petty thief landed with some real villain’s murder rap; the apprentice mugger who jumps the world kick-boxing champion. Lorimer felt oddly besmirched himself – he had rarely used the legal-counter-threat response, his modus operandi usually made it unnecessary – but he had crossed through Rintoul’s world for a moment, the world of dog eat dog or, rather, of big dog eating smaller dog, and had shared in his terms of reference, spoken a language of unfairness and injustice that Rintoul understood all too well.
But he could not relax, this did not mean he was safe. One dark night Rintoul might have violence visited on him anonymously – after all, Lorimer Black was the only objective correlative he had, the living, breathing symbol of all his woes… Lorimer wondered if he should tell Hogg – it was time for an ‘oiling’, in GGH parlance, another resource available to troubled or worried employees caught in the line of fire. Some ‘cod-liver oil’ was a pre-emptive frightener, a scarer-away, the details of which he knew very little, as it was something controlled exclusively by Hogg. ‘So you need a dose of cod-liver oil,’ Hogg would smile, ‘to keep the colds and flu away. Leave it to Uncle George.’ Lorimer watched Rintoul’s hunched, shrinking figure disappear down the street and thought perhaps it might not be necessary after all. At least he knew who had put the sand on his car, now.
‘Come on, old boy’ he said to Jupiter, still patiently sitting, ‘let’s go home.’
211. You sometimes feel your job dirties you, you’re unhappy at the levels of duplicity and manipulation the work demands. You feel corrupt and at that moment the world seems a sink where only the powerful and the ruthless flourish and ideas of justice and fair play, of honour and decency, of bravery and kindness are like childish fantasies.
What did you do the last time you felt like that? You went to see Hogg.
‘So you want consoling?’ Hogg said, with exaggerated, wholly false pity. ‘You think the world’s a place where only evil-doing and graft get you where you want to be?’
‘Sometimes it seems like that,’ you admitted.
Hogg said: ‘It depends on where you stand. Let me tell you something: there have always been many more decent folk in the world than bastards. Many more. The bastards have always been outnumbered. So what happens is that bastards congregate in certain places, in certain professions. Bastards prefer the company of bastards, they like doing business with other bastards, everything’s understood then. The problem for people like you – and people like me – occurs when you find yourself, a decent person, having to live and work in the world of bastards. That can be difficult. Everywhere you look, the world seems a sink, and there seem to be only two options for survival – become a bastard yourself, or surrender to despair. But that’s only because you’re in your small bastard world. Outside in the wider world, the real world, there are plenty of decent folk and it’s run along lines that decent folk can understand, by and large. We’ve got plenty of bastards in this square mile and that’s why you’re finding it tough; but move away, change your point of view and you’ll see it’s not all dark. You’ll see the good in the world. It helps.’
You’ll see the good in the world. It does work, it worked for you, for a while, until you wondered if Hogg believed a word of what he said.
The Book of Transfiguration
The Café Greco was a small, shadowy place, a thin, dark rectangle wedged between a betting shop and an off-licence, with a counter and the Gaggia machine at one end and some chest-high shelves running along the walls where patrons were meant to stand, drink their coffee quickly and go. There were three stools, all currently occupied when Lorimer arrived at 6.15.
He ordered an espresso and considered what this choice of venue told him. The Café Greco would never merit selection for his collection of ‘Classic British Caffs’ because of its recycled Europeanism and its strained-for modishness, however tired: black walls, over-familiar reproductions of famous black and white photos, bare floorboards, Latin American salsa on the sound system. Only variations of coffee were served, or soft drinks in cans; there were some pastries under a plastic bell jar and a half-hearted stab at a selection of panini. No, the décor and its pretensions told him nothing, he realized with weary worldliness, it