exotic hybrids, newly discovered orchids.
To Lorimer’s intense consternation the mobile phone in his breast pocket began to chirrup like a hungry fledgling. Everyone looked round at him, impressed, as if to say, see, even here Milo has to be on call, as if he were a surgeon waiting for a vital organ to transplant. He fumbled to remove the phone and walked off some distance to answer it, hearing Trevor one-five’s admiring comment: ‘Look at him, never stops, amazing.’
‘Hello?’
‘Black?’ It was Hogg.
‘Yes?’
‘Get your arse down to the junction of Pall Mall and St James’s. Six o’clock this evening. Good news.’
‘What’s this all about?’
‘Be there.’
He rung off and Lorimer thought: this is most confusing, these are complexities beyond complexities. Hogg just assumed he would be there, he realized, that he would still jump to his command. For a moment he pondered an act of defiance – and decided against it. It was too hard to resist, and Hogg knew he would come, knew in his bones. There was too much shared history for him to refuse – and it was too soon. And Hogg had not merely issued an order: ‘good news’, he had said, that was the lure, that was the invitation, and this was as close to mollifying as Hogg would ever become. Of course what was ‘good news’ to George Hogg wouldn’t necessarily be perceived as such by anyone else. Lorimer sighed: he sensed again his impotence and ignorance, the bystander who can only see glimpses of the race and cannot tell who’s winning or who’s being lapped; he felt the buffeting, burly power of forces he did not comprehend or welcome, pushing at and shaping his destiny.
The front door of number II, Lupus Crescent was open, much to Lorimer’s surprise, and in the hall stood a lanky, red-eyed, sniffing Rastafarian whom Lorimer recognized as Nigel, Lady Haigh’s mulch – and compost-supplier.
He was about to ask him what the trouble was when the door of Lady Haigh’s flat opened and two undertakers appeared, manoeuvring a low gurney upon which lay a thick, rubberized zip-up plastic bag. With sad, professional smiles they swiftly trundled their burden out of the front door.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Lorimer said. ‘Lady Haigh.’
‘She wouldn’t answer the bell,’ Nigel said. ‘So I went round the back, through a friend’s house, nipped over the fence and saw her lying on the kitchen floor. I broke in, there was a phone number by the phone, and I called this gentleman.’ His voice was level but tears shimmered pinkly in his eyes and he sniffed again.
Lorimer turned to see he was referring to a harassed-looking, balding man in his fifties coming through the door, a tuft of his fine thinning hair standing straight up, filaments waving to and fro as he moved. He sensed Lorimer’s gaze upon it so he stopped wiping his hands on a handkerchief and palmed his hair flat across his pate.
Lorimer introduced himself.
‘What a terrible shock,’ Lorimer said, with absolute sincerity. ‘I live upstairs. I’ve just come from my father’s funeral. I can’t believe it.’
The harassed man seemed not to want to hear any more depressing statements from Lorimer and looked anxiously at his watch.
‘I’m Godfrey Durrell,’ he said. ‘Cecilia’s nephew.’
Cecilia? This was news – and a nephew as well. He felt sad that Lady Haigh had died but also he remembered how she longed for this release. A drip of guilt began to intrude on his shock and upset: how long had it been since he had last seen her, or given a thought to her welfare? It had been the dog food conversation, which was – when? Hours, days or weeks ago? His life seemed currently to be defying the segmented orders of diurnal time, hours lasting days, days compressed into minutes. He thought suddenly of Jupiter’s untypical solitary bark on – good God – Sunday night and wondered if it were as close as he could come to a pealing howl over his dead mistress’s body…
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Durrell said. ‘I’ve got to get back.’
‘Where?’ Lorimer felt he had a right to know.
‘I’m a radiologist at the Demarco-Westminster Clinic. I’ve got a waiting room full of patients.’ He re-entered the flat and emerged moments later in a semi-crouch, his left hand gripping the generous scruff of Jupiter’s neck.
‘I believe he’s yours now,’ he said. ‘There are about a dozen notes taped up around the house saying he’s to be delivered to you, in the event, etcetera.’
‘Yes. I did promise –’
He was locking