SEVENTEEN

I arrived back in London next morning with most of my fee intact and my head stuffed with cotton wool. John had been as good as his word and led me into a world of basement drinking clubs where people went to forget for a short while whatever was plaguing them. Then he’d poured me into a hotel and allowed me to get some sleep while he went back to fight best-of-three with Nicole, whom he belatedly told me he’d forgotten to inform about our evening together. Fortunately, I wear a reasonably distinctive aftershave, so she wouldn’t think he’d been consorting with undesirable women.

I remembered to call Clayton from the airport, and when I got to his office he handed me another envelope with another payment. He raised an eyebrow at my pallid appearance, but made no comment.

‘This needs to be in Frankfurt by six this evening,’ he said. ‘The person you’re to give it to will meet you at the airport – the details are in the envelope with the money. If you make it quick you can probably get back on the return flight. Do you have a phone?’

‘Sure. Why?’

Clayton opened a cupboard and tossed me a small Nokia. ‘Use that. In case I need to contact you. It’s cleared internationally. I’ll pick up any personal calls as long as they’re not too unreasonable.’ He nodded and drifted back into his office, leaving me to be escorted out by his tame bouncer.

I flew to Frankfurt airport and was met by a heavily-moustachioed gent who introduced himself as Willi. He had the impressive gut and flushed cheeks of a seasoned beer drinker, and steered me through a crowd of excited meeters and greeters into a corner where we exchanged identification and I handed him the envelope. Then I returned to London and found a cheap hotel in Bayswater to wait for Clayton to call me again. I debated going home to join the hippy commune, but decided I could do with some peace and quiet for a while; after two trips and a mammoth drinking session, I was beginning to feel my age.

I rang Hugo the following day and he agreed to meet for lunch – my treat – just off Piccadilly. He turned out to be in an odd mood.

‘So,’ he greeted me, sinking a rapid gin and tonic and calling for another. ‘How goes the world of secret parcels in shady places?’

‘I can’t talk about it,’ I told him seriously. ‘If I do, I’ll have to kill you. How do you know what I’m doing, anyway?’

He shrugged evasively, which made me wonder how much he and Clayton might be talking together. I’d never have put Hugo in the same area of operations, old school tie or not, but one never knew.

‘Susan came round the other night,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Wanting to know where you’d disappeared to.’

‘Which you, being my one and only true friend and confidant, didn’t tell her, of course.’

‘I couldn’t, could I? Juliette got a bit sniffy about it; she thought I was hiding you somewhere.’ He looked hurt at the implication.

‘Was that all Susan wanted? No heavy lawyer type following her with writs and so forth?’ If I knew Susan like I knew Susan, she wasn’t going to let sleeping dogs lie. She’d rather they were well and truly woken up and baying at the moon.

‘Well, if there was anything else, she wasn’t about to tell me. I’m contaminated by association. I left her and Juliette plotting and went for a drink.’

‘And?’

He looked at me. ‘What?’

‘Unless you’re on pillow talk rations, you usually know everything Juliette knows a few minutes after she knows it.’

Hugo sighed heavily. ‘Well, the thing is, old boy, I think Susan’s really got her dander up. She was pretty upset after your chat the other day and your unwillingness to meet her halfway. She says you’ve basically given up on the relationship and forced her hand. I know, I know.’ He held up a conciliatory hand. ‘I’m only telling you what I hear. It sounds as if Susan intends to nail you – fair or unfair. I mean, what can you do?’

‘Plenty,’ I muttered. ‘Present a moving bloody target for one thing. Better than waiting round for the axe to fall.’

‘Is that wise?’

I didn’t know was the short answer. Probably not. But since the chances of me coming out of a fight with anything but a small part of the house and proceeds and a severe bruising in the process was infinitely small, I might as well fight for pride if nothing else.

Hugo, as it turned out, had other things on his mind.

‘I’m beginning to wish I’d never got you involved with Charles Clayton, if the truth be known.’

‘Why?’ I said. ‘I’m big enough and old enough to know what I’m doing. Anyway, I’m quite enjoying it.’

Hugo looked amazed. ‘How can you be enjoying it? It’s not a career, for God’s sake. It’s delivering iffy packets to iffy people you’ve never met before in obscure corners of the world. It’s so…’ He struggled to find words for something to which he’d originally given the all clear on the basis of his old school tie. And therein, I figured, lay the problem.

‘Dodgy?’ I finished for him.

‘Yes, quite. Dodgy.’

‘Well, of course it is, Hugo,’ I said. ‘I didn’t spend years coming up against slush funds and backhanders without gaining some insights. But maybe that’s what I enjoy about it – the faint whiff of danger after all these years of being so bloody strait-laced.’ Or deluding myself that I had been, I thought. Maybe boring and strait-laced were stable mates, bestie pals on the road to nowhere exciting, and I’d never noticed.

‘But you had danger with HP&P, didn’t you? I’d never go near some of the banana republics you used to visit. Your bloody insurance premiums must have been appalling. Did you know Matheson in Accounts went across to Latin America last week and got himself kidnapped? One of the government departments they had a contract with decided they didn’t want to pay, so he went to browbeat them on orders from Dunckley. Poor bugger was lucky to come out with his balls intact, I gather.’

I pictured Matheson and recalled how he’d once been responsible for losing a project, when he’d called into question the financial status of a certain oil-rich African state on the grounds that he had never heard of it. ‘Unlikely,’ I said. ‘Matheson never had any to begin with.’

Hugo smiled grimly. ‘You’re probably right. He said he’d talked his way out of it, but it didn’t sound quite gen. Anyway, what’s this sudden taste for danger you’ve developed?’

‘I don’t know,’ I confessed. ‘Second childhood, mid-life crisis. Haven’t you ever had a yen for doing something risky?’

‘Risqué, certainly. I wasn’t born into a family of risk-takers, Jake. My forbears believed in taking the long-term view, like the Chinese. All to do with the family line, you see. Lines can be broken by thoughtless acts of bravado, according to my grandfather. Very selfish when you’ve got responsibilities.’

‘What did he do for a living?’ I asked, and refrained from pointing out that several illustrious British families were littered with risk-takers, most of whom had helped build the Empire.

‘He was a lawyer. Made a mint and bought land.’

Hugo made it all sound so simple and accessible. If anyone was to research my family line, they wouldn’t get too far back before it broke up into dots and wandered off the page. The Foremans had made a habit of moving around a lot – probably to keep a step or two ahead of people like Hugo’s grandfather, the legal land-grabber. Just as I was considering doing right now. It almost made me proud to be continuing a fine family tradition.

‘So what are you going to do with your new-found wealth? I bet Charles is pretty generous with the loot, isn’t he?’ Hugo’s question was casually put, but I thought I detected more than a grain of real interest.

‘I haven’t thought about it. Anyway, I haven’t got that much. I bet you make more in one day’s share transactions.’

He flipped a card across the table at me. It was for a hotel in the Lake District, on the edge of Derwent Water near Keswick. It read ‘Social Weekends. Relax in comfortable surroundings with people of like minds and interests. Special rates available.’

‘What’s this – are you adding pimping to the family interests?’

He looked hurt. ‘I say, old boy, steady on. That’s a bloody fine hotel, I’ll have you know. Owned by friends of mine. It was merely a suggestion… in case you needed to get away for a bit.’

‘How thoughtful of you,’ I said coolly. ‘But if I want a bit, I’d rather choose my own place to get away to and find it, thank you very much.’

After leaving Hugo to get back to work, I pottered around a bit, kicking my heels, until I found myself down in the wilds of Richmond. I tried telling myself it was by accident, but at the back of my mind was a small, insistent voice which had been asking me a question ever since the night of the party: had it all been for real? If so, was that it? Nothing else to look forward to but baked beans on toast and memories?

Well, I couldn’t very well ask Marcus; he’d have a fit. So there was only one way to find out.

After years spent in taxis travelling to out-of-the-way places, I’d developed a habit of subconsciously memorising routes. It was part of the survival gear I’d found necessary to ensure I always came back in one piece. It took me just a few minutes to find the street and wander past the house where the party had been.

I debated a frontal assault by knocking on the door and hoping Jane was the one who opened it. But when I saw a large, gleaming BMW parked on the drive alongside a sleek little sports saloon, I had an attack of the cautions and recalled the appearance of her husband, Basher, and Marcus’s description of his volatility.

Instead, I hung around in the area until I saw Jane emerge and walk along the street towards where I knew were some local shops. I set off in pursuit, feeling like a stalker and hoping a local Neighbourhood Watch person wasn’t already dialling the police and reporting a furtive character in the area.

Jane was in jeans and a sweater, dressed for comfort rather than elegance, yet still managing to out-do several other young women in designer wear. She had that air of casual gloss which some women never lose, and I followed her to a small supermarket, a baker and a delicatessen, and enjoyed watching her move those long, elegant legs. I also experienced an unsettling surge of memories of her guest room, and forced myself to clear my mind before I ended up walking with a limp. Somehow I didn’t think Richmond would welcome a middle-aged man lurking in the area with an obvious sign of excitement for all to see. Just as I was preparing myself to tap her on the shoulder, she turned in the middle of the pavement and gave me a quizzical look.

‘Jake, isn’t it?’ she said, making my chest pound. God, she was lovely – and she remembered me.

‘Hi,’ I said, pretending surprise, and failing. ‘Jane. How are you?’ What I wanted to say was ‘Any chance of a re-match?’, but I figured that would be a bit crass.

‘I’m fine. I didn’t realise you were local.’

‘I’m not. I happened to be in the area,’ I lied. ‘Would you like coffee?’

She considered it for a moment, then nodded cautiously. ‘All right.’

We eased into a coffee bar where there wasn’t a person under seventy, and I placed our order while Jane found a table away from the entrance. Was this how people did it? How easy it was to slip into the role and subterfuge of an adulterer! Stolen moments in mundane locations, with one eye on the door in case Mrs Jones from number thirty walked in.

I looked at Jane across the table and saw her eyes were actually hazel, rather than green. But she was still beautiful, with a magnetism even daylight couldn’t hide. For a swift second, remembering the other evening, I wondered indelicately how many other men had faced her across a table and had the same thoughts.

‘So, did you get lucky?’ she asked, unwrapping a sugar cube and nibbling away at the edges with perfect white teeth.

‘I thought I did,’ I said with a grin, thinking of her on the bed in the guest room.

She half smiled in a gently reproachful way, suggestion that I was a naughty boy for bringing it up. ‘I meant your job. That’s why you’re down here, isn’t it? Looking for a job?’

It brought me back to earth with a jolt. She wasn’t supposed to bring reality into the conversation; reality was cold and unwelcome and boring. I was still somewhere above ground level, my subconscious basking in an attack of self-satisfied smugness after getting a home run on my first foray into the field. We had shared something special, I was thinking, and I’d rather continue with that than consider the ordinary and everyday.

‘Not really,’ I confessed. ‘I came down hoping to see you.’

‘Really. Why?’

The coolness of her tone had me flustered. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I wasn’t expecting her to fling herself into my arms, exactly – although it would have helped. But surely she didn’t mean to be so aloof?

She pushed away her coffee untouched and glanced towards the door, and I realised she was still holding her purchases in one hand, as if she’d merely paused for a few seconds amid the pressing tasks of a busy day. Her stance reminded me of the look of a small, delicate animal about to take flight, and I felt a sudden surge of mortification at the idea that I’d overstepped the mark and was actually frightening her. Then it hit me with all the force of a sledgehammer: she wasn’t scared of me – she was embarrassed by my presence! I was a factor in her day that she could have done without. Like an leak in the bathroom.

‘It was fun,’ she said calmly, further killing off any wild ideas I might have had about taking our intimate interlude any further. ‘But that’s all it was, Jake. We met, we had fun. There’s nothing else.’

It was surprising how so few words could do such an efficient hatchet job on any dreams I might have harboured, and I instantly wanted to be away from that place, preferably in a deep, dark hole where nobody could see my face. Was this what people referred to as a man’s mid-life foolishness? Fooled into chasing after a young, attractive woman and failing to recognise that there was nothing to be gained by it save huge, mind-numbing embarrassment?

She stood up and stepped away from the table. ‘Sorry, Jake – I can’t stop. Good luck with the job.’

Then she was gone, leaving me like a deflated balloon, lost in the humiliation of my own making and just a whiff of her perfume hanging in the air to remind me she’d ever been there.

Smart? I’ll say it did.