are also lawful,’ I answered.
He beamed and pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. I had made him very happy.
‘If it pleases you that much,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry I can’t muster it in dog-Latin.’
‘It’s all right, all right,’ said Dalby. He traversed his cigarette then changed the range and elevation until it had me in its sights. He spoke slowly, carefully articulating each syllable. ‘Go and buy this Raven for me.’
‘From Jay.’
‘From anyone who has him – I’m broadminded.’
‘How much can I spend, Daddy?’
He moved his chair an inch nearer the desk with a loud crash. ‘Look here, every point of entry has the stopper jammed tightly upon it.’ He gave a little bitter laugh. ‘It makes you laugh, doesn’t it. I remember when we asked HO to close the airports for one hour last July. The list of excuses they gave us. But when someone slips through their little butter-fingers and they are going to be asked some awkward questions, anything goes. Anyway, Jay is a bright lad; he’ll know what’s going on; he’ll have this Raven on ice for a week and then move him when all goes quiet. If meanwhile we make him anything like a decent offer …’ Dalby’s voice trailed off as he slipped his mind into over-drive, ‘… say 18,000 quid. We pick him up from anywhere Jay says – no questions asked.’
‘18,000,’ I said.
‘You can go up to twenty-three if you are sure they are on the level. But on our terms. Payment after delivery. Into a Swiss bank. Strictly no cash and I don’t want Raven dead. Or even damaged.’
‘OK,’ I said. I suddenly felt very small and young and called upon to do something that I wasn’t sure I could manage. If this was the run of the mill job at WOOC(P) they deserved their high pay and expense accounts. ‘Shall I start by locating Jay?’ It seemed a foolish thing to say but I felt in dire need of an instruction book.
Dalby flapped a palm. I sat down again. ‘Done,’ he said. He flipped a switch on his squawk-box. Alice’s voice, electronically distorted, spoke from the room downstairs. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
‘What’s Jay doing?’
There was a couple of clicks and Alice’s voice came back to the office again. ‘At 12.10 he was in Lederer’s coffee-house.’
‘Thanks, Alice,’ said Dalby.
‘Cease surveillance, sir?’
‘Not yet, Alice. I’ll tell you when.’ To me he said, ‘There you are then. Off you go.’
I doused my cigarette and stood up. ‘Two other last things,’ said Dalby. ‘I am authorizing you for 1,200 a year expenses. And,’ he paused, ‘don’t contact me if anything goes wrong, because I won’t know what the hell you are talking about.’
[Aquarius (Jan 20–Feb 19) New business opportunities begin well in unusual surroundings that provide chance of a gamble.]
I walked down Charlotte Street towards Soho. It was that sort of January morning that had enough sunshine to point up the dirt without raising the temperature. I was probably seeking excuses to delay; I bought two packets of Gauloises, sank a quick grappa with Mario and Franco at the Terrazza, bought a Statesman, some Normandy butter and garlic sausage. The girl in the delicatessen was small, dark and rather delicious. We had been flirting across the mozzarella for years. Again we exchanged offers with neither side taking up the option.
In spite of my dawdling I was still in Lederer’s coffee-house by 12.55. Led’s is one of those continental-style coffee-houses where coffee comes in a glass. The customers, who mostly think of themselves as clientele, are those smooth-rugged characters with sun-lamp complexions, half a dozen 10in by 8in glossies, an agent and more time than money on their hands.
Jay was there, skin like polished ivory, small piggy eyes and a luxuriant growth of facial hair. Small talk ricocheted around me as reputations hit the dust.
‘She’s marvellous in small parts,’ an expensive gingery-pink rinse was saying, and people were dropping names, using one-word abbreviations of West End shows and trying to leave without paying for their coffee.
The back of Jay’s large head touched the red flocked wallpaper between the notice that told customers not to expect dairy cream in their pastries and the one that cautioned them against passing betting slips. Jay had seen me, of course. He’d priced my coat and measured the pink-haired girl in the flick of an eyelid. I waited for Jay to stroke his eyebrow with his right index finger and I knew that he would. He did. I’d never seen him before but I knew him from the flick of the finger to the lopsided way he walked downstairs. I knew that he’d paid sixty guineas for each of his suits except the flannel one, which by some quirk of a tailor’s reasoning had cost fifty-eight and a half guineas. I knew all about Jay except how to ask him to sell me a biochemist for £18,000.
I sat down and burnt my raincoat on the bars of the fire. An unassisted thirty-eight with a sneer under contract eased her chair three-sixteenths of an inch to give me more space, and nosed deeper into Variety. She hated me because I was trying to pick her up, or not trying perhaps, but anyway, she had her reasons. On the far side of Jay’s table I saw the handsome face of Housemartin, his co-star in the Charlotte Street film library. I lit a Gauloise and blew a smoke ring. The thirty-eight sucked her teeth. I noticed Housemartin lean across to Jay and whisper in his ear while they both looked at me. Then Jay nodded.
The waitress – a young fifty-three with imitation pastry cream on her pinafore – came across to my table. My friend with Variety stretched out a hand, white and lifeless like some animal that had never been exposed to daylight. It touched the glass of cold coffee and dragged it away from the waitress. I ordered Russian tea and apple strudel.
Had it been Chico sitting there he would have been making time with the minox camera, and dusting the waitress for Jay’s prints, but I knew we had more footage on Jay than MGM have on Ben Hur, so I sat tight and edged into the strudel.
When I had finished my tea and bun I had no further excuse for delay. I searched through my pockets for some visiting cards. There was an engraved one that said ‘Bertram Loess – Assessor and Valuer’, another printed one that said ‘Brian Serck Inter News Press Agency’, and a small imitation leather folder that gave me Right of Entry under the Factories Act because I was a weights and measures inspector. None of those suited the present situation so I went across to Jay’s table, touched a forelock and said the first thing that came into my head – ‘Beamish,’ I said, ‘Stanley Beamish.’ Jay nodded. It was the head of a Buddha coming unsoldered. ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ I said. ‘I have a financial proposition to put to you.’ But Jay was not going to be hurried; he took out his thin wallet, produced a white rectangle and passed it to me. I read – ‘Henry Carpenter – Import Export’. I’d always favoured foreign names on the ground that there is nothing more authentically English than a foreign name. Perhaps I should tell Jay. He picked up his card and delicately with his big scarred finger-tips on the points returned it to his crocodile-skin wallet. He consulted a watch with a dial like the control panel of a Boeing 707, and eased himself back in his chair.
‘You shall take me to lunch,’ said Jay, as though he were conferring a favour.
