Chapter Twenty-six

Within the flat there were voices. He stood a moment on the landing, strangely reluctant to use the key. Then he turned it in the lock, opened the door, hesitated again in the hall, put down the blue suitcase and the zipping bag, and opened the living room door.

‘Why, Bill!’ Anna swung her legs off the sofa, pushed away her woman’s magazine, got up. ‘We were talking about you. You’re wet, Bill, you’re awfully wet.’

‘Talk of the devil,’ Charlie Cash said. He was sunk in the big shabby armchair with the webbing gone at the bottom, and there was a bottle of beer by his side. ‘I was asking Anna where I could find you. She said she didn’t know.’

‘And in you come like the Prince in the fairy tale.’

‘Or the wicked uncle.’

They were glad to see him, there was no doubt about it. They enveloped him in a blanket of affection which was quite unlike anything he had known in his relationship with Anthea, a relationship all ice and fire. He knew the warmth and the protective quality of the blanket well enough, but the time had gone by when he could roll up in it and think himself happy. So now he looked from one to the other of them, and answered the question that Anna had not asked.

‘I’d like a bath and a change of clothes. I should like that very much.’

‘And shoes,’ she cried, refusing to see any implication of speedy departure in what he had just said. ‘They’re simply filthy. All over mud. You might have been walking through fields in them. Charlie, go and talk to Bill in the bath while I get him some clean clothes.’ Now she came up to him and kissed him on the cheek.

Five minutes later he was in the bath with a glass of whisky in his hand, and Charlie was sitting on the bathroom stool drinking beer.

‘What I wanted to say was this, that you went off half-cock when you left here.’

His body was exposed to the water, he seemed to feel it seeping through the flesh, warming the chilled bones. He drained half the glass of whisky and felt corresponding warmth in his stomach. Where was the liquid that would warm the heart? ‘I don’t understand you.’

Charlie, unusually, was embarrassed. ‘About you and Anna, I got no call to interfere. I know that. You want to leave her, I think you’re a fool, but it’s not my business. I’m talking about a job, about you being finished in TV. You’re wrong about that.’

He went on to explain. There was this TV research firm, Bill knew the kind of thing, audience research, what markets were best for what products, why C and D groups switched off at certain times of the day no matter what programme was on, what programmes got real audience participation, that kind of thing. ‘They’re looking for an assistant general manager, and it could be you, Bill.’

Clouds of steam came up from him. ‘You mean you mentioned my name and they didn’t flinch?’

‘Hell, no, why should they flinch about something that happened way back in the dark ages? We all killed people in the war and crowed about it. You’re out as a TV personality, agreed, but for the rest of it you’re carrying a chip on your shoulder.’

The bathroom door opened. Anna put her head round it. ‘There’s a man on the telephone. His name’s Westmark. Shall I tell him you’re here?’

‘Westmark.’ He sat up, moved to get out of the bath, thought again. ‘Say you may be in touch with me. If so, you’ll ask me to telephone. Try to find out what he wants.’

Her head disappeared. ‘I thought you just wanted his name for an article you were writing,’ Charlie said.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Westmark’s dangerous.’

‘You said he was reliable.’

‘So he is. But dangerous if you try to play any tricks with him. What have you…’ Charlie shut his thin mouth at the sight of Hunter’s expression. ‘Not my business, all right, I know. But how about the other thing, Bill? How about coming along with me to see these people?’

The heat, the real passionate heat, was going out of the water. ‘Give me the towel, Charlie.’

‘What about it?’

‘No use. It’s too late.’

‘Too late,’ Charlie echoed indignantly. ‘That’s nonsense, Bill. Too late for what? It’s never too late.’

He wrapped himself in the big towel, the warm protective thing, but inside him there remained an area of cold. ‘It’s been too late for a long time, Charlie, too late for me. I told you before. When something like this happens you have to make a clean break. It’s the only way.’

‘You never do it,’ Charlie said. ‘You keep on coming back. That’s why you’re here. Don’t you want to know what I found out about that girl who calls herself a model?’

‘Tanya Broderick? Not particularly. Does it matter?’

‘She’s never been inside, but she’s no more of a genuine model than I am. She plays around with people on the edge of crime – not the real big boys but the hangers-on, understrappers you might call ’em.’ Charlie said slowly, ‘There are three or four men she’s mixed up with now – she never has just one boyfriend at a time. One of them is Brannigan, Paddy Brannigan. Didn’t you say you knew him?’

The mirror had steamed over. He rubbed away reflectively and saw himself, a red-haired ogre in a bath towel.

‘Didn’t you?’

‘It was a long time ago, Charlie,’ he said. ‘Too long.’

In the bedroom Anna had put out a good grey tweed suit, clean handkerchief, shirt, socks, shoes. It was all part of the warmth he understood, but could not feel, that a fly-button was missing from the trousers and that there was a hole in the toe of one sock. Before putting on the suit he looked in the second drawer of the chest of drawers, the one that almost always stuck. This time it opened smoothly. The gun lay beneath spare sheets, black, shiny, surprisingly small. He broke it to see that it was loaded, dressed, and put it into his hip pocket.

Back in the living room Anna stared at him mournfully. ‘You’re going away again.’

‘Yes. What’s Westmark’s number?’

‘On the pad by the telephone.’

Charlie got up, drained his beer. ‘I’m off. Ta very much for the beer, sweetie. Be seeing you. Goodbye, Bill.’ He kissed Anna lightly on the forehead. As he went out he did not look at Hunter.

Now that they were alone, Anna compassionately stared at him. ‘Are you going to ring up that man?’

‘Later, perhaps. Not now.’

‘You’re in trouble.’

‘You might say so.’

‘Charlie says Westmark’s a currency fiddler, does it in a big way. Says he’s a bad man to get mixed up with.’

‘Charlie should know. He gave me Westmark’s name.’

‘Are you leaving the country?’

‘I was. Now it looks a bit doubtful.’

She wandered over to the mantelpiece, took a sweet from the box there, bit it. ‘There’s someone else. You’re taking her with you.’

‘There’s nobody else, Anna. Not at present, anyway. I’m just going out to play a game. Find the lady, you might call it.’ He touched her shoulder. It was firm and warm. ‘You’ve always been good to me. Better than I deserve.’ Why is it always the stale, sentimental words one uses, he wondered?

The usual easy tears were in her eyes. ‘You’re in some sort of trouble. I don’t know what it is, but I can tell it’s bad trouble. Don’t do anything silly.’

‘I’ve done such a lot of silly things in my life that one or two more don’t matter.’

She put her hand on his arm, timidly. ‘You think too much about the past. Really it doesn’t matter all that much.’

‘It does to me. Sometimes I think that the past is the only thing that’s real.’ He broke away from her, muttering something – he could not have said exactly what – and left the flat.