The Night Manager

SIXTEEN

"Old love," Corkoran proposed, lighting his first foul cigarette of the day and balancing a porcelain inkstand by way of an ashtray on his lap. "What say we pick the fly shit out of the pepper?"

"I don't want you near me, actually," Jonathan said, in a prepared speech. "I've got nothing to explain and nothing to apologise for. Just leave me alone."

Corkoran lowered himself gratefully into the armchair. They were alone in the bedroom. Frisky had once more been ordered to remove himself.

"Your name's Jonathan Pine, formerly of Meister's, the Queen Nefertiti and other emporia. But you are now travelling as one Thomas Lamont on a bona fide Canadian passport. Except that you don't happen to be Thomas Lamont. Contest? No contest."

"I got the kid back. You've had me patched up. Give me my passport and let me go."

"And between being J. Pine of Meister's and T. Lamont of Canada, not to mention J. Beauregard, you were Jack Linden of remotest Cornwall. In which capacity, you topped a mate of yours, to wit one Alfred alias Jumbo Harlow, an Aussie boat bum with sundry convictions for drug running down under. Whereupon, you did a bunk before the law could have its way with you."

"I'm wanted for questioning by the Plymouth police. That's as far as it ever got."

"And Harlow was your business partner," said Corkoran, writing.

"If you say so."

"Dope-running, heart?" asked Corkoran, glancing up.

"It was a straight commercial venture."

"That's not what the press cuttings say. It's not what our little dickybirds say either. Jack Linden, alias J. Pine, alias you, ran a load of dope for Harlow single-handed from the Channel Islands to Falmouth, what the hacks called an impressive sail. And Brother Harlow, our partner, took the dope to London, flogged it and bilked us out of our cut. Which miffed us. Understandably. So you did what any of us would do when he's miffed with his partner: you topped him. It wasn't the neat piece of necessary surgery it might have been, given your proven skills in the field, because Harlow churlishly offered resistance. So you had a fight. But you won. And when you'd won, you topped him. Hoorah for us."

Stonewall, Burr had said. You weren't there, it was two other blokes, he hit you first and it was with his consent. Then yield ungracefully and make them think they've got the real you.

"They've no proof," Jonathan replied. "They found some blood, they never found the body. Now for Christ's sake get out."

Corkoran seemed to have forgotten the whole subject. He was grinning reminiscently into the middle air, all bad thoughts abandoned. "Do you know the one about the chap applying for a job in the Foreign Office? 'Look here, Carruthers,' they say, 'we like the cut of your jib, but we can't overlook the fact that you've done a spot of time for buggery, arson and rape....' Really not know it?"

Jonathan groaned.

" 'Perfectly simple explanation,' says Carruthers. 'Loved a girl who wouldn't let me diddle her, so I banged her on the head, raped her, shafted her old dad and set fire to the house.' You must have heard it."

Jonathan had closed his eyes.

" 'Okay, Carruthers,' say the selector chaps. 'We knew there'd be a reasonable explanation. Here's the deal. Keep away from the girls in the typing pool, no playing with matches, give us a kiss and you can have the job.' "

Corkoran was really laughing. The chubby wreaths around his neck went pink and shook; merry tears ran down his cheeks. "I feel such a shit, you being in bed, you see," he explained. "And the hero of the hour to boot. So much easier if I had you under a bright light with me playing James Cagney and walloping you with a dildo." He adopted the high-flown tones of a court policeman. " 'The wanted man, M'lud, is believed to 'ave a revealin' scar on 'is right 'and!' Show," he ordered in a quite altered voice.

Jonathan opened his eyes. Corkoran was standing at the bedside again, his cigarette held to one side and upward like a grubby yellow wand, and he was holding Jonathan's right wrist in his damp hand, examining the broad scar curling along the back of it.

"Oh dear," said Corkoran. "You can't have done that shaving.... All right, be like that."

Jonathan had snatched back his hand. "He pulled a knife on me," he said. "I didn't know he carried one. He wore it on his calf. I was asking him what was in the boat. I knew by then. I'd guessed. He was a big man. I couldn't trust myself to throw him, so I went for his throat."

"The old Adam's apple, eh? You're quite a brawler, aren't you? Nice to think Ireland's been some use to somebody. Sure it wasn't your knife, old love? You do seem quite partial to a knife, from all one hears."

"It was his knife. I told you."

"Who did Harlow flog the dope to ― any idea?"

"None. Zero. I was just the sailor. Look, go away. Go and persecute someone else."

"The mule. Mule is the term we use. Mule."

But Jonathan kept up his attack. "That's who you are, then, is it? You and Roper? Drug-runners? That's perfect. Home from bloody home."

He dropped back on the pillows, waiting for Corkoran's response.

It came with a vigour that found him unprepared. For, with remarkable agility, Corkoran had sprung to his bedside and helped himself to a substantial handful of Jonathan's hair, which he was now pulling very hard indeed.

"Sweetheart," he murmured reproachfully. "Old love. Little boys in your position do well to watch their fucking language, actually. We are the Ironbrand Gas, Light & Coke Company of Nassau, Bananas, short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Respectability. The question is, who the fuck are you?"

The hand relinquished Jonathan's hair. He lay still, his heart thumping. "Harlow said it was a repossession job," he said huskily. "Somebody he'd sold a boat to in Australia who'd welshed on the debt. Jumbo had traced the boat to the Channel Islands through some friends, he said. If I could bring it to Plymouth we could flog it and get ourselves off the hook. It didn't seem such a tall story at the time. I was a fool to trust him."

"So what did we do with the body, old love?" Corkoran enquired chummily, back in his chair. "Dump it down the proverbial tin mine? The great tradition?"

Change the rhythm. Let him wait. The voice grey with despair.

"Why don't you just call the police, extradite me, claim the reward?" Jonathan suggested.

Corkoran removed his makeshift ashtray from his lap and replaced it with a buff, army-style folder, which seemed to contain nothing but faxes.

"And Brother Meister?" he enquired. "How did he offend?"

"He robbed me."

"Oh, you poor lamb! One of life's true victims.... But how?"

"Everyone else on the staff got a piece of the service money. There was a scale, so much for rank and how long you'd been employed. It came to quite a lot each month, even for a newcomer. Meister told me he wasn't obliged to pay it to foreigners. Then I found out he was paying the other foreigners, just not me."

"So you helped yourself from the safe. Well, he was jolly lucky you didn't top him too. Or unzip his whatnot with your penknife."

"I did overtime for him. Day work. I did the fine-wine inventory on my day off. Nothing. Not even when I took guests sailing on the lake. He charged them a fortune and didn't pay me a cent."

"We left Cairo in a bit of a hurry too, one notices. Nobody quite seems to know why. No hint of foul play, mind. Not a stain on our escutcheon, according to Queen Nefertiti. Or perhaps she just never rumbled us."

Jonathan had that fiction ready. He had worked it out with Burr. "I got mixed up with a girl. She was married."

"She have a name?"

Fight your corner, Burr had said. "Not for you. No."

"Fifi? Lulu? Mrs. Tutankhamen? No? Well, she can always use one of yours, can't she?" Corkoran was leafing lazily through his faxes. "What about the good doctor? Did he have a name?"

"Marti."

"Not that doctor, silly."

"Then who? What doctor? What is this, Corkoran? Am I on trial for saving Daniel? Where's this leading?"

This time Corkoran waited patiently for the storm to pass.

"The doctor who stitched up our hand at Truro Casualty," he explained.

"I don't know what he was called. He was an intern."

"A white intern?"

"Brown. Indian or Pakistani."

"And how did we get ourselves there? To the hospital? With our poor bleeding wrist?"

"I wrapped it in a couple of dishcloths and drove Harlow's jeep."

"Left-handed?"

"Yes."

"The same car we used to remove the body to other premises, no doubt? The law did find traces of our blood in the car. But it seems to have been a bit of a cocktail. There was some of Jumbo's too."

Waiting for an answer, Corkoran was busily writing himself little notes.

"Just get me a lift to Nassau," Jonathan said. "I've done you no harm. I'm not asking for anything. You'd never have known about me if I hadn't been such a fool at Low's. I don't need anything from you, I'm not applying for anything, I don't want money, I don't want thanks, I don't want your approval. Let me go ― "

Corkoran ruminatively worked his cigarette while he turned the pages on his lap. "What say we do Ireland for a change?" he proposed, as if Ireland were a party game for a wet afternoon. "Two old soldiers having a chin-wag about better times. What could be jollier than that?"

When you come to the true parts, don't sit back, Burr had said. Better to flounder, forget a little and correct yourself. make them think that's where they should be looking for the lies.

* * *

"What did you do to that bloke, anyway?" Frisky was asking, with professional curiosity.

It was the middle of the night. He was stretched on a futon across the door, a masked reading light and a heap of pornographic magazines beside his head.

"Which bloke?" said Jonathan.

"The bloke who borrowed little Danny for the evening. Screaming like a stuck pig he was, up there in the cookhouse ― they could have heard him in Miami."

"I must have broken his arm."

"Broken it? I think you must have screwed it off him very slowly against the thread. Are you one of these amateur Japanese martial artists, then, one of your hari-suchi merchants?"

"I just grabbed and pulled," said Jonathan.

"Fell to pieces in your hand," Frisky said understandingly. "Happens to the best of us."

The most dangerous moments are when you need a friend, Burr had said.

* * *

And after Ireland they reconnoitred what Corkoran called "our days as upwardly mobile flunky," which meant Jonathan's time at catering college, then his days as sous-chef, then as chef and then as graduate to the staff side of the hotel business.

After that again, Corkoran needed to hear about his exploits at the Chateau Babette, which Jonathan related with scrupulous regard for Yvonne's anonymity, only to discover that Corkoran knew that story too.

"So how in Gawd's name do we come to stick a pin into Mama Low's, old love?" Corkoran asked, lighting himself another cigarette. "Mama's has been the Chief's favourite watering hole for donkeys' years."

"Just somewhere I thought I'd go to ground for a few weeks."

"Keep our head down, you mean?"

"I'd been doing a job on a yacht up in Maine."

"Chief cook and bottle washer?"

"Major-domo."

Paused while Corkoran rummaged among his faxes.

"And?"

"I caught a bug and had to be put ashore. I lay up in a hotel in Boston, then called Billy Bourne in Newport. Billy gets me the work. He said, Why not devil at Low's for a few months, dinners only, take a rest?"

Corkoran licked a finger, fished out whatever he was looking for and held it to the light.

"For heaven's sake," Jonathan muttered, like a prayer for sleep.

"Now, this boat we went sick on, old love. That would have been the Lolita, nee Persephone, built in Holland, owned by Nikos Asserkalian, the celebrated show business personality, God-thumper and crook, two hundred feet of bloody awful taste. Not Nikos; he's a midget."

"I never met him. We were chartered out."

"Who to, my heart?"

"Four California dentists and their women."

Jonathan volunteered a couple of names, which Corkoran wrote down in his scruffy penny notebook, having first flattened it on his ample thigh.

"Balls of fun, were they? Laugh a minute?"

"They did me no harm."

"And you didn't do them any?" Corkoran suggested kindly. "Bust their safe or someone's neck, or do a knife job on them or anything?"

"Actually, go to hell," said Jonathan.

Corkoran considered this invitation and seemed to decide it was a good idea. He packed together his papers and emptied his ashtray into the wastepaper basket, making a frightful mess. He peered at himself in the mirror, grimaced and tried to pull his hair straight with his fingers, but it wasn't a success.

"It's too bloody good, dearie," he declared.

"What is?"

"Your story. Don't know why. Don't know how. Don't know where. It's you, I think. You make me feel inadequate." He gave his hair another disastrous yank. "But then I am inadequate. I'm a savage little poof in a grownup world. Whereas you ― you're just trying to be inadequate." He wandered into the bathroom and peed. "Tabby's brought some clothes for you, by the by," he called through the open doorway. "Nothing earthshaking, but they'll clothe our nakedness till the Armanis come through." He flushed, and reappeared in the bedroom.

"Left to myself, I'd roast you, actually," he said, zipping himself up. "I'd deprive you, hood you and hang you up by your fucking ankles till the truth fell out of you by gravity. Still, can't have everything in life, can we? Toodle-oo."

* * *

It was the next day. Daniel had decided that Jonathan was in need of entertainment.

"What's a Grecian urn?"

"A pot. A jug. Art form of the ancient Greeks."

"Fifty dollars a week. What goes through a tortoise's brain when it's being hit by a Mercedes?"

"Slow music?"

"Its shell. Corky's talking to Roper in the study. He says he's gone as far as he can go. Either you're squeaky clean or you're the biggest con in Christendom."

"When did they get back?"

"At first light. Roper always flies at first light. They're talking about your question mark."

"With Jed?"

"Jed's riding Sarah. She always rides Sarah as soon as she gets back. Sarah hears her and gets in a rage if she doesn't come. Roper says they're a pair of dykes. What's a dyke?"

"A woman who loves women."

"Roper talked to Sandy Langbourne about you while they were in Curaçao. No one's to discuss you on the telephone. Radio silence on Thomas until further notice. Chief's orders."

"Maybe you shouldn't eavesdrop on people so much. You'll wear yourself out."

Daniel arched his back, flung up his head and yelled at the punkah: "I don't eavesdrop! That's not fair! I wasn't even trying! I just can't help hearing! Corky says you're a dangerous riddle, that's all! You're not! I know you're not! I love you! Roper's going to feel your bones for himself and take a view!"

* * *

It was just before dawn.

"Know the best way to make a bloke talk, Tommy?" Tabby asked from the futon, offering a helpful tip. "Infallible? One hundred percent? Never known to fail? The fizzy-drink treatment. Bung his mouth up so he can't breathe except through his nose. Or her. Get a funnel, if there's one handy. And pour the fizz into his nose. Hits you right in the switchboard, like your brain's boiling. Bloody diabolical."

* * *

It was ten in the morning.

Walking uncertainly at Corkoran's side across the gravel sweep of Crystal, Jonathan had an exact memory of crossing the main courtyard of Buckingham Palace on the arm of his German Aunt Monika the day she took him to collect his dead father's medal. What's the point of prizes when you're dead? he had wondered. And school while you're alive?

A stocky black manservant admitted them. He wore a green waistcoat and black trousers. A venerable black butler in a striped cotton waistcoat came forward to receive them.

"For the Chief, please, Isaac," said Corkoran. "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We're expected."

The immense hall echoed like a church to their footsteps. A curved marble staircase with a gilded handrail rose into the cupola, making three landings on its way to a blue-painted heaven. The marble they were walking on was pink, and the sunlight lifted from it in a rosy dew. Two man-sized Egyptian warriors guarded an arched doorway of carved stone. They passed through it and entered a gallery dominated by a gold head of the sun god Ra. Greek torsos, marble heads, hands, urns and stone panels of hieroglyphics stood or lay about in disarray. Brass-bound glass cabinets ran along the walls, crammed with figurines. Hand-printed signs declared their provenance: West African, Peruvian, pre-Columbian, Cambodian, Minoan, Russian, Roman and in one case simply "Nile."

He plunders, Burr had said.

Freddie likes to sell him stolen artefacts, Sophie had said.

Roper's going to feel your bones for himself, Daniel had said.

They entered the library. Leather-bound books reached from floor to ceiling. A rolling spiral staircase, unmanned, stood by.

They entered a prison corridor between arched dungeons. From their solitary cells, antique weapons glimmered in the twilight: swords and pikes and maces, suits of armour posed on wooden horses; muskets, halberds, cannon balls and green cannons still barnacled from the sea.

They passed a billiards room and came to the second centre of the house. Marble columns supported a wagon roof. A tiled blue pool mirrored them, bordered by a marble concourse. On the walls hung Impressionist paintings of fruit and farms and naked women: can this really be a Gauguin? On a marble chaise two young men in shirtsleeves and twenties baggy trousers talked business across open attaché cases.

"Corky, hi, how's tricks?" drawled one.

"Darlings," said Corkoran.

They approached a pair of high doors of burnished bronze. Before them sat Frisky in a porter's chair. A matronly woman emerged, carrying a shorthand pad. Frisky shoved out his foot at her, pretending to trip her up.

"Oh, you silly boy," said the matronly woman happily.

The doors closed again.

"Why, it's the Major," Frisky cried facetiously, affecting not to have noticed their arrival till the last minute. "How are we today, sir? Hullo there, Tommy. That's the way, then."

"Tit," said Corkoran.

Frisky unhooked a house telephone from the wall and touched a number. The doors opened to reveal a room so large, so intricate in its furnishings, so bathed with sunlight and blackened by shadow, that Jonathan had a sensation not of arriving but ascending. Through a wall of tinted windows lay a terrace of strangely formed white tables, each shaded by a white umbrella. Beyond them lay an emerald lagoon bordered by a narrow sandbar and black reefs. Beyond the reefs lay the open sea in lakes of jagged blues.

The splendour of the room was at first all Jonathan could take in. Its occupants, if there were any, were lost between the brilliance and the dark. Then, as Corkoran ushered him forward, he made out a swirling golden desk in tortoise-shell and brass, and behind it a scrolled throne covered in rich tapestry frayed with age. And beside the desk, in a bamboo sun chair with wide arms and a footstool, reclined the worst man in the world, dressed in white sailing ducks and espadrilles and a short-sleeved navy blue shirt with a monogram on the pocket. He had his legs crossed and was wearing his half-lens spectacles, and he was reading something from a leather-backed folder that bore the same monogram as his shirt, and he was smiling while he read it, because he smiled a great deal. A woman secretary stood behind him, and she could have been the twin sister of the first.

"No disturbances, Frisky," an alarmingly familiar voice ordered, snapping the leather folder shut and shoving it at the secretary. "Nobody on the terrace. Who's the ass running an outboard in my bay?"

"That's Talbot, fixin' it, Chief," said Isaac from the back.

"Tell him to unfix it. Corks, shampoo. Well, I'm damned. Pine. Come here. Well done. Well done indeed."

He was clambering to his feet, his spectacles perched comically on the tip of his nose. Grasping Jonathan's hand, he drew him forward until, as at Meister's, they had entered each other's private space. And examined him, frowning through his spectacles. And while he did so, he slowly raised his palms to Jonathan's cheeks as if he meant to trap them in a double slap. And kept them there, so close that Jonathan could feel their heat, while Roper posed his head at different angles, peering at him from a few inches' distance until he was satisfied.

"Bloody marvellous," he pronounced finally. "Well done, Pine; well done, Marti; well done, money. What it's for. Sorry not to be around when you arrived. Had a couple of farms to flog. When was the worst?" Disconcertingly, he had turned to Corkoran, who was advancing across the marble floor bearing a tray with three frosted silver goblets of Dom Perignon. "Here he is. Thought we were running a dry ship."

"After the operation, I suppose," said Jonathan. "Coming round. It was like the dentist multiplied by ten."

"Hang on. Here's the best bit."

Confused by Roper's scattershot method of talking, Jonathan had failed to hear the music. But as Roper's hand reached out to order silence, he recognised the dying strains of Pavarotti singing "La donna è mobile." All three stood motionless until the music ended. Then Roper lifted his goblet and drank.

"God, he's marvellous. Always play it on Sundays. Never miss, do I, Corks? Bloody good luck. Thanks."

"Good luck," said Jonathan, and drank too. As he did so, the sound of the distant outboard cut off, leaving a deep silence. Roper's gaze dropped to the scar on Jonathan's right wrist.

"How many for lunch, Corks?"

"Eighteen, rising twenty, Chief."

"Vincettis coming? Didn't hear their plane yet. That Czech twin-engined thing they fly."

"Coming when last heard of, Chief."

"Tell Jed, name cards. And decent napkins. None of that red loo paper. And track down the Vincettis, yes or no. Pauli come through about those 130s yet?"

"Still waiting, Chief."

"Well, he better be bloody quick, or never. Here you are. Pine. Sit down. Not there. Here, where I can see you. And the Sancerre, tell Isaac. Cold, for once. Apo faxed the draught amendment yet?"

"In your in-tray."

"Marvellous chap," Roper commented as Corkoran departed.

"I'm sure he is," Jonathan agreed politely.

"Loves to serve," said Roper, with the glance that heterosexuals share.

* * *

Roper was swirling the champagne in his goblet, smiling while he watched it go round and round. "Mind telling me what you want?" he asked.

"Well, I'd like to get back to Low's if I could. As soon as it's convenient, really. Just a plane to Nassau would be fine. I'll make my way from there."

"Not what I mean at all. Bigger question altogether. In life. What do you want? What's your plan?"

"I haven't got a plan. Not at the moment. I'm drifting. Taking time out."

"Balls, frankly. Don't believe you. You've never relaxed in your life, my view. Not sure I have either. I try. Play a bit of golf, do the boat, bit of this and that, swim, screw. But my engine's going all the time. So's yours. What I like about you. No neutral gear."

He was still smiling. So was Jonathan, even though he wondered on what evidence Roper was able to base his judgment.

"If you say so," he said.

"Cooking. Climbing. Boating. Painting. Soldiering. Marrying. Languages. Divorcing. Some girl in Cairo, girl in Cornwall, girl in Canada. Some Australian doper you killed. Never trust a chap who tells me he's not after something. Why'd you do it?"

"Do what?"

Roper's charm was something Jonathan had not allowed himself to remember. Man-to-man, Roper let you know that you could tell him anything, and he would still be smiling at the end of it.

"Go out on a limb for old Daniel. Break a fellow's neck one day, save my boy's the next. You robbed Meister, why don't you rob me? Why don't you ask me for money?" He sounded almost deprived. "I'd pay you. I don't care what you've done; you saved my kid. No limit to my bounty where the boy's concerned."

"I didn't do it for money. You've patched me up. Looked after me. Been good to me. I'll just go."

"What languages y'got, anyway?" Roper asked, reaching for a sheet of paper, looking it over and tossing it aside.

"French. German. Spanish."

"Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that. Arabic?"

"No."

"Why not? You were there long enough."

"Well, just scraps. Elementary stuff."

"Should have got yourself an Arab woman. Perhaps you did. Did you know old Freddie Hamid while you were there, chum of mine? Bit of a wild chap? Must have done. Family owns the pub you worked in. Got some horses."

"He was on the board of management of the hotel."

"Total monk, you are, according to Freddie. Asked him. Model of discreet behaviour. Why did you go there?"

"It was chance. The job was advertised on the notice board at hotel school the day I graduated. I'd always wanted to see the Middle East, so I applied."

"Freddie had a girlfriend. Older woman. Bright. Too good for him, really. Lot of heart. Used to hang around the race course and the yacht club with him. Sophie. Ever meet her?"

"She was killed," Jonathan said.

"That's right. Just before you left. Ever meet her?"

"She had an apartment at the top of the hotel. Everyone knew her. She was Hamid's woman."

"Was she yours?"

The clear, clever eyes did not threaten. They appraised. They offered companionship and understanding.

"Of course not."

"Why of course?"

"It would have been madness. Even if she'd wanted it."

"Why shouldn't she? Hot-blooded Arab, forty if a day, loves a tumble. Personable young chap. God knows, Freddie's no oil painting. Who killed her?"

"It was still being investigated as I left. I never heard whether they arrested anyone. Some intruder, they thought. She surprised him, so he knifed her."

"Wasn't you, anyway?" The clear, clever eyes inviting him to share the joke. The dolphin smile.

"No."

"Sure?"

"There was a rumour Freddie did it."

"Was there, though? Why'd he do a thing like that?"

"Or had it done, anyway. She was said to have betrayed him in some way."

Roper was amused. "Not with you, though?"

"I'm afraid not."

The smile still there. So was Jonathan's.

"Corky can't make you out, you see. Suspicious chap, Corks. Got bad vibes about you. Record's one man, you're another, he says. What else have you been up to? Got any more skeletons in your cupboard? Tricks you've pulled that we don't know about? Police don't? More chaps you've topped?"

"I don't pull tricks. Things happen to me and I react. That's how it's always been."

"Well, Christ, you certainly react. They tell me you had to identify Sophie's corpse, cope with the rozzers. That right?"

"Yes."

"Pretty foul assignment, wasn't it?"

"Someone had to do it."

"Freddie was grateful. Said, if I ever saw you, tell you thanks. Off the record, of course. He was a bit worried he'd have to go himself. Could have been tricky."

Was hate within Jonathan's reach at last? Nothing had altered in Roper's face. The half-smile was neither more nor less. Out of focus, Corkoran tiptoed back into the room and lowered himself onto a sofa. Indefinably, Roper's style altered and he began playing to an audience.

"This boat you came to Canada on," he resumed in his confiding way. "Got a name at all?"

"The Star of Bethel."

"Registered?"

"South Shields."

"How'd you gel the berth? Not easy, is it? Bum a berth on a dirty little boat?"

"I cooked."

Seated in the wings, Corkoran was unable to restrain himself.

"With one hand?" he demanded.

"I wore rubber gloves."

"How'd you get the berth?" Roper repeated.

"I bribed the ship's cook, and the captain took me on as a supernumerary."

"Name?"

"Greville."

"Your agent chap, Billy Bourne. Crewing agent, Newport, Rhode Island," Roper continued. "How did you bump into Bourne?"

"Everyone knows him. Ask any of us."

"Us?"

"Crew. Catering staff."

"Got that fax from Billy there, Corks? Likes him, doesn't he? Full of balm, far as I remember?"

"Oh, Billy Bourne adores him," Corkoran confirmed sourly.

"Lamont can do no wrong. Cooks, pleases, doesn't pinch the silver or the guests, there when you want him, fades away when you don't, sun shines out of his fundament."

"But didn't we check some of the other references? They weren't all that clever, were they?"

"A tad fanciful, Chief," Corkoran conceded. "Moonshine, in fact."

"Fake 'em. Pine?"

"Yes."

"That fellow whose arm you smashed up. Ever see him before that night?"

"No."

"Not eating at Low's some other evening?"

"No."

"Never sailed a boat for him? Cooked for him? Run dope for him?"

There was no apparent menace to these questions, no quickening of the flow. Roper's friendly smile remained unruffled, even if Corkoran was scowling and pulling at his ear.

"No," said Jonathan.

"Killed for him, stole with him?"

"No."

"How about his mate?"

"No."

"Occurred to us you could have started out as their inside man and decided to switch sides halfway through. Wondered whether that was the reason you gave him such a working over. Show you're holier than the Pope, get my meaning?"

"That's idiotic," said Jonathan sharply. He gathered strength. "Actually, that's just bloody insulting." And on a more literary note. "I think you should take that back. Why should I put up with this?"

Play the plucky loser, Burr had said. Never crawl. It makes him sick.

But Roper appeared not to hear Jonathan's protests. "Form like yours, on the run, funny name, you might not be looking for another brush with the law. Better to earn favour with the rich Brit instead of kidnapping his boy. See our point?"

"I had nothing to do with either of them. I told you. I'd never seen them or heard of them or spoken to them before that night. I got your boy back, didn't I? I don't even want a reward. I want out. That's all. Just let me go."

"How did you know they were heading for the cookhouse? Could have been heading anywhere."

"They knew the layout. They knew where the cash was kept. They'd obviously done their reconnaissance. For God's sake."

"With a little help from you?"

"No!"

"You could have hidden yourself away. Why didn't you? Kept out of trouble. That's what most chaps on the run would have done, wouldn't they? Never been on the run myself."

Jonathan let a long silence pass, sighed and appeared to resign himself to the madness of his hosts. "I'm beginning to wish I had," he said, and let his body slump in frustration.

"Corks, what's happened to that bottle? Haven't drunk it, have you?"

"Right here, Chief."

Back to Jonathan: "I want you to stick around, enjoy yourself, make yourself useful, swim, get your strength back, see what we'll do with you. May even find a job for you, something a bit special. Depends." The smile widened. "Cook us a few carrot cakes. What's the matter?"

"I'm afraid I'm not doing that," Jonathan said. "It's not what I want."

"Balls. Course it is."

"Where else have you got to go?" Corkoran asked. "Carlyle in New York? Ritz-Carlton in Boston?"

"I'll just go my own way," Jonathan said, politely but resolutely.

He had had enough. Acting and being had become one for him. He no longer knew the difference. I need my own space, my own agenda, he was telling himself. I'm sick of being someone's creature. He was standing, ready to leave.

"Hell are you talking about?" Roper complained, mystified. "I'll pay you. Not mean. Pay you top whack. Nice little house, other side of the island. He can have Woody's place, Corky. Horses. Swimming. Borrow a boat. Right up your street. Anyway, what're you going to use for a passport?"

"Mine," said Jonathan. "Lamont. Thomas Lamont." He appealed to Corkoran. "It was among my things."

A cloud moved across the sun, making a brief, unnatural evening in the room.

"Corky, sock him the bad news," Roper ordered, one arm outstretched as if Pavarotti had started singing again.

Corkoran shrugged and pulled an apologetic grin. "Yes, well, it's about this Canadian passport of ours, old love," he said. "Thing of the past, I'm afraid. Popped it in the shredder. Seemed the right thing to do at the time."

"What are you talking about?"

Corkoran was working the palm of one hand with the thumb of the other.

"No good getting in a paddy, heart. Doing you a favour. Your cover's blown sky-high. As of a few days ago, T. Lamont is on every watch list in the Western what-not. Interpol, Salvation Army, you name it. Show you the evidence if you like. Blue chip. Sorry about that. Fact."

"That was my passport!"

It was the anger that had seized him in the kitchen at Mama Low's, unfeigned, unbridled, blind ― or almost. That was my name, my woman, my betrayal, my shadow! I lied for that passport! I cheated for it! I cooked and skivvied and ate din for it, left warm bodies on my trail for it!

"We're getting you a new one, something clean," Roper said. "Least we can do for you. Corky, get your Polaroid, take his mug shot. Has to be colour these days. Somebody better touch out the bruises. Nobody else knows, understand? Crushers, gardeners, maids, grooms, nobody." A deliberate break.

"Jed, nothing. Jed keeps out of all this." He did not say all what. "What did you do with that motorbike you owned ― the one in Cornwall?"

"Ditched it outside Bristol," Jonathan said.

"So why didn't you flog it?" Corkoran demanded vindictively. "Or take it to France? You could have done, couldn't you?"

"It was an albatross. Everyone knew I rode a bike."

"One more thing." Roper's back was turned to the terrace, and his pistol finger was pointing at Jonathan's skull. "I run a tight ship here. We thieve a little, but we play straight with each other. You saved my boy. But if you step out of line, you'll wish you'd never been born."

Hearing footsteps on the terrace, Roper swung round, prepared to be angry that his order had been flouted, and saw Jed setting out name cards in silver stands on the tables spread about the terrace. Her chestnut hair fell over her shoulders. Her body was hidden demurely in a wrap.

"Jeds! Come over here a minute! Got a spot of good news for you. Name of Thomas. Joining the family for a bit. Better tell Daniel; he'll be tickled pink."

She allowed a beat. She raised her head and turned it, favouring the cameras with her best smile.

"Oh, gosh. Thomas. Super." Eyebrows up. Registers misty pleasure. "That's terribly good news. Roper, shouldn't we celebrate, or something?"

* * *

It was the next morning, soon after seven, but in the Miami headquarters it could have been midnight. The same neon lights glowed on the same green-painted brick walls. Sick of his art deco hotel. Burr had made the building his solitary home.

"Yes, it's me," he replied quietly into the red receiver. "And you're you, by the sound of you. How've you been?"

As he spoke, his spare hand slowly rose above his head until the whole arm was stretched toward the shut-off sky. All was forgiven. God was in His heaven. Jonathan was calling his controller on his magic box.

* * *

"They won't have me," Palfrey told Goodhew with satisfaction, as they rode round Battersea in a taxi. Goodhew had picked him up at the Festival Hall. We'll have to make it quick, Palfrey had said.

"Who won't?"

"Darker's new committee. They've invented a code name for themselves: Flagship. You have to be on their list, otherwise you're not Flagship cleared."

"So who is on the list?"

"Not known. They're colour coded."

"Meaning?"

"They're identified by an electronic band printed into their office passes. There's a Flagship reading room. They go there, they shove their passes into a machine, the door opens. They go in, it shuts. They sit down, read the stuff, have a meeting. The door opens, and they come out."

"What do they read?"

"The developments. The game plan."

"Where's the reading room?"

"Away from the building. Far from prying eyes. Rented. They pay cash. No receipts. Probably the upstairs of a bank. Darker loves banks." He kept talking, anxious to unload and go. "If you're Flagship cleared, you're a Mariner. There's a new insider-speak based on sea lore. If something's a bit wet for circulation, that means it ought to be Flagship classified. Or it's too nautical for non-Mariners. Or somebody's a dry bob, not a wet bob. They've got a kind of outer rampart of code names to protect the inner bailey."

"Are all the Mariners members of the River House?"

"Purists, bankers, civil servants, couple of MPs, couple of makers."

"Makers?"

"Manufacturers. Arms makers. For Christ's sake, Rex!"

"Are the makers British?"

"Near enough."

"Are they American? Are there American Mariners, Harry? Is there an American Flagship? Is there an equivalent over there?"

"Pass."

"Can you give me one name, Harry? Just one way into this?"

But Palfrey was too busy, too pressed, too late. He hopped onto the curb, then ducked back into the cab to grab his umbrella.

"Ask your master," he whispered. But so softly that Goodhew in his deafness was not absolutely sure.