staggering round from the force of the blow as it was – he wheeled his briefcase in a self-protective arc. He heard a crunching noise as its edge went into his assailant’s face, a noise not violent so much as quietly and domestically satisfying, like a splash of milk falling on crisp cornflakes. His attacker screamed in his turn and staggered away, falling to the ground. Lights were flashing in Lorimer’s face – anti-aircraft fire over Baghdad – and he aimed a couple of kicks in the squirming, scrabbling body’s direction, the second of which connected with an ankle. The figure, wearing dark clothes, a hood over its head, clambered to its feet and limp-ran away, surprisingly fast, club or bat or two-by-four in its hand, and Lorimer fell over, himself, his head suddenly speared with a new form of nerve-end trauma. Gently he touched the hair above his left ear – wet, horrifically tender, a lump rising under his fingertips. Blood.
No one came out and no one seemed to have heard anything – the whole ‘fight’ must have lasted three seconds. Inside, peering into the bathroom mirror, he discovered he had an oozing one-inch cut above his ear and a lump the size of a halved ping-pong ball. The big muscle on the back of his shoulder was dark red and badly contused but no bones seemed to have been broken. He wondered if he would be able to move his left arm in the morning. He stumbled out of the bathroom and filled a glass with medicinal Scotch. He was very pleased Torquil was not at home. He jammed the telephone receiver under his chin and punched out a number.
‘Yeah?’
‘Phil?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘It’s Lor – it’s Milo.’
‘Hey, Milo, my main man. Lobby’s not here. How you doing?’
‘Not so good. Somebody just took a swing at my head with a baseball bat.’
‘That scumbag who’s been bugging you?’
‘Rintoul.’
‘Do you, like, want me to sort him instead of his motor? Break all his fingers or something? It proper fucks you up, eight broken fingers, I tell you. Can’t even take a piss.’
‘No, just do the motor. He’ll get the message.’
‘Consider it done, Milo. My pleasure.’
He drank his whisky and took four aspirin and managed to shrug off his jacket and kick away his shoes before sliding himself into bed beneath the duvet. He felt his shoulder and arm stiffening, as if being subjected to some localized freezing device. He felt too an immense weariness descend on him as the adrenalin flood seeped away or wore off or whatever happened to adrenalin when it was no longer needed. He felt himself start to shiver and for the first time the delayed shock made tears prick his eyes. What a vicious… What kind of desperate coward would… If he had not moved his head that fraction what damage might have been done to him? The only consolation was that he knew that, for the first time in years, he was about to sleep a whole night through.
Torquil woke him at 2.15 a.m. Shook him awake, his big clumsy paw gripping his ruined shoulder.
‘God, sorry,’ Torquil stepped back in alarm. ‘What happened to you? Look like shit.’
‘Someone tried to mug me. Got hit on the head.’
‘Bastard. Guess how much I made?’
‘Torquil, I’ve been attacked, brutalized, I have to sleep.’
‘I worked nine hours non-stop. Guess.’
‘I need sleep.’
‘£285. Lobby said the work’s there for me. Nights are even better. There’s a surcharge after ten.’
‘Congratulations.’ Lorimer hunched into the pillow.
‘I thought you’d be pleased for me,’ Torquil said, petulantly.
‘I am,’ Lorimer mumbled. ‘I’m very pleased. Now go away and leave me alone, there’s a good boy.’
234. 1953. It is one of the most astonishing facts in scientific history, Alan said, one of the most inexplicable occurrences in the history of the study of the human body. What? Consider this, Alan said, after millennia of sleep and sleeping, REM sleep was only discovered in 1953. 1953! Did no one ever look at another person sleeping and wonder why their eyeballs were moving? Well, did it exist before 1953? I said. Perhaps REM sleep is a late evolutionary refinement amongst human beings. Of course it did, Alan said. How do you know? Because we only dream in REM sleep, and people have dreamed since the beginning of time.
The Book of Transfiguration
‘– and this is Adrian Bolt,’ Hogg was saying, ‘Dymphna Macfarlane, Shane Ashgable, Ian Fetter, and, last but by no means least, Lorimer Black.’