London Match (20 page)

'I lease from George. I've done that for years. He lets me change cars, see? You knew that, didn't you?' He meant that George let him have a succession of cars when he was keeping someone under observation and didn't want the car he used recognized.

'No,' I said. 'George observes the discretion of the confessional. I didn't even know he knew you,'

'And nice kids, Bernie.' He slapped me on the back. 'Don't look so worried, pal. You've got a lot of good friends. A lot of people owe you. They'll see you through.'

Posh Harry was in the middle of saying all this when the door of the office crashed open. In the doorway there was a woman, thirtyish and pretty in the way that women become pretty if they use enough expensive makeup. She wore a full-length fur coat and hugged a large handbag to herself as if it contained a lot of valuables.

'Hon-ee,' she called petulantly. 'How much longer do I have to sit around in this dump?'

'Coming, sweetheart,' said Posh Harry.

'Har-ree! We're going to be so late,' she said. Her voice was laden with magnolia blossoms, the sort of accent that happens to ladies who watch
Gone With the Wind
on TV while eating chocolates.

Harry looked at his watch. Then we went through the usual routine of exchanging phone numbers and promising to meet for lunch, but neither of us put much enthusiasm into it. After Harry had finally said goodbye, George Kosinski returned with the kids.

'Everything all right, Bernard?' he said. He looked at me expectantly. I suppose for George all meetings were deals or potential deals.

'Yes, it was all right,' I said.

'Your Rover is there. The kids like it.' He put his briefcase on the table and began to rummage through it to find the registration book, but he only found it after dumping the contents of his case on the table. There was a bundle of mail ready to be posted, a biography of Mozart, and an elaborately bound Bible. 'A present for my nephew,' he said, as if the presence of the Bible required some sort of explanation. He also found a copy of the
Daily Telegraph
, an assortment of car keys with large labels attached, an address book, some foreign coins, and a red silk scarf. He waved the Mozart book at me. 'I've become interested in music lately,' he said. 'I've been going to concerts with Tessa. Mozart had a terrible life, did you know that?'

'I'd heard rumours,' I said.

'If ever you wanted to prove that there is no relationship between effort and reward in this world, you've only got to read the life of Mozart.'

'You don't even have to do that,' I said. 'You can come and work in my office and find that out.'

'The piano concertos,' said George. He pushed his glasses up again. 'It's the piano concertos that I really like. I've gone right off pop music since discovering Mozart. This morning I've ordered the complete quintets from the record shop. Wonderful music, Bernard. Wonderful.'

'Is Tessa sharing this musical enthusiasm?' I asked.

'She goes along with it,' said George. 'She's an educated woman, of course. Not like me; left school at fourteen hardly able to write. Tessa knows about music and art and that sort of thing. She learned it at school.'

He saw me glancing out of the window at what was going on in the yard. 'The children are all right, Bernard. My foreman is letting them help him with a decoking job. All kids are keen on mechanical things; you probably know that already. You just can't keep boys away from motorcars. I was like that when I was young. I loved cars. Most of the cars pinched are taken by kids too young to get a driving licence.' He sighed. 'Yes, Tessa and me are getting along. We've got to, Bernard. She's getting too old for running after other men; she's realized that herself.'

'I'm glad,' I said. 'I've always liked Tessa.'

George stopped this rambling conversation. He looked at me and spent a moment thinking about what he was going to say. 'I owe you an apology, Bernard. I know that.'

He'd virtually accused me of having an affair with his wife Tessa at a time when he was suspecting every man who knew her of the same thing. Now he'd had a chance to see things in perspective.

'It's never been like that,' I said. 'In fact, I never really knew her until Fiona left me. Then Tessa did everything to help . . . with the children and getting the house sorted out and arguing with her father and so on. I appreciate it and I like her, George. I like her very much. I like her so much that I think she deserves a happy marriage.'

'We're trying,' said George. 'We're both trying. But that father of hers. He hates me, you know. He can't bear anyone he knows hearing that I'm his son-in-law. He's ashamed of me. He calls himself a socialist, but he's ashamed of me because I don't have the right accent, the right education, or the right family background. He really hates me.'

'He's not exactly crazy about me,' I said.

'But you don't have to meet him in your club or fall over him in restaurants when you've got a client in tow. I swear he's screwed up a couple of good deals for me by barging in when I'm in the middle of lunch and making broad hints about my marriage. Life's difficult enough, Bernie. I don't need that kind of treatment, especially when I'm with a client.'

'He may not have done it deliberately,' I said.

'Of course he does it deliberately. He's teaching me a lesson. I go round telling everyone that I'm his son-in-law, so he goes round telling everyone that I can't control my wife.'

'Does he say that?'

'If I caught him . . .' George scowled as he thought about it. 'He hints, Bernard. He hints. You know what that man can imply with a wink and a nod.'

'He's got some strange ideas,' I said.

'You mean he's dead stupid. Yes, well I know that, don't I. You should hear his ideas about how I should run my business.' George stopped putting his possessions back into the briefcase, placed his hands on his hips, and cocked his head to one side in the manner of my father-in-law. His voice was that of David Kimber-Hutchinson too: 'Go public, George. Look for export opportunities, George. Better still, create a chance to merge with one of the really big companies. Think big. You don't want to be a car salesman all your life, do you?' George smiled.

The egregious David Kimber-Hutchinson was inimitable, but it was a good impersonation. And yet there is no better opportunity of seeing deep into a person's soul than to watch him impersonate someone else. A deep hurt had produced in George a resentment that burned bright. If it came to a showdown, I wouldn't care to be in Kimber-Hutchinson's shoes. And because I was already ranged against my father-in-law, I noted this fact with interest.

'And yet he makes a lot of money,' I said.

They look after each other, the Davids of this world.'

'He wanted the children. He thought he'd adopt them. . . .'

'And make them into little Kimber-Hutchinsons. I know. Tessa told me all about it. But you'll fight him, Bernard?'

'Every inch of the way.'

My enemy's enemy . . . there is no finer basis for friendship, according to the old proverb. 'Do you see him often?' I asked.

'Too damned often,' said George. 'But I'm determined to be nice to Tessa so I go down there with her and listen to the old man rabbiting on about what a big success he is.' George put his Mozart book into his case. 'He wants to buy a new Roller from me and he's determined to trade in the old one at a good price. He's taken me all round the paintwork and upholstery three times. Three times!'

'Wouldn't that be good business, George? A new Rolls-Royce must cost quite a packet.'

'And have him on my doorstep whenever it didn't start on the first turn of the key? Look, I'm not a Rolls dealer, but I buy and sell a few in the course of the year. They're good, the ones I sell, because I won't touch a dodgy one. It's a tricky market; a customer can't deduct much of the price from his tax allowances these days. But you know, and I know, that no matter what kind of brand new Rolls I get for that old bastard, it will start giving him trouble from the moment I deliver it. Right? It's some kind of law of nature; the car I get for him will give trouble. And he'll immediately decide that it's not straight from the factory at all; he'll say it's one I got cheap because there was something wrong with it.' He snapped the case shut. 'I don't want all that hassle, Bernard. I'd rather he went off and bought one in Berkeley Square. I've told him that, but he won't bloody well believe that there's anyone in this world who turns down a business opportunity.'

'Well, it's not like you, George.'

He grinned ruefully. 'I suppose not, but it's the way I feel about him.'

'Let's go and look at my new car,' I said. But he didn't move from behind the table.

'Posh Harry said you're in trouble. Is that right, Bernard?'

'Posh Harry makes his living by selling snippets of information. What he doesn't know he guesses, what he can't guess he invents.'

'Money trouble? Woman trouble? Trouble at work? If it's money I might be able to help, Bernard. You'd be better borrowing from me than from a High Street bank. I know you don't want to move from the house. Tessa explained all that to me.'

'Thanks, George. I think I'm going to manage the money end. Looks like they're going to give me some special allowance to help with the kids and the nanny and so on.'

'Couldn't you take the children away for a bit? Get a leave of absence and have a rest? You look damned tired these days.'

'I can't afford it,' I said. 'You're rich, George. You can do whatever you fancy doing. I can't.'

'I'm not rich enough to do anything I want to do. But I know what you mean; I'm rich enough to avoid doing the things I don't want to do.' George took off his heavy spectacles. 'I asked Posh Harry what he had to see you about. He didn't want to tell me, but I pressed him. He has to keep in with me, I do him a lot of favours one way and the other. And he wouldn't find many people who'd wait so patiently to be paid. I said, "What do you want with Bernard?" He said, "I'm helping him; he's in trouble." "What kind of trouble?" I said. "His people think he's working for the other side," said Harry. "If they prove it, he'll go to jail for about thirty years; they can't let him walk the streets; he knows too damned much about the way his people work." ' George stopped for a moment.

' "Bernard Samson wouldn't work for the Russians," I said. "I know him well enough to know that, and if the people he works for can't see that they must be stupid." ' George scratched his neck as he decided how to go on with his story. ' "Well, his wife worked for them," said Harry, "and if he's not working for them too, the Russians are not going to leave him alone either." "What do you mean?" I asked Posh Harry. "That's the bind he's in," said Posh Harry, "that's why he needs help. Either the Brits will jail him for thirty years or the Russians will send a hit team to waste him." ' George put his glasses on again and looked at me as if seeing me for the first time.

'Posh Harry earns a living selling stories like that, George. It's good dramatic stuff, isn't it? It's like the films on TV.'

'Not when you know one of the cast,' said George. Another train rolled slowly across the viaduct, its noise enough to prevent any conversation. 'Bloody trains,' said George after the sound had died away. 'We had trains making that kind of a racket right alongside the house where I grew up. I swore I'd never have to endure that kind of thing again once I made enough money . . . and here I am.' He looked round his squalid little office as if seeing it through the eyes of a visitor. 'Funny, isn't it?'

'Let's go and look at my car,' I suggested again.

'Bernard,' said George, fixing me with a serious stare. 'Do you know a man named Richard Cruyer?'

'Yes,' I said, vaguely enough to suddenly deny it if that became necessary.

'You work with him, don't you?'

I tried to remember if George and Tessa had ever had dinner at my home with the Cruyers as fellow guests. 'Yes, I work with him. Why?'

'Tessa has had to see him a couple of times. She says it was in connection with this children's charity she's doing so much work for.'

'I see,' I said, although I didn't see. I'd never heard Tessa mention any sort of charity she was doing any work for and I couldn't imagine what role Dicky Cruyer would play in any charity that wasn't devoting its energies to his own well-being.

'I can't help being suspicious, Bernard. I've forgiven her and removed from my mind a lot of the bad feeling that was poisoning our relationship. But I still get suspicious, Bernard. I'm only human.'

'And what do you want to know?' I asked, although what he wanted to know was only too evident. He wanted to know if Dicky Cruyer was the sort of man who would have an affair with Tessa. And the only truthful answer was an unequivocal 'Yes'.