to the Albert Embankment, straight on through Stamford Street and Southwark Street, down Tooley Street, passing Tower Bridge to the left.
The car pulled up in front of a warehouse conversion a few hundred yards downstream from Tower Bridge. Tasteful gilt lettering affixed to the sooty brick told him they were at Kendrick Quay. The streets around were deserted of people but, curiously were full of parked cars. There were many new traffic indicators and signs, islands of neat landscaping, grouped laurels and phormiums, securely staked leafless saplings, newly cast bollards set in newly laid cobbles. And, on every angle of wall, a camera sat, high and out of reach.
Terry pressed a code into a keyboard mounted on a stainless steel plinth and glass doors slid open. They rode up in a lift smelling of glue and glazier’s putty to the fifth floor. Exiting the lift, Lorimer saw a printed sign with an arrow saying ‘Sheer Achimota’ and a weary, zemblan premonition took root in his head.
The ‘Sheer Achimota’ offices were empty apart from some unpacked computer hardware and an ebony desk with a slim, flat phone. The floor-to-ceiling plate-glass curtain wall on the river side looked out on the turbulent and ebbing Thames, the sky still wrought with its billowy juxtapositions of brightness and dark and, square in the middle of the view, was Tower Bridge’s silhouette, irritatingly too familiar an outline, Lorimer thought, and irritatingly too omnipresent. Working in this office for any length of time you would come to hate it: a cliché in your face all day.
Watts stood in a corner, jogging and swaying, headphones plugged in his ears, eyes tightly closed. Terry coughed several times to interrupt the reverie and left them alone. Watts fiddled with his boogie-pack and eventually managed to switch it off. He removed the left earphone and let it dangle on his chest. Lorimer noticed that his hairy cheek patch had gone.
‘Lorimer,’ Watts greeted him with some enthusiasm. ‘What do you think, man?’
‘Very panoramic.’
‘No. “Sheer Achimota”. That’s the name of the management company, the record label, the new band and probably the new album.’
‘Catchy.’
Watts roamed the room towards him. ‘Fucking amazing, man. I sent Terry up to that place in Camden you told me about. He came back with eight carrier bags of C D s. I listened to African music non-stop for… for seventy-eight hours. And, this’ll finish you, guess what?’
‘You’re going to Africa?’
‘He’s gone.’
‘Who?’
‘Lucifer.’ He tapped his left shoulder, tapped his left cheek. ‘Old Satan got pissed off and left.’ Watts was close to him now and Lorimer could see his eyes were bright. Lorimer wondered if he was on anything or if it was simply the relief of the recently exorcized.
‘Thanks to you, Lorimer.’
‘No, I can’t take –’
‘– Without you, I’d never have heard Sheer Achimota. Without you I wouldn’t have got that ju-ju working for me. Strong African ju-ju scared the shit out of Satan. Thanks to you, Sheer Achimota did it.’
Lorimer checked the room’s exits. ‘Whatever it takes, Mr Watts.’
‘Oi. Call me David. Now, I want you to come and work for me, run Sheer Achimota, sort of chief executive type kind of thing.’
‘I’ve already got a job, um, David. But thanks very much.’
‘Quit it. I’ll pay you whatever you want. Hundred grand a year.’
‘It’s very kind. But –’ But I have a life to live.
‘Of course I’m still suing bastard Fortress Sure. But that’s nothing against you. I’ve told them to say nothing against Lorimer Black.’
‘I recommended they pay you.’
‘Sod the money. It’s the mental wear and tear. I was out of my mind with worry, what with the devil on my shoulder, and all. Someone’s got to pay for that stress-load.’
Lorimer thought it best to break things to him easily. ‘I could hardly leave my job and come and work for you if you are suing the company I was representing in the case.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well…Not ethical?’
‘Where’s your home planet, Lorimer? Anyway, no hurry, think about it. It’ll be cool. I’ll pop in from time to time. We could hang out.’ He refitted the left earplug. ‘Could you send Terry in? You can find your own way home, can’t you? Looking forward to our association, as they say.’
In a pig’s ear, Lorimer thought, as he trudged the deserted streets looking for a taxi, and wondering vaguely if ‘Sheer Achimota’ might exorcize his own set of demons and set some powerful African ju-ju to work on his behalf for a change.