by the martial click of his shoe steels and fled, or was he, or she, still hiding somewhere near by? He saw no one, nothing stirred, so he swept the cold sand from the gentle slope of the bonnet. How to explain this? Was this directed at him or was it random, his bad luck? BASTA – it meant ‘enough’ in Italian. Or was it an incomplete slur on the marital status of his mother? Basta. Enough. Enough already. Enough questions. He hoped he would sleep tonight, but he doubted it, his mind was already full of his next project: he was going to telephone Flavia Malinverno in the morning.
Chapter 8
‘Hello?’
‘Could I speak to Flavia Malinverno?’
‘You are?’
‘Hello. This is Lorimer Black. We met —’
‘Who?’
‘Lorimer Black. We –’
‘Do I know you?’
‘We met very briefly the other day. In the Alcazar. I was the one who was so taken with your performance. In the Fortress Sure advertisement.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ Pause. ‘How did you get my number?’
‘I told you – I work for Fortress Sure. All that information is on file.’ He was floundering a bit. ‘From the company who made the film. You know, call sheets, ah, transportation records…’
‘Really?’
‘They’re very keen on files. They’re an insurance company, remember. Everything filed away somewhere.’
‘Oh. You don’t say.’
‘Yes.’ In for a penny. ‘I was wondering if we could meet? Drink, buy you lunch or something?’
‘Why?’
‘Because… Because, I’d like to, is the honest answer.’
Silence. Lorimer swallowed. No saliva in his arid mouth.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m free Sunday evening. Where do you live?’
‘Pimlico. In Lupus Crescent,’ he added, as if that made him sound more alluring and upscale.
‘That’s no good. I’ll meet you at the Café Greco in Old Compton Street. 6.30.’
‘6.30, Café Greco, Old Compton Street. I’ll be there.’
‘See you then, Lorimer Black.’
I75. Sinbad’s Folly. Sinbad Fingleton had unruly mid-brown hair, frequently unwashed, that formed itself into thick corkscrews, like planed shavings off a plank of wood, and that hung forward over his narrow brow to just below eye-level. He had a chronic sinus problem which meant he sniffed a great deal and was obliged to breathe through his mouth. Consequently his mouth was open most of his waking day, and indeed his sleeping night. He enjoyed simple physical exertion – chopping, mowing, clipping, digging, carrying – which was why his despairing father (phoning a crony on the town council) had managed to swing him a menial job in the Parks Department. His other pleasure was marijuana and its derivatives and from the tales he recounted it sounded that his colleagues shared similar tastes, passing their working hours tending to the lawns and borders, shrubs and saplings of Inverness in an agreeable drug haze. Sinbad was happy to experiment with other drugs and when a friend sold him some tabs of LSD he had driven off in a Parks Department Land Rover and tripped out in the craggy isolation of Glen Affric for thirty-six hours (necessitating a further round of mollifying phone calls from his father, more markers being called in). It had been, Sinbad told the household, the most, you know, amazing experience of his life and he would like to offer – free of charge – some LSD to any fellow tenants who wished to sample the intensity of perceptual change the stuff provoked. Lachlan and Murdo accepted, saying they would take it back to Mull to try. The rest of us indifferently, but politely, declined (Joyce doing so on Shona’s behalf – Shona was keen).
Sinbad was disappointed by this reticence and so one evening, as Joyce was preparing our communal meal – a large shepherd’s pie – Sinbad dropped three tabs of acid into the simmering mincemeat to ensure that we did not miss out on the mindbending experience he felt sure, really, that in our heart of hearts we wanted. It was one of the evenings when I happened to be staying over.
The Book of Transfiguration
Ivan Algomir looked at Binnie Helvoir-Jayne’s scrawled note, her huge, looping handwriting giving instructions about the dinner party.
‘Black tie?’ he said. ‘That’s a bit naff, isn’t it?’ He sniffed. ‘I suppose it’s just allowable these days, there must be someone grand coming.’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘If it’s just a bunch of friends then it’s unforgivable. Where the hell is Monken Hadley?’
‘It’s in the borough of Barnet,’ Lorimer said, ‘believe it or not.’
‘Priddion’s Farm, Monken Hadley? You could be in darkest Gloucestershire.’