Free Three Brothers by Peter Ackroyd Page B

mean?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “Do you suppose or do you know? Oh forget it. It doesn’t matter. So anyway he smiles this lovely smile. ‘I talk to a person such as yourself, and I find out all about the neighbourhood. When I have walked down all the streets, and discovered all its secrets, I leave my lodging and rent somewhere else.’ Then he gets up and sits by the window. For the rest of the morning he just looks into the street. I could tell from the way he sat that he loved windows.”
    “He sounds like a daft old bastard.”
    “I wouldn’t describe him as daft . Perhaps a little bit cracked .” She sensed that she had bored him with this story. So she said no more.
    Late one afternoon, as she stood behind the counter, a young man entered the coffee shop. He lingered over the menu, asking her carefully and specifically about every item. Even as he did so it seemed to Hilda that he was troubled by some inward thought or inward distress. Without knowing anything about him, she pitied him. Eventually he ordered a ham sandwich and a cup of tea. She watched him surreptitiouslyas he chewed the food, and drank the tea; he was staring far away.
    She presented him with the bill.
    “I’m afraid I can’t pay this,” he told her. “I have no job. No money.” He looked at her without expression.
    She was so surprised that she did not know how to reply. “No money?” He shook his head. She stood there for a moment, and then impulsively went back to the counter and put three pastries into a paper bag. He took them and, without a word, left the coffee shop. She sat down at one of the tables, and burst into tears. Hilda told Harry the story that evening, omitting the detail of her tears.
    He sighed, and looked away for a moment. Somehow he knew that she had encountered Sam.
    She followed Harry’s career with more interest than her own, questioning him about his work and colleagues. “How is the balding bully?” she asked him. She was referring to James White, the news editor.
    “Getting more beastly every day. Whenever I think of him, I feel an inexpressible sensation of weariness. Or boredom. One or the other. What is the point of these people? He’s so damned superior. But he has nothing to be superior about. He has a companion. A comrade in arms who has a pudgy face and smokes all the time. That’s all I know about him. All I want to know.”
    One evening, she said to him, “I saw that man you interviewed. Cormac something.”
    “Cormac Webb?”
    “That’s it. Webb.” Cormac Webb was a junior minister in the Department of Housing. He had been interviewed by Harry because he was the youngest member of the Labour government. Webb had struck him as being brash, exuberant and opportunistic—all the qualities that Harry admired. Hehad told Harry, off the record, that he preferred champagne to beer and that his favourite restaurant was Simpson’s in the Strand. He exuded a sort of charmless bonhomie. “Where did you see him?” he asked her.
    “He was going into that Ruppta’s building.” These offices were immediately across the street from The Wait And See. Asher Ruppta was a businessman, of ambiguous nationality, who had become the subject of hostile controversy and bitter complaint in Notting Hill Gate. He was known as a brutal and rapacious landlord, buying up old houses and subdividing them into smaller and smaller flats that were then rented to immigrants from the West Indies. It was reported that he terrorised the older residents until they were forced to move out or to sell their properties to him. Then he would bring in new tenants and charge them exorbitant rents. His “agents” always had bull terriers with them. “Then I saw them walking towards the park. Later, that is.”
    What would Webb have to do with Ruppta? The fact that Webb was in the housing department occurred to Harry as soon as he asked himself the question. But why would he visit Ruppta’s offices? Why did not Ruppta go to