murder of his wife.
When he thought of her (when didn’t he?) his mouth was dry and his palms were wet; he sighed; he shook. She was in his mind’s eye now, like a fugitive from some more perfect place. Her skin was flawless, and always cool, always pale; her body was long, like her hair, like her fingers, like her laughter; and her eyes, oh, her eyes, had every season of leaf in them: the twin greens of spring and high summer, the golds of autumn, and, in her rages, black midwinter rot.
He was, by contrast, a plain man; well scrubbed, but plain. He’d made his fortune selling baths, bidets and toilets, which lent him little by way of mystique. So, when he’d first laid eyes on Judith - she’d been sitting behind a desk at his accountant’s offices, her beauty all the more luminous for its drab setting - his first thought was: I want this woman; his second: she won’t want me. There was, however, an instinct in him when it came to Judith that he’d never experienced with any other woman. Quite simply, he felt she belonged to him, and that if he turned his wit to it, he could win her. His courtship had begun the day they’d met, with the first of many small tokens of affection delivered to her desk. But he soon learned that such bribes and blandishments would not help his case. She politely thanked him, but told him they weren’t welcome. He dutifully ceased to send presents, and instead began a systematic investigation of her circumstances. There was precious little to learn. She lived simply, her small circle vaguely bohemian. But amongst that circle he discovered a man whose claim upon her preceded his own, and to whom she was apparently devoted. That man was John Furie Zacharias, known universally as Gentle, and he had a reputation as a lover that would have driven Estabrook from the field had that strange certainty not been upon him. He decided to be patient and await his moment. It would come.
Meanwhile he watched his beloved from afar, conspiring to encounter her accidentally now and again, while he researched his antagonist’s history. Again, there was little to learn. Zacharias was a minor painter when he wasn’t living off his mistresses, and reputedly a dissolute. Of this Estabrook had perfect proof when, by chance, he met the fellow. Gentle was as handsome as his legends suggested, but looked, Charlie thought, like a man just risen from a fever. There was something raw about him; his body sweated to its essence, his face betraying a hunger behind its symmetry that lent him a bedevilled look.
Half a week after that encounter, Charlie had heard that his beloved had parted from the man with great grief, and was in need of tender care. He’d been quick to supply it, and she’d come into the comfort of his devotion with an ease that suggested his dreams of possession had been well founded.
His memories of that triumph had, of course, been soured by her departure, and now it was he who wore the hungry, yearning look he’d first seen on Furie’s face. It suited him less well than it had Zacharias. His was not a head made for haunting. At fifty-six, he looked sixty or more, his features as solid as Gentle’s were spare, as pragmatic as Gentle’s were rarefied. His only concession to vanity was the delicately curled moustache beneath his patrician’s nose, which concealed an upper lip he’d thought dubiously ripe in his youth, leaving the lower to jut in lieu of a chin.
Now, as he rode through the darkened streets, he caught sight of that face in the window, and perused it ruefully. What a mockery he was! He blushed to think of how shamelessly he’d paraded himself when he’d had Judith on his arm; how he’d joked that she loved him for his cleanliness, and for his taste in bidets. The same people who’d listened to those jokes were laughing in earnest now; were calling him ridiculous. It was unbearable. The only way he knew to heal the pain of his humiliation was to punish her for the crime of leaving him.
He rubbed the heel of his hand against the window, and peered out.
‘Where are we?’ he asked Chant.
‘South of the river, sir.’
‘Yes, but where?’
‘Streatham.’
Though he’d driven through this area many times - he had a warehouse in the neighbourhood - he recognized none of it. The city had never looked more foreign, nor more unlovely.
‘What sex is London, do you suppose?’ he mused.
‘I hadn’t ever thought,’ Chant said.
‘It was a woman once,’ Estabrook went on. ‘One calls a city she, yes? But it doesn’t seem very feminine any more.’
‘She’ll be a lady again in spring,’ Chant replied.
‘I don’t think a few crocuses in Hyde Park are going to make much difference,’ Estabrook said. The charm’s gone out of it.’ He sighed. ‘How far now?’
‘Maybe another mile.’
‘Are you sure your man’s going to be there?’
‘Of course.’
‘You’ve done this a lot, have you? Been a go-between, I mean. What did you call it … a facilitator?
‘Oh yes,’ Chant said. ‘It’s in my blood.’ That blood was not entirely English. Chant’s skin and syntax carried traces of the immigrant. But Estabrook had grown to trust him a little, even so.
‘Aren’t you curious about all of this?’ he asked the man.
‘It’s not my business, sir. You’re paying for the service, and I provide it. If you wanted to tell me your reasons —’
‘As it happens, I don’t.’
‘I understand. So it would be useless for me to be curious, yes?’
That was neat enough, Estabrook thought. Not to want what couldn’t be had no doubt took the sting from things. He might need to learn the trick of that before he got too much older; before he wanted time he couldn’t have. Not that he demanded much in the way of satisfactions. He’d not been sexually insistent with Judith, for instance. Indeed he’d taken as much pleasure in the simple sight of her as he’d taken in the act of love. The sight of her had pierced him, making her the enterer, had she but known it, and him the entered. Perhaps she had known, on reflection. Perhaps she’d fled from his passivity, from his ease beneath the spike of her beauty. If so, he would undo her revulsion with tonight’s business. Here, in the hiring of the assassin, he would prove himself. And, dying, she would realize her error. The thought pleased him. He allowed himself a little smile, which vanished from his face when he felt the car slowing, and glimpsed through the misted window the place the facilitator had brought him to.
A wall of corrugated iron lay before them, its length daubed with graffiti. Beyond it, visible through gaps where the iron had been torn into ragged wings and beaten back, was a junkyard in which caravans were parked. This was apparently their destination.
‘Are you out of your mind?’ he said, leaning forward to take hold of Chant’s shoulder. ‘We’re not safe here.’
‘I promised you the best assassin in England, Mr Estabrook, and he’s here. Trust me, he’s here.’
Estabrook growled in fury and frustration. He’d expected a clandestine rendezvous - curtained windows, locked doors—not a gypsy encampment. This was altogether too public, and too dangerous. Would it not be the perfect irony to be murdered in the middle of an assignation with an assassin? He leaned back against the creaking leather of his seat and said:
‘You’ve let me down.’
‘I promise you this man is a most extraordinary individual,’ Chant said. ‘Nobody in Europe comes remotely close. I’ve worked with him before -’
‘Would you care to name the victims?’
Chant looked round at his employer, and in faintly admonishing tones said:
‘I haven’t presumed upon your privacy, Mr Estabrook. Please don’t presume upon mine.’
Estabrook gave a chastened grunt.
‘Would you prefer we go back to Chelsea?’ Chant went on. ‘I can find somebody else for you. Not as good, perhaps, but in more congenial