Full of Money Read Free

said.
    â€˜A Retrospective gives that sequential aspect,’ Pellotte said. ‘Dean’s got such an appetite for learning. It’s an inspiration.’
    He would be seven or eight pounds heavier than Dean and a couple of years older, about forty-five. Pellotte had on a grey, pinstriped suit, his dark hair brushed smooth, not spiky or tinted. His face was entirely unscarred and free from cell pallor, his tie burgundy and in a modest knot, no flashy, imperious bulge. He didn’t do hand jewellery of any kind. Whitsun gossip said pushers and wholesalers as far off as Carlisle and Linton-upon-Ouse spoke wonderingly of this principled dearth of rings, despite magnificent commercial, unprosecutable success on and around the estate, regardless of a new clean-up, top woman detective. Yes, tone. Obviously, in view of Pellotte’s non-decorativeness, it would have jarred if Dean wore a medallion. Unflashiness and Pellotte were synonymous, understatement his statement.
    â€˜It’s good we could intercept you like this today, Larry,’ Dean said. ‘We didn’t want to come ringing your front doorbell – disturbing you and giving the street cause for talk first thing in the morning. When Adrian calls on some people at home, especially when it’s early, there can be neighbourhood interest. Rumour. Gossip, etcetera. If we conduct visits of that sort they will often have, well . . . to be frank . . . often have a sorting-out purpose.’
    â€˜Sorting out?’ Edgehill said.
    â€˜In a special sense,’ Dean said.
    â€˜Which?’ Edgehill said.
    â€˜Someone in the house needing to be sorted out,’ Dean said. ‘This wouldn’t have been decided hastily by Adrian and me, but it would have been decided on.’
    â€˜The sorting out?’ Edgehill replied.
    Dean said: ‘If we arrived at your place, 19a Bell Close, pre-breakfast, folk on the estate could imagine you were in some sort of difficulty – could think you’d foolishly, disgustingly, crossed Adrian – been skimming from deals, say, and doing tetramisole or hydroxyzine mixes. Undue tetramisole or hydroxyzine, damaging the firm’s reputation for notable quality. In fact, of course, we wouldn’t have had that kind of ticklish, reprimand purpose in calling on you, but people form ideas of their own. It’s what’s known as their “perception”.’
    Edgehill wondered whether to people in Gideon he’d look like a Pellotte associate, though a lowly one, who could be required to stoop and take a kerbside briefing which wasn’t brief. He’d prefer not to have that sort of reputation, thanks. If Edgehill had owned a car himself and used it to drive to work, unwanted encounters like this would be impossible. But almost as soon as he bought his Whitsun flat he’d realized – been made to realize – that vehicle ownership here didn’t really serve, unless you were Pellotte or one of his staff, and – crucially – known to be one of his staff. Otherwise, if you kept a car in the street, pieces of it, or it itself, would disappear some nights, or days, and, in fact, as to pieces of it, most nights or days: anything removable. You might keep it elsewhere, out of the district, and go to pick it up by Tube train or bus or hike or folding bike, but you still had to pay insurance postcode related, and the postcode of your address, not the car’s, with bulky weighting for likely vandalism and, almost just as likely, taking, driving away and torching.
    â€˜An informal encounter like this is better,’ Pellotte said. ‘I’m more comfortable with that. Doorstepping – so crude and potentially . . . potentially unpleasant.’
    â€˜An Englishman’s home is his piss-hole,’ Dean said. ‘I guessed you’d probably be walking to the Tube at about this spot – the former fruit and vegery –