Armadillo Read Free Page B

their mouths, as if someone was likely suddenly to snatch them away, confiscate the booze. There were very few he knew here any more, just a sprinkling from his own days at the Fort. They were a young crowd, early to mid-twenties (trainees?), newly suited, loudly tied, flushed, cheery faces. Friday evening, no work tomorrow, arse-holed by midnight, rollocked, well bevvied. The women were all smoking, confident in their minority status, laughing as the males grouped and regrouped about them, sure of themselves, sought-after. Lorimer ruefully reflected that he hadn’t really been fair to –
    His elbow was gripped, hard. He barely had the strength to hold on to Dymphna’s glass. He felt obliged to utter a small gasp of pain as he was wheeled round, effortlessly, as if on a dance floor, being masterfully led.
    ‘How’s Mr Dupree?’ Hogg asked, his big, lumpy face bland, and very close to Lorimer’s. His breath smelt most odd, a mix of wine and something metallic, like Brasso, or some other powerful cleansing agent, or as if every cavity in his teeth had been freshly filled an hour ago. Hogg had also, improbably, tiny ruby jewels of shaving cuts on his left earlobe, his upper lip and another two centimetres down from his left eye. He must have been in a hurry.
    ‘Mr Dupree in the pink, is he?’ Hogg went on. ‘Tip top, hale and hearty, full of piss and vinegar?’
    ‘Ah,’ Lorimer said weakly, ‘you heard.’
    ‘From the fucking POLICE,’ Hogg said in a throat-grating whisper, his big simple features looming ever closer, almost out of focus. Lorimer held his ground: it was important not to flinch in the brunt of Hogg’s verbal batterings, even though, if he thrust his face any further forward, they might as well be kissing. Hogg’s mineral breath wafted off his cheeks, fanned his hair gently.
    ‘I had no idea,’ Lorimer said, resolutely. ‘He agreed to meet. I figured I’d have it tied up –’
    ‘– Nice choice of vocabulary, Black.’ He prodded Lorimer in the chest with some force, hitting his right nipple square on, as if it were a bell-push. Lorimer winced, again. Hogg stepped back, his face a mask of loathing, of profound, metaphysical disgust. ‘Sort it out. And keep it squeaky.’
    ‘Yes, Mr Hogg.’
    Lorimer swiftly gulped two glasses of wine at the bar, inhaled and exhaled deeply a few times, before heading back towards Dymphna and his colleagues. He saw Hogg across the room pointing him out to a fleshy-looking man in a hand-made pin-stripe suit with a pink tie. The man began to make his way towards him and Lorimer felt his throat tighten suddenly – What now? Police? No, surely not in bespoke tailoring? – and he ducked his head to suck at some of his wine as the fellow approached, smiling a thin, insincere smile. The face was puffy, strangely weather-beaten with the roseate, burny glow of burst capillaries around the cheeks and nostrils. Small, bright, unfriendly eyes. Closer to he saw that the man was really not that old after all, not much older than he was, he just seemed older. The motif on the man’s pink tie, he noticed, was of tiny yellow teddy bears.
    ‘Lorimer Black?’ the man said, raising his deep voice, a lazy patrician drawl, to compete with the babble around them. Lorimer noticed that his lips barely moved, he spoke through his teeth, like an inept ventriloquist.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Stalk hilly virgin.’ His mouth had opened a slit and these sounds had issued forth. These were the words Lorimer aurally registered. He proffered a hand. Lorimer juggled glasses, slopped wine, managed a brisk, damp shake.
    ‘What?’
    The man looked at him fixedly and the insincere smile grew marginally wider, marginally more insincere. He spoke again.
    ‘Thought we’ll heave the gin.’
    Lorimer paused for the briefest of moments. ‘Excuse me. What exactly do you mean?’
    ‘Torn, we’ll lever chain.’
    ‘Look, I don’t know what –’
    ‘TALK, OR WE’LL LEAVE HER, JANE.’
    ‘Jane