2

Matt

On the night I met Eric Billings, I was sitting in a shabby pub in Cricklewood and thinking about the factors that had led me to undertake the Finchley job. In the end they boiled down to personal and professional vanity. Certainly there was an element of greed, there is always that element, but the job was important to my status. Now, on reflection, I regretted the whole thing. It wasn’t because I felt a twinge of conscience (I never feel such twinges), but because I was afraid. Just that. Fear. And the fear didn’t stem from the prospect of discovery but from the thought of violent recrimination. This time I had overplayed my hand. My sense of coolness, my judgement, my confidence above all – these things had deserted me. I was out on the proverbial bloody limb and all I could do, it seemed, was wait. But for how long? And how would I spend the waiting period? Biting my nails and slopping whisky in drab bars? Walking up and down some grubby bedsit? On the other hand, I could hide. But vengeance has a long nose and an acute sense of smell.

My time – if I was going to be honest – was limited.

But at least I could look back on the Finchley job with a sense of pride. It isn’t just anybody who can take Big Ed Sharp for as much as I had taken him. To achieve that you’ve got to be dedicated to this game, you’ve got to have a fully professional attitude.

The Finchley job was my promotion from the lower leagues to higher ones. No more calls on crazy old women to read their gas meters and swipe the cardboard box with their life savings in it as soon as they had their backs turned: no more phoney charity collections and cold feet trudging from one door to the next: and no more false life-insurance policies or subscriptions to encyclopaedias that never materialise. All that was soul-destroying and a dead loss and highly illegal anyway.

The beauty of taking Big Ed’s money was that it had been unlawfully earned in the first place. But if that was the beauty it was also the horror – because if he couldn’t take lawful steps to regain his cash there were other courses open to him. I’d seen it all before. I should have known better. Wisdom after the event is no wisdom at all. A boot in the face in some dark alley on a rainy night. A razor in the neck. Broken ribs, blood. I’d seen it all before.

Pride – and a great deal of Big Ed’s money – was all I had left.

Mind you, I felt that my pride was justified. The operation itself was classically simple. Exploitation of the victim’s weakness; and in this case Big Ed’s weakness was the desire to hide his philistine background behind a collection of objets d’art. Of course he didn’t know the first thing about art, but he listened to my flattery and erudition.

And of course he was besotted by the Renoir I had picked up in the Portobello Road.

It was dead simple, possibly all too simple. Whether he was a bigger fool than me is a matter for debate. He had only parted with money. God knows what I would have to part with before the whole thing was over and done with. Some of my blood – and some of my bones – at the very least.

I was proud, and I was scared stiff.

When I saw Eric Billings I was sitting at a table in a darkened alcove to the rear of the bar. From my position I was able to watch the door and see who came in without being easily spotted myself. Big Ed has a well-organised network of lackeys – most of them inexorably in his debt, most of them owing their life to him – and it only needed one solitary phone call for him to send out his heavy squad. I cursed my stupidity in ever having mixed with villains in the first place. But cursing wasn’t going to save me now. Nor was praying, if I’d been the praying sort: but how can you believe in God when you make your living in such an ungodly way as I do? I tell you, a man is born to this game. He finds that he has an extraordinary facility for inducing people to part with their money, and he capitalises on the gift. Sometimes it backfires. But not always.

I was watching everyone who drifted into the bar. Outside it was one of those filthy nights when the sky seems to have broken in pieces – it was raining, the pavements were sodden, and a brisk wind was blowing. The night seemed apt in many ways, it matched my mood and my feelings. I sat there at the back and whenever the door opened I could feel the dampness blow in and it seemed to have stricken my bones. Although my glass was empty, I couldn’t get up to order another drink. Perhaps I’d had too much already. But I felt stone-cold sober, icily sober, my perceptions sharpened to a fine edge.

Eric Billings came into the bar. At that time, of course, I didn’t know his name. He entered timidly and although he seemed desperately to be looking for somebody, I crossed him off my list of suspects at once. He didn’t have a villainous manner. He was wearing a gaberdine raincoat that was discoloured by rain and his hair was plastered down on his head. On the crown of his head there lay a handkerchief knotted at each corner, but this covered only a very small area of what seemed to me like a very large skull. He hesitated, hanging back from the crowd of drinkers at the bar, and then he pushed forward. He disappeared for a minute in the crowd and when he reappeared he was clutching a glass of what looked like Guinness, awkwardly, in both hands. He still seemed to be searching for someone. Because he didn’t interest me much, I turned my eyes back to the door.

And then he was sitting at my table, slurping his drink noisily. He was staring at me and I was beginning to wonder if perhaps I had misjudged him, perhaps he was after all potentially dangerous. Yet I don’t think I’ve ever seen a face so clearly stamped with the word idiot. His eyes are set wide apart and they bulge badly so that he has this constantly staring expression. He has a weak mouth with tiny lips that flap together like two loose pieces of flesh accidentally ripped from elsewhere. He looked positively harmless, but in this game you can never be really sure. Ninety-nine per cent certain, yes, but never totally so. I turned my eyes back to the door.

After a bit I became conscious of this strange sound. It sounded like a restrained gurgle, as if he were on the point of vomiting. I moved away instinctively because with all my other worries I didn’t want to be vomited on as well – but as I moved I realised that he was speaking and that he was simply having some difficulty in getting his words out.

‘Would you like to earn twenty pounds?’ he asked.

I said nothing for a time. It flashed through my mind that he might be homosexual, but he didn’t have that indeterminate femininity that you feel rather than recognise. I waited for him to enlarge on his proposition before speaking.

‘I would make it more, but that’s all I have in my post office account,’ he said.

A sucker, I thought. A genuine, first-class nit. I leaned forward to hear more. But for a long time he said nothing and just kept staring. For a moment I felt the impulse – who can explain these things? – to stick my fingers into his rounded eyes. But there was no point in being that rude and offensive.

After a time I heard this weird story about how he had been going around for two weeks looking for someone – and this killed me – who was prepared to assassinate – wait for it – a dog. I nodded my head. It was best in the situation to treat him seriously, although I did wonder at what time he would have to be back in his room in whatever institution contained him.

He told me more. He said that the dog was ruining his life, he was on the point of losing his job, he had pleaded, begged, the dog’s owner to shut the creature up, he had become a nervous wreck.

‘There is an easy solution,’ I said.

‘Tell me, tell me,’ he said, and gripped my wrist.

‘Move,’ I replied.

He slumped down into his chair. His flesh was pale, even grey, and he looked physically sick.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That would be an admission of defeat.’

‘I see,’ I said.

He was leaning over the table and prodding me.

‘Will you do it? Will you do it?’

I was on the point of telling him that he had some recourse in law and that he could quite easily get an injunction in the County Court: it sounded like a genuine nuisance. But I didn’t. I have found by experience that it is best to let people discover such basic facts for themselves. The world is such, the nature of man is such, that the element of competition enters into even the most simple relation of facts. Why should I tell him?

‘It’s a long time since I killed a dog,’ I said.

‘But you’ve done it before?’ he asked.

‘Oh, on many occasions,’ I replied. ‘The last was a diseased alsatian in 1960 down in Clapham. Mind you, it was difficult and it was bloody –’

‘Will you help me then?’ he asked.

‘Twenty pounds,’ I said, as if deliberating.

His mouth was hanging open while he waited.

‘I’d need to look over the premises and size up the situation before I could decide,’ I said.

He smiled then. The basic knack in my game – more a gift than something you can develop – is to recognise the possibilities of a situation, to know when you are on to what might be a good thing. I had such a feeling then. And I was willing to back the feeling, at least for the time being.

What precipitated my decision to return with him to his room was the sight of one of Big Ed’s heavy boys in the doorway. He hadn’t seen me, but his gaze was travelling quickly along the crowd at the bar.

‘Meet me outside,’ I said to Eric Billings and I ducked into the lavatory. I climbed out of the window into a little yard and then went through a door into a lane. When I thought it would be safe, I walked round to the front of the pub.

‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ Eric said.

‘Nature called,’ I said.

‘We can get a bus over there,’ he said.

I felt exposed at the bus-stop and when a taxi came down through the rain I stopped it. Eric and I got inside.

‘My name’s Eric Billings,’ he said. ‘What’s yours?’

I have a selection of names that I use at different times. Mostly I permutate any one of six Christian names with any one of six surnames. It gives some variety.

‘Matthew Churchill,’ I said. ‘But you can call me Matt.’

‘Do you always ride in taxis?’ he asked.

‘When I want to get somewhere in a hurry,’ I answered.

I felt inside my coat pocket. Big Ed’s money, wrapped in yesterday’s Daily Express, was safely there.

‘Rex has made my life a misery,’ Eric said.

‘Perhaps we can soon do something about that.’

The situation would have to be played strictly by ear. Another necessary gift. Another essential knack.

2

As soon as I saw the room I decided it would be the ideal place in which to lie low. It was scruffy and not at all the sort of place I had planned to rent with some of Big Ed’s money: my dreams had taken me to a penthouse overlooking Hyde Park. But stuff dreams. Survival was the issue now. I threw my sodden raincoat down on the sofa.

‘Is there any tea going?’ I asked.

Eric, who seemed uneasy at my presence in the room, filled a kettle and lit the gas.

‘What about the dog?’ he asked. He still had that knotted handkerchief on his head and his long gaberdine was almost stiff with rain. It made me uncomfortable to look at him. I turned on the electric-fire and lit a cigarette.

‘First things first,’ I said. ‘And the first thing now is a good cup of char.’

While he was making tea I had a look at the room properly. Along the mantelpiece there was placed a pathetic collection of objects. There was, for example, an old golliwog with buttons sewn into his face in place of eyes. Beside this was a school photograph in which I picked out friend Eric almost at once: the doltish expression and massive skull gave him away and the eyes, even then, had the same staring look.

‘I bet you were a bright lad,’ I said.

‘Well, the teachers didn’t think so,’ he answered.

‘Teachers,’ I said. ‘What do they know?’

He brought me a cup of tea. His face was screwed up in an odd sort of way. Later, I was to realise that this was his thinking look. But at the time I imagined him to be constipated or suffering from a rebellion of his digestive fluids.

‘Teachers,’ he said. ‘You’re right about them.’

‘Of course I’m right,’ I said. I gave him my cigarette end and he put it down the sink. The essence of tidiness. ‘Let me tell you something. When I was eighteen I wanted to leave Eton. I’d learned enough anyway and besides I’d been offered a fellowship at All Souls. Do you know the headmaster went down on his knees and begged me to stay? You wouldn’t believe that, would you? Teachers. Where’s the dignity in it?’

‘Well, I never,’ he said, impressed.

‘That finished me with teachers,’ I said. ‘This tea’s rather good.’

He blinked his eyes. He has this habit of blinking in a watery sort of way – as if you expect his eyes suddenly to melt and come running like tears, great liquid globs, down his face.

‘Eton,’ he said. ‘That’s where they have a boating song.’

‘You are a clever chap,’ I said.

‘I’ve picked up one or two things,’ he said.

We sat for a bit in silence and drank our teas. He made a great deal of noise over his, slurping it up, shaping his tongue into a funnel and slurping the liquid up the groove.

After a time he said, ‘About the dog –’

‘We don’t want to rush things,’ I said.

‘I went over the wall once to choke him with a bit of string –’

‘Wall? Wall?’ I asked. It was best to lay it on thick. ‘You didn’t say anything about my wall. That wasn’t very fair of you, was it? I didn’t think it was going to involve any climbing.’

‘It isn’t a high wall,’ he said. Frightened, all of a sudden, that I might leave. ‘There’s some glass along the top –’

‘Glass? Christ. Are there any machine-gun towers?’

He stared at me. For a second I thought he was going to reply in the negative, but the exaggeration penetrated his thick skull and he smiled, pointing his finger at me.

‘Ha-ha,’ he laughed. ‘Machine-guns, ha-ha.’

I finished my tea and got him to pour a second cup. He was easily dominated, docile, somewhat like a well-trained dog himself. Slightly more intelligent than a dog, I suppose. He came with the tea and then said – and I swear he said it –

‘No, there aren’t any machine-guns.’

‘That’s a relief,’ I said.

‘But there’s broken glass, as I was saying. The wall isn’t hard to climb. I went across it myself with this bit of string, but I didn’t have the heart to do it, you see. I’ve always been soft that way.’

He began some fantastically boring story of how his mother had once given him a spray-gun, with which he was meant to kill the flies in the kitchen. With idiot cunning – and because he didn’t have the heart – he had emptied the gun into a clump of bushes. The flies survived, but he himself was beaten when the leaves turned yellow and withered. Whether he makes these yarns up, fabricates them in that apology for a brain that lurks the size of a pea in his enormous cranium, I’ve never been able to discover. If he does invent them then I’m sure he does so innocently, in the sense that he believes them to have actually happened. He doesn’t lie, not in the way that I have to do professionally. Of course, I believe my own lies for the duration of the act, but afterwards I always recognise them for what they are: a load of bullshit. But Eric, I think, believes implicitly in his own drivel. And therein lies the difference between our kinds of fabrication.

‘That’s very interesting,’ I said.

‘About Rex,’ he said. ‘What sort of thing do you have in mind?’

‘Don’t rush me,’ I replied. ‘This will have to be planned and pondered upon before we can take appropriate remedial action. Your approach up to now has been crude, if you don’t mind my saying. A little subtlety is required.’

‘Yes, yes, you’re right,’ Eric said.

‘First of all I must actually hear for myself what it is that the dog does. After that, plans can be laid.’

‘But I can tell you all that. Rex moans. He moans from midnight until dawn. Can’t you take my word for it?’

‘Eric, second-hand information is of no value. Ask any scientist. Observation, rationalisation, hypothesis. That’s how I work.’

He sat down on the bed, his stiff gaberdine trying its best to remain standing. He hauled it off, folded it tidily, and laid it on the chair. I lit a cigarette and watched him. I’ve had no training in the descriptive use of words, no instruction in such things as similes and metaphors. So trying to describe Eric wasn’t easy. He sat on the bed and stared at the window and watching him I likened him to several different things: a rag that has been washed and squeezed until its fabric has all but gone: a bottle of milk left standing too long in the sun, gone yellow and curdled: a damp cigarette packet trodden in a flowing gutter: a slag-heap thrown up behind some quarry. The images have one common element; in each case their theme, their focal point, is that of a thing having been discarded, a useless thing, something thrown away because its only function now is as a reminder of futility. Eric Billings projected this same useless aura, this air of having been discarded, a scrap-heap man. He sat on his own bed like a foreign body, a fungus ripped out of the earth. These images amused me, because I’d never met another human being to whom they could so aptly be applied.

I tested the sofa with my fingers. It felt much too hard to sleep on. The bed, on the other hand, looked more appealing. I trotted out the India story, although Eric would have believed anything. In this story I begin with a brief résumé of my army career, most of which was spent in the Far East. I win several decorations, am mentioned in despatches, and have my photograph in The Times; grinning at the camera, although visibly in pain, an impression strengthened by the blood on my khaki shirt. And then, a dangerous mission to check German infiltrators in North Pakistan, during the course of which I fall out of an aeroplane straight down a gully.

‘My back hasn’t been the same since,’ I finished by saying. ‘Naturally, I get a meagre pension from the government, but I’d rather have my back in good shape.’

I wriggled uncomfortably on the sofa.

I said, ‘This sofa feels a bit hard, Eric.’

He was still thinking about my dangerous mission. His tiny mouth hung open and his eyes were glazed.

‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep here,’ I said.

He stood up. ‘Are you going to stay overnight then?’

‘In the circumstances, don’t you think it would be better? I’d be able to hear the dog. I can start working on a plan.’

He went across to the window. Suddenly he said, ‘Last week I threw down a lamb chop I’d covered with mustard and insecticide. But Rex didn’t eat it. It’s still rotting down there.’

I moved over to the bed and put up my legs. I felt whacked and wanted nothing better than a good night’s sleep.

‘If your back’s really bad,’ he said, ‘why don’t you have the bed?’

‘That’s kind of you,’ I said. ‘It’s good to meet someone who knows the meaning of kindness.’

He sat down on the sofa and began to weep.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘I can’t go on,’ he said. Crying, his face looked like a swollen balloon drifting through rain. ‘I can’t go on. He’s making my life a misery.’

‘Never mind, old chap,’ I said. I used my seaside manner and voice, the breezy one, the one that Britons everywhere used in the air-raid shelters when the bombs were falling and morale had to be boosted. ‘Things will get better.’

After he had put out the light I could hear him wandering around in the darkened room. He was sobbing now and again, and sometimes he stumbled into pieces of furniture.

I lay there thinking about what I could do with Big Ed’s money when the heat was off. The South of France? Italy? I dreamed of golden women wandering half-naked on sand. I dreamed of their being stretched beside me against a backdrop of sun and water, soft whishings up the beach. I could feel the heat begin in my thighs.

And then Eric said, ‘Did you hear that? Did you hear him?’

I opened my eyes. ‘What?’

‘Rex,’ he said. ‘Did you hear him?’

‘No. Get to sleep.’

‘I never sleep.’

I listened. Through the dark came a faint, a tiny whine. The dog sounded as if it were in pain. I listened for a bit, but most of the time I could only hear Eric mumbling about his unhappy lot, the awful fate that had dropped on his shoulders with the dead weight of bricks. I felt slightly irritated, the way you do when you want to sleep and someone is coming between you and your objective.

‘Silence,’ I said.

I could hear the dog clearly. But it wasn’t a particularly objectionable noise. It was recognisably the moan of a frustrated and lonely dog, but it wasn’t anything to get worked up over.

‘Listen,’ Eric cried. ‘Can you hear him? Can you hear that?’

‘We’ll start making plans tomorrow,’ I said.

I closed my eyes and the cries grew fainter the nearer I got to sleep. My beauties, my glorious summer creatures, paraded themselves in their burned splendour along the sand. I was judging a contest, but it was no ordinary beauty contest. The winner would have the pleasure of my bed.

I fell asleep. Rex didn’t disturb me at all. I did wake once when it was light though, on account of Eric’s terrible snore.

3

When I woke in the morning, Eric was standing over the bed.

‘I have to go to the factory now,’ he said. ‘But if you feel hungry there’s some bacon in the cupboard and a box of eggs.’

He was dressed in his long gaberdine coat, which was still damp and stiff and smelling of rubber, and there was a cloth cap pulled down tight on his head.

‘How’s your back?’ he asked.

I groaned a little for his benefit and he stood there making sympathetic noises. When he was gone I closed my eyes and pulled the blankets up to my chin. Rain was hammering on the window and panes of glass were rattling in the wind; a foul morning. On such mornings I have a tendency to think of my life in terms of what might have been, in terms of nostalgia for objects and persons past and lost – an uncharacteristic luxury for a selfish bugger like me. But such thoughts, interesting though they may be in themselves, reveal perhaps a basic weakness in my psychology – to wit, the need to find some saving grace in a personality almost totally self-centred. Unfortunately I can never find the saving grace, and even the most tender memories are somehow blighted by my own actions. There was Rose, for instance, dear Rose, a Swansea girl who came up to London on a day-trip and who never went back because she had the misfortune to collide with me on the pavement outside Selfridges. I had been acting as a guide at that time and had just managed to lose a party of Americans somewhere between the second and third floors, when Rose came my way. She ended up that night in the narrow bed of my dingy Kensington bedsitter, her knickers strewn across the floor, her virginity taken. It may have been because I was the first to have her, or it may have been something clean she saw in my personality – God knows what – but the fact is, she attached herself to me like a snivelling dog to its master.

My mode of life, reckless and uncertain, wasn’t suited to the demands of a woman like Rose, however pleasant and sweet she may have been. I returned home at all hours, I was irregular, I didn’t conform to the patterns of the man-woman relationship that the Baptist Church had indoctrinated into her. She wanted marriage, and possibly what was left of my soul, and I wanted out. It was a confining relationship that became alarming when she started talking about taking me down to Swansea to meet Mum and Dad. Swansea was bad enough without having her parents thrown in – so what did I do? Like the bastard I am, I arranged to meet her at Paddington Station but instead caught a bus that took me in the opposite direction. I never saw her again. I was thankful, but it proved a chastening kind of experience: I realised that I was committed to one kind of life and that the semi-detached ideal, the kids and the prams and the mortgages and the lawns to mow, left me unmoved. Poor Rose, you might say. But she was better out of it. I hope that she went to Swansea and that she married a coalminer or somebody who keeps regular hours and doesn’t bash her too much.

I was thinking about all this, unfeelingly as ever, when the redhead came into the room. With my head partially covered by the blankets she obviously mistook me for Eric, for she started to shake me gently back and forward. I pushed the blankets away and looked at her.

‘You aren’t Eric,’ she said.

She moved away from the bed and sat in the chair facing me.

‘You’re observant,’ I said. ‘I like that quality in a woman.’

‘Where’s Eric?’

‘Gone to his factory or to his salt-mines or wherever.’

She was small and neat and although she was worn she wasn’t too bad to look at. Her long red hair fell about her shoulders. She was wearing a nightdress that was short and transparent and through which I could make out plainly her nipples and the folds in her belly. A dressing-gown was thrown around her shoulders, but she hadn’t done up the buttons. Her face carried the smears of yesterday’s make-up, streaks of eye-shadow, pale lipstick.

‘I didn’t expect to find somebody else here,’ she said.

‘Matthew Churchill’s the name,’ I said. ‘But I use a nom de plume, so you might not have heard of me.’

‘A nom-de-what?’

‘Plume,’ I answered. ‘An implement of some six inches in length, which is sometimes dipped into a narrow-necked bottle.’

She looked at me blankly, although I think she understood the allusion. I pushed back the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed. I was wearing only my underpants.

‘Well, who are you?’ she asked.

‘Churchill, Matthew,’ I said. ‘To save you asking the question, no, I’m not a relation of the famous family –’

‘I mean, what are you doing here?’

My powers of invention are at their peak in the early morning. At any other time of the day I have to fall back on a stock of stale lies or sweat over something new. But in the morning I am fresh.

‘Allow me to explain,’ I said. ‘I’m working on a book about the suicide rate among those who live lonely lives in bedsits. You might say that I’m here to get the feel of the subject.’

She sniggered.

‘When I’ve written the book I’ll submit it to the London School of Economics for my Ph.D. thesis.’

‘What’s it got to do with economics?’ she asked.

Awkward woman. ‘Academic life has its peculiarities.’ I said.

She let it go at that. She said, ‘Well, it seems a bit morbid. You don’t think that Eric’s going to do himself in, do you?’

‘You never know,’ I replied.

She went to the cooker and put on the kettle and then she returned to her chair. The nightdress had risen to a careless height on her thighs.

‘We’ll have a cup of tea,’ she said.

There was silence for a time. I have this ability of being able to smell when a woman’s available, when she’s bedable, as it were. And it seemed a safe bet that the redhead would have come across in a flash. But although my powers of invention may be at their peak, my stamina is at its lowest ebb in the mornings and sex is beyond my capacity. So I contented myself simply with staring at her body. The breasts were flabby and hung a little, and there was too much spare flesh on the belly. But for all that she was acceptable: I wouldn’t have refused it.

I could also see that she was interested in me. Now and again her eyes wandered down my chest as far as my crutch and remained there, fixed for a moment, before they’d start to move back up again. She performed this visual movement several times. For my part, I stared at the shadowy region just under her belly.

The kettle began to whistle and she rose to make tea.

She brought me a cup and stood in front of me as I sipped it.

‘Tastes nice,’ I said.

‘By the way, my name’s Agnes.’

‘Married?’

She made a face and laughed with contempt.

‘I haven’t seen the bastard for six years, darling,’ she said. ‘Are you married?’

‘It hasn’t happened to me yet,’ I said. ‘I don’t think that marriage and the academic life go together.’

She drank some of her tea and lit a cigarette.

‘It must be frustrating for you,’ I said.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘I’m not a nun, if that’s what you mean.’

She began to scratch her thigh. I watched her fingers move across the flesh, scrabbling like a crab rushing to get under a stone.

‘Filthy old morning,’ she said.

Looking at her, I had the distinct impression that I was seeing a woman who was at her prime. She had been knocked about a bit, obviously, but she had resisted some of the deterioration that goes along with it. I reckoned that in six months, or a year, she wouldn’t be worth having. She had transferred her scratching hand to her armpits. First she attacked the one, next the other.

‘That’s hard work,’ I remarked.

‘I’m always itchy when I get up,’ she said.

‘Maybe you’re on heat,’ I said.

‘Who knows?’ she asked, and she looked at me coolly.

I got up from the bed and stretched myself. While I was doing this, I was conscious of her watching me.

Suddenly she said, ‘Did the dog disturb you last night?’

‘I didn’t lose any sleep over it,’ I answered.

‘I think Eric exaggerates a bit,’ she said, and sat down. She began to tell me about how Mr Peluzzi had been standing on the front steps one night, smoking his pipe and watching people go back and forward in the street. His wife called out that his supper was ready, at which point he pitched forward on his face. Dead. Just like that. Failure of the heart.

It had been a great shock to everybody. Mr Peluzzi, with tattoos on his broad arms, had been the picture of health. Never a day’s illness and all that.

‘What a sad story,’ I said, beginning to fidget.

‘Isn’t it? That’s how it goes, I suppose. But you can see why Rex plays up a bit at night, can’t you? He misses his master. I’ve told Eric that. But it’s a funny thing; I don’t think he takes things in very quickly, does he?’

‘Oh, he’s slow,’ I said.

‘Have you known him long?’ She took a battered cigarette from her dressing-gown and lit it.

‘All my life,’ I said. ‘He’s a distant cousin, in fact. But we come from different branches of the family. On his side they’re all manual workers in low social categories. On my side we’re scholars and industrialists.’

‘Well,’ she said, as if a penny had suddenly dropped.

The way she was sitting seemed an invitation to me. The hem of the nightdress lay dangerously around the top of her hip and the nipples, visible through the flimsy garment, were pointed and firm. I reproached myself for my lack of stamina: but what can you do if you’re strictly a night athlete? if you can perform only under the secrecy of dark? Does that indicate a sense of guilt in the sexual act? God. Had my parents, drunk or sober, taught me anything? I knew I’d only have to approach her – and bang. But I felt limp, used, devoid of any real urge.

She had tilted her head to one side and was examining me. Her eyes, tight from sleep, flicked up and down my naked chest, lingered around the area of my crutch, swept downwards along my legs. Another time, I thought: but soon.

‘Is Eric a queer?’ she asked.

‘Queer? Funny you should say that, because I’ve often wondered myself –’

‘You’d better look out,’ she said.

She finished her tea and then placed the cup neatly in the sink. She made no attempt to wash it.

‘Mind you, I’ve nothing against queers. You’ve got to live and let live in this world, don’t you think?’

‘Too true,’ I said, wondering if other profundities were locked away in her head. I reached for my shirt and pulled it over my head. Through the thin fabric I took a good look at her. Because she supposed that I couldn’t see her, her gaze was fastened unashamedly to my crutch and her tongue appeared, a tiny yellow thing, that swept once quickly across her lips – as if she were working up an appetite. I pushed my head through the collar and winked at her, but she turned her face away.

‘Filthy old morning,’ she said, looking at the rain against the window.

She threw her cigarette into the hearth and watched it burn on the tiles.

‘Eric’s funny about tidiness,’ she said. ‘He gives me the creeps the way he goes around keeping everything in place. And look at that lot on the mantelpiece. I mean, he’s a grown man, it’s not right. Christ, what does he want with a bloody golliwog?’

‘He’ll grow out of it,’ I said. I noticed that she was sitting on my trousers. That meant I’d have to approach her if I wanted to retrieve them and I didn’t fancy getting too close to her. She seemed the sort who might possibly just reach out and grab herself a handful if she felt like it. So I said, ‘You’re sitting on my trousers.’

‘Am I? Why don’t you come and get them then?’

‘I would do – except that my leg is a bit painful this morning. Would you throw them here?’

‘Leg,’ she said, with a certain amount of disbelief. She picked up the trousers and brought them over to the bed. ‘That was just an excuse to get me to come to you, wasn’t it?’

She sat beside me and placed her hand on my thigh. I smiled at her. The trousers slipped on to the carpet and I looked at them.

‘I don’t need excuses,’ I said.

‘Oooh, this bed’s nice and soft,’ she said, bouncing herself up and down. ‘And it’s springy, I like springy beds.’

‘It’s comfortable,’ I said.

Her hand worked up to the elastic of my underpants and she was breathing heavily against the side of my face. There was the odour of last week’s tobacco and tomorrow’s dental decay.

‘You wanted me as soon as you saw me, didn’t you, darling? As soon as I came in the room …’

I thought of myself, stupidly, like an owl, a thing that comes out only after dark, that stirs into life only after the sun has vanished. Rose used to say that I was only fit to make tea in the mornings. Poor bloody Rose.

The tips of her fingers moved towards my testicles.

I had the sensation of being raped. Somehow it’s a feeling that reduces your masculinity to a pulpy nothingness, as if castrated, chewed, broken.

She pressed her dry lips to my neck, fastened her teeth to a sensitive area just below my ear.

I stared at the rain on the window. I knew, from a hundred absurd experiences, that I couldn’t have raised a whisper, let alone what Agnes expected me to raise, at that particular moment.

‘Oh, oh,’ she said.

And then the door of the room was pushed open suddenly and a young man dressed in a paint-stained jacket was standing there. Agnes sprung to a position of propriety and said.

‘Hello, Roderick.’

Roderick said, ‘I was looking for Eric, actually.’

I said, ‘He’s gone to work.’

‘Isn’t it Sunday?’ Roderick asked.

‘It’s Thursday,’ Agnes said, getting up from the bed.

Hastily I pulled on my trousers and fumbled for a cigarette.

‘I could have sworn,’ Roderick said. ‘When I woke up the morning had this draggy, dead religious thing about it, and I thought, God, it’s Sunday. How could I have been mistaken?’

‘It’s an easy mistake to make,’ I said. ‘Especially if you’re walking across the Sahara without water.’

Agnes, deflated, went to the door.

‘Come down for a drink sometime,’ she said to me.

‘Thank you,’ I answered. ‘I will.’

When she had gone, Roderick lingered a moment in the open doorway.

‘Eric’s been having this awful trouble with a dog. He was trying to hire a man –’

‘To kill the beast?’ I said.

Roderick stroked his chin and looked pensive.

‘Are you going to do it?’ he asked.

‘That’s hard to say at this point,’ I answered. ‘Various contractual difficulties have arisen that will have to be straightened out before any further moves are possible.’

He leaned against the wall and drummed his fingers against the side of his leg. There was something arrogant and casual in his stance that suggested he was used to far better surroundings than those he now found himself in. That accent – Eton and Cambridge? That mien – hunt balls and the enclosure at Royal Ascot? There was a smell of money somewhere in the background that I responded to at once. But I had to resist any urge to ask questions and plan a strategy, if only because I had enough on my plate at that time. Some of the best opportunities offer themselves at impossible moments. But it’s a sick, contrary world we live in. Roderick looked simple and rich, a combination I’d dreamed and drooled over every time I’d counted the odd halfpennies of some old spinster’s life savings: bottom drawers that remained always at the bottom, unfingered by man. Now I would have to shrug and pass the matter over.

Besides, I felt indebted to him for having extricated me, however unwittingly, from a nasty spot. Agnes had been a millimetre away, a gasp away, from discovering my morning impotency. That was a chink in my armour that I preferred to keep to myself. Being in the business of exploiting weaknesses, it’s suicide to expose one’s own.

‘He’s offered you twenty quid, has he?’ Roderick asked.

‘I prefer not to say,’ I said.

‘As you wish, man.’ He pushed himself off the wall and ran one hand through his long, girlish hair. And then he turned and went out of the room, closing the door.

I heated up what remained of the tea in the pot and fried two eggs. And then I put the dirty dishes in the sink for Eric to clean.

After that I stood at the window and looked out on the miserable morning.

That was when I had my first sight of the dreaded Rex.

He was lying flat on the concrete yard next door, his paws stretched, his snout somewhere between his legs. From time to time he looked up, blinked at the rain, and then covered his head again. His black fur glistened from the rain and – if dogs can have attributed to them human qualities – his expression was one of the utmost misery and despair. I thought it odd that Mrs Peluzzi had not provided a kennel, or some form of shelter at least, or failing that why did she not take the creature indoors in such weather? But that wasn’t my problem.

The wall dividing the yards looked about ten feet high. Nasty blades of broken glass stuck up from the brick. I wouldn’t have wanted to climb it in any circumstances. But then, I didn’t intend to try.

4

I’ve had to lie low at other times in my life. Once I was holed up in a dingy room in Brighton for two weeks, while the local police were searching for a well-dressed, glibly-spoken man of about thirty-five, wearing a moustache and an RAF tie. They had even constructed an identikit picture that bore a remarkable resemblance to the Frankenstein monster. I shaved off the moustache and flushed the tie down a lav, and hid myself from the world for a full two weeks. Going out in the street in such circumstances is a risky business, because they can haul you in for an identity parade at which some hysterical old woman can easily lay the finger. The great enemy, at such times when disappearance is essential to survival, is boredom. It springs up between you and four blank walls. It spits out of the cheap paperback you’ve already read three times and despised on the first reading. It attacks you from the grubby pack of cards that you can only use for solitaire or poker, with imaginary partners. It lingers in every line of the view you continually see from your window, every sickening, unchanging line.

Boredom is the killer. Conquer that and you more or less conquer all. The problem is how. Waiting that first day for Eric to come back I read through a pile of letters I found in his suitcase and a diary he had kept at the age of twenty-one. ‘I’m twenty-one today. I can vote if I like. I’m a man. And suddenly my childhood is over.’ Heady stuff indeed. But whether it was better than the emptiness of boredom is debatable. Then there were the letters, mainly from an aunt in Canada. ‘Today we saw our first rodeo and it was really exciting. You would have loved it Eric, what a pity you weren’t here to see it, but we thought about you when one of the cowboys fell off his horse.’ Absolutely hilarious, I thought. I searched through the rest of his papers: one cutting from an insert in a Deaths column (‘gone to the everlasting sleep, now at peace’); one birth certificate (Eric Shootler Billings – Shootler?); one old wrapper from a Wall’s Pork Pie, the sentimental value of which I couldn’t even begin to guess; and two or three photographs of women crudely cut from a nude magazine. Well, well.

I had the feeling that I had sifted through his entire life, and that there was nothing else to discover. Add all that lot to the golliwog, the school photograph, and the half-dozen or so cigarette cards that litter the mantelpiece and what have you? Eric Shootler Billings, a man.

When he came in at six o’clock I was lying on the bed. He went at once to the window and looked down into the yard.

‘He isn’t dead,’ he said. ‘You were going to kill him, you were going to –’

‘Relax, relax,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t it be the height of nonsense to kill the animal in broad daylight? Think of the consequences if I’d been discovered doing that.’

He paused for a second, before unscrewing the cloth cap from his skull and unbuttoning the raincoat.

‘I’m too eager,’ he said. ‘That’s always been –’

‘We’ve got to make plans, Eric,’ I said. ‘Planning is the essence of every success. Ask any successful man – Sir, was your success an accident? What do you think he’ll say?’

Eric put the kettle on the gas, shaking his head back and forward.

‘The bald fact of the matter is that everything has to be gone into, step by step. Blundering is useless. Think of the charge of the Light Brigade, Eric. If only that had been well planned, who knows what would have happened to the course of history?’

‘Like Cleopatra’s nose,’ he said. He was watching the gas flame, his mouth open in a kind of grin.

‘We could quite easily go down there and stick a knife in the animal’s neck. All right. It would bleed to death. So what? That would be a fine example of blundering because we’d be discovered almost at once.’

‘You’re right,’ he said. He began to make tea. He brought me a cup and a digestive biscuit.

‘That last dog I killed was a borzoi in Hampstead Garden Suburb –’

‘You said it was in Clapham.’

Memory like a bloody limpet. ‘That was the last but one,’ I said. ‘With the borzoi I sneaked into the garden during a snowstorm dressed in white PVC from head to toe. Camouflage, you see. I dragged the dog under my coat, got into my car, drove out the North Circular and choked it to death in a lay-by near North Finchley. It went like clockwork. And why did it go like clockwork, Eric? Because I’d planned every last detail, right down to the average circumference of the animal’s turds. You’ve asked me to do a job. I’m a perfectionist. You’ll get a perfect job. But I’ve got to have some time.’

Eric sat down on the couch.

He chewed his biscuit and said, ‘They warned me to watch my timekeeping, you know. The foreman took me into his office and said that I’d lost nearly three hours work over the last two weeks. It can’t go on, he said. Well, I explained to him about the dog and everything but he wasn’t interested. I’m interested in corrugated packing, he said. Your corrugated packing. So watch it.’

I lit my last cigarette and listened to his monotonous voice.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘Things will improve.’

He sat in silence for a time. There were crumbs on his chin. I stared up at the ceiling. I thought about my boredom and wondered how it might be dissolved.

‘I’ve been at King’s for twelve years,’ Eric said. ‘That’s a lot of water under the bridge.’

‘Yes, well, you don’t want to get yourself sacked now,’ I said.

He held up his hand. His fingers were crossed. He accompanied this gesture with a smile at me, and there was something of trust, even faith, in the smile, that was utterly pathetic. Clearly he relied on me to flush this noise, this nuisance, out of his life; to restore the status quo, to enable him to return to his undisturbed, humdrum existence. And my services were to cost him twenty pounds.

I thought about the three thousand quid that lay in my raincoat pocket, wrapped inside the Daily Express. It was more money than I’d ever had at any one time in my life. It was my strike, my passport to a better elsewhere – and yet here I was, holed up in this dump with a nut.

‘When will you start making plans?’ Eric asked.

‘I can’t make any plans until I get materials, can I?’

‘Materials?’

‘First of all, I’ll need a measuring tape –’

‘What for?’

‘I want to size up that wall, don’t I? You don’t expect me to climb it if I don’t know how high it is, do you?’

‘Well, I climbed it,’ he said.

‘Do you want to do this job yourself?’

He shook his head, his eyes staring.

‘Fine. Then I need a measuring tape.’

‘Why do you want to know how high it is?’ he asked.

‘Mine is an exact science,’ I said. ‘What’s the point in my having mastered trigonometry at Eton if I can’t put it to practical use? I also need a flashlight, since most of the work will have to be done after dark.’

He shifted round on the sofa, that constipated look of concentration on his face.

‘In addition, I’ll need to have some form of protective clothing, because of the glass on the wall. When I go over, I don’t want to carve myself up like you did.’

‘Protective clothing?’ he asked.

‘Padded trousers, padded jacket, and several pairs of leather gloves.’

‘Where will I get padded clothes from?’

‘That’s your affair,’ I said. ‘I only do the job. You supply the materials. Apart from that, I must have a yard of nylon reel. String isn’t any good because it might break at the crucial moment. So I must have unbreakable nylon if I’m going to strangle the dog properly.’

He found a piece of scrap paper and the end of a pencil and was writing these items down.

‘If I need anything else I’ll let you know.’

He got up, looking thoughtful, and took a packet of sausages from his raincoat. He opened the packet and began to fry the sausages on the stove.

When we had eaten, he washed up the dishes, dried them, and stacked them away neatly. Watching him, I was almost stricken by a sense of pity. It was an uncomfortable feeling that I only managed to suppress at the last moment. Analysing it, I suppose it was caused by the sight of him grubbing around at the sink, the sound of him whistling tunelessly, and the realisation that all his trust and hope had been placed (or misplaced) in me.

‘Will you go out and buy me a bottle of whisky?’ I asked.

Almost at once he put on his coat. I gave him some money and watched him go.

When he came back he gave me the whisky and returned the money.

‘A present from me,’ he said. ‘I never have the chance to give presents.’

I went downstairs with the whisky and found Agnes in her kitchen, seated at the table, drinking gin from a cracked cup. I placed the bottle on the table and winked at her.

She looked at me blearily.

‘You invited me for a drink,’ I said.

She was wearing a black dress and had her red hair piled up untidily on the top of her head. Hairpins and wisps of hair protruded. I sat down and opened the whisky.

‘We were disturbed this morning,’ I said.

‘By Roderick,’ she said, as if remembering something in the distant past.

‘That’s right,’ I said. I found myself a cup and poured some whisky. ‘But we won’t be disturbed this time.’ I swallowed some of the alcohol and slipped my hand across the table, gripping her fingers. She was drunk. She knocked the bottle over while reaching for it with her free hand. I caught it, but not before some of the whisky had been spilled.

If there is one thing that cancels my desire, it is a drunken woman. Possibly there’s an ingrained puritanism in this reaction. Who knows? But I tried to forget her drunkenness, because I couldn’t afford to be choosy. It was all of three months since I’d last had a bit and that had been brief and unsatisfactory – a widow with a penchant for toes and fingers, a kind of trickery that doesn’t enthral me.

Agnes laughed and coughed, a spluttering, smoky cough that sounded decidedly bronchial.

‘So you’ve come down, have you?’

‘That’s right. Now that I am here, what are we going to do about it?’

I moved my hands over her breasts and she tossed her head back, laughing still.

‘Is something wrong?’ I asked. She wasn’t responding as I had anticipated.

‘God I want you,’ she said. ‘You know that I want you, don’t you?’

‘There’s nothing to stop us,’ I said.

She pushed my hands away. ‘There is, lovy, there is. My monthlies have just started and I make it a firm rule never to go with a man while they’re on. You’ll have to wait a bit.’

And she laughed a little longer.

5

I didn’t wake next morning until after Eric had gone to work. The sun was shining on the window and the outside world seemed silent and deceptively peaceful: deceptive, since I knew that the streets weren’t safe for me. I got out of bed and made a cup of coffee. I stood drinking it by the window.

In the yard, Rex was eating meat from a tin bowl. Sometimes he would raise his neck, chewing absently, staring upwards at the sky or along the walls of his prison. After a time, a woman came out of the house and watched him. I guessed that she was Mrs Peluzzi. She was small and plump with massive breasts – breasts, as the cheap novelists say, like melons – and she was dressed in the faded black of a Latin widow. When the dog had finished eating and had dragged a bloody bone to the far comer of the yard, she went down on her knees and threw her arms around the creature’s neck. She caressed the dog. Caressed may be odd in this context, but there is no other word. She pushed her fingers through the thick black fur and smoothed them down the animal’s flanks.

This little scene lasted perhaps for about thirty seconds, certainly no longer than a minute, but even so there was something in it, a certain element of perverse sexuality that appalled and excited me simultaneously. I’m not keen on extreme deviations, being an advocate of straight-up-and-down sex with minimal variations, but I sensed something of the sheer excitement in what was taking place. When Mrs Peluzzi had gone indoors the dog yapped for a bit and then slumped down on his belly as if prematurely abandoned.

This interested and intrigued me. Did she miss her husband to the extent that she had transferred her affections to the animal? Did the dog have the late Peluzzi’s face in her mind? Did she – I wondered, I wondered – have illicit relations with the beast?

I watched the dog for a time, but the pulse had gone out of the scene and I was left to wonder if I’d only imagined what had taken place. But I’m not given to illusions or to hallucinations: for me the external world is real enough, and everything in it is either true or false. I don’t believe in fairies or in God (since both come from the same stable anyway) but I believe up to the hilt in the things I can see. Mrs Peluzzi had caressed the dog in a way that went far beyond the normal sickening embraces given to pets by their owners.

I poured myself a glass of whisky and sat down on the bed. When I reached for a cigarette I discovered that I had none left. I dressed and went downstairs to borrow one from Agnes, but she was nowhere to be found. I stood for a moment in the hallway. There was a dreadful conflict between my craving for tobacco and my reluctance to venture on to the streets. I stood there, undecided.

After a moment, I opened the front door and looked along the street. Apart from a few parked cars and a streetsweeper, sleeping propped against his broom, I could see nothing dangerous. Nothing ostensively dangerous, that is. But vengeance has an odd habit of dropping out of the sky. I was once arrested in Chester for something I had done three years before in Southend, simply because someone recognised me at the self-service counter in a Woolworth’s cafeteria. I hesitated. Besides, I didn’t know where the nearest tobacconist’s was.

My craving won; or to put the matter another way, my weakness did. I went down the steps, turned right, and walked to the end of the street. It led nowhere. I turned back and went to the other end of the street. On the corner was a newsagent’s shop. It was filled with chattering women and an indolent assistant, an old man who must have passed his prime with Kitchener. When my turn came I asked for two one hundred boxes of Players.

‘Hundred boxes, oh dear,’ the old man said. ‘We only have them at Christmas, unless there’s some in the back.’

Before I could say anything he had disappeared. I looked through the window and on to the street. Were my fears groundless? This was just a quiet suburban street: nothing wild and violent could happen here, in the strong sunshine, in the very ordinariness of things. Some five minutes later the old man came back with two boxes of cigarettes.

‘Last of the Christmas stock,’ he said. He was peering at the coloured wrappers; S. Claus with reindeers, flurry of snow. ‘Thought we didn’t have any left. But there you are. Two hundred coffin nails for you.’

I paid with a five pound note and waited an age for him to count out the change. And then I stepped out of the shop and on to the sunlit street.

I saw the black Ford coming up on my left. I don’t know why I was suddenly struck by fear. The licence-plate number was faintly familiar, but I couldn’t really place the car itself. For a moment I couldn’t move. And then I turned and walked quickly along the street. There were three, perhaps four, men inside the Ford and it was moving with the slowness of a very patient patrol car. As I walked I heard it come up behind me.

All I could think, rightly or wrongly, was that the car had something to do with Ed Sharp. Because of this connection, I had the strong, almost overpowering feeling, that my survival hung by the thinnest of thin threads at that moment.

I ran up the steps of the nearest house and pressed the first bell I saw.

That was how I first met Bella Peluzzi.

6

I stepped into the darkened hallway and said,

‘Carson of the RSPCA. I believe you have a dog.’

‘A dog?’

I saw that, in spite of the almost inevitable moustache, she had a plump, pretty face. Her skin was a pale yellowy colour, but the secret of her appeal lay in the eyes. They were dark brown, perhaps black, the colour of burned wood.

‘Rex,’ I said. I was almost out of breath. I listened for the sound of the car, but the street seemed silent.

‘Yes, I have a dog and his name is Rex,’ she said. ‘What is your purpose?’

In spite of the drabness of the threadbare black dress, the breasts were magnificent. I contrasted them with the scrawny items that Agnes sported so freely. There was really no comparison, none whatsoever.

‘RSPCA,’ I said, my inventiveness having been stalled a little by the appearance of the car.

‘Maybe you’d better come in.’

I followed her into her sitting-room. I have never seen a room so full of photographs. Some were early and brown, some black and white, one or two were coloured.

‘You must have a great many relatives,’ I said.

‘A big family, yes,’ she said.

‘You aren’t English?’

‘Italian,’ she said.

I sat down. The furniture was massive and hard.

‘Why have you come to see my Rex? He isn’t ill.’

‘No, he isn’t ill,’ I said. ‘But you may have heard of the new government legislation, the Dog Owners’ Bill. Under the provisions of the DOB – as we call it in the trade – a census has to be taken every five years and the total number of dogs in the country computed. You do understand, don’t you? It’s all tied in with the restriction of the canine population by birth control methods.’

She looked at me oddly. ‘You’re crazy.’

‘I’ve got a job to do, madam. If you want to complain, you must utilise the proper channels.’

She shrugged and threw her hands in the air.

‘Can I see the dog?’ I asked.

‘Why?’

‘I must have descriptive details.’

I followed her into the back yard. Rex was asleep against the wall. The chain that bound him was fixed to a bracket high in the wall and was probably about twelve feet long.

‘Does he live in the yard?’ I asked.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ she said, impatiently.

‘I assume you provide shelter.’

‘Of course, I am not a heartless woman.’

We stood looking at Rex for a time and then we went indoors again.

‘Certain other people are heartless, but not me,’ she said.

‘Oh?’

She lowered her voice. ‘There is a man next door who would like to destroy my Rex. I know it for a fact.’

‘Probably he’s just a crank.’

‘No, he throws down poisoned meat.’

‘Why don’t you do something about it?’

She didn’t answer me. She sat down on the sofa and clasped her hands together. I looked around the room. From every angle, photographed in every possible stance, sombre Italian faces stared down at me.

‘Can I see the licence?’ I asked.

‘I lost it.’

I tutted. ‘You really must have a licence, you know.’

‘You aren’t going to take Rex away, are you?’

‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘But you must get a licence before long. I take it that you acquired Rex in England?’

‘No,’ she said, tears suddenly streaming down her face. ‘He is an Italian dog. We bring him from Naples.’

I was beginning to get the feel of my role. ‘But you obtained permission, didn’t you?’

‘No,’ she said. She was howling a little now. ‘We smuggle him in a cardboard box.’

‘That’s very serious,’ I said.

‘Please, please, don’t take him away from me!’

I sat down beside her on the sofa and put my arm around her shoulders. She stiffened a bit at first and then relaxed. After a time she became silent.

‘Will you report me?’ she asked.

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ I said.

Another stifled sob. Then she got to her feet.

‘Will you take a cup of tea?’

‘Thank you.’

‘Perhaps a slice of home-made cake?’

‘Please.’

She went out of the room. The air was thick with the smell of her heavy perfume. In her absence, I realised that there was no longer anything to keep me there. Danger, if it had been danger, was now past. Perhaps I stayed because the alternative – Eric’s empty room – was so alarming. She returned carrying a tray. She set it down, poured two cups of tea, and handed me a plate with a slice of cream cake.

‘That looks appetising,’ I said.

‘If you don’t report me, you deserve it,’ she said.

She looked appealing when she smiled, as she did then.

‘Well, we officials have hearts like anybody else,’ I said. I ate the cake, which was delicious, and then lit a cigarette. ‘How long have you been in England?’

‘Three years,’ she replied. ‘My husband died last month.’

‘I am sorry.’

‘His heart.’

‘Dear, dear. It must be lonely for you.’

‘I’ve only got my Rex now,’ she said. ‘He is a comfort.’

‘I can imagine.’

Blinds were half-drawn across the windows. The room had a certain stuffiness – not that it smelled – a certain staleness that seemed a direct result of the lack of light coming through the windows. I looked round the faces in the photographs. It was like seeing the same face, constantly repeated in an infinite series of mirrors, poised in different angles yet ageing with each reflection.

‘Which one is your husband?’ I asked.

She looked at me coldly, sniffing a little.

‘There isn’t a picture of my husband,’ she said.

Odd, I thought. There should have been one of the late Peluzzi, if only for the sake of sentiment.

‘You’d like more cake?’ she asked.

‘Please.’

She cut another slice and slapped it down on my plate.

‘I make all my own cakes and bread,’ she said.

She was wandering up and down the room, wringing her hands together as if to rid them of moisture. She seemed uneasy – was she worried that I might impound her beloved Rex? I thought of the scene that I had witnessed only a short time before in the back yard and absurdly there came into my mind an image of Rex dressed in waistcoat and bow-tie, standing panting on his hind legs.

‘We all have to die some time,’ she said.

I stared at her. She was standing by the window, frozen in the yellow light that fell through the thick blinds. She turned round to look at me. We all have to die some time? Why had she said that?

‘Indeed,’ I said.

‘There is no escaping the fact.’

‘From the minute we’re born …’

She shrugged, lifting her eyebrows.

‘My husband,’ she said. She looked round the photographs – there must have been hundreds of them, all of them in tin frames, all pickled behind glass – as if seeking out the one that wasn’t there. And then she stared at me. ‘Will you report me? Will you?’

I shook my head. The whole situation was false. Her question meant nothing. Somehow I didn’t have the heart to carry on. But I said, ‘You must buy a licence as soon as you can.’

She sat down. ‘I can see you like animals. It shows a kindness in your soul.’

I neither like nor dislike animals. They signify nothing. I couldn’t, in cold blood, actually kill one, but that doesn’t mean that I’m an animal worshipper.

‘Mr Peluzzi didn’t like Rex,’ she said.

She was silent for a moment. I waited to hear more.

‘Sometimes he beat Rex with a rope until blood come into the fur. Can you picture that?’

Revelations. Was there anything more?

She turned her palms over in her lap and stared at the lines.

‘But. He’s dead. No good to talk of him like he was still alive.’

And then she began to clear away the dirty tea cups and dishes. I got to my feet.

I said, ‘You should have reported him to us.’

‘My own husband?’

She went with me to the front door. In the dim hallway my fingers, quite by accident, brushed against her bare arm. She looked as if the touch caused her immense pain.

I went down the steps and into the sunlit street. There was no sign now of the black Ford. When I turned to wave to her she had already gone and the door was closed.

When I got back to the room I felt listless and lay down on the bed, smoking cigarettes one after the other.

I’m not the sort of person who gets easily depressed. By nature I’m inclined to be extrovert, resilient, even optimistic. But I recognised in my listlessness a nagging, faint sense of depression. I stared at the window and the pattern drawn by sunlight on the floor.

What was it? What caused it?

It was something about the Italian widow; something about her room, her life; something to do with that bloody dog. Was it the pointlessness of the picture collection, the fact that dead faces pinned under glass indicate merely a docile subservience to past things? Was it the way she had spoken of her husband? I couldn’t think. Was it the way she had thrown herself, body and soul, upon the dog?

Or was I beginning to get a bad dose of solitude sickness?

I found an old copy of The People, faded and six years out of date, lining the shelf of the pantry. I tore it out, read it, re-read it, and smoked more cigarettes. ‘We say to the so-called Reverend Jim Birmingham – Come off it, Jim.’

The world is full of failed cons.

I threw the paper down and went to the window. I could smell faint traces of Mrs Peluzzi’s scent on my clothes. Rex was asleep in the yard, curled into an unrecognisable shape. Somehow I couldn’t stand to look at him.

7

When Eric returned he went straight to the window. He didn’t say anything at first. He took a packet of sausages from his coat and fried them. We had finished eating before he spoke.

‘I had to go and see King today. He had my timecards on his desk. They were covered in red numbers. You get stamped red every time you’re late, you see. He said that if I couldn’t improve within a week, I’d have to go. Twelve years I’ve given to the company. It’s funny when you think about it like that. It’s a lot of water under the bridge, twelve years. I was twelve years younger when I started there. Twelve. A dozen. I hadn’t thought about that. A dozen seems longer than twelve, doesn’t it?’

He hadn’t eaten the skins of his sausages. They lay crumpled, swept to one side of the plate.

I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, old son. These things can’t be rushed. Anyway, you can always get another job –’

‘I don’t want another job!’ he shouted.

‘All right, all right, take it easy.’

I hadn’t seen him in a rage before, but it was amusing to witness. His face became a dark shade of pink and his ears seemed to stiffen and move up his head. The tiny mouth shook wetly, beads of spit dripping down the chin.

‘I’m sorry. Excuse me.’ He circled a hunk of bread round his greasy plate. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a better chance of promotion at King’s than I’d have anywhere else. If I got another job, you see, I’d have to start at the bottom of the ladder again.’

Promotion! It was the first indication of ambition that he’d ever given. I almost laughed. Promotion for him was a matter of chasing ghosts. Did he imagine, did he dream, that you could walk straight off the conveyor belt and on to a seat in the boardroom, expense-account lunches, trips overseas, women in first-class hotels? Even if he’d had the necessary grey matter – and clearly he had little in that enormous skull – it couldn’t have happened. I could have told him, there and then, that he would spend the rest of his life packing boring little cardboard slats into boring cardboard boxes. We each have a station in life.

‘You see, it’s essential to kill the dog.’

He took a length of nylon cord from his trousers and threw it down on the table.

‘There’s one of the things you asked for.’

I picked it up. ‘I’ve been thinking, Eric. I wonder if strangulation is the best way after all.’

For a moment he was silent.

And then he said, ‘Oh mother.’

His huge hands came across the table, spilling sauce bottles, vinegar, and salt, and he tore at the lapels of my jacket, hauling me up from my seat and pulling my face down until it was level with the surface of the table.

‘What are you playing at? What are you playing at?’ he asked.

He pushed my face into the open packet of butter that lay on the table. For a second or two I was so surprised that I didn’t react. His hands were on my neck, digging into my flesh.

‘You’re supposed to be … killing that … bloody dog …’

He was lifting my head and then smearing it across the butter.

‘Supposed to be … what are you playing at?’

I drew my breath. I pulled myself free. I found myself staring into the ugliness, the blank stupidity of his face. His skin was red and his eyes were watering.

I struck him on the mouth and he stepped back, staggering a bit. He didn’t know what to do. He was scared of his own strength and shocked by his own behaviour. There was bewilderment in his eyes. I struck him again and again. He fell down against the bed. I crushed my knee into his ribs and he gasped. He lifted his arms in the air. Tears streamed over his face.

When he tried to get up I thumped him again, on the side of the neck. I can’t explain why, but I enjoyed it. I enjoyed inflicting pain on him.

‘I’m sorry, sorry,’ he said.

He was lying face down on the floor, his arms curled protectively around his head.

‘Please,’ he said.

I jumped once on his back and he cried out.

Shaking, I sat down and lit a cigarette. For a long time he didn’t move. I looked at him. It was pitiful. This huge object sprawled across the floor like a broken ornament, like something dropped from a great height.

‘Get up,’ I said. ‘Get up, you stupid bastard.’

He lifted his head and looked at me.

‘Don’t ever lay a finger on me again,’ I said.

He crawled over the floor and raised himself by pulling on the edge of the bed. He sat there, staring at me miserably, like a mournful dog.

I poured him a cupful of whisky and he drank it.

‘I don’t know why I did that,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to … but I … Oh mother, you’ve got to help me.’

Poor bastard. He was relying on me: he was relying on another human being. I felt sick. There are times when I wish I had a conscience.

He was examining himself for bruises. I turned away.

I picked up the nylon cord from the table.

‘You’re really getting desperate, aren’t you?’

He nodded his head slowly. ‘I can’t go on like this. You’ve got to do something soon. You’ve –’

I held my hand in the air to stop him. I was still shaking from the physical effort of punishing him. I was out of shape. But then I hadn’t needed to fight crudely like that for years. He got up from the bed and stood beside me.

‘Shake,’ he said.

Shake. Just like a child after a child’s fight.

I put out my hand and he took it. And then he gathered the dirty dishes and started to wash them in the sink. As if nothing had happened. Resilience or stupidity?

When it was dark we went down and looked at the wall. I pretended to be sizing it up, to look for the easiest part to climb. We had been there for about five minutes when there came the sound of Mrs Peluzzi’s voice from the other side of the wall. Eric and I stood silently and listened.

She didn’t say much to Rex. In fact, she only said one thing.

‘My Rex, my Rex, he can’t hurt you now.’

And then she went indoors.