Newton’s Fire

II

Pelham scrolled for a number then jammed his phone between shoulder and ear. ‘Hey, gorgeous,’ he said. ‘It’s me. Yeah. Listen, that friend of yours at Caius. Sonia, isn’t it? You couldn’t give her a call for me, could you? Brilliant. I need to get hold of a girl there. Rachel something …’ He glanced across at Luke for a prompt.

‘Rachel Parkes,’ said Luke.

‘Rachel Parkes,’ relayed Pelham. He listened a moment, laughed loudly. ‘No. Nothing like that, I promise. A favour for a mate.’ He laughed again. ‘What do you mean? I’ve got plenty of mates. I just won’t introduce you or you’ll run off with one of them.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, anything you can get. Mobile, home phone, address, whatever. Thanks, sweetheart. Love you.’ He killed the call, turned to Luke. ‘Miriam,’ he said. ‘I think she might be the one.’

‘You always think they might be the one.’

‘Keeps the heart young, falling in love. Try it yourself sometime.’

‘Maybe next week. This week I’m focusing on staying alive.’

‘You’ll need something to write on when she calls back.’ He gestured at his glove compartment. ‘Have a rootle around in there.’

‘Jesus, mate,’ said Luke, as he precipitated a small avalanche of candy bars and boiled sweets.

‘Better give me one of those,’ said Pelham. ‘Wouldn’t want to faint from sugar deficiency; not with all these telephone poles around.’

‘Was that when the last one attacked?’ asked Luke, finding himself a stubby pencil and a notepad. ‘While you were feeding?’

‘What are you? A claims adjuster?’ He tore the wrapper off one with his teeth, stuffed the molten mess inside into his mouth. He was still chewing when his phone rang, had to give himself a couple of moments to swallow it away. ‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘Any joy?’ He listened a moment, grinned. ‘You’re a star.’ He called out phone numbers and an address for Luke to jot down. ‘Thanks, gorgeous,’ he said. ‘And we’re still on for tomorrow, yeah? Great. Then take care, now.’ He ended the call and handed Luke his phone so that he could try the various numbers. Without success. ‘Do you want to go sit outside her place?’ asked Pelham. ‘You can’t consider yourself a proper stalker until you’ve done that.’

‘How far is it?’

Pelham turned on his GPS, typed in her address. ‘Other side of town,’ he said. ‘Twenty minutes or so.’ He gave Luke a pointed look. ‘Just about long enough for you to tell me what the fuck’s going on.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Luke. He took a moment to order his thoughts. ‘Remember that business with the Uni?’

Pelham nodded soberly. ‘Of course.’

‘I tried to get myself another job, but I was way too toxic. It was clearly going to be a year or two before the whole thing died down, so I decided to make a virtue of necessity, write my book. I’d been talking about it long enough.’

‘Telling me.’

‘I had some savings, but it was still going to be pretty tight, you know; so I put the word out that if there was any work-’

‘I asked around,’ said Pelham. ‘I swear I did. But you know how things are.’

‘I wasn’t having a go. I’m just explaining the background. Because around last Christmas this guy rings out of the blue. He tells me his name is Steven, though I doubt now that it really was. He says that he’s a lawyer and that he’s got a possible job for me. One of his clients is apparently a Newton obsessive.’

‘You should get on famously, then.’

‘This client had commissioned him to track down all of Newton’s papers still missing from the Sotheby’s auction. You know about that, right?’

‘Do I?’ asked Pelham. He pulled up at a set of lights, indicated to turn left. ‘Tell you what: why don’t you give me the refresher?’