‘You know, I was rather outspoken at the Ivy a couple of nights ago, after the second bottle. I could swear someone started following me afterwards. The dark forces of the Establishment, out to stifle the gentlemen of the press. Can you hear me? Are you even listening?’
‘I’m listening,’ Pavel assured him. ‘But I don’t know why. You’re so full of shit. Go to bed, Henry.’
‘You love my shit, Pav darling! You do! And you know I adore Mrs Jones really, the minx. We’re supposed to feel sorry for her, giving up the love of her life for the sake of her duty, when all she really wanted was the chance to keep us all bobbing and bowing to her. Doesn’t it drive you
Pavel opened the door of his darkroom, converted from the integral garage of his little house, where enlargements of more interesting prints were pegged on strips of washing line above a trestle table that held his developing trays.
‘Talking of which, a bird threw herself at me last week,’ Henry said. ‘Proper posh totty. Forgot to tell you. You think I don’t still have it in me, Pav, but I assure you, this one was a corker. Legs all the way till Christmas. Couldn’t get enough of me …‘
Pavel been at a club in Soho last night, greedily capturing the silhouette of a spotlit saxophonist through a haze of smoke. The blown-up print was certainly more arresting than the posed portraits, but was it too obvious? What about the wild-eyed look of the pianist, urging the horn section to greater heights? Or the blonde with the French-looking haircut, very short, like Jean Seberg, whom he’d encountered at the bar?
‘Look, someone’s at the door,’ Henry said. ‘I’ll be back in a moment. If I’m not, call the police.
His voice faded away, and Pavel’s thoughts remained with the blonde, who had slipped out of his flat this morning leaving a tangle of sheets imbued with her smell. Before going, she had borrowed his camera to take his post-coital picture and, more by luck than judgment, she’d done a decent enough job. He examined his face in the resulting images impartially, noting the lack of symmetry between his eyes, the severe angularity of the nose. It was, however, a beautiful face. It must be: it got the job done, as witnessed by the rumpled sheets upstairs. He thought of it as another tool of his trade, like the hands that were so good with wires and switches.
Pavel wondered in passing how Henry had got on with the ‘posh totty’ he’d just mentioned. Henry wasn’t usually successful with women, unless they happened to have a thing for tweed jackets and cord trousers. It was the uniform they’d worn at prep school together aged seven, and that Henry had yet to grow out of. Which probably explained a lot.
Pavel looked round. Something was off. Behind him, the house had gone very quiet.
Where was Henry? What had happened to him?
‘Hello?’ he called out.
Hadn’t Henry mentioned being followed? Pavel had automatically ignored his friend’s mentions of ‘dark forces of the Establishment’. He didn’t believe in such things. Still, Henry was very good at making enemies and apparently he’d trash-talked the Queen’s sister in a public restaurant. Pavel felt a prickle of unease.
‘Henry?’ He left the darkroom and walked over to the microphone, which sat on a teetering stack of unreturned library books. ‘Henry?’
There was a strange, muffled sound through the speaker.
‘All present and correct,’ Henry said, through a mouthful of crumbs. ‘I just had to go to the cake tin for a little something. Fruit cake. Wedding last weekend. Whisky makes me peckish. And Mrs Jones was very miserly with the canapés. What was I saying?’
‘Someone was at your door.’
‘Oh yes. The mad old bat downstairs wanted to tell me off for dancing around in hobnail boots. By which she means walking in stockinged feet across my own floorboards. I swear I’ll kill her one of these days. What was I saying before that? Oh, God, tonight’s cabaret. Bloody Cole Porter. I’ll have to put something in my column on Friday. What shall I say? “Charming’” “gracious”, “tuneful”, grovel grovel grovel … “Her Royal Highness, in sparkling form, accompanied herself on the piano with the skill of a seasoned performer . . .” “The blooming cheek of a fresh young bride . . .” Blooming cheek indeed. God, I hate myself. I said,
But this time, Pavel had gone to answer a knock at his own door. He lived in the heart of Belgravia and it wasn’t unusual for friends who’d been tipped out of pubs and clubs or girlfriends’ flats to show up in need of an overnight place on his sofa. However, to his surprise, the two darkly-dressed men standing on the threshold were strangers. Without preamble, the taller of the pair said, ‘We have a message from Mirny. Hand delivered.’
