if he’d hoped to stay lily-white.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘We’re here, and I may as well see him. What’s his name?’
‘I only know him as Pie,’ Chant said.
‘Pie? Pie what?’
‘Just Pie.’
Chant got out of the car and opened Estabrook’s door. Icy air swirled in, bearing a few flakes of sleet. Winter was eager this year. Pulling his coat collar up around his nape, and plunging his hands into the minty depths of his pockets, Estabrook followed his guide through the nearest gap in the corrugated wall. The wind carried the tang of burning timber from an almost spent bonfire set amongst the caravans; that, and the smell of rancid fat.
‘Keep close,’ Chant advised. ‘Walk briskly, and don’t show too much interest. These are very private people.’
‘What’s your man doing here?’ Estabrook demanded to know. ‘Is he on the run?’
‘You said you wanted somebody who couldn’t be traced. Invisible was the word you used. Pie’s that man. He’s on no files of any kind. Not the police, not the Social Security. He’s not even registered as born.’
‘I find that unlikely.’
‘I specialize in the unlikely,’ Chant replied.
Until this exchange the violent turn in Chant’s eye had never unsettled Estabrook, but it did now, preventing him as it did from meeting the other man’s gaze directly. This tale he was telling was surely a lie. Who these days got to adulthood without appearing on a file somewhere? But the thought of meeting a man who even believed himself undocumented intrigued Estabrook. He nodded Chant on, and together they headed over the ill-lit and squalid ground.
There was debris dumped every side: the skeletal hulks of rusted vehicles; heaps of rotted household refuse, the stench of which the cold could not subdue; innumerable dead bonfires. The presence of trespassers had attracted some attention. A dog with more breeds in its blood than hairs on its back foamed and yapped at them from the limit of its rope; the curtains of several trailers were drawn back by shadowy witnesses; two girls in early adolescence, both with hair so long and blonde they looked to have been baptized in gold (unlikely beauty, in such a place) rose from beside the fire, one running as if to alert guards, the other watching the newcomers with a smile somewhere between the seraphic and the cretinous on her face.
‘Don’t stare,’ Chant reminded him as he hurried on, but Estabrook couldn’t help himself.
An albino with white dreadlocks had appeared from one of the trailers with the blonde girl in tow. Seeing the strangers he let out a shout, and headed towards them. Two more doors now opened, and others emerged from their trailers, but Estabrook had no chance to either see who they were or whether they were armed because Chant again said:
‘Just walk, don’t look. We’re heading for the caravan with the sun painted on it. See it?’
‘I see it.’
There were twenty yards still to cover. Dreadlocks was delivering a stream of orders now, most of them incoherent, but surely intended to stop them in their tracks. Estabrook glanced across at Chant, who had his gaze fixed on their destination, and his teeth clenched. The sound of footsteps grew louder behind them. A blow on the head or a knife in the ribs couldn’t be far off.
‘We’re not going to make it,’ Estabrook said.
Within ten yards of the caravan - the albino at their shoulders - the door ahead opened, and a woman in a dressing-gown, with a baby in her arms, peered out. She was small, and looked so frail it was a wonder she could hold the child, who began bawling as soon as the cold found it. The ache of its complaint drove their pursuers to action. Dreadlocks took hold of Estabrook’s shoulder and stopped him dead. Chant - wretched coward that he was - didn’t slow his pace by a beat, but strode on towards the caravan as Estabrook was swung round to face the albino. This was his perfect nightmare, to be facing scabby, pock-marked men like these, who had nothing to lose if they gutted him on the spot. While Dreadlocks held him hard another man - gold incisors glinting - stepped in and pulled open Estabrook’s coat, then reached in to empty his pockets with the speed of an illusionist. This was not simply professionalism. They wanted their business done before they were stopped. As the pick-pocket’s hand pulled out his victim’s wallet a voice from the caravan behind Estabrook said:
‘Let the Mister go. He’s real.’
Whatever the latter meant, the order was instantly obeyed, but by that time the thief had whipped Estabrook’s wallet into his own pocket, and had stepped back, hands raised to show them empty. Nor, despite the fact that the speaker - presumably Pie - was extending his protection to his guest, did it seem circumspect to try and reclaim the wallet. Estabrook retreated from the thieves, lighter in step and cash, but glad to be doing so at all.
Turning, he saw Chant at the caravan door, which was open. The woman, the baby and the speaker had already gone back inside.
‘They didn’t hurt you, did they?’ Chant said.
Estabrook glanced back over his shoulder at the thugs, who had gone to the fire, presumably to divide the loot by its light.
‘No,’ he said. ‘But you’d better go and check the car, or they’ll have it stripped.’
‘First I’d like to introduce you -’
‘Just check the car,’ Estabrook said, taking some satisfaction in the thought of sending Chant back across the no-man’s land between here and the perimeter. ‘I can introduce myself.’
‘As you like.’
Chant went off, and Estabrook climbed the steps into the caravan. A scent and a sound met him, both sweet. Oranges had been peeled, and their dew was in the air. So was a lullaby, played on a guitar. The player, a black man, sat in the furthest corner of the caravan, in a shadowy place beside a sleeping child. The babe lay to his other side, gurgling softly in a simple cot, its fat arms raised as if to pluck the music from the air with its tiny hands. The woman was at a table at the other end of the vehicle tidying away the orange peel. The whole interior was marked by the same fastidiousness she was applying to this task; every surface neat and polished.
‘You must be Pie,’ Estabrook said.
‘Please close the door,’ the guitar player said. Estabrook did so. ‘And sit down. Theresa? Something for the gentleman. You must be cold.’
The china cup of brandy set before him was like nectar. He downed it in two throatfuls, and Theresa instantly replenished it. He drank again with the same speed, only to have his cup furnished with a further draught. By the time Pie had played both the children to sleep, and rose to come and join his guest at the table, the liquor had brought a pleasant buzz to Estabrook’s head.
In his life Estabrook had known only two other black men by name. One the manager of a tiling manufacturers in Swindon, the other a colleague of his brother’s: neither of the men he’d wished to know better. He was of an age and class that still swilled the dregs of colonialism at two in the morning, and the fact this man had black blood in him (and, he guessed, much else besides) counted as another mark against Chant’s judgement. And yet - perhaps it was the brandy - he found the fellow opposite him intriguing. Pie didn’t have the face of an assassin. It wasn’t dispassionate, but distressingly vulnerable; even (though Estabrook would never have breathed this aloud) beautiful. Cheeks high, lips full, eyes heavily lidded. His hair, mingled black and blond, fell in Italianate profusion, knotted ringlets to his shoulders. He looked older than Estabrook would have expected, given the age of his children. Perhaps only thirty, but wearied by some excess or other, the burnished sepia of his skin barely concealing a sickly iridescence, as though there was a mercurial taint in his cells. It made him difficult to fix, especially for eyes awash with brandy, the merest motion of his head breaking subtle waves against his bones, their spume draining back into his skin trailing colours Estabrook had never seen in flesh before.
Theresa left them to their business, and retired