Our Game полностью

The tail pointed downward, and it was strongly drawn. A defined tail. It ran diagonally towards my right foot, and at the toe of my right foot ran the skirting of the door, and underneath the skirting a flattened cigarette end protruded, and I suppose a very curious person might just have wondered quite how a cigarette end came to be flattened and wedged beneath the skirting of a door unless someone had deliberately stood on it and kicked it there; and the same person might also have remarked that the beam of the corner street light shone brightly onto the lower part of the door, so that once you were aware of the conjunction of the chalk mark and the cigarette end, you marvelled that there wasn't a great crowd of people round you, staring at the same thing.

I did not, however, possess Checheyev's physical dexterity; I could not achieve the lightning swing of the upper body that had put Jack Andover, our chief watcher, in mind of Welsh miners. So I did what middle-aged spies do the world over: I stooped and made a show of fastening my shoelace, while with one hand I pinched hold of the cigarette end, and of the string that was inside it, and I tugged: to be rewarded, after a further length of string, with the flat brass Yale door key that was attached to it. Then, with the key concealed in my hand, I stood up and walked confidently round the corner to the front door.

"They're on holiday, darling," a bass voice called from beside me.

I turned quickly, my rent-a-drool smile hoisted in readiness. A large blond-headed woman, backlit by the light of her own hall, was standing in the neighbouring doorway, dressed in what seemed to be a white nightgown and clutching a glass of something strong.

"I know," I said.

"Feebs is what he calls me. I'm Phoebe really. You were here before, weren't you?"

"That's right. I forgot to collect the key and had to go back and get it. I'll forget my own name next. Still, a holiday was what they needed, wasn't it?"

"He did," she said darkly.

My brain must have been working overtime, for I divined her meaning immediately. "Of course! Poor man," I cried. "I mean how was he looking? Better? On the mend? Or was he still all colours of the rainbow?"

But some sense of need-to-know held her back from further confidence. "What do you want, then?" she asked sullenly.

"It's what they want, I'm afraid. Sally's typewriter. More clothes. Practically anything I can carry."

"You're not a debt collector, are you?"

"Good Lord, no." I laughed and took a couple of paces towards her so that she could see what a trustworthy fellow I was. "I'm his brother. Richard. Dick. The respectable one. They phoned me. Would I put together some stuff for them? Take it up to London. He'd had this accident. Fallen downstairs, he said. Poor love, if it's not one thing, it's another. Did they manage to leave together? I gather it was all rather rushed."

"There's no accidents round here, darling. Everything's deliberate." She giggled at her own wit. So did I, elaborately. "He went first, she followed him, I don't know why." She took a sip from her glass, but kept her eyes on me. "I don't think I like you going in, you see. Not while they're in France. I think I'm worried."

Stepping back into her house, she slammed the front door. A moment later a wet crack like a training grenade split the air as an upper window of the house was flung open and a broad-headed hairy man in an undershirt leaned out.

"You! Come 'ere! You're Terry's brother, are you?"

"Yes."

"Dick, right?"

"Dick is correct."

"Know all about him, do you?"

"Pretty much."

"What's his favourite football team, then, Dick?"

"Moscow Dynamo," I replied, before I had given myself time to think, for soccer was one of Larry's many incongruous obsessions. "And Lev Yashin was the greatest goalkeeper of all time. And the greatest goal ever scored was by Ponedelnik for Russia against Yugoslavia in 1960."

"Bloody hell."

He disappeared, and a delay followed, presumably while he conferred with Phoebe. Then he was back and smiling.

"I'm Arsenal myself. Not that he minded. Here. How'd he get his black eye, then? I've seen some shiners, but he was classic. 'What happened?' I says to him. 'She close her legs too soon?' Walked into a door, he says. Then Sally turns round and says it was a car smash. You don't know who to believe these days, do you? Want a hand at all?"

"Maybe later. I'll give you a shout, if I may."

"I'm Wilf. He's a mad bugger, but I like him."

The window slammed shut.

* * *