to Brighton for a day or two —’

‘Yeah, yeah. I got that. And do what?’

‘And … Well, you’d have to meet this bloke and pretend you were a sort of fruit wholesaler …’

Neil laughs. ‘What?’

‘That’s the job.’

‘What is? I don’t understand.’

‘You’d have to meet this bloke, right, and pose as a fruit wholesaler.’ More laughter. Paul laughs slightly himself. ‘What? That’s all. It’s simple.’

‘I’d have to sell him some fruit?’

‘No … Well, not exactly. You’d have to pretend … I mean — are you interested at all?’

‘I don’t think so, mate. What is it? Some kind of scam?’

‘No, no, nothing like that. It’s two hundred quid for doing not much —’

‘Two hundred quid isn’t much. And anyway, I’ve got a job to do as it is —’

‘We could do it at the weekend. Or you could take a day off —’

‘Thanks for thinking of me, mate, but I’m not interested.’

‘It’ll probably be a laugh.’

‘I’m sure it will …’

‘A day out by the sea …’

‘No, mate. Seriously. I’ve got other priorities at the moment.’

Neil, it turns out, is now Lawrence’s number two, and the myriad problems of Park Lane Publications press down heavily on his shoulders. (Since his nervous breakdown, Lawrence himself has been little more than a figurehead.)

‘What you up to anyway?’ Neil says.

‘Oh … Working.’

‘What — with Murray and the Pig and that lot?’

‘No.’

There is a pause. Then Neil says, ‘Well. Hope you find someone, mate …’

‘You’re sure you’re not interested?’

‘Yeah, I’m sure. Cheers. Take it easy, yeah?’

‘Yeah. You too, mate.’

Slightly disconsolate, still in his blue nightshift uniform, Paul switches off his phone and pads through to the kitchen. Fuck it, he thinks. Fuck Watt and the whole fucking thing.

Exactly twenty-four hours later, however, he is speaking to Watt in person. ‘Hello? Is that Paul Rainey?’

‘Yeah, it’s me.’

‘Ah. Morning. How are you?’

‘I’m okay.’

There is a short silence.

‘Yes, I’m okay,’ Watt says. ‘Oh, by the way, did Hazel see you the other night?’

‘Hazel?’

‘That young woman … That member of staff we saw in the pub.’

‘Oh.’ Paul hesitates. ‘No.’ This is not true. When he stood up to leave, two minutes after Watt himself had left, Paul’s eyes had for a moment met Hazel’s. She looked slightly puzzled — as if she was unable to place him …

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well …’ Watt laughs nervously. ‘How do you know? How do you know she didn’t see you?’ When Paul says nothing, Watt makes a dissatisfied, sceptical noise. He has found himself the subject of some very strange looks since the weekend; some very significant smirks in the supermarket. ‘So,’ he says, ‘any news?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

There is a long pause. ‘You mean you’ve not found anyone?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I just haven’t been able to.’

‘Have you tried?’

‘Of course I’ve tried.’ Somehow, Paul is aware of Heather listening to what he is saying — perhaps it is the sheer intensity of the silence — and he lowers his voice. ‘I’ve tried a few people,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. There’s nothing more I can do —’

‘Look, Rainey —’ Watt’s tone is that of someone finally taking a firm line with a plumber who has been messing him around for months — ‘You’re going to have to do better than that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you want me to get Jock involved?’

‘No, I don’t want you to get Jock involved. But what do you want me to do?’

‘Find someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Anyone. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.’

‘I’m telling you, it’s not that easy —’

‘You’ve got until Friday,’ Watt says. ‘You’ve got until Friday, all right? If you’ve not found someone to do this by then, I’m going to Jock. I’m sorry. It’s what I should have done in the first place. Do you understand?’

‘Do I understand what?’

‘That you have until Friday, or I’m going to Jock?’

‘Yes,’ Paul says, eventually, ‘I understand.’

When Heather enters the kitchen, he is staring stonily at his phone. It is one of the unusual, uneasy weekday mornings when she is not at work. ‘You all right, Paul?’ she says.

‘Yeah.’

‘Who was that?’ She puts the question very indifferently, with her head in the fridge, and when Paul murmurs, ‘No one,’ she does not press him further.