He looked back towards the water, curiosity getting the better of him. The steam swirled; an eddy toyed with the scum. And there! His eye caught sight of a dark, anonymous shape sliding beneath the skin of the water. He thought of the creature he'd killed; of its formless body and the dangling loops of its limbs. Was this another of that species? The liquid brightness lapped against the poolside at his feet; continents of scum broke into archipelagoes. Of the swimmer, there was no sign.
Irritated, he looked away from the water. He was no longer alone. Three girls had appeared from somewhere, and were moving down the edge of the pool towards him. One he recognized as the girl he had first seen here. She was wearing a dress, unlike her sisters. One of her breasts was bared. She looked at him gravely, as she approached; by her side she trailed a rope, decorated along its length with stained ribbons tied in limp but extravagant bows. At the arrival of these three graces the fermenting waters of the pool were stirred into a frenzy, as its occupants rose to meet the women. Garvey could see three or four restless forms teasing – but not breaking – the surface. He was caught between his instinct to take flight (the rope, though prettifled, was still a rope) and the desire to linger and see what the pool contained. He glanced towards the door. He was within ten yards of it. A quick dash and he'd be out into the cool air of the corridor. From there, Chandaman was within bailing distance.
The girls stood a few feet from him, and watched him. He returned their looks. All the desires that had brought him here had taken heel. He no longer wanted to cup the breasts of these creatures, or dabble at the intersection of their gleaming thighs. These women were not what they seemed. Their quietness wasn't docility, but a drug-trance; their nakedness wasn't sensuality, but a horrid indifference which offended him. Even their youth, and all it brought – the softness of their skins, the gloss of their hair – even that was somehow corrupt. When the girl in the dress reached out and touched his sweating face, Garvey made a small cry of disgust, as if he'd been licked by a snake. She was not fazed by his response, but stepped closer to him still, her eyes fixed on his, smelling not of perfume like his mistress, but of fleshliness. Affronted as he was, he could not turn away. He stood, meeting the slut's eyes, as she kissed his cheek, and the beribboned rope was wrapped around his neck.
Jerry called Garvey's office at half-hourly intervals through the day. At first he was told that the man was out of the office, and would be available later that afternoon. As the day wore on, however, the message changed. Garvey was not going to be in the office at all that day, Jerry was informed. Mr. Garvey is feeling unwell, the secretary told him; he has gone home to rest. Please call again tomorrow. Jerry left with her the message that he had secured the ground plan to the Pools and would be delighted to meet and discuss their plans at Mr. Garvey's convenience. Carole called in the late afternoon.
"Shall we go out tonight?" she said. "Maybe a film?"
"What do you want to see?" he said.
"Oh, I hadn't really thought that far. We'll talk about it this evening, shall we?"
They ended up going to a French movie, which seemed, as far as Jerry could grasp, completely lacking in plot; it was simply a series of dialogues between characters, discussing their traumas and their aspirations, the former being in direct proportion to the failure of the latter. It left him feeling torpid.
"You didn't like it…"
"Not much. All that brow-beating."
"And no shoot-out."
"No shoot-out."
She smiled to herself.
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing…"
"Don't say nothing."
She shrugged. “I was just smiling, that's all. Can't I smile?"
"Jesus. All this conversation needs is sub-titles."
They walked along Oxford Street a little way.
"Do you want to eat?" he said, as they came to the head of Poland Street. "We could go to the Red Fort." "No thanks. I hate eating late."
"For Christ's sake, let's not argue about a bloody film."
"Who's arguing?"
"You're so infuriating-”
"That's something we've got in common, anyhow," she returned. Her neck was flushed.
"You said this morning -”
"What?"
"About us not losing each other-”
"That was this morning," she said, eyes steely. And then, suddenly: "You don't give a fuck, Jerry. Not about me, not about anybody."
She stared at him, almost defying him not to respond. When he failed to, she seemed curiously satisfied. "Goodnight…" she said, and began to walk away from him. He watched her take five, six, seven steps from him, the deepest part of him wanting to call after her, but a dozen irrelevancies – pride, fatigue, inconvenience – blocking his doing so. What eventually uprooted him, and put her name on his lips, was the thought of an empty bed tonight; of the sheets warm only where he lay, and chilly as Hell to left and right of him.
"Carole."
She didn't turn; her step didn't even falter. He had to trot to catch up with her, conscious that this scene was probably entertaining the passers-by.
"Carole." He caught hold of her arm. Now she stopped. When he moved round to face her he was shocked to see that she was crying. This discomfited him; he hated her tears only marginally less than his own.
"I surrender," he said, trying a smile. "The film was a masterpiece.
How's that?"
She refused to be soothed by his antics; her face was swollen with unhappiness.
"Don't," he said. "Please don't. I'm not…" (very good at apologies, he wanted to say, but he was so bad at them he couldn't even manage that much.)
"Never mind," she said softly. She wasn't angry, he saw; only miserable.
"Come back to the flat."
"I don't want to."
"I want you to," he replied. That at least was sincerely meant. "I don't like talking in the street." He hailed a cab, and they made their way back to Kentish Town, keeping their silence. Half way up the stairs to the door of the flat Carole said: "Foul perfume."
There was a strong, acidic smell lingering on the stairs.
"Somebody's been up here," he said, suddenly anxious, and hurried on up the flight to the front door of his flat. It was open; the lock had been unceremoniously forced, the wood of the door-jamb splinted. He cursed. "What's wrong?" Carole asked, following him up the stairs.
"Break in."
He stepped into the flat and switched on the light. The interior was chaos. The whole flat had been comprehensively trashed. Everywhere, petty acts of vandalism – pictures smashed, pillows de-gutted, furniture reduced to timber. He stood in the middle of the turmoil and shook, while Carole went from room to room, finding the same thorough destruction in each.
"This is personal, Jerry."
He nodded.
"I'll call the police," she volunteered. "You find out what's missing."
He did as he was told, white-faced. The blow of this invasion numbed him. As he walked listlessly through the flat to survey the pandemonium – turning broken items over, pushing drawers back into place – he found himself imagining the intruders about their business, laughing as they worked through his clothes and keepsakes. In the corner of his bedroom he found a heap of his photographs.
They had urinated on them.
"The police are on their way," Carole told him. "They said not to touch anything."
Too late," he murmured.
"What's missing?"
Nothing," he told her. All the valuables – the stereo and video equipment, his credit cards, his few items of jewellery – were present.
Only then did he remember the ground-plan. He returned to the living-room and proceeded to root through the wreckage, but he knew damn well he wasn't going to find it.
"Garvey," he said.
"What about him?"
"He came for the ground-plan of the Pools. Or sent someone."
"Why?" Carole replied, looking at the chaos. "You were goi
ng to give it to him anyway."
Jerry shook his head. "You were the one who warned me to stay clear -”
"I never expected something like this."
"That makes two of us."
The police came and went, offering faint apologies for the fact that they thought an arrest unlikely. "There's a lot of vandalism around at the moment," the officer said. "There's nobody in downstairs…"
"No. They're away."
"Last hope, I'm afraid. We're getting calls like this all the time. You're insured?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's something."
Throughout the interview Jerry kept silent on his suspicions, though he was repeatedly tempted to point the finger. There was little purpose in accusing Garvey at this juncture. For one, Garvey would have alibis prepared; for another, what would unsubstantiated accusations do but inflame the man's unreason further?
"What will you do?" Carole asked him, when the police picked up their shrugs and walked.
"I don't know. I can't even be certain it was Garvey. One minute he's all sweetness and light; the next this. How do I deal with a mind like that?"
"You don't. You leave it well be," she replied. "Do you want to stay here, or go over to my place?" "Stay," he said.
They made a perfunctory attempt to restore the status quo -righting the furniture that was not too crippled to stand, and clearing up the broken glass. Then they turned the slashed mattress over, located two unmutilated cushions, and went to bed.
She wanted to make love, but that reassurance, like so much of his life of late, was doomed to failure. There was no making good between the sheets what had been so badly soured out of them. His anger made him rough, and his roughness in turn angered her. She frowned beneath him, her kisses unwilling and tight. Her reluctance only spumed him on to fresh crassness.
"Stop," she said, as he was about to enter her. "I don't want this."
He did; and badly. He pushed before she could further her objections.
"I said don't, Jerry."
He shut out her voice. He was half as heavy again as she.
"Stop."
He closed his eyes. She told him again to stop, this time with real fury, but he just thrust harder – the way she'd ask him to sometimes, when the heat was really on – beg him to, even. But now she only swore at him, and threatened, and every word she said made him more intent not to be cheated of this, though he felt nothing at this groin but fullness and discomfort, and the urge to be rid.
She began to fight, raking at his back with her nails, and pulling at his hair to unclamp his face from her neck. It passed through his head as he laboured that she would hate him for this, and on that, at least, they would be of one accord, but the thought was soon lost to sensation.
The poison passed, he rolled off her.
"Bastard…" she said.
His back stung. When he got up from the bed he left blood on the sheets. Digging through the chaos in the living room he located an unbroken bottle of whisky. The glasses, however, were all smashed, and out of absurd fastidiousness he didn't want to drink from the bottle. He squatted against the wall, his back chilled, feeling neither wretched nor proud. The front door opened, and was slammed. He waited, listening to Carole's feet on the stairs. Then tears came, though these too he felt utterly detached from. Finally, the bout dispatched, he went through into the kitchen, found a cup, and drank himself senseless out of that.
Garvey's study was an impressive room; he'd had it fashioned after that of a tax lawyer he'd known, the walls lined with books purchased by the yard, the colour of carpet and paintwork alike muted, as though by an accrual of cigar smoke and learning. When he found sleep difficult, as he did now, he could retire to the study, sit on his leather backed chair behind a vast desk, and dream of legitimacy. Not tonight, however; tonight his thoughts were otherwise preoccupied. Always, however much he might try to turn to another route, they went back to Leopold Road. He remembered little of what had happened at the Pools. That in itself was distressing; he had always prided himself upon the acuteness of his memory. Indeed his recall of faces seen and favours done had ID no small measure helped him to his present power. Of the hundreds in his employ he boasted that there was not a door-keeper or a cleaner he could not address by their Christian name. * * *
But of the events at Leopold Road, barely thirty-six hours old, he had only the vaguest recollection; of the women closing upon him, and the rope tightening around his neck; of their leading him along the lip of the pool to some chamber the vileness of which had practically snatched his senses away. What had followed his arrival there moved in his memory like those forms in the filth of the pool: obscure, but horribly distressing. There had been humiliation and horrors, hadn't there? Beyond that, he remembered nothing.
He was not a man to kowtow to such ambiguities without argument, however. If there were mysteries to be uncovered here, then he would do so, and take the consequence of revelation. His first offensive had been sending Chandaman and Fryer to turn Coloqhoun's place over. If, as he suspected, this whole enterprise was some elaborate trap devised by his enemies, then Coloqhoun was involved in its setting. No more than a front man, no doubt; certainly not the mastermind. But Garvey was satisfied that the destruction of Coloqhoun's goods and chattels would warn his masters of his intent to fight. It had born other fruit too. Chandaman had returned with the ground-plan of the Pools; they were spread on Garvey's desk now. He had traced his route through the complex time and again, hoping that his memory might be jogged. He had been disappointed.
Weary, he got up and went to the study window. The garden behind the house was vast, and severely schooled. He could see little of the immaculate borders at the moment however; the starlight barely described the world outside. All he could see was his own reflection in the polished pane.
As he focused on it, his outline seemed to waver, and he felt a loosening in his lower belly, as if something had come unknotted there. He put his hand to his abdomen. It twitched, it trembled, and for an instant he was back in the Pools, and naked, and something lumpen moved in front of his eyes. He almost yelled, but stopped himself by turning away from the window and staring at the room; at the carpets and the books and the furniture; at sober, solid reality. Even then the images refused to leave his head entirely. The coils of his innards were still jittery. It was several minutes before he could bring himself to look back at the reflection in the window. When at last he did all trace of the vacillation had disappeared. He would countenance no more nights like this, sleepless and haunted. With the first light of dawn came the conviction that today was the day to break Mr. Coloqhoun.
Jerry tried to call Carole at her office that morning. She was repeatedly unavailable. Eventually he simply gave up trying, and turned his attentions to the Herculean task of restoring some order to the flat. He lacked the focus and the energy to do a good job however. After a futile hour, in which he seemed not to have made more than a dent in the problem, he gave up. The chaos accurately reflected his opinion of himself. Best perhaps that it be left to lie. Just before noon, he received a call.
"Mr. Coloqhoun? Mr. Gerard Coloqhoun?"
"That's right."
"My name's Fryer. I'm calling on behalf of Mr. Garvey -”
"Oh?"
Was this to gloat, or threaten further mischief?
"Mr. Garvey was expecting some proposals from you," Fryer said.
"Proposals?"
"He's very enthusiastic about the Leopold Road project, Mr. Coloqhoun. He feels there's substantial monies to be made."
Jerry said nothing; this palaver confounded him.
"Mr. Garvey would like another meeting, as soon as possible."
"Yes?"
"At the Pools. There's a few architectural details he'd like to show his colleagues."
"I see."
"Would you be available later on today?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Four-thirty?"
The conversation more o
r less ended there, leaving Jerry mystified. There had been no trace of enmity in Fryer's manner; no hint, however subtle, of bad blood between the two parties. Perhaps, as the police had suggested, the events of the previous night had been the work of anonymous vandals – the theft of the ground-plan a whim of those responsible. His depressed spirits rose. All was not lost.
He rang Carole again, buoyed up by this turn of events. This time did not take the repeated excuses of her colleagues, but insisted on speaking to her. Finally, she picked up the phone.
"I don't want to talk to you, Jerry. Just go to hell."
"Just hear me out -”
She slammed the receiver down before he said another word. He rang back again, immediately. When she answered, and heard his voice, she seemed baffled that he was so eager to make amends.
"Why are you even trying?" she said. "Jesus Christ, what's the use?" H e could hear the tears in her throat. "I want you to understand how sick I feel. Let me make it right. Please let me make it right."
She didn't reply to his appeal.
"Don't put the phone down. Please don't. I know it was unforgivable. Jesus, I know…"
Still, she kept her silence.
"Just think about it, will you? Give me a chance to put things right. Will you do that?"
Very quietly, she said: "I don't see the use."
"May I call you tomorrow?"
He heard her sigh.
"May I?"
"Yes. Yes."
The line went dead.
He set out for his meeting at Leopold Road with a full three-quarters of an hour to spare, but half way to his destination the rain came on, great spots of it which defied the best efforts of his windscreen wipers. The traffic slowed; he crawled for half a mile, with only the brake-lights of the vehicle ahead visible through the deluge. The minutes ticked by, and his anxiety mounted. By the time he edged his way out of the fouled-up traffic to find another route, he was already late. There was nobody waiting on the steps of the Pools; but Garvey's powder-blue Rover was parked a little way down the road. There was no sign of the chauffeur. Jerry found a place to park on the opposite side of the road, and crossed through the rain. It was a matter of fifty yards from the door of the car to that of the Pools but by the time he reached the soothe was drenched and breathless. The door was open. Garvey had clearly manipulated the lock and slipped out of the downpour. Jerry ducked inside.