He went in. She was sitting behind her desk lighting a thin cheroot. On the scuffed and ink-stained leather of the desktop in a silver frame stood a notice which read You are in a smoking zone. If you don"t like it, feel free to leave. If asked about the new smoking ban in public places, she would reply, "This is my private office, not a public place. I don"t have staff because no one who works here gets paid. And I don"t have customers because people who show up here give whatever they can afford, which in many cases is nothing, so any money that comes my way is a donation not a fee."
From a cloud of smoke she said, "This visit social or professional, Joe?"
"What"s the difference?"
"If it"s social, it"s not convenient. I"ve a stack of work to get through. If it"s professional and you"re in work, I"ll expect a contribution."
"OK." Joe pulled the YFG"s roll out of his back pocket. It had to be his imagination but it still felt crisp and cool. He peeled off a fifty and dropped the note on to the desk.
Butcher looked at it then said, "How much time do you expect for that?"
"Well, it was yesterday afternoon I got the money, two hundred, let"s call it a day"s fee, and let"s say a day is twelve working hours, so I reckon that"s three hours" worth there."
"You work short hours," she said. "I"ll give you till I finish this cheroot."
She took a long drag and said, "Better start talking, Sixsmith. And talking fast."
Favours.
Joe talked as fast as he could. Even so, by the time he got everything in and he knew it was important with Butcher to give her every detail the narrow fuse of tobacco had burnt within an inch of her lips.
She interrupted only once, when he mentioned his encounter with the Bermuda Triangle, letting out a hrmph! on a jet of noxious smoke on hearing Arthur Surtees" name.
"You know him?" said Joe. "Served on the lawyers" charity committee together or something?"
"I know of him," she said. "They say if you"re crossing a desert and stop to take a rest, after a couple of minutes there"ll be a black speck way up in the sky and that will be Arthur Surtees. Go on, Joe. I don"t intend blistering my lips."
When he finished she said, "So let me get this straight. You got yourself a client you can"t see any way to help, but you don"t want to step away because (a) the guy offered to loan you his car and (b) the money"s good."
Joe didn"t argue. He hadn"t come here for comfort but for clarity.
"That"s about it," he said. "Also I reckon he"s got a bad deal."
"Evidence?"
"Don"t have no evidence, else I wouldn"t be here, would I?"
She stubbed the cheroot out in a cracked soup plate. This is where she pockets the fifty and tells me to refund the rest, thought Joe.
Instead she said, "OK. I"ll poke around a bit. Let me know how you get on with King Rat."
He said, "You think there could be a connection then?"
"I don"t think anything, Sixsmith, not till I"ve got the facts," she said negligently. "It was you who suggested the possibility."
"Yeah, but I was reaching. Like I said, I got this feeling those guys at the Hoo knew what I was doing there, and the only way I could see them knowing that was someone hearing Merv shooting his mouth off down the Supporters", and the guy who seemed most interested was Monty Wright ..."
"Who as everyone knows scratches when King Rat itches. Yes, I followed the line of reasoning, but seeing where it starts at, to wit, you, I"m not going to lean on it too heavily. Now get out of here. Can"t waste any more time doing favours when I"ve got real work to do. Close the door behind you."
It wasn"t a big room and even with Joe"s smallish step it only took three of them to reach the doorway.
As he took the first he thought, she"s doing me a favour? So how come that"s my fifty lying on her desk?
As he took the second he recalled Aunt Mirabelle saying something like, lawyers do favours like cats take mice for a walk.
And as he reached the doorway the sight of the empty chair in which the woman, Betty, had been sitting gave him a flash of where he"d seen her sitting before.
He turned round and said, "Butcher, you being so nice to me wouldn"t have anything to do with that Betty being a checkout girl at Wright-Price, would it?"
For a second the lawyer blanked him out. Then suddenly she relaxed and grinned.
"Sixsmith, you never cease to amaze me, which is why I put up with you, I suppose. All right, once again you"ve taken a blind swing and hit the right b.u.t.ton."
"So she"s been giving you some bad stuff about Wright-Price, is that it?"
"Don"t get your hopes up, Joe. Yes, Betty Bradshaw lost her job there, but she didn"t come to me to complain. What she wants is help dealing with all the obstacles our beloved leaders put in the way of needy folk getting their hands on the benefits they"re ent.i.tled to at the time they most need them, which is usually yesterday."
Joe digested this then said, "But you know better, Butcher."
"Now why do you say that, Joe?"
"Because you always do," said Joe. "Specially where big business is concerned. You think maybe there"s something dodgy about the way she got fired and you"re looking for a hook to hang your suspicions on but you"ve not found anything, and when I come along with Mr Porphyry"s case and you hear me mention Sir Monty"s name, you think, likely this is just another bunch of old Joe"s squashy bananas, but just in case he does stumble across something you could rattle Monty"s cage with, you"ll string him along."
She didn"t blush. Butcher didn"t do blushing. But she did wrinkle her lips into a rueful smile.
"Something like that, Joe, maybe. Hey, what are you doing?"
Joe had moved rapidly back to the desk and retrieved the fifty-pound note.
"First, you do a friend a favour, you don"t charge money," he said. "And second, it seems like it could be me doing you the favour, right?"
One thing about Butcher, she knew how to lose.
She nodded and said, "Could be. So long as you don"t expect me to pay you money."
"Like I say, I don"t charge friends for favours," said Joe.
"OK, OK," she said. "You"ve made me feel bad so I suppose I"d better atone. You said you were seeing this young fellow, Chip, in the Hole in the Wall tonight? Why don"t I come along? You can tell me what King Rat wants with you and I can stop you looking like a dirty old man come to eye up the young talent."
"We go Dutch?" said Joe.
Butcher laughed.
"Joe, the way your aunt brought you up, there"s no way you"ll sit on your b.u.m while the lady you"re with goes to the bar to buy her own drink."
"Yeah," said Joe, heading for the door. "But that only works when I"m with a lady."
k.n.o.bbly Scones and Lipton"s Tea.
It wasn"t often Joe got away from Butcher on a good line so as he stepped out into the cauldron of Bullpat Square, he felt so full of bounce that he greeted the heat with a spirited rendition of the opening lines of "Mad Dogs and Englishmen".
Then the words dried up on his lips and his mood deflated as he saw that he and Nol had got it wrong together. It was mad dogs and English traffic wardens that went out in the midday sun. One of them was just about to stick a ticket on the Morris.
The guy looked very hot and very ill-tempered so Joe aborted his instinctive friendly how"re-you-doing-let"s-talk-about-this approach. Instead he held out his hand for the ticket and said, "Thanks. I"ll see Mr King gets it."
"Uh?" said the warden, squinting malevolently through a fringe of sweat.
"Mr Ratcliffe King. It"s his car."
The warden looked doubtfully at the Morris.
"He collects vintage," said Joe. "I"m delivering it to him. Here, let me take a note of your number. You know Mr King, he likes to keep things close up and personal."
The warden s.n.a.t.c.hed back the ticket.
"p.i.s.s off out of here," he growled and shambled on his way.
As Joe got into the car he should have felt triumphant that his ruse had worked. Instead he found himself thinking, if King Rat"s name"s enough to send an overheated traffic warden into retreat, better watch how you go, Joe Sixsmith!
ProtoVision House was Luton"s Trump Tower, on a more modest scale perhaps, but in proportion to the buildings that surrounded it, just as dominating. Its golden obelisk arrowed into the sky a good thirty metres above its nearest rival and it was said that at certain times of day the sun striking back from its reflective surface caused the pilots descending towards Luton Airport to put on their RayBans. The architect had been not unsuccessful in realizing his client"s vision of a building that would convey the power and the feel of a newly launched s.p.a.ce rocket, and it was the generally unspoken hope of many Lutonians that they would wake up one morning and find it was actually going boldly where no building had gone before. Certainly it had been born in fire, the much loved if rather dilapidated old theatre that had previously occupied the site going up in flames one night. There had been talk of replacing it with a new modern arts centre, then suddenly, no one quite knew how, it emerged that King Rat already owned the site and had somehow got planning permission to build an office block there. The sop to civic pride was that the bottom floor contained a small concert hall and studio theatre, enabling King to present himself as a local benefactor.
The next five floors were prestigious office s.p.a.ce, soon taken over by Luton"s premier commercial organizations who paid a price for the privilege that, combined with the grants obtained for the ground-floor arts area and the insurance pay-out for the burnt theatre, meant that the ProtoVision Consultancy got the top three floors pretty well free gratis and for nothing.
King Rat himself had established his throne room in the obelisk"s apex or the rocket"s nose-cone, depending how you looked at it. Joe had never been in the building before and he entered the reception area at street level half expecting to be subjected to the kind of intimidatory security checks which were now the norm for anyone crazy enough to go near an airport. Instead as he made his way towards the desk a small but perfectly formed young woman with a smile which could have lit up a prison cell on a cold winter"s morning intercepted him and said, "It"s Mr Sixsmith, isn"t it? Hi, I"m Mimi."
He took her offered hand. It was far from frozen, but if he"d been a young romantic tenor he might have burst into song. From a middling aged, middling bald, middling middled baritone it would just be embarra.s.sing. Anyway, she"d probably had to endure the joke a thousand times before.
He said, "Pleased to meet you. Sorry, I"m a bit early."
The wall clock behind the desk read ten to three.
"That"s good. Mr King likes early," said Mimi. "Over here."
Taking his arm, which was nice because you could feel the animal energy surging through her gorgeous frame, she steered him past the main lifts to a narrower rather anonymous-looking door with a key pad on the wall beside it. She punched in a code and the door opened to reveal a mahogany-panelled lift with a deep-piled carpet.
"In you go, Joe may I call you Joe?"
"Oh yes," said Joe.
She followed him in and waved up at a discreet camera set in a corner of the ceiling.
The door closed and the lift began to ascend so smoothly the motion was almost imperceptible.
"You don"t press any b.u.t.tons then?" he said.
"Oh no. If you"re not who you should be, you stay down below."
She laughed as she spoke and he found himself laughing with her. She wasn"t conventionally beautiful; in fact she had what Aunt Mirabelle would have called a good old-fashioned homely sort of face. But she radiated so much vitality and merriment that it was a pleasure to be in her company.
"You worked for Mr King long?" he asked.
She thought about it then said, "Four years," as if slightly surprised.
He recalled what Eloise had said about King"s powers of retention.
"Was talking to an old school mate of yours when you rang," he said. "Eloise Bracewell."
"Oh, Edith," she said. "Haven"t seen her for ages, How is she?"
"She"s fine. Sends her best. Edith, you say? You all change your names?"
"A few of us. Why not? Like clothes. Up till nine or ten you wear what your mum buys, after that you choose your own, right?"
"Right," he said, thinking that he was nearer twenty before he finally convinced Aunt Mirabelle he could buy his own gear. As for turning up one day and saying, from now on in I want to be called Brad, the simple thought made him shudder!
"Good boss, is he, Mr King?" he ventured.
Again she had to think.
"Fine," she said, a slight frown momentarily darkening her face. But it was only the shadow of a summer cloud cast by the bright sun which now came out again as she smiled and said, "Four years working for the one guy has to mean something, right?"
But what? wondered Joe.
He"d never met King face to face but, like most Lutonians, he"d heard a lot about him. Nothing to look at, was the general verdict. In fact so inconspicuous you could meet him then forget all about him when you turned your back. Until you felt the pain.
Only child of middle-cla.s.s parents who were willing and able to send him to university, instead he had opted to remain in Luton, working as a clerk and getting involved in local politics as a ward councillor. In the eyes of old school friends who were forging ahead in the rat race, he appeared as a stick-in-the-mud they"d left far behind. In council circles, his apparent lack of interest in money won him the reputation of being rather unworldly, and as he never appeared a threat to anyone, he was everyone"s compromise candidate when positions of power were wrangled over.
And then gradually it began to dawn on his fellow councillors that all lines of power led to Ratcliffe King, and on his rat-racing school friends that, far from sticking in the mud behind them, King Rat was already breasting the tape some distance ahead.
It was said that it only took one meeting for King Rat to suss out your talents and your weaknesses. He could then, if it seemed worthwhile, show you how to channel the former to achieve your aspirations, at the same time using the latter to bind you close to him for ever.
The lift came to a jerk-free halt and the inner door opened, but their exit was barred, literally, by a curlicued lattice in gold metal through which Joe could see a man seated at a desk behind a bank of security screens.
The man studied them for a moment. He had the sleek muscularity of a killer shark, the kind of no-expression face you don"t want to see on your doctor coming to give you your X-ray results, and his eyes were so cold they froze you where they touched.
It wasn"t a long moment but long enough for Mimi to say with good-natured patience, "Hey, come on Stephen! You going to keep us waiting all day?"