I pressed the sliding catches with my thumbs and the clasps sprang open. I hadn’t been prepared for that – that it would open at a touch, and for a moment I paused, trying to calm myself. My hands were clammy. I hadn’t stolen anything since I was a kid: it brought back that dreadful excitement, that hollow hammering of the heart, when you’ve slipped the chocolate bar into your pocket while the shopkeeper’s back was turned and you’re drifting ever so casually to the door, step by dragging step, seeming to take an eternity.
I wet my lips and raised the lid.
The case was lined with dark-blue silk, monogrammed in the top right-hand corner in delicate gold thread: ‘N.D.B.’ There were two rows of silk-lined compartments containing several small fat books, edged in gold-leaf. There was also a chequebook in a leather folder, a pocket calculator, and a micro-cassette recorder with spare tapes in two clear plastic cases. One by one I took the contents out and laid them on the bed, like a child on Christmas morning.
Behind one of the books I found a thick brown envelope secured with rubber bands. It had the feel of money. It had the smell of money. Yet I didn’t dare believe it.
I rolled off the rubber bands, tipped the envelope and out it slid in a solid crisp block of £20 notes. I had never held so much money in my hand. They were so new they were difficult to count. When I had stacked them, fifty notes to a pile, five piles lay on the grey wrinkled blanket.
Five thousand pounds in brand-new notes. It was such a neat sum, a perfectly rounded sum, that it bothered me, and I must have sat there for three or four minutes worrying at it like a dog with a bone. Then I put the money back in the envelope and replaced the rubber bands. The freedom it offered me hadn’t quite registered yet.
The fat little books with their gold embossed initials yielded up less than I had hoped. There was a business diary with dates and times of appointments, written in what appeared to be Benson’s own cryptic shorthand: ‘PL Mgr. – Site – 3pm.’ ‘Check Disp. rota – night shift?’ ‘Ring W. re info leak.’ ‘Baths sched.’ and so on.
There were perhaps a dozen references to ‘Baths sched’, which made me wonder about it. What kind of baths was Benson referring to? Swimming baths? Then it occurred to me that this might be council business – something to do with the public swimming pool in Brickton.
I read every entry, for what little sense it made, right up to today’s date – the 19th – in which he had written: ‘Rec. & Ent. Cmtee, 8pm, Crabtree agenda.’ So there was to be a council meeting tonight at eight o’clock. Some meetings, I knew, were open to members of the public. I would ask Mr Patundi where the council met.
A woman’s voice, low, excited, drifted up from below. I went to the door and eased it open. For a minute I thought I’d lost the powers of comprehension, until I realised she was speaking to Mr Patundi in his own tongue. His answer was brief and non-committal, in tones I recognised as those of a husband being badgered by his wife who sensibly takes the line of least resistance.
Until now there had been no sign or indication of a wife, a family. They must live in the warren of rooms in the basement, a separate subterranean existence, engaged in strange domestic rituals they had transposed from Asia to this cold, rainy corner of England. I’d been told, or read somewhere, that Indian men shielded their womenfolk from the temptations and depravities of Western civilisation. I couldn’t conceive of the kind of life Mrs Patundi led, unless it was to pad about in stuffy, overheated rooms, spending hours at the stove sprinkling spices into simmering ochre mixtures, watching video films of technicolour Indian epics from a reclining position.
I shut the door and on the way back my distorted reflection caught my eye, leering at me from the wardrobe mirror. With the money I could do something about my shabbiness. New clothes. A complete change of appearance. Moreover, it was now absolutely vital: too many people had seen me on the premises at B-H Haulage – the mechanic working on the lorry, Mrs Crompton in the office. Even Benson’s own daughter. They would give the police a detailed description. Middle-aged, thickening about the waist, pale, drawn features, short hair greying at the sides. The only immediate change I could think of was to get rid of the grey – dye my hair black or dark brown.
I recalled seeing a barber’s along the street. I would slip out later and buy hair dye. I had a three-day growth of beard which I had intended to shave off, but now I changed my mind.
I smiled to myself. Together we used to laugh, Susan and me, at these little pretensions of vanity; except that this wasn’t vanity, this was self-protective camouflage. Not the same as when she refused to wear glasses and suffered agonies with contact lenses, always losing them, down the bathroom sink, in the washing-up bowl, inevitably when we went away on holiday. I smiled, remembering those happy times, and to my surprise felt moisture trickling down my face. It rather shook me. To feel an emotion other than hatred was to experience once again a lost pleasure, distant as childhood, like remembering those bright summer mornings filled with acres of blue sky and limitless possibilities that had happened in another age to a person different from yourself.
I dried my face. Susan was dead and gone. I couldn’t afford these other redundant emotions.
After a while I played the tape in the micro-cassette machine, which was no bigger than an electric shaver, and looked expensive. I listened to it twice. Benson was talking to a man named Russell. At first I assumed that was his surname, until glancing through the business diary I came across an entry which mentioned somebody called Russell Rhodes.
There was something odd about the tape – the actual sound quality – that I couldn’t work out. Behind the conversation I could hear a steady throbbing hum, industrial machinery perhaps, but that wasn’t the odd thing. It was as if something kept scraping across the built-in microphone in a harsh explosion of noise, and the sound level was erratic, the two voices fading away and then becoming loud and clear for no apparent reason.
It wasn’t until I’d listened a second time that I realised what it was.
RHODES: If the contract comes through we might have to come to some new arrangement. That’s fair, isn’t it, in view of the risk?
BENSON: It all depends. (Cough. Throat clearing.) There’s a limit to what the traffic will bear.
RHODES: I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, Neville. I stand to lose everything, and I don’t just mean my job.
BENSON: It has to go through committee first. It has to be approved. (Click of lighter. Indrawn breath.) I know they’re a bunch of old women but they’re not complete fools. Potter in particular. Sums of five and ten grand can’t vanish into thin air. They have to be accounted for on the balance sheet.
RHODES: You told me you could lose them as a consultancy fee. Isn’t that what you said? (Nervously) Look, you’re not supposed to smoke in here. If the smoke detector activates—
BENSON: Calm down, Russell, for God’s sake. You take your job too seriously. If the place goes up it won’t be because some body lit a cigarette. (Silence. Scrape of clothing.)
RHODES: I don’t see why you can’t arrange something direct. On a personal basis. When the EC coughs up you’re going to be rolling in it.
BENSON: They haven’t coughed up yet.
RHODES: Not yet. But soon.
BENSON: Maybe, Russell. The big maybe. It isn’t in the bag. And in the meantime if I make funds available out of my personal resources, how do I recoup them? I can’t charge myself a consultancy fee. The council treasurer would smell a rat straight away. (Laughs) That would be grist to Potter’s mill. He’d drop on me like a ton of bricks.
RHODES: Is there no way you could get it in cash?
BENSON: It’s in cash now, so where’s the difference? (Heavy sigh.) What’s the point in paying money into the firm’s account only to withdraw it to give to you? I’ve thought this through, Russell, and it’s the only way.
RHODES: There’s nothing on paper to link it to me?
BENSON: Don’t be stupid. With neither of us. No names, no pack drill. Let’s just leave the arrangement as it stands. It’s safer all round. (Silence)
RHODES: I still think I deserve more.
BENSON: Do you now? On top of the five thousand a month? I call that greedy—
RHODES: How much is that sludge disposal contract worth to you? Quarter of a million? I helped arrange that too, you know.
BENSON: I haven’t forgotten.
RHODES: And the provision of free hot water for the swimming baths. You got a bloody good deal it seems to me.
BENSON: (Scrape of clothing.) The hire of tankers and the disposal of waste material is a straightforward business contract, signed and sealed and totally above board. The provision of hot water is a separate issue.
RHODES: Just as long as we don’t land in it.
BENSON: What? Land in what?
RHODES: Hot water.
BENSON: Very good, Russell. I didn’t know you had a sense of humour.
RHODES: (Pause) And as long as nobody realises what it is you’re dumping and where you’re dumping it.
BENSON: That’s an odd tone to use. I don’t think I like it. If you’ve got something to say, spit it out.
RHODES: All right … all right. I’m talking about Holford. What’s he after? What’s he want?
BENSON: Don’t worry about Holford. I’ll see he’s taken care of.
RHODES: What does he know?
BENSON: (Soothing) He doesn’t know anything. Just forget about it, Russell. It’s all arranged. (Chuckle) I have a friend who knows how to deal with that sort of thing. (Scraping sound. A clink of something – glass or metal.)
RHODES: You call that fat junkie a friend? You trust him?
BENSON: He’s handy with a needle.
RHODES: I don’t see the joke, Neville.
BENSON: No? Ah well, never mind. (Laughs and chokes.)
Holford will get the point all right.
RHODES: I’m not going to be involved in this. (Low) I refuse to be involved. This is none of my concern—
BENSON: Squeamish all of a sudden. You take the money and we take the risks.
RHODES: Five grand a month isn’t worth that sort of risk.
BENSON: It had better be or I might start having second thoughts about you.
RHODES: I didn’t mean—
BENSON: I don’t care what you meant. You’ve taken the money. You’re in it. You asked about Holford and I told you. If you don’t want to know in future, don’t ask.
RHODES: And what about the money? Have you got it with you?
BENSON: You’ll get it tomorrow. I’ll call you. (Scrape of clothing.) Time I went. Why not come down to the clubhouse? You could do with some fresh air after this place.
RHODES: I don’t play.
BENSON: For Christ’s sake, do you never relax? (Door opening. Humming noise very loud. Footsteps on metal grating. Sound becomes blurred, voices indistinct.)
RHODES: Will you … that cigarette …
BENSON: Yes, yes … all right. (Scrape of clothing. Humming sound even louder. Footsteps descending metal stairway. Voices barely audible.)
RHODES: Do you … worked here … ford …
BENSON: What? Who?
RHODES: Maintenance worker … Trafford. He found …
BENSON: … haven’t … why did … never … (Footsteps on metal stairway. Voices inaudible. Scrape of clothing. Click. Hiss of silence.)
I pressed the button to stop the tape and pressed it again to eject the tiny cassette. I held the tape between finger and thumb for a moment, and then as I replaced it in the clear plastic case I suddenly knew what was odd about the sound quality, and why. The recording had been made in secret. Benson had concealed the recorder – breast pocket of his jacket perhaps – so that every time he moved his lapel scraped against the microphone. Though Benson was paying money to Russell, apparently he still didn’t trust him. The tape was Benson’s insurance, just in case Russell started to backslide.
And now I had Russell’s money – whoever Russell was. Benson was paying him off – but for what? And how did Benson, who’d never in his life laid eyes on me, know I was here? Had someone told him? I couldn’t think who. Dr Morduch at the clinic might have reported my departure to the police, but why should the police inform Benson? The one person, the only person, who knew for sure I was in this part of the country was Diane Locke. Not counting S –, which I didn’t.
The thought of S – though, wherever he might be, sparked off another. I reached down to my bundle of things lying under the bed and took out the diary. It was cheap and nasty-looking, and I could hardly bear to touch its shiny black plastic cover. Handling it made me feel cold. It was as if, in stealing it and bringing it with me, I had dragged S – and his evil fantasies after me. Why hadn’t I got rid of the hateful thing?
Even more incredibly, I now realised with a shudder, I had left the diary in my bundle, unattended, for anyone to wander in and read. I would had to be more careful.
Leaving the money in its envelope on the bed I put everything back in the attaché case, including S –’s diary, and looked round for somewhere to hide it. The room was bare as a mortuary. I used my weight to test for loose floorboards, then gave it up, knowing it was one of the places I’d have looked within five minutes of entering the room.
I took the attaché case and stepped onto the landing and listened. Slowly I moved towards the back of the house. The light was dim and I had to feel my way. Mr Patundi must have been a favoured customer of the local ironmongers because every door was padlocked. I came to a blank wall, fingers touching cold bare plaster through hanging strips of mildewed wallpaper. I didn’t expect to find another door – there couldn’t be more than four upstairs rooms in a house this size – but in fact there was one, narrower than the rest, and behind it pitch-darkness. I stumbled, cracked my knee, made a racket, and reaching out felt worn wooden stairs rising steeply upwards. I climbed.
In the attic a small dormer window crusted over with grime and cobwebs looked out on a dismal prospect of slate rooftops wreathed in mist – and a long way below, the vacant, dusty shop fronts across the street, their ragged patchwork of fly posters torn into tatters by the wind.
The same wind that was moaning in the hollow brick vault of the chimney, like a trapped spirit.
I looked round at the detritus of previous occupants: an armchair leaking horse-hair, a folding-leaf table branded by tea pots and countless mugs of hot tea, a mattress trussed up like a soggy sausage roll, a chest of drawers kneeling forward with a leg missing, the drawers hanging out as if gasping for air. Broken ornaments, shards of crockery, rusty springs and curled yellowing newspapers were strewn across the pitted floorboards. Mr Patundi must have taken one eye-rolling look and flapped off down the narrow stairs.
I raised the armchair onto its back, pulled the hessian loose from the frame underneath, and wedged the case between the springs, which gave a dull protesting twang. Dust sifted down in the weak light as I scuffed some rubbish around it to cover my tracks. Everything slumbered on in mould and decay.
Back in my room I put on my overcoat and pushed the envelope into the deep inside pocket. I took the envelope out again, counted off three £20 notes, pushed it back down. Suddenly I had a ravenous appetite. I had no idea of the time. The drab daylight gave no clue. First, and more important than food, was my appearance. I needed a suit, shirt, raincoat, shoes, and a change of hair colour. How was it done – did you just wet the hair and comb it in? Perhaps I ought to let the barber do it, except that would mean sitting in the chair and letting him have a good long look at me …
I decided to buy the stuff and do it myself; Mr Patundi wouldn’t begrudge me a kettle of boiling water.
Buttoned up, wearing my hat pulled well down, I stepped into the street. The envelope made a hard, solid bulge against my ribs, as if I were carrying a concealed weapon. I had an exhilarating sense of power. The money, Benson’s money, would allow me to pursue him. His wife and daughter too. And to destroy them all. There was a pleasing symmetry about that, as if the fates, for once, were on my side.
Further along the street a light was burning behind the misted-up window. I pushed open the door and stood in the narrow space between a wooden bench and a partition of tongue-and-groove boards with panels of frosted glass upon which a shadow rippled, obscuring the light. An instrument buzzed and stuttered, and a voice called, ‘Won’t be long, squire, take a seat,’ and reflected in a blemished mirror I saw a pale fat neck bent forward, a shirt bulging at the waistband and strained tight over a shoulder like a flabby side of beef.
I now noticed something: that the colour pictures on the glossy yellow walls, torn from magazines, weren’t of hairstyles after all. They were of birds, battleships, flowers, snakes, skulls, naked women, dragons, chains, guitars, concentration camps, sunsets, leaves, Nazi insignia, atomic bombs, circus clowns, panthers. On the shelves were bottles containing a rainbow of brightly coloured liquids.
The instrument rasped, making an angry sound like that of a mechanical hornet battering itself to death against a window pane. The air had a stale, used-up smell, mingled with the acrid taint of burnt rubber. I stood close to the partition and listened as the same voice said, ‘How many drops of blood d’ya want, Gaz? Three, four? Or a bleedin’ bucketful?’
‘Give me four,’ the other answered. And then, ‘Ouch! Shite and corruption, take it easy!’
‘Drops aren’t easy. You’ve godder ged ‘em right or they look stupid, like onions. You don’t want a bunch of onions on yer arm, do yer?’ The fat one gasped a whinnying laugh, like someone getting the point of a dirty joke.
The buzzing swooped to a lower pitch; I moved slowly backwards to the door.
‘Nearly done, squire. Two minutes,’ the voice called out, and the moon face swam up into the mirror. I ducked my head, bringing my hat brim down to cover my eyes. I fumbled for the latch, keeping my head lowered.
‘Jesus, Wayne, get on with it,’ the customer complained. ‘This is bloody torture.’
‘Give it a rest, Gaz – Hang on, squire, nearly done—’
I slammed the door on the whining needle and walked quickly along the street towards the main road, away from the E GA FOO S ORE, heart thumping. I reached the corner and almost collided with an elderly woman in a headscarf and a coat with a moth-eaten fur collar who was dragging herself along the pavement under the burden of two overladen shopping-bags.
I went on past the lighted shop windows with their jumble of cheap goods, past a taxi-hire board with a solitary car at the kerb, and a butcher’s with technicolor meat basking in a blue neon glow. Farther on, the main road split in two, sweeping like a forked river either side of a mock-Gothic structure of sandblasted stone the colour of biscuit, with words and Roman numerals carved above the arched entrance.
BRICKTON TOWN HALL + + + MDCCCLXXVI
There was a notice-board with a constellation of rusty drawing pins and some flapping scraps of paper. One was headed ‘Brickton & District Council Meetings – Sub-Committees’, and halfway down the list: ‘Recreation & Entertainments – Room E14.’
A squeaky, high-pitched voice inquired, ‘Looking for the Job Centre?’
A small, thin-shouldered man in a peaked cap and a dark uniform jacket shiny with age stood in the entrance, peering out at me with an inquisitive squirrel’s face.
‘Does the Job Centre have any jobs?’
‘You might be lucky. Bar staff. Caretaker. Lavatory attendant. They used to need street-cleaners but that’s all gone mechanical. There’s a haulage firm. They take people on when they’re busy.’
‘I’ve tried there.’
‘Ah well, you see’ – he wagged his narrow head – ‘it all depends on the Station. When they’re busy you can have fifty loads a day – through the night as well. You damn near fall out of bed with the rumble.’
‘Which station?’
He blinked bright, watery eyes, as if I’d confessed some shameful ignorance. ‘The processing Station. A lot of folk don’t like it being so near, but if there’s work, you’ll tek it, won’t you? When you’ve got a family and a mortgage. It’s all right these conversationists making protests, waving banners and what have you …’ He tugged at my sleeve, became confiding:
‘If you had to mek bombs or weapons or tanks to get a wage you’d do it, wouldn’t you? You can’t afford to protest on social security. I’d like to see some of them buggers try it. They’d soon shut up. Like a shot. They’d soon stop waving their bloody silly banners if they couldn’t afford to buy their kids a decent pair of shoes.’
‘Does the Station employ many local people?’
He screwed up his face. ‘Few. Manual. But it’s mainly technical – white coat, collar-and-tie jobs. They’ve all got degrees. Letters after their names.’ He spoke of them as of untrustworthy foreigners with dubious reputations. ‘B-H do all right out of it, but they’re on contract. You’ve already tried there, you said?’
I nodded.
He was eager to talk, to interrupt the long shapeless hours pacing the polished entrance hall. After gazing at silver-plated civic trophies in glass cases, pointing the way to the borough surveyor’s department, nipping into the gent’s for a smoke, it brought a flush to his hollow cheeks.
‘Try the Job Centre, that’s your best bet. Oh it’s very posh now, like a five-star hotel. They let you use the phone for nothing and give out envelopes and writing paper. There’s free coffee and you can sit round with the others and have a chat. They’ve got carpets and armchairs; it’s cosy on wet afternoons. I know two or three who go regular.’
I glanced at the noticeboard. ‘Are these meetings open to the public – the sub-committees?’
‘Some are, some aren’t.’ His little face screwed up in a frown of real perplexity. ‘You know something? I can never get over how chummy they all are. Outside they slag one another off left, right and centre. In here it’s all pals together. Like a private club. Some of them even play golf together! You wouldn’t credit it, would you?’
‘Thanks for the information … erm …’
‘Joe,’ he said. ‘Chadwick. Everybody calls me Chaddie. Want to know where anything is in this mausoleum, ask Chaddie they all say. That’s me. The Job Centre’s halfway down Queen’s Street. They’ll be open now. Use the phone, have a coffee, bit of a natter.’ He gave a wave of his scrawny brown hand and turned it into a tug at the peak of his cap. Then he clasped it behind his back, straightened his spine, resumed his interminable pacing.
I went back along the high street and stopped at a chemist’s on the corner and went in and asked for a bottle of hair dye, chestnut brown. The woman climbed onto a stool to reach it down. I took a pair of spectacle frames from a revolving rack and looked at myself in the tiny mirror. The black plastic frames emphasised my pallor. I tried on another pair, less severe, and got a shock when I took them to the counter.
‘Eighteen pounds.’ I gave her a note. She held out her hand. ‘Another forty pee – two pound forty for the dye. We do testing as well, you know.’
‘Testing?’ I said stupidly.
‘Eye tests. You want lenses, don’t you?’
‘I already have the lenses.’
She laughed in a scathing way. ‘How do you know they’ll fit? Anyway, you can’t fit them, it’s done on a special machine.’
‘If they’re not right I’ll bring them back and change them. That’s all right, isn’t it?’ She stared at me. I could feel myself getting angry, which was a mistake. I wanted to stamp the frames into the floor and snatch the note out of her hand and run away. I said, ‘Wrap them up and let me worry about it. Or is the customer always in the wrong in this establishment?’
It was satisfying to have said it but a bad mistake. She would remember me, the silly rude man who purchased spectacle frames without lenses. Anger does that to me, and I never seem to learn.
I went out, knowing the old hag was watching with cold, brilliant eyes. What should be simple is always complicated. And then I thought, My God, the £20 note I’d given her. Newly minted, smelling of ink. The bank would have the numbers of all new notes issued. They would have the number of every note in my pocket. Every shopkeeper in town would be watching out for a stranger handing out crisp £20 notes. The hard brick of money tucked comfortingly in my inside pocket was just so much waste paper.
I had four pounds and a few coins in real money and £4980 I might just as well have scattered in the street for all the good it would do me.
Working my way through cobbled alleys and back entries, past jerry-built extensions writhing with green plastic pipework, I approached the shop from the rear and hammered on the back door until Mr Patundi heard me and let me in. His yellow eyes rolled in the gloom of the passage. ‘Did you tell Councillor Benson for me? I am most obliging to you—’
‘Tell him what?’ Then I remembered Mr Patundi’s troubles with the local youth. I pushed past a wooden crate, the lid open, giving off a reek that you could grab with both hands. I said shortly, ‘I didn’t see him. He’s away at the moment on business.’
He jerked his head. ‘Come – come. You will have some tea?’ He flapped ahead of me.
‘I’d like some hot water,’ I said, following him along the passage. ‘To wash with.’ He nodded and beckoned me into a room opposite the stairs.
The room was like a cave. A grimy striped blanket was tacked across the window so that the only light came second-hand from the passage. There were two very cheap-looking plastic chairs, a white sink with brown stains, and a gas-ring. On a metal tray commemorating the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales were two chipped mugs, a packet of tea bags, a large bag of white sugar, a tin of powdered milk. Thick curling wads of invoices were nailed to the walls with six-inch nails, as if Mr Patundi had exorcised his rage by proxy on all those who demanded payment. As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I saw in the corner, almost hidden behind a crinkled velvet drape, an antique safe, squat and black, with a gleaming brass handle and a well-worn brass keyhole.
Mr Patundi stood in the cramped space, swaying to and fro, while I sat drinking the tea he had made me which was weak and too milky, served in a beaker with a spoon in it. My stomach shrank and recoiled as the hot liquid sloshed around in it.
I kept wondering about the large key that must fit the brass keyhole. If I were Mr Patundi it would be tied round my neck on a double loop of string, flat and warm against my chest, under the collarless smock and vest, if Indians wore vests.
For something to say I asked him if he had any children.
‘I have two children,’ Mr Patundi replied, as if this was the correct answer to an examination question.
‘I never hear them. Do they go to school?’
‘My son – Rajiv – went to school for two months, but he cried every day. He was struck every day. These blue marks – here, on his arms and legs …’ He indicated where while he fumbled for the right word
‘Bruises.’
‘Very good, yes. Bruises. Now my wife shows him books with pictures about Janet and her friend John going to the post office. He learn very quick. He can read almost.’
‘Your wife speaks good English?’
Mr Patundi hooked his finger inside the frayed edge of his smock, scratching his neck. He shook his head. ‘She doesn’t speak at all – no English. Rajiv, he sees the picture, he tells the word to her. Very quick. Very good.’
It was a different approach to education.
‘My other son, the younger one, Kamal – he is very sick,’ Mr Patundi said gravely.
‘I’m sorry. What does the doctor say?’
I had been watching Mr Patundi’s finger scratching his neck: no sign of a chain or loops of string.
He shrugged. ‘The doctor knows nothing. He said to me, Kamal’s blood is weak. That is all I have to tell you. He has weak blood. I ask him why he has weak blood because my other son, Rajiv, has strong blood, and he says nothing. He gives tablets for Kamal – three times in one day, after he eats – but he eats nothing so how can I give tablets when I have to give them when he eats and he eats nothing?’ He wiped both eyes with heel of his hand. ‘Now my wife will not eat because Kamal is sick. She does not sleep.’
‘That’s a shame,’ I said, glancing round, but there was nothing handy to hit him with. I could hit him with my fist, I supposed, though what if somebody came into the shop in the middle of it? Or his wife heard the noise of the struggle and crept up from the basement? It was better to wait for another time, late at night perhaps. I calmed down and drank my tea. I have found that anger – controlled, tight, held in check – brings with it a great lucidity, a clarity of purpose.
I put the mug on the tray and got up. As I did so the shop bell tinkled. ‘About the hot water – can I take a kettleful upstairs?’
He waved his hand on his way out. I filled the kettle at the stained sink and set it to boil on the gas-ring. I listened at the door for a moment and then knelt in front of the safe. There were fresh scratches round the brass keyhole. I tried the handle, which was firm. A week’s takings would see me through. I pondered how to get the key off Mr Patundi and lay the blame on the prowling yobboes in the streets. But getting the key, that was the first obstacle.
Upstairs in my room I put the spectacle frames and bottle of hair dye on the washstand and poured hot water into the bowl. I added cold water from the plastic jug, stripped off my jacket and shirt, and read the instructions on the bottle. It seemed simple enough.
The comic side of the situation suddenly struck me. Presumably the theft had been reported and by now the police would be looking for a man with £5000 (less £20) he couldn’t spend. That was funny. I bared my teeth at the image in the mirror. A quirky item you might come across as a space-filler in a tabloid newspaper. Hilarious.
I combed my wet hair back. The transformation was startling. My grey temples and the streaks in my hair were gone, and even with the glasses and growth of beard I looked younger, less haggard.
I lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket over me. The light was dying rapidly. It was nearly dark. Later, that same evening, at the town hall, I would see Benson for the first time. I fell asleep and immediately began to dream that S – and the bitch in the chemist’s were whispering together, conspiring to do away with me, for the heinous crime of wearing spectacle frames with no glass in them.