3

The detective takes the snapshot from my hand. “I think it’s time we shut up shop,” he says.

“I can’t help wondering who she is.”

“Naturally you can’t.”

His apartment is on Finchley Road, over a bakery called Grodzinski’s. “I like this area,” he tells me. “Bus conductors cry, ‘Get out your passports, we’re coming to Golders Green!’ But that’s what’s good about it. Jewish. Cosmopolitan. Lively.”

“Maybe. But my trouble is—can I really believe in any private eye who doesn’t come from Southern California?”

“I know. I sometimes have the same problem.”

I ask about his average day.

“It may not inspire you with confidence.”

“But I can’t take my business anyplace else, can I? Especially when you’ve just bought me a toothbrush and washcloth. Did Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe ever do as much for any of their clients?”

So he mentions process-serving. Debt-collecting. Surveillance work. Investigating cases of pilfering for a company which doesn’t want to call in the police. Carrying out a lot of grindingly tedious research. “I’m not sure what’s average. Certainly not becoming involved with missing heiresses and stumbling upon fraud and ancient unsuspected murder. Probably just sitting in the office and hoping for business.”

“Like this afternoon?”

“Like this afternoon. Your timing was impeccable.”

I ask him other things, more personal things. “No,” he says, “no wife nor family. Obviously I’ve never met the right girl. Not yet.”

However, although his tone is light, I get the feeling he’d rather not talk about his private life. Well, fair enough.

We listen to Elgar and drink Scotch while waiting for the supper to be done; he’s boiling some potatoes and has put the contents of two packets of Lean Cuisine into the oven: fillets of cod with broccoli in a white sauce. He’s also put some Riesling in the fridge.

After supper we channel-hop: half-watch, amongst other things, ten minutes of a programme on Pirandello. I scarcely take in any of it, but Tom says, “Sometimes I feel I might be a character in search of an author. Or may have existence only in the minds of others.” He smiles at me. “God knows how the world works!” he says.

One thing is fairly certain. He’s drunk far more of the wine than I have. I go to bed quite early.

This could be a mistake. For the first time in several hours I’m alone with all the haunting speculation. Just what is it, exactly, I’m so anxious to forget?

Maybe it’s this, maybe it’s that. Maybe I’m a guy with a broken marriage, a failed career, a smashed ambition; with a terminal illness, a kidnapped child, a dead wife. Maybe I’m wanted by the police. Wanted on a charge of tax evasion, drunken driving, manslaughter, murder…

Surprisingly, I eventually manage to sleep.

Tom wakes me with a cup of tea.

“And…?” He sounds too eager. “Has anything come back?”

“You mean, anything apart from ‘I tort I taw a puddy tat’ or ‘I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows’?” This morning I’m finding it hard to hide a growing note of bitterness.

But he ignores it. “Do you want to shower before or after breakfast? And how do you like your eggs?”

While we’re eating he says:

“About that snapshot. During the night I had an idea. Suppose your father was over here in the war? Long before he thought of marrying your mother he met this English girl. The war ended and they lost touch. But now, when he heard that you were coming to London, he asked you to try to trace her.”

“Why?”

“Nostalgia, perhaps?”

“Yes, but I mean if he cared that much why didn’t he come himself? The guy’s had forty-five years in which to look for his little buttercup.”

“What I’m saying is—suddenly he has this strong desire to take stock; to come to terms with his past.”

“And this is the sort of thing you’d get your son to do for you?”

“Depends,” says Tom. “Whenever he’s here himself he’s probably with your mother. And maybe it’s something you could speak of more easily to your son.”

“Well, I don’t know… I don’t know if I buy that.”

“It’s just a theory.”

After a moment, though, I give a shrug and do my damnedest not to sound perverse. “And I suppose it’s the only one we have. Okay, then. Why not?”

Tom stirs his coffee. “Actually I’m hoping there could be another woman somewhere. A bit more contemporary.”

“Meaning a wife?”

“A wife or partner. Anyone who—by this time—might have raised the alarm.”

I pause in the act of buttering toast. My God, I’m a bastard! (And perhaps that’s why I’ve got amnesia: simple self-disgust.) Oh, yes, I’ve certainly wondered what sort of wife I may have left behind. But up to now I haven’t thought there could be someone not so very far away who’s maybe feeling desperate; who, apart from having a missing husband, could be seriously unsure of how everything operates in a strange country—could be worried about funds—could be encumbered by a worried child, or even worried children. Oh, Christ! I’ve been thinking only of myself.

My possible wife, child, children, parents…presumably I have parents, who at some point will need to be notified? All these begin to acquire, not faces, not personalities, but at least some sort of real and suffering existence. No longer simply adjuncts.

I also start to wonder about my father and that girl.