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Walter’s house is a very nice house. Just as nice as Gerald and Les’s. It’s on Millionaires’ Row in Hampstead along with all those other businessmen’s nice houses. Only unlike all the other houses it isn’t lit up like Blackpool Illuminations. There’s not a light on, not even a porch light to illuminate the slowly drifting snowflakes. The whole house is dead and you don’t have to get out of the car to know that the occupants have gone away. It has that feel about it.
“Well, that’s one less way to Jimmy Swann,” I say, lighting up a cigarette. In the passenger seat next to me Peter takes a packet of cheroots out of the pocket of his leather coat.
“They may be coming back,” he says. “They may just be out for the afternoon.”
I shake my head.
“Walter’s got three kids. After what’s happened today he’s sorted them and his missus out of it. Just playing safe, just in case.”
“If that’s the case, then Eddie’ll have done the same,” Peter says, lighting a cheroot.
“I don’t know. Eddie lives different to Walter. He still lives in the Buildings, in the flat his old mother used to have. Like a palace inside, so I hear, but still the Buildings. He likes the security of his old surroundings.”
“Yes, but if he knows we’re getting on to him his living room and two bedrooms won’t seem all that appealing.”
“But he doesn’t know yet, does he? I mean, Walter’s the one with the head, the forward-looking one. It’d be just like Walter to slide out of it in the hope that if everything’s blown then he’ll know about it when he’s called on to identify Eddie.”
“So we go and see if Eddie’s at home, then?”
I switch on the ignition and let out the hand brake and the car begins to slip away from the curb and I say to Peter, “If we are in luck, and Eddie is at home, you take your lead from me, right? I don’t want your enthusiasm for your work cocking up the whole operation. I mean, if it did, I’d just as soon see to you as I’d see to Eddie or anybody else.”
“Jack,” he says, “you’ve got such a wonderful way of putting things. Did you know that?”
“I always was good at English,” I tell him. “Or so my old English teacher used to say.”
We drive along in silence for a while and then Peter says, “Incidentally, I don’t give two fucks about what’s behind all this, the ins and the outs, but I would like to know, in your opinion, who’s going to come out of it best.”
“Why, so that if it’s the Colemans you can do a little pirouette and end up facing the other way?”
“I always face the other way. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
“I only notice things that are likely to affect me.”
Peter rolls the window down and throws the cheroot out.
“But do you see what I mean?” he says. “I came to Gerald and Les for finance. That’s all I’m interested in. This little tickle I presented to them could see me in the sun for the rest of my life.”
“In that case I should keep doing your banking with Gerald and Les. That way you might even get to go on the job.”
Peter doesn’t answer that and when I make my next right turn I catch a quick glance at his face. It’s set like some old boiler who’s concentrating on her Bingo card. I shake my head and look at my watch. It’s ten minutes to six.
It takes us another half an hour to get to Eddie’s. I park the car in a side street and Peter and I walk back to the corner and look up at the Buildings on the other side of the road. They look like reject plans for Colditz. Real artisans’ dwellings and I bet Eddie’s still paying the same rent his dear old mother used to pay. And with his money he prefers to stay there.
We look at the Buildings for a minute or two more, and then I say to Peter, “What have you got with you?”
“What I’ve always got,” he says. “My quiet little peashooter.”
“You haven’t got your shotgun stuffed up your shirt?”
“No,” he says. “Unfortunately I said goodbye to that this afternoon.”
“Thank Christ for that,” I say.
“You’d be well out of it by now if I hadn’t brought it along.”
“If you say so,” I say, beginning to cross the road.
“Too bloody right you would,” Peter says, following
after me.
We get to the other side and go through the arch that opens into the courtyard that’s formed by the four interior walls of the Buildings. Apart from tracks of footprints round the sides the large central area of snow is pure and unbroken and under the lights from the landings the whole scene looks like something from an old British picture.
“Eddie lives on the top floor,” I say to Peter. “You’d think that seeing as he chooses to stay here he’d at least have bothered to move down a bit.”
We walk round the inside of the courtyard until we come to the foot of the flight of stone stairs that leads up to the landings. Everything is very quiet, it being the teatime hour. We get to the third landing without seeing anybody. Eddie’s flat is the third one along on the right as you stop off the stairs. We walk along the landing and stop outside the front door. There is a small panel of frosted glass set in the door and through it there is the faint glow of light from deep inside. I look at Peter and he looks at me. I step forward and have a look at the lock. It’s a Yale so that doesn’t take long and when I’ve finished the door opens half an inch without making any noise at all. We wait and listen for a few minutes and from inside I can hear the sound of someone talking on the phone beyond a closed door. I can’t tell who it is or what they’re saying but at least there’s somebody at home we can talk to.
I push the door open so there’s room enough for Peter to go through and when he’s done that I follow him and close and lock the door behind us. We’re in a small square unlit hall. Including the front door there is a door in each of the four walls. One of the doors is open about an inch and this is where the light and the voice are coming from. I walk the couple of steps it takes to get to the door and I have a look to see what I can see through the crack.
Eddie’s been very considerate because he’s placed himself precisely where I can see him. He’s standing over by the window with his back to the room, looking out at the falling snowflakes. The phone’s pressed to his ear and whoever he’s talking to is doing all the talking at the moment because Eddie’s just making the occasional grunt of agreement. He’s wearing the waistcoat and trousers to a very nice dove-gray pin-stripe suit and on his feet he’s wearing a pair of tartan carpet slippers.
I push the door open very, very slowly. Eddie continues nodding and grunting so without making a sound I move into the room and Peter follows me. When we’re both in, Eddie puts the receiver down on the cradle which is perched on the windowsill and scratches his head and shoves his hands in his pockets and continues to look out of the window until in the blackness he registers our reflections instead of the snowflakes. Then he spins round and catches the phone with his right hand and sends it crashing and tinkling to the floor. He looks from side to side like a rubbish defender looking for someone to play the ball to, then chooses a direction and begins to bluster through the furniture in the direction of the kitchenette but I take off at a tangent and cut him off and at the same time Peter pulls a chair directly in front of the door we’ve just come through and sits down in it and takes out a cheroot and lights it up. Eddie now is forced to forget his instincts and pulls himself up short to try and rationalise the situation. He knows there’s nothing he can say, because if there was we wouldn’t be there. There’s no way out for him, but he can’t prevent the cogs in his brain turning and turning just in case he can come up with something. So I light up a cigarette and look round the place and wait for Eddie to reach his logical conclusion.
The place is done out like a miniature brothel. Everything that is possible to have a pattern on it is patterned: the suite, the curtains, the wallpaper, the carpet, the cushions. One wall consists of rose-tinted paneled mirrors and yet in the middle of those panels is set an electric fire and round this fire there is even an inlaid pattern of roses. In fact all the patterns are floral (but never the same one twice) and the whole effect makes the ramrod stripes of Eddie’s beautiful suiting seem quite spectacularly out of place, like a graph superimposed over a flower study. And then there are the ornaments. There are a couple of shelves on the wall where the window is that are brimful of miniature liqueur and spirit bottles. Then there are three whole shelves on a bookcase that are stacked with mementos of holidays abroad, like pot sombreros or ashtrays set in basket weave or little figures of donkeys in sombreros with little bambinos leading them or cellophane encased dolls in national costume, or models of famous pieces of architecture with tiny barometers set in relevant positions to the design. And then there are the reproductions: Picasso’s Clown, Tretchikoff’s The Tear, and the wild horses in the surf.
I throw my spent match in a wastebin with a floral pattern which is set in a mock wrought-iron receptacle and I say, “I always thought it quiet round here, Eddie, until I saw the inside of this place.”
By this time Eddie has reached the macaroni stage and his face has gone as slack as a melting waxwork and the only thing that stops him sinking to his knees on the carpet is the unconscious awareness of the knife edges in his trousers. His mouth is wide open like the mouth of a fish with a hook inside it but he’s not going to be able to control his lips so that he can form any words. His face is the colour of vanilla ice cream and beads of oily sweat are slowly following the downward pattern of his expression. Inside he must be wishing he’d worshiped a little more fastidiously at the shrine of the God he’s now praying to.
“Well,” I say. “Eddie.”
Eddie’s hands move briefly as though somebody’s pulling the strings and I walk over to him and flip the top of my cigarette packet and offer him a cigarette but all that happens is that his mouth falls open a little bit wider. So I take hold of one of his hands and insert a cigarette between the fore and middle fingers and lift his arm and hold his hand so that the cigarette is near his lips and he automatically does the rest himself. I light the cigarette for him and he manages to inhale and while he’s doing that I draw well back and hit him as hard as I can just below his breastbone. The punch makes him stagger backwards rather than fall over immediately but he’s got to fall over sometime and when he does it’s across a low table next to the colour telly, upending the little wrought-iron magazine holder and scattering the telly papers all over the place. I give him a few minutes to get his breath back and to pass the time I watch the cigarette I gave him burn a hole in the centre of one of the flowers in the pattern on the carpet.
When Eddie’s got himself back together I say to him, “As you know, we haven’t the time to play mulberry bushes. All we want to know is what’s happening, from beginning to end. That’s all we want, Eddie, and I think you know that shooting shit won’t help your position one little bit.”
Eddie drags himself up off the floor and supports himself on the back of an easy chair and exercises his lungs for a couple of minutes.
Then he looks up at me and says, “What’s going to happen to me?”
“I don’t know, Eddie,” I tell him.
He looks down at the back of the chair again and nods.
“Yes,” he says.
I sit down in the opposite armchair and say, “Tell us first, Eddie. You never know, depending on what kind of fairy tale it is there might just be a happy ending.”
Eddie stays the way he is for a minute then works his way round to the front of the chair and eases himself down into it. Then he sees the cigarette lying on the floor burning its way through the carpet and he bends over and picks it up and flicks the ash into an ashtray and takes a drag.
Then he passes his hand through his hair and is about to speak, but before he can, I say, “First, Eddie. The wife. The kids. Where are they?”
“They’re out of it,” he says. “They’re away. That I’m not telling you.”
“It’s not important right now,” I tell him. “Just didn’t want us to be interrupted once you got into full flow.’’
Eddie takes another drag on his cigarette.
“It wasn’t my idea,” he says.
I don’t make any comment on his statement so there’s no alternative but for him to go on. “I mean, I said to Wally, ‘We’re all right as we are, aren’t we? What’s wrong with the setup we already have? This idea is going to bring us nothing but fucking strife.’ But Wally just rubbed his hands together and said he’d been looking forward to a setup like this for years.”
Eddie puts the cigarette out in the ashtray. He looks at me and then at Peter and then back to me.
“What was the idea, Eddie?” I say to him.
“Well, it wasn’t even Wally’s idea, was it? I mean, if it hadn’t been served up to him he’d never have thought of it by himself, would he? I mean, be fair. Would he?”
“So whose idea was it?”
Eddie makes sure he’s not looking into my eyes when he says, “Hume.”
Eddie might be avoiding my eyes but I can certainly feel Peter’s boring into the back of my neck when the word drops into the silence of the room.
“See, Hume comes round to see Wally one day about this bullion job we put out over in Bromley. He comes steaming in with his usual spiel about how he’s fitted up somebody who wasn’t even on the job and how to save himself ten out of twenty this somebody’s going to stand up and point at me and Wally. Of course, Wally tells Hume to piss off and go and play in the next street. I mean, the thing is that this somebody’s a geezer called Danny Ross and Wally did Danny a great big favour once and Danny’s soft as shit and he’d do thirty rather than point at me and Wally and Wally tells Hume as much. Hume doesn’t like it, understandably enough, so he takes his pleasure by saying that if Danny’s such an old mucker of ours we’ll enjoy seeing him do a twenty-five for this and a couple of others Hume will fit him in on, not to mention Danny’s old lady who he’ll do for harbouring and receiving and being an accessory and all that rubbish. So Walter says all right, all right, how much? Hume calms down and then he asks us how much we fenced it for. I mean, he sat there and fucking asked us. So Walter tells him half of what we got for it and Hume says in that case ten grand’ll see Danny at home with his wife and kiddies until the next time. Wally says five and they finally fix a figure. And with that Hume trolleys off. For a while Wally’s blazing and all for putting a bomb outside Hume’s front door but I cool him off and he lets the matter drop. Then a month or so later Hume comes back and says to us how’d we like to have him as a permanent partner? Wally says fucking lovely, it’ll only cost us fifty grand a year at Hume’s rates, why doesn’t he start today? Hume wears it all and when Wally’s finished he says, ‘Let’s not be silly, you couldn’t even afford that if you had Gerald and Les’s patch as well,’ and Wally says, ‘Yes, you can afford anything when you’re dead.’ Hume shakes his head a few times and then puts us this proposition; first, that he’d heard he could get Finbow’s job if Finbow was out of it. And that would be a step in the right direction but Gerald and Les would still be there, Finbow or not. So, he says, supposing somebody blew the whistle on Gerald and Les? Supposing it could be guaranteed that somebody would be out of the country the day the trial ended, with a new name on his passport and free passage to anywhere he wants to go with his family and ten thousand quid out of the police fund? Plus, of course, whatever me and Wally’d want to chip in, which could make the offer much more attractive. And he says with him in West End Central and Gerald and Les and you out of the way he’d look after us the way Finbow looked after you lot. And we’d be doing twice the business, what with the shops and the clubs and the places and all those things.”
“Yes,” I say to him. “I know about those things, Eddie.”
“Look, Jack, for Christ’s sake, do me a favour, will you?” He slides off the chair and sinks to the floor and puts his hands on my knees. “Christ, I didn’t . . . ”
I take his hands away.
“Sit down and finish the story,” I say to him. “There’s time for all that afterwards.” Eddie shakes his head and a tear flicks from his eye on to the carpet but he back-pedals on his knees and finds the chair and slides back into it.
“I told Wally he’d be barmy to think of it but Wally shut me up and asked Hume if he’d worked out how to do it yet. Hume said he’d let us know and he went away. He comes back a week later and tells us he’s done some sniffing and he’s found out from someone in the Fraud Squad that Mallory’s behind some dodgy companies that are just about to make the headlines and even Mallory won’t be able to avoid getting five to seven. So he promises Mallory some friendship if he can figure a way to blow Finbow and put it on Gerald and Les. And he does. He comes up with the pictures and Jimmy Swann. Wally’s over the moon about it, especially as Hume says he’s already put it to the top brass and they’re prepared to let him play it his way and also finance Jimmy. And from then on there’s no stopping Wally. He can’t wait for the action to start.”
“What held him back last night?”
“Hume wanted him to keep buttoned up. But today when Wally heard about you getting to the Abbotts he decided to have his fun and join in. You know what Wally’s like.”
“Yes, I know what Wally’s like,” I say. I light another cigarette. “But Hume saw me last night. He could have had me then. Jimmy needn’t even have signed his statement.”
“Hume fixed Finbow but he doesn’t want anybody to know on account of being next in line. So he’s worked it that someone else does the lifting and he’s prepared to come in with any further names and evidence for the glory later on; that’s why so many names are still walking around enjoying the fresh air. But after today Hume will have to start pulling them in right away.”
Eddie stops talking. I don’t say anything for a while. Eventually I say, “So where’s Jimmy Swann?”
Eddie shakes his head. “Only Hume knows that.”
I look at him. “I’ll only ask you once more, Eddie.”
“Jack, honest. I don’t know. Christ, I’d tell you if I knew. I’ve told you everything else. Why shouldn’t I tell you that?”
“All right, we’ll leave that for the time being. So where’s Walter?”
He shakes his head again.
“Come on, Eddie,” I say to him. “You know where Walter is.”
“Yes,” he says. “I know where he is. But Jack, he’s my own brother. How can I tell you where my own brother is?”
“Quite easily,” I tell him, and wait for the reply.
After a while Eddie says, “Wally’s got this place in Suffolk. Big old farmhouse in about ten acres. Bought it last year and had it done up. He went there this afternoon. He’s staying till Boxing Day.”
I sit there and think about what Eddie’s told me. Then I say, “All right, Eddie. Put your coat on.”
“Jack . . . ” Eddie says.
“Your coat.”
Eddie’s face sags even more and he drags himself up out of his chair and I get up as well.
“Hang on a minute, Jack,” Peter says from behind me. “Don’t you think we ought to have a chat before we do anything we can’t go back on?”
I turn round and look at Peter. He’s still lounging in the chair by the door but now he’s got his shooter resting in his lap. He’s holding it, and although he’s extremely careful that it shouldn’t be pointing directly in my direction, it wouldn’t take much if the situation made that eventuality necessary.
“I mean,” Peter says, “it bears thinking about, doesn’t it?”
“Oh yes?” I say.
“Well, look at it this way,” he says. “What’s the point in plowing on against all the odds? If what Eddie says is right, Hume has got it all sewn up. There’s no going back. Gerald and Les are finished.”
I don’t say anything.
From behind me Eddie says, “That’s right. They’re finished. They can’t come back now.”
I turn to face Eddie. He’s standing there with his face all lit up, thinking he can see a way out of his situation.
“Get your coat, Eddie,” I tell him.
Eddie looks at Peter and I follow his glance.
Peter says, “We could do a deal with Hume. We could tell him where to get at Gerald and Les and make the takeover nice and smooth in return for being left out of it and carrying on as we are.”
“That’s right,” Eddie says. “Wally’s always wanted you on the firm, Jack. It’d work out perfect.”
“And you could still get the finance for your tickle,” I say to Peter.
“Spot on,” he says. “You got it in one.”
“Except that if we were to do what you’ve just said we’d both be on twenty-fives whatever this chancer’s trying to tell us.”
“You wouldn’t,” Eddie says. “I guarantee it. I can phone Hume and do a deal right now.”
“Do you believe what Eddie says?” I ask Peter. Peter shrugs.
“What’s the alternative?” he says. “We’re on a definite loser the other way.”
“And what if I say I’m going to play this the way I set out to play it?”
Peter looks me in the face and is quite motionless. This is where he has to decide what to do and until he’s done that he is very careful not to do anything which will cause me to react. He looks beyond me at Eddie and then back to me and he’s just about to speak when there is a slight movement behind me and I whirl round just in time to see Eddie disappearing round the corner of the L-shaped room, the part that leads to the kitchenette. I rush after him but there is a lot of furniture in the way and before I’m at the corner of the L the kitchenette door has slammed. Peter is already on his feet and I shout at him to open the door behind the chair he was sitting in and get into the hall. I make it to the kitchenette door and yank it open but of course Eddie is no longer in the kitchenette because through its other door, the one that leads into the hall, I can see Eddie scrambling at the lock handle of the outside door. I hurry across the kitchenette but I’m never going to make it because now Eddie has got the outside door open and the only thing that’s going to stop him is Peter but the outside door slams as Peter appears in the hall. I get into the hall a second after Peter and already he’s twisting the lock handle. He’s gripping his shooter in his free hand.
“Whatever you do, you cunt, don’t shoot,” I tell him as I follow him through the door. We turn left but there’s no sign of Eddie; he’s already legging it down the stairs. We rush along the landing and Peter calls Eddie’s name as we go, as if that’s going to make him stop for a moment’s reflection. I make it to the top of the stairs first and start going down them two at a time but when I get to the second landing I’m still no closer to Eddie because he’s already out of sight and on the second flight of stairs but when I get to the top of them I stop short when I see what’s on the third step down: one of Eddie’s tartan slippers is lying there, sole upwards, and I look beyond the slipper to the foot of the stone staircase and see the still figure of Eddie lying there, arms outstretched, face down, his head at a completely wrong angle to the rest of his body. He’d tripped and broken his neck.
Peter pulls up sharp too and we both stand there at the top of the stairs looking down at Eddie’s body. Then I turn to Peter and take hold of him by his neck and with all the angry force in my body I push him backwards until the balcony wall stops us going any farther. The shooter slips out of Peter’s fingers and with both hands he tries to loosen my grip on his neck but there’s no way he’s going to be able to manage that. I keep pressing until he’s leaning out over the empty courtyard and with my free hand I hit him several times across the face.
“I should let you drop,” I tell him. “I should let you drop right now.”
I hit him again and step back and then I pick up his shooter and point it at him.
“Or shall I shoot your fucking kneecaps off? Shall I do that instead?”
Peter pushes himself away from the balcony wall and looks at me the way Eddie had looked at me when I’d first walked into his living room.
“Jack . . . ” he says.
“Shut it,” I tell him. “Another word and I’ll do it.”
Then I put his shooter in my pocket and turn away from him and begin to walk down the stairs, picking up Eddie’s slipper on the way. When I get to Eddie, I bend over him and turn him face upwards but there are no miracles for Eddie this Christmas. His dead eyes reflect the naked light bulb in the stairwell’s ceiling.
Peter makes his way down to the bottom of the steps and leans against the wall, supporting himself on the handrail. I look up at him.
“All right, you fucking egg,” I tell him. “Get hold of the legs.”
I put the slipper back on Eddie’s foot and then I take hold of him underneath his armpits and look up at Peter again and he moves and gets hold of the legs and as we lift, some change slips out of Eddie’s trouser pocket and the coins make a tinkling sound as they hit the stone floor.
We get Eddie to the bottom of the stairs that open into the courtyard. The snow is still falling and the courtyard is still empty. We carry Eddie away from the light on the staircase and into the shadow of the balcony above and then we put Eddie down.
“Right,” I say to Peter. “Now you go and fetch the car and back it in the courtyard entrance and open up the boot. I know you’re going to do exactly that because you don’t want to wake up every night for the rest of your life wondering if tonight’s the night I’m going to appear at the end of your bedstead. Do you?”
I hand him the car keys. He doesn’t answer. He looks at me for a moment and turns away and hurries across to the courtyard entrance and disappears round the corner. Then I take hold of Eddie again and under cover of the balcony I drag him round to the arch and wait for Peter. I look at my watch and decide to give him two minutes. If he’s not back by then the only thing I can do is leave Eddie where he is and take one of the few remaining chances I have left.
But within the allowed time there is the sound of the car backing into the archway. I grab Eddie again and start pulling him through the snow and I hear Peter get out of the car and unlock the boot and by that time I have got Eddie to the rear of the car. Peter takes Eddie’s legs again and we lift Eddie into the boot and close the lid. Then I tell Peter to drive the car back to where it was before and wait and I go back up to Eddie’s flat and put the furniture back the way it was and get rid of the cigarette ends and then I pick up the address book that Eddie had been writing in and slip it in my pocket. After I’ve done that I put the flat black case on the settee and flip the catches and open the lid and my eyes are greeted with the beautifully symmetrical pattern of ranks of wads of nice crisp notes. At a quick guess I would say there is twenty thousand worth at least. I look into the case for a moment or two and then I get up and find Eddie’s bedroom and slide open one of the doors on the built-in wardrobe. I take out one of Eddie’s overcoats and a pair of his shoes and as I’m doing that I notice that on the top shelf there is a stack of brightly wrapped Christmas presents out of sight and of reach, all ready for Eddie to deliver to wherever his wife and kids are spending Christmas.
I shut up the wardrobe and then I switch out all the lights and close all the doors and go out of the flat.
When I get back to where Peter is I throw the coat and the shoes in the back seat and tell him to drive to a place I know beyond Liverpool Street. Peter does as he’s told and sets off without saying anything. His face looks even pastier under the sodium streetlighting and his mouth is set in a light thin line and it’s not because he’s been affected by Eddie’s death because normally he’d be making the most of the funny side of it. I sit there in silence myself and let him sweat for a while.
The place I’m thinking of is about half a mile off Liverpool Street itself. This place used to be a block of insurance offices and for the last few weeks it’s been in the process of being demolished. I passed by it a few days ago and its cellars and their interlocking passages are now wide open to the weather. It takes us about quarter of an hour to get there and when we arrive I tell Peter to drive down a side street that would have been boundaried by one of the walls of the demolished building. We park at the far corner of the site away from any lights, and I tell Peter to wait in the car while I go and take a look around. I walk onto the site and over to the edge of one of the sunken corridors and drop down into it. Now I’m out of sight and I take out my key ring and play the small torch along the corridor until I come to a pile of plastic rubble sacks lying on the floor next to a narrow cupboard set in a tiled wall. I climb out of the corridor and go back to the car and tell Peter to get out and open up the boot and we carry Eddie back to the corridor and I get down in it and Peter lowers Eddie down onto my shoulders and I carry him to where the cupboard is and tug one of the plastic sacks over his feet and legs and one over his head and his torso and prop him up in the cupboard and close the door on him. Unless they decide to take out the cupboard in the morning he’ll be safe there till after Christmas.
I climb out of the corridor. Peter is still standing on the edge and he waits for me to walk past him and falls into step behind me.
When we get back to the car I get in the driving seat and Peter gets in the other side and when he’s closed the door I say to him, “The only reason you’re not propped up next to Eddie is because I couldn’t carry the two of you on my own.” He takes out one of his cheroots and tries to find his lighter.
“So you know what you’re doing for Christmas, don’t you?” I say to him.
He manages to light his cheroot but it takes him two or three goes. He blows the smoke out. “I was right,” he says. “You know I was only talking sense back there.”
“Yes and look where your sense got us.”
He’s quiet for a while.
“So what now?” he says at last.
“You’re the one with all the bright ideas,” I tell him. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”