Armadillo - By William Boyd Page 0,110

brutish and nasty, where all endeavours were hazardous in the extreme and life was one gargantuan gamble, a cycle of happenstance and rotten luck.

Was this all there really was, in the end, he wondered? Beneath this veneer of order, probity, governance and civilized behaviour – aren’t we just kidding ourselves? The Savage Precursors knew… Stop, he told himself, he was depressed enough as it was, and bent to unlock his car. He heard his name softly called and looked round to see Barbuda standing ten feet away, as if restrained by an invisible cordon sanitaire around him.

‘Hi, Barbuda,’ he said, the two words overburdened by all the friendliness, pleasure and genuine good-natured blokiness he could force upon them.

‘I was listening,’ she said, flatly ‘She was talking about a fish farm. Near Guildford. What’s she gone and done?’

‘I think your mother should tell you that.’

‘She’s bought a fish farm, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes.’ There was nothing to be gained by lying, he thought, seeing Barbuda’s bottom lip fatten as she pushed it forward.

‘A fish farm.’ She made it sound vile, horror-filled: a vivisection laboratory, the dankest sweat-shop, a child brothel.

‘It sounds like fun,’ he said, urging a chuckle into his voice. ‘Could be interesting.’

She looked skywards and Lorimer saw the shine as the streetlamp caught her teartracks.

‘What am I going to tell my friends? What will my friends think?’

It seemed not to be a rhetorical question so Lorimer answered. ‘If they think any the less of you because your mother owns a fish farm, then they’re not true friends.’

‘A fish farm. My mother’s a fish farmer.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with a fish farm. It could be very successful.’

‘I don’t want to be the daughter of someone who owns a fish farm,’ Barbuda said in a desperate, whining voice. ‘I can’t be. I won’t be.’

Lorimer knew the feeling: he understood the reluctance to have an identity thrust upon you – even though he could not bring himself to sympathize with the brat.

‘Look, they know she runs a scaffolding firm, surely they –’

‘They don’t know. They know nothing about her. But if she moves to Guildford they’ll find out.’

‘These things seem important, but after a while –’

‘It’s all your fault.’ Barbuda wiped away her tears.

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s done it for you. If you weren’t in her life she would never have bought the fish farm.’

‘I think she would. Anyway look, Barbuda, or Angelica, if you like –’

‘It’s all your fault,’ she repeated in a small hard voice. ‘I’ll kill you. One day I’ll kill you.’

She turned and ran, on light, quick feet, back into the house.

Well, you’ll just have to join the queue, Lorimer reflected with some bitterness, exhaling. He was becoming fed up with this role of fall-guy for other people’s woes, he was reaching the end of his tether; if life didn’t ease up on him he might just possibly break.

There were four fire engines outside the ShoppaSava when Lorimer drove past and a small crowd had gathered. Some fitful wisps of smoke and steam seemed to be issuing from the rear of the building, Lorimer could see, parking the Toyota and wandering along the street to discover what had happened. He peered over the heads of the onlookers at the blackened plate-glass doors. Firemen, draped in breathing apparatus like deep sea divers, were wandering around in a relaxed manner, swigging from two-litre bottles of mineral water, so Lorimer assumed the worst was over. A policeman told him it had been a ‘ferociously fierce’ fire, with everything pretty much consumed. Lorimer mooched around for a few more minutes and then headed back to his car and realized, after a moment or two, that he was following a figure that was vaguely familiar – a figure in pale blue jeans and an expensive-looking ochre suede jacket. Lorimer ducked into a shop doorway and watched the figure covertly: was this what it was like being a secret agent in the field, he asked himself with some bitterness, a life of eternal vigilance the price demanded? Gone forever that unreflecting amble through your own particular quartier of your own particular city, always edgy and alert like –

He watched the man climb into a glossy new-model BMW – Kenneth Rintoul. No doubt he’s been sniffing around number II, trying to catch him off his guard. A little bit of grievous bodily harm of a Sunday afternoon, just the ticket. Lorimer waited until Rintoul had driven off and then loped diffidently to his rust-bucket. The mobile rang as

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