“Would you care to name the victims?”
Chant looked around at his employer and, in faintly admonishing tones, said, “I haven’t presumed upon your privacy, Mr. Estabrook. Please don’t presume upon mine.”
Estabrook gave a chastened grunt.
“Would you prefer we go back to Chelsea?” Chant went on. “I can find somebody else for you. Not as good, perhaps, but in more congenial surroundings.”
Chant’s sarcasm wasn’t lost on Estabrook, nor could he resist the recognition that this was not a game he should have entered if he’d hoped to stay lily-white. “No, no,” he said. “We’re here, and I may as well see him. What’s his name?”
“I only know him as Pie,” Chant said.
“Pie? Pie what?”
“Just Pie.”
Chant got out of the car and opened Estabrook’s door. Icy air swirled in, bearing a few flakes of sleet. Winter was eager this year. Pulling his coat collar up around his nape and plunging his hands into the minty depths of his pockets, Estabrook followed his guide through the nearest gap in the corrugated wall. The wind carried the tang of burning timber from an almost spent bonfire set among the trailers: that, and the smell of rancid fat.
“Keep close,” Chant advised, “walk briskly, and don’t show too much interest. These are very private people.”
“What’s your man doing here?” Estabrook demanded to know. “Is he on the run?”
“You said you wanted somebody who couldn’t be traced. ‘Invisible’ was the word you used. Pie’s that man. He’s on no files of any kind. Not the police, not the Social Security. He’s not even registered as born.”
“I find that unlikely.”
“I specialize in the unlikely,” Chant replied.
Until this exchange the violent turn in Chant’s eye had never unsettled Estabrook, but it did now, preventing him as it did from meeting the other man’s gaze directly. This tale he was telling was surely a lie. Who these days got to adulthood without appearing on a file somewhere? But the thought of meeting a man who even believed himself undocumented intrigued Estabrook. He nodded Chant on, and together they headed over the ill-lit and squalid ground.
There was debris dumped on every side: the skeletal hulks of rusted vehicles; heaps of rotted household refuse, the stench of which the cold could not subdue; innumerable dead bonfires. The presence of trespassers had attracted some attention. A dog with more breeds in its blood than hairs on its back foamed and yapped at them from the limit of its rope; the curtains of several trailers were drawn back by shadowy witnesses; two girls in early adolescence, both with hair so long and blond they looked to have been baptized in gold (unlikely beauty, in such a place) rose from beside the fire, one running as if to alert guards, the other watching the newcomers with a smile somewhere between the seraphic and the cretinous.
“Don’t stare,” Chant reminded him as he hurried on, but Estabrook couldn’t help himself.
An albino with white dreadlocks had appeared from one of the trailers with the blond girl in tow. Seeing the strangers he let out a shout and headed towards them.
Two more doors now opened, and others emerged from their trailers, but Estabrook had no chance to either see who they were or whether they were armed because Chant again said, “Just walk, don’t look. We’re heading for the caravan with the sun painted on it. See it?”
“I see it.”
There were twenty yards still to cover. Dreadlocks was delivering a stream of orders now, most of them incoherent but surely intended to stop them in their tracks. Estabrook glanced across at Chant, who had his gaze fixed on their destination and his teeth clenched. The sound of footsteps grew louder behind them. A blow on the head or a knife in the ribs couldn’t be far off.
“We’re not going to make it,” Estabrook said.
Within ten yards of the trailer—the albino at their shoulders—the door ahead opened, and a woman in a dressing gown, with a baby in her arms, peered out. She was small and looked so frail it was a wonder she could hold the child, who began bawling as soon as the cold found it. The ache of its complaint drove their pursuers to action. Dreadlocks took hold of Estabrook’s shoulder and stopped him dead. Chant—wretched coward that he was—didn’t slow his pace by a beat but strode on towards the trailer as Estabrook was swung around to face the albino. This was his perfect nightmare, to be facing scabby, pockmarked men like these, who had nothing to lose if they gutted him on the spot. While Dreadlocks held him hard, another man—gold incisors glinting—stepped in and pulled open Estabrook’s coat, then reached in to empty his pockets with the speed of an illusionist. This was not simply professionalism. They wanted their business done before they were stopped.
As the pickpocket’s hand pulled out his victim’s wallet, a voice came from the trailer behind Estabrook: “Let the Mister go. He’s real.”
Whatever the latter meant, the order was instantly obeyed, but by that time the thief had whipped Estabrook’s wallet into his own pocket and had stepped back, hands raised to show them empty. Nor, despite the fact that the speaker—presumably Pie—was extending his protection to his guest, did it seem circumspect to try and reclaim the wallet. Estabrook retreated from the thieves, lighter in step and cash but glad to be doing so at all.
Turning, he saw Chant at the trailer door, which was open. The woman, the baby, and the speaker had already gone back inside.
“They didn’t hurt you, did they?” Chant said.
Estabrook glanced back over his shoulder at the thugs, who had gone to the fire, presumably to divide the loot by its light. “No,” he said. “But you’d better go and check the car, or they’ll have it stripped.”
“First I’d like to introduce you—”
“Just check the car,” Estabrook said, taking some satisfaction in the thought of sending Chant back across the no-man’s-land between here and the perimeter. “I can introduce myself.”
“As you like.”
Chant went off, and Estabrook climbed the steps into the trailer. A scent and a sound met him, both sweet. Oranges had been peeled, and their dew was in the air. So was a lullaby, played on a guitar. The player, a black man, sat in the farthest corner, in a shadowy place beside a sleeping child. The babe lay to his other side, gurgling softly in a simple cot, its fat arms raised as if to pluck the music from the air with its tiny hands. The woman was at a table at the other end of the vehicle, tidying away the orange peel. The whole interior was marked by the same fastidiousness she was applying to this task, every surface neat and polished.
“You must be Pie,” Estabrook said.
“Please close the door,” the guitar player said. Estabrook did so. “And sit down. Theresa? Something for the gentleman. You must be cold.”
The china cup of brandy set before him was like nectar. He downed it in two throatfuls, and Theresa instantly replenished it. He drank again with the same speed, only to have his cup furnished with a further draft. By the time Pie had played both the children to sleep and rose to come and join his guest at the table, the liquor had brought a pleasant buzz to Estabrook’s head.
In his life Estabrook had known only two other black men by name. One was the manager of a tiling manufacturer in Swindon, the other a colleague of his brother’s: neither of them men he’d wished to know better. He was of an age and class that still swilled the dregs of colonialism at two in the morning, and the fact this man had black blood in him (and, he guessed, much else besides) counted as another mark against Chant’s judgment. And yet—perhaps it was the brandy—he found the fellow opposite him intriguing. Pie didn’t have the face of an assassin. It wasn’t dispassionate, but distressingly vulnerable; even (though Estabrook would never have breathed this aloud) beautiful. Cheeks high, lips full, eyes heavily lidded. His hair, mingled black and blond, fell in Italianate profusion, knotted ringlets to his shoulders. He looked older than Estabrook would have expected, given the age of his children. Perhaps only thirty, but wearied by some excess or other, the burn
ishedsepia of his skin barely concealing a sickly iridescence, as though there were a mercurial taint in his cells. It made him difficult to fix, especially for eyes awash with brandy, the merest motion of his head breaking subtle waves against his bones, their spume draining back into his skin trailing colors Estabrook had never seen in flesh before.
Theresa left them to their business and retired to sit beside the cot. In part out of deference to the sleepers and in part from his own unease at saying aloud what was on his mind, Estabrook spoke in whispers.
“Did Chant tell you why I’m here?”
“Of course,” said Pie. “You want somebody murdered.” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his denim shirt and offered one to Estabrook, who declined with a shake of his head. “That is why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Estabrook replied. “Only—”
“You’re looking at me and thinking I’m not the one to do it,” Pie prompted. He put a cigarette to his lips. “Be honest.”
“You’re not exactly as I imagined,” Estabrook replied.
“So, this is good,” Pie said, applying a light to the cigarette. “If I had been what you’d imagined, I’d look like an assassin, and you’d say I was too obvious.”
“Maybe.”
“If you don’t want to hire me, that’s fine. I’m sure Chant can find you somebody else. If you do want to hire me, then you’d better tell me what you need.”
Estabrook watched the smoke drift up over the assassin’s gray eyes, and before he could prevent himself he was telling his story, the rules he’d drawn for this exchange forgotten. Instead of questioning the man closely, concealing his own biography so that the other would have as little hold on him as possible, he spilled the tragedy in every unflattering detail. Several times he almost stopped himself, but it felt so good to be unburdened that he let his tongue defy his better judgment. Not once did the other man interrupt the litany, and it was only when a rapping on the door, announcing Chant’s return, interrupted the flow that Estabrook remembered there was anyone else alive in the world tonight besides himself and his confessor. And by that time the tale was told.
Pie opened the door but didn’t let Chant in. “We’ll wander over to the car when we’ve finished,” he told the driver. “We won’t be long.” Then he closed the door again and returned to the table. “Something more to drink?” he asked.
Estabrook declined, but accepted a cigarette as they talked on, Pie requesting details of Judith’s whereabouts and movements, Estabrook supplying the answers in a monotone. Finally, the issue of payment. Ten thousand pounds, to be paid in two halves, the first upon agreement of the contract, the second after its completion.
“Chant has the money,” Estabrook said.
“Shall we walk, then?” Pie said.
Before they left the trailer, Estabrook looked into the cot. “You have beautiful children,” he said when they were out in the cold.
“They’re not mine,” Pie replied. “Their father died a year ago this Christmas.”
“Tragic,” Estabrook said.
“It was quick,” Pie said, glancing across at Estabrook and confirming in his glance the suspicion that he was the orphan maker. “Are you quite certain you want this woman dead?” Pie said. “Doubt’s bad in a business like this. If there’s any part of you that hesitates—”
“There’s none,” Estabrook said. “I came here to find a man to kill my wife. You’re that man.”
“You still love her, don’t you?” Pie said, once they were out and walking.
“Of course I love her,” Estabrook said. “That’s why I want her dead.”
“There’s no resurrection, Mr. Estabrook. Not for you, at least.”
“It’s not me who’s dying,” he said.
“I think it is,” came the reply. They were at the fire, now untended. “A man kills the thing he loves, and he must die a little himself. That’s plain, yes?”
“If I die, I die,” was Estabrook’s response. “As long as she goes first. I’d like it done as quickly as possible.”
“You said she’s in New York. Do you want me to follow her there?”
“Are you familiar with the city?”
“Yes.”
“Then do it there and do it soon. I’ll have Chant supply extra funds to cover the flight. And that’s that. We shan’t see each other again.”
Chant was waiting at the perimeter and fished the envelope containing the payment from his inside pocket. Pie accepted it without question or thanks, then shook Estabrook’s hand and left the trespassers to return to the safety of their car. As he settled into the comfort of the leather seat, Estabrook realized the palm he’d pressed against Pie’s was trembling. He knitted its fingers with those of his other hand, and there they remained, white-knuckled, for the length of the journey home.
Two
DO THIS FOR THE women of the world, read the note John Furie Zacharias held. Slit your lying throat.
Beside the note, lying on the bare boards, Vanessa and her cohorts (she had two brothers; it was probably they who’d come with her to empty the house) had left a neat pile of broken glass, in case he was sufficiently moved by her entreaty to end his life there and then. He stared at the note in something of a stupor, reading it over and over, looking—vainly, of course—for some small consolation in it. Beneath the tick and scrawl that made her name, the paper was lightly wrinkled. Had tears fallen there while she’d written her goodbye, he wondered? Small comfort if they had, and a smaller likelihood still. Vanessa was not one for crying. Nor could he imagine a woman with the least ambiguity of feeling so comprehensively stripping him of possessions. True, neither the mews house nor any stick of furniture in it had been his by law, but they had chosen many of the items together—she relying upon his artist’s eye, he upon her money to purchase whatever his gaze admired. Now it wasall gone, to the last Persian rug and Deco lamp. The home they’d made together, and enjoyed for a year and two months, was stripped bare. And so indeed was he: to the nerve, to the bone. He had nothing.
It wasn’t calamitous. Vanessa hadn’t been the first woman to indulge his taste in handmade shirts and silk waistcoats, nor would she be the last. But she was the first in recent memory—for Gentle the past had a way of evaporating after about ten years—who had conspired to remove everything from him in the space of half a day. His error was plain enough. He’d woken that morning, lying beside Vanessa with a hard-on she’d wanted him to pleasure her with, and had stupidly refused her, knowing he had a liaison with Martine that afternoon. How she’d discovered where he was unloading his balls was academic. She had, and that was that. He’d stepped out of the house at noon, believing the woman he’d left was devoted to him, and come home five hours later to find the house as it was now.
He could be sentimental at the strangest times. As now, for instance, wandering through the empty rooms, collecting up the belongings she had felt obliged to leave for him: his address book, the clothes he’d bought with his own money as opposed to hers, his spare spectacles, his cigarettes. He hadn’t loved Vanessa, but he had enjoyed the fourteen months they’d spent together here. She’d left a few more pieces of trash on the dining room floor, reminders of that time: a cluster of keys they’d never found doors to fit, instruction documents for a blender he’d burned out making midnight margaritas, a plastic bottle of massage oil. All in all, a pitiful collection, but he wasn’t so self-deceiving as to believe their relationship had been much more than a sum of those parts. The question was—now that it was over—where was he to go and what was he to do? Martine was a middle-aged married woman, her husband a banker who spent three days of every week in Luxembourg,leaving her time to philander. She professed love for Gentle at intervals, but not with sufficient consistency to make him think he could prize her from her husband, even if he wanted to, which he was by no means certain he did. He’d known her eight months—met her, in fact, at a dinner party hosted by Vanessa’s elder brother, William
—and they had only argued once, but it had been a telling exchange. She’d accused him of always looking at other women; looking, looking, as though for the next conquest. Perhaps because he didn’t care for her too much, he’d replied honestly and told her she was right. He was stupid for her sex. Sickened in their absence, blissful in their company: love’s fool. She’d replied that while his obsession might be healthier than her husband’s—which was money and its manipulation—his behavior was still neurotic. Why this endless hunt? she’d asked him. He’d answered with some folderol about seeking the idealwoman, but he’d known the truth even as he was spinning her this tosh, and it was a bitter thing. Too bitter, in fact, to be put on his tongue. In essence, it came down to this: he felt meaningless, empty, almost invisible unless one or more of her sex were doting on him. Yes, he knew his face was finely made, his forehead broad, his gaze haunting, his lips sculpted so that even a sneer looked fetching on them, but he needed a living mirror to tell him so. More, he lived in hope that one such mirror would find something behind his looks only another pair of eyes could see: some undiscovered self that would free him from being Gentle.
As always when he felt deserted, he went to see Chester Klein, patron of the arts by diverse hands, a man who claimed to have been excised by fretful lawyers from more biographies than any other man since Byron. He lived in Notting Hill Gate, in a house he’d bought cheaply in the late fifties, which he now seldom left, touched as he was by agoraphobia or, as he preferred it, “a perfectly rational fear of anyone I can’t blackmail.”
From this small dukedom he managed to prosper, employed as he was in a business which required a few choice contacts, a nose for the changing taste of his market, and an ability to conceal his pleasure at his achievements. In short, he dealt in fakes, and it was this latter quality he was most deficient in. There were those among his small circle of intimates who said it would be his undoing, but they or their predecessors had been prophesying the same for three decades, and Klein had outprospered every one of them. The luminaries he’d entertained over the decades—the defecting dancers and minor spies, the addicted debutantes, the rock stars with messianic leanings, the bishops who made idols of barrow boys—they’d all had their moments of glory, then fallen. But Klein went on to tell the tale. And when, on occasion, his name did creep into a scandal sheet or a confessional biography, he was invariably painted as the patron saint of lost souls.