Atas 2

Harry and I retreat to my back office, leaving Jacqueline to tend the front shop. There’s a onagraceae standing in a medium-sized pot in the corner, type and genera unknown, but it is made out of hard-wearing plastic and always in bloom, which works well because there’s no window to escape through and it’s the artificial light of a single thirty-watt bulb above it, which these purple flowers thrive on. I got my desk and two chairs from a wholesaler that specialises in office accoutrements at prices so low it’s almost a steal.  Next door a dog howls. I know how it feels. My stomach’s giving me gyp, but apart from the gleam of sweat on my forehead, I know I don’t look like a man that really needs to go for a shit. He takes my seat behind the desk and takes the phone off the hook and the burr of the dialling tone reminds me I have a prior engagement elsewhere, but he takes charge.

          ‘Sit down Joe,’ he says.

          I can tell from his voice that he’s an educated man and it wasn’t the kind of establishment that gave elocution lessons in Received Pronunciation.   

          ‘Relax,’ he says, leaning back in his chair, which was my chair, and stretching his legs out beneath the desk as he looked me over.

          I sat on the bevel edge of the chair, ready to ram the desk against the wall, pinning him in and allowing me to make a run for it. I figured him as the frontman for that Councillor I’d duped for a few thousand. And there’s nothing worse than someone telling you to relax to make you even more nervous. It’s the detective equivalent of Pavlov smearing himself with hamburgers and ringing a bell. Right on cue the Doberman next door starts its choir practice.

          ‘You mind if I smoke?’ he says, finger tapping on the edge of the desk. ‘Whit’s with the racket next door?’ He reaches into his coat pocket and I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but I expected a handgun, a ball-bearing cosh, or a nine-inch bone handle razor, so when he pulled out a twenty packet of cigarettes, even though I no longer smoke I’m relieved. It’s a small airless room, but I figure it will take him about thirty or forty years to kill me by secondary passive smoking but, as it’s Menthol, I’ll probably live to get the Queen’s telegram.

          ‘Knock yourself out,’ I reply, having regained some of my cockiness. I sneak a silent fart into the mix. Both of us can play at that game.

          His nose and eyes crinkle up and he uses one of those old-fashioned silver Zippo lighters that melodramtically spark the flint to light his fag. He blows smoke in my direction. The dogs next door fall silent and I’m thinking maybe they’ve been given the bullet. My stomach makes little meowing growling sounds and I don’t think I can manage any more silent attacks without a nappy on.

          ‘Where’s the ashtray?’ His eyes dart about the room and fix on my potted plant.

          I kick the bin, underneath the desk. He leans over and pulls it closer to his feet, exposing a monk’s patch covered over with longer strands of hair on the crown of his head. My stomach rumbles again and I tell him straight, ‘look Harry I appreciate you coming, but I’ve not got a lot of time’.

          His eyes narrow and he puts his size ten Clark’s shoes up on my desk. ‘Bullshit,’ he says, smoke settling round his face.

          ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that,’ I say, clenching my stomach, squeezing my bum cheeks shut.

          ‘Look,’ he says, waving his fag about for emphasis. ‘We know what you do, a bit of dog-napping, low-level surveillance of those involved in a bit of rumpy-pumpy.’ He chuckled. ‘It’s that low key that sometimes you’re not even there.’ But his voice grew hard. ‘That doesn’t stop you collecting from the Marks, does it?’  

          I shrugged.

          ‘Does it?’ he says, his fist banging on the table, startling the dog, bringing them back to life, starting a medley of barking next door.

          My eyes drift up to the ceiling and rest on a whitewashed spot above his left shoulder. ‘I’ve really got to go,’ I say.

          ‘You’re good,’ he says, ‘a lot better, a tighter operation than we expected.’ He shakes his head in acknowledgement of his misjudgement, ‘a lot better than I expected’. His foot clips the bin as he lopsidedly lifts his heels off the desk to stub out his fag, clattering it over. It half-rolls on the hard grey floor tiles, revealing nothing of my business. There’s no receipts, no shredded old papers in its faux gold bottom.

          ‘I can offer you another appointment,’ I say, changing tack, picking the phone receiver back up and putting it back on the cradle. ‘If we can just get Jacqueline in here I’m sure we can arrange something.’ My shirt feels too tight, underneath my double-breasted jacket, sweat sops my shirt under the oxters, running down my back and into the grimy band of my trousers.  

          He holds his hands up. ‘We know all about you, but I’m not here to blackmail you,’ he says. ‘I’m here to throw money at you. A minimum of fifteen thousand a week, for at least a year, that’s a lot of bread.’

          ‘What have I got to do sign for Rangers? Kill somebody?’ I lift a bum cheek off the chair and risk it, farting like a kazoo.  

          ‘Jesus Christ,’ he says, holding his hand up and over his nose, ‘that’s absolutely minging.’

          ‘I know,’ I say.  ‘We’re next door to a vets, it gets that way sometimes. I keep complaining about it. But they never seem to listen. I’m thinking about moving somewhere more salubrious.’ I stand up. ‘Anyway,’ I say in that weary tone that implies the interview is over. I get them sometimes, the Walter Mitty’s of this world, but I must admit, he had me going.

          Jacqueline opens the door a tad and pokes her face through. ‘That’s four o’clock,’ she says. She’s not long out of high school and, although she calls it supper, I don’t want to be responsible for her missing dinner at her usual time. But she’s not yet learned the lesson of how to mask your face when someone in the room is stinking. My eyes float towards Walter Mitty, and I make googly eyes as a warning to her to say nothing.

          ‘That’s alright Jacqueline, I’ll lock up. We’re finished here.’

          She makes gagging noises, doesn’t hang about. Young people today are like that. They’ve got no manners. No respect for their elders.

          Harry reached two-fingered into the side pocket of his coat, pulls out an iPad and puts it square on the desk.  He knows I’m watching. I hadn’t sussed him as an iPad kind of man and I’m not sure how to work them myself. He does all that flicking about thing, with his nicotine-stained index finger as a wand on the touch-screen. When he’s finished playing with it, he turns the screen towards me. I glance down. It’s my bank details with RBS he’s opened and all my debits and credits are highlighted. He leans across and flicks the screen up and down in that pansy way and it goes back six months to the overdraft. It’s like getting caught with my pants down. His eyes meet mine. He hooks his iPad back round towards his side of the desk. Ignoring me, he dibs and dabs at the screen again.  He flicks the iPad toward me, the way it clatters down in front of me, he knows it’s a winning hand. There’s £20K been paid into my account.