A Traitor to Memory (25 page)

“You
talked
to my—” TongueMan stopped himself. This, after all, was the reaction Robbie sought. He said, “I thought we'd got that straight. I asked you not to speak to anyone but me when you phone me at work. You've got the private line. There's never any need to talk to my secretary.”

“You ask for a lot,” Robbie said. “‘N't that so, Brent?” This last was obviously meant to remind the other man—possessing the lesser intelligence—which side he was supposed to be on.

Brent said, “Right. You asking us in, or what, Jay? Cold out here.”

Robbie added, as if superfluously, “There's three tabloid blokes down the end of the street. You know that, Jay? Wha's going on?”

TongueMan cursed in silence and stepped back from the door. The two men outside laughed, knocked hands in a clumsy high-five, crossed the flagstones, and came up the steps. “There's a boot scraper. Use it,” TongueMan told them. Last night's rain had made a swamp of the ground beneath the trees that formed the boundary between the houses and the park. Robbie and Brent had tramped right through it like farmers raising pigs. “I've a decent Oriental carpet in here.”

“Take the daisies off, Brent,” Robbie said cooperatively. “How's that, Jay? We leave our mucked-up boots on the step. We know how to be proper guests, me and Brent.”

“Proper guests wait for invitations.”

“Wouldn't want to stand on that sort of ceremony.”

Both men were inside, and they seemed to fill the room. They were enormous, and while they'd never used their size to intimidate him, he knew they wouldn't hesitate to use anything within their power to bend his will to theirs.

“Why's those tabloid blokes hanging about?” Robbie asked. “Far's I know, the only way tabloids get their stuff 's if someone rings them up with something hot.”

“Yeah,” Brent said, bending to peer into the china cabinet, which he used as a mirror to inspect his hair. “Something hot, Jay.” He jiggled the cabinet door.

“That's antique. Have a care, all right?”

“It looked dodgy, those blokes hanging round the barriers at the bottom of the road,” Robbie said. “So we had a word with them, me and Brent did, didn't we?”

“Yeah. A word.” Brent opened the door and took out one of the china cups inside. “Nice, this. Old, is it, Jay?”

“Come on, Brent.”

“He asked a question, Jay.”

“Fine. It's old. It's early nineteenth century. If you're going to break it, just get it over with and spare me the suspense, all right?”

Robbie chuckled. Brent grinned and replaced the cup. He shut the cabinet with the care a neurosurgeon might give to repositioning a section of skull.

Robbie said, “One of the tabloid blokes said the cops're interested in someone on this street. Said a snout at the station tol' him the dead bird was carrying an address with her last night. Wouldn't give us the address, though, me and Brent, if he knew it. Thought we might be competition.”

Small chance of that, TongueMan thought. But he anticipated the direction they were about to take, and he did what he could to brace himself for the inevitable course of the conversation.

“Tabloids,” Robbie said. “Amazing what they c'n dig up 'less someone tries to head them off.”

“Yeah. Amazing,” Brent agreed. And then as if he'd merely been playing the other man's stooge instead of living the rôle, he said, “Rolling Suds, Jay. It needs some bolstering.”

“I ‘bolstered’ it not six months ago.”

“Right. But that was then, in spring. Season's slow now. And there's this matter of … well, you know.” Brent glanced at Robbie.

Which was when the pieces clicked into place. “You've borrowed against the business, haven't you?” TongueMan said. “What is it this time? Horses? Dogs? Cards? I'm not
about
to—”

“Hey, you listen.” Robbie took a step forward as if to demonstrate the considerable difference in their sizes. “You owe us, mate. Who stood by you? Who gave aggro to every Tom and Willie who even thought 'bout whispering behind your back? Brent got his
arm
broke because of you, and I—”

“I know the story, Rob.”

“Good. So hear the ending, okay? We need some oscar, we need it today, and if that's a problem, then you best speak up.”

TongueMan looked from one man to the other and saw the future unrolling before him like an endless carpet with a repetitive design. He would sell up again, move house again, establish himself, change his job if necessary … and they would still find him. And when they found him, they would trot out the same manoeuvre they'd used with so much success for so many years. This was the way it was going to be. They believed he owed them. And they never forgot.

“What do you need?” he asked them wearily.

Robbie named his price. Brent blinked and grinned.

TongueMan fetched his chequebook and scrawled the amount. Then he saw them out the way they had come: through the dining room door and into the back garden. He watched till they ducked beneath the bare branches of the plane trees at the edge of the park. Then he went to the phone.

When he had Jake Azoff on the line, he took a breath that felt like a stab in the heart. “Rob and Brent found me,” he informed his solicitor. “Tell the police I'll talk.”

GIDEON

10 September

I don't understand
why you won't prescribe something for me. You're a medical doctor, aren't you? Or will the act of writing out a prescription for migraines reveal you as a charlatan? And please don't produce that tedious commentary about psychotropic medication again. We're not talking about antidepressants, Dr. Rose. About antipsychotics, tranquillisers, sedatives, or amphetamines. We are talking about a simple pain killer. Because what I have in my head is simple pain.

Libby's trying to help. She was here earlier and she found me where I'd been all morning: in my bedroom with the curtains drawn and a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream tucked into the crook of my arm like a Paddington bear. She sat on the edge of the bed and loosened my grip on the bottle, saying, “If you're planning on getting blitzed on this, you'll be hurling chunks in an hour.”

I groaned. Her style of language, so bizarre and so graphic, was the last thing I needed to hear. I said, “My head.”

She said, “The pits. But booze's going to make it worse. Let's see if I can help.”

She put her hands on my head. The tips of her fingers, resting lightly on my temples, were cool and they traced small circles, small fresh circles that diminished the pounding in my veins. I felt my body relax beneath her touch, and it seemed to me that I could easily fall asleep with her sitting there so quietly.

She moved and lay next to me and placed her hand on my cheek. The same gentle touch of the same cool flesh. She said, “You're burning.”

I murmured, “It's the headache.”

She turned her hand so my cheek felt the backs of her fingers, then. Cool, they were so wonderfully cool.

I said, “Feels good. Thanks, Libby.” I took her hand, kissed her fingers, and placed them back against my cheek.

She said, “Gideon …?”

I said, “Hmm?”

“Oh, never mind.” And then when I did just that, she sighed and went on. “D'you ever think about … us? I mean, like, where we're headed and all?”

I made no reply. It seems to me that it always comes down to this with women. That plural pronoun and the quest for validation: thinking about us confirms that there is an
us
in the first place.

She said, “D'you realise how much time we've spent together?”

“A great deal of time.”

“Jeez, we've even, like, slept together.”

Women, I have also noted, have a marvelous command of the obvious.

“So d'you think we should go on? D'you think we're ready for the next level in all this? I mean, I've got to say I feel totally ready. Really ready for what comes next. What about you?” And as she spoke, she lifted her leg to rest her thigh against mine, crossed my chest with her arm, and tilted her hips—just the ghost of a tilt, this was—to press her pubis against me.

And suddenly I am back with Beth, back at that point in a relationship when something more is supposed to happen between the man and the woman and when nothing does. At least, not for me. With Beth the next level was permanent commitment. We were lovers, after all, and had been lovers for eleven months.

She is the liaison between East London Conservatory and the schools from which the conservatory draws its students. A former music instructor, she is also a cellist. She is perfect for the conservatory in that she speaks the language of the instruments, the language of the music, and, most importantly, the language of the children themselves.

I am not aware of her at first. Not until we must deal with a parent whose child has run away from home, seeking a shelter that the conservatory cannot provide. The child, we learn, has been prevented from practising by the mother's boyfriend, who, we also learn, has other activities in mind for her. The girl has become little more than a servant in their squalid home. But that
little more
is defined by sexual favours she has been told to perform on both of them.

Beth is Nemesis to this pathetic excuse of a human couple. She is pure Fury. She waits for neither police nor Social Services to deal with the situation because she trusts neither police nor Social Services. She deals with it herself: with a private detective and with a meeting between herself and the couple during which she makes it clear what will happen to them both should this child come to any harm. And to make sure that they understand, she defines
harm
for them in the explicit street terms that they are accustomed to.

I am not there for any of this, but I hear of it from more than one of the other instructors. And the ferocity of her devotion to this student touches something within me. A longing, perhaps. Or perhaps a chord of recognition.

At any rate, I seek her out. We fall into
together
in the most natural fashion I can imagine. For a year all is well.

But then as it happens, she talks of having more. It's logical, I know. Pondering the next step is rational for a man and a woman, although perhaps more for a woman who has her basic biology to consider.

When the subject of
next
comes up between us, I know I should want what follows those professions of love we've made for each other. I realise that nothing stays the same forever and to expect that she and I will be forever content to be fellow musicians and ardent lovers is a form of delusion. But, still, when she broaches the idea of marriage and children, I feel myself grow cool. I avoid the topic at first and when it can no longer be shunted to one side with the excuse of rehearsals, practises, recording sessions, and personal appearances, I find that the coolness within me has increased in proportion and now has iced over the idea not only of a future with Beth but also a present with Beth as well. I can't be with her as I was before. I feel no passion, and I have no desire. I attempt to go through the motions at first but it's just not there for me any longer. Whatever
it
was: desire, fervour, attachment, devotion.