Free In the Evil Day by Peter Temple Page B

thinking the other night. I’ve never asked. What happened to Angelica?’
    ‘She doesn’t work anymore. She paints. She married an Englishman and now there’s an American.’
    ‘People you know?’
    ‘The Pom, yes. I liked him. Eton and kicked out of the Guards. Rooting the CO’s batman probably, much worse than rooting the CO’s wife, he doesn’t fuck his wife. The American’s rich, inherited. I had dinner with them in Paris, in their apartment, the Marais can you believe? They have a cook, a chef. But there’s hope, she’s really distant with the hubby. Not surprising, he’s an Egyptologist, the place’s like a tomb and he could bore Mormons stiff.’
    O’Malley drank the last of his wine. ‘Still interested?’
    ‘Just curious.’
    ‘I could bring you together. Accidental meeting.’
    ‘We only actually kissed once. While very drunk.’
    ‘I remember. The Angel didn’t kiss casually, though. Not a serial kisser.’
    ‘I may be too late for accidental meetings. I may have had my ration of accidental meetings.’
    ‘No, there’s always one left.’
    A youth in white had appeared to take away the plates. Close behind him came another young man, dark, Italianate, long-fingered. He fawned over O’Malley, suggesting the dessert trolley or something from the kitchen, anything, any whim. O’Malley ordered cognacs. He had the accent identified with Cologne, somehow frivolous in the intonation. North Germans found it annoying.
    The waiter gone, O’Malley sighed. ‘Well, a business lunch. What’s a put-and-pluck cost?’
    ‘As an estimate, plenty.’
    O’Malley was looking away, watching three sailors on a Japanese container ship taking photographs of the shore. He said nothing for a while, drank some riesling, nodded in answer to some inner question. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought it would be in that vicinity.’
    They sat in silence until the cognacs came, more fawning. O’Malley rotated his fat-bellied glass and sniffed the small collar. ‘If angels peed,’ he said, and sipped.
    Anselm felt the unease returning, wanted to be out of the place, away from people. He saw O’Malley’s mouth rolling the liquid, his upward gaze, the calibrating.
    ‘Nice lunch,’ said Anselm. ‘Thank you.’
    O’Malley landed his glass on the heavy white linen. ‘My pleasure. You eat quickly, not so much a diner as an eater.’
    ‘I usually eat in the street,’ Anselm said. ‘Vendor food. You get into habits like that.’ The unease was growing. He steadied himself. ‘I have to go.’
    On their way out, O’Malley stopped and bent over a handsome woman in dark business clothes, alone. ‘Are you stalking me, Lucy?’ he said. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’
    Anselm kept going, he wanted to be outside. A flunky was waiting to open the door. He went out onto the pavement, closed his eyes, breathed deeply, said his mantra.
    In the taxi, O’Malley said, ‘That woman, she’s English, a very smart maritime lawyer based here. Froze a Polish ship for us in Rotterdam. I hope she’s going to do the trick again.’
    ‘I’m sure the courts look kindly upon her.’
    ‘She’s persuasive. They say she blew a judge when she was starting out in England. That’s the gossip. Judgment overturned on appeal.
    Black mark for a judge.’
    ‘At least he’s got his memories,’ Anselm said. ‘Keep her wig on?’
    O’Malley shook his head. ‘How can you be so ignorant of legal decorum?’

13
…LONDON…
     
    HALLIGAN, THE deputy editor, presided over the news conference. Caroline Wishart was nine minutes late, just behind skeletal Alan Sindall, the chief crime reporter.
    ‘Welcome,’ said Halligan. ‘I’m thinking of making this meeting’s time more flexible. We’ll just run the fucking thing from 2 p.m. to whenever, open-ended, pop in whenever it suits you.’
    ‘Sorry,’ said Sindall, eyes down.
    Caroline said nothing, eyes on the styrofoam cup of coffee she was carrying.
    ‘Came together did you!’