‘Come on, on, on, on in,’ I said. ‘It’s like Piccadilly station round here this day.’ I indicated the chairs. ‘You’re lucky there’s only two of you, because I only have the two seats. If there were three of you, one of you would have to stand, and that would be awkward. I should invest in a third seat.’ I nodded at them. They nodded back. ‘If there were four of you,’ I said, ‘it would be friggin’ anarchy in the UK.’
They just looked at me. I was hoping that a different audience might appreciate me better, but it was looking as if it was the material that was the problem. The fact that they were an ill-matched pair shouldn’t have been a surprise, given their respective professions, but it was. Because the big, muscular man in the zip-up Puffa jacket introduced himself as Conor Wilson, from Wilson and Maguire Solicitors, and the small, bony-looking guy in the trendy black boutique hotel manager’s suit said he was Paddy Barr, from Malone Security.
I sat down and said, ‘No trouble downstairs?’
‘Ah, no,’ said Conor Wilson. ‘They didn’t seem very interested.’
‘It’s an act,’ I said. ‘They’ll be checking out your bona fides as we speak.’
Paddy Barr glanced at Wilson. Wilson kept his eyes on me. So I concentrated on Paddy Barr.
‘Malone Security, is it?’ I asked. ‘At a wild guess, would that be providing security up Malone direction?’
Paddy Barr nodded. ‘We provide a bespoke service . . .’
‘Gotcha!’
‘. . . for clients in the Malone area, yes.’
‘Sorry, yes. I’m just excited to meet someone else in the bespoke trade.’
His nose had been broken at some time in the past and had mended crooked. Now that I looked at him he wasn’t so much bony as wiry, an important difference. There was some evidence of scarring around his eyes. I checked out his knuckles. Two of them were missing.
I said, ‘What weight did you fight at?’
‘Bantam,’ he said.
‘Olympics?’
‘Commonwealth.’
I nodded. I like my boxing.
‘Gold?’
‘Bronze. You?’ He indicated the eye.
‘The wife,’ I said. ‘Punches above her weight. I used to be best buds with Fat Boy McMaster, remember him?’
‘Must be before my time.’
‘Most everything I know seems to be before everyone’s time,’ I said wistfully, and shifted back to Conor Wilson. ‘What about you? You remember Fat Boy? He fought Tyson for the world heavyweight title, New York, St Patrick’s Day, fifteen years ago, must be.’
‘I’m not here to discuss boxing.’
‘Are you sure about that? Because we could outvote you.’ Conor Wilson shook his head, slightly. There wasn’t a lot of animation in him. Or personality. Or humour. There wasn’t much of it in Paddy Barr either. I gave him a shrug, and sat back and clasped my hands in what I hoped was a mildly professional manner. ‘Okay, folks, what can I be doing for you? Is it a case, a job, a crime that needs solving? I’m kind of busy, but if it was sufficiently interesting, I’m sure I could find a window. My rates are competitive and my service is . . .’ I showed a hand to Paddy Barr. He did not take the bait. ‘. . . bespoke.’
‘No, Mr Starkey, I am not here to offer you a job,’ said the solicitor. ‘I am here on behalf of my client, Mr Caramac, and his employers, Cityscape FM, to give you due notice that if you continue to harass Mr Caramac and his family, we will commence legal proceedings against you.’
‘Harass?’
‘We seek that you should desist from approaching our client, his wife, any of his employees; we seek that you should desist from entering his property uninvited; we seek that you should desist from loitering outside his property and accosting any members of his staff as he, she or they leave said property; we seek that you should desist from following said employees to their places of residence; we seek that you should desist from harassing said employees at said place of residence.’
‘My, that’s a lot of seeking,’ I said, ‘but I like it.’
‘You like what, Mr Starkey?’
‘Your turn of phrase. It’s not really how humans speak, is it? We seek that you should desist. In a letter or maybe a court order, I understand, but not face to face, one-on-one. Those are words you don’t often hear out loud. I like them, but you should have just written them down and stuck them in the letter box. The desisting loses something spoken out loudy.’ I nodded. ‘Not that I have a letter box, but you get my drift.’
‘We wished to give you the option of desisting before we formalised matters.’
I looked at Paddy Barr. ‘You don’t look like a man who asks many people to desist.’
‘No, Mr Starkey, I prefer a more practical approach. You might almost say physical.’
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Let me see then if I understand this correctly. There’s kind of a twin thing going on here – on one hand, I’m being threatened with legal action; on the other, I’m being threatened with what you might call a good diggin’. Is that a fair summation of what we have discussed here this afternoon?’
‘Mr Starkey,’ said Conor Wilson, ‘this isn’t a joke.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it’s a little bit of a joke.’
‘No, sir, it is most assuredly not . . .’
‘Desist,’ I said.
Conor Wilson stopped. I leaned forward. I smiled from one to the other. ‘You have to remember, Mr Wilson, Mr Barr, that I worked with Jack Caramac for many years, indeed before he became Jack Caramac. I know him very well, and he knows me, likewise. As reporters, he would know that if we were ever threatened with legal action or physical violence, our reaction was always to dig deeper, because it was surely a sign that there was something to hide, that we were on the right path. So what I interpret from your visit here is that Jack is actually making a cry for help, that he’s in some trouble but can’t talk about it, that he is in fact asking me to look into this whole situation even more thoroughly.’
‘Mr Starkey, that is the very opposite of—’
‘Well you would say that, because you’re not in on the joke. Oh, I’d say he knows exactly what he’s doing.’
Conor Wilson cleared his throat. ‘Mr Starkey . . .’
‘Or,’ I continued, because when you’re on a roll, it’s best to keep rolling, ‘there’s also the possibility that he’s not sending me a coded message at all, but that he has disappeared so far up his own arse that he actually thinks that sending in you two eejits really will frighten me, in which case I’m sorry to tell you that you may seek to inform said fuckwit that I’ve no intention of laying off, and that in fact I’ve a fair mind to crank it up. So you see, whatever way you want to interpret it, the result is the same. I’m on it, I’m going to stay on it, and there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it.’
Paddy Barr stood up. His hands were at his sides, but bunched into fists.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘you were a bantam; that’s about two ounces above pixieweight.’
He was all ready to come over the desk at me, but the solicitor put a hand on his arm. ‘No, Paddy,’ he said.
Paddy kept glaring at me, but didn’t come any closer. Instead he growled, ‘Funny fella.’ He pointed a finger. ‘Well I’m telling you, sunshine, this is a warning, so watch your back. There’s plenty more where I come from.’
‘Where’s that, Pixie Land?’
‘Funny fella,’ said Paddy, ‘fun-ny fella.’
Conor Wilson stood up. He said, ‘Very well, Mr Starkey, we have delivered our message, you have given us your response. I appreciate that taking umbrage is a natural response when presented with such demands. But I would suggest you take a little time to think about it more thoroughly, and if you decide to change your position, then your cooperation will simply become apparent to the parties involved.’
He turned for the door. Paddy gave me a sneer and went after him.
‘One thing,’ I said. They stopped. ‘Umbrage. Is that where the Archers live?’