A Spy by Nature - Charles Cumming [76]
‘There’s no chance of jet-lag on account of the time difference, but they do their best to exhaust you anyway. Aeroplane sat on the tarmac for three straight hours. Fuckin’ stewards gave us one complimentary drink and then played cards until take-off. Then the flight was diverted through Munich and I had to spend the night in a goddam Holiday Inn. Took a day to get home.’
This is utterly convincing. Perhaps the Hobbit got it wrong. Fortner does look older tonight, aged by long-haul flights and the trickeries of Kiev. Here is a man propping up a bar, a man in shirt-sleeves and slacks, with ovals of sweat under his arms and stubble cast across his face like a rash. There will be questions he means to ask of me, but his eyes look drained of will. He has no energy.
‘You look tired,’ I tell him.
‘Oh, I’m all right. This’ll start me up.’
He takes a long creamy swig of his Guinness and sets it back down on the bar with a thud.
‘So what’d you and Kathy get up to while I was away?’ he asks, licking his upper lip. We’ve already been over this at dinner, but it makes me do the talking.
‘Like she told you at supper. We went walking in Battersea Park. Had dinner at your place afterwards.’
‘Oh, yeah. She mentioned that.’
‘Why d’you ask, then?’
‘I just wanted details. Kinda missed her while I was away. I like hearing stories about her, things she did and said.’
The truth here would prove interesting. Well, frankly, Fort, there’s a lot of sexual tension between your wife and me and we nearly had sex on Saturday night.
‘She talked about you a lot,’ I tell him.
‘Is that right?’
‘Then I talked about me a lot…’
‘No change there, then.’
‘And finally we went to bed. I slept on the sofa.’
‘You stayed the night on the couch? Kathy never said.’
Interesting.
‘Didn’t she?’
‘No.’
An awkward pause hovers over us. The builder turns the page of his newspaper and it crackles in the silence.
‘Why do we always drink here?’ I ask Fortner, turning back to face him and lighting a cigarette from my packet on the counter. ‘Why do you like it?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No, it’s great. It’s just that we haven’t varied the venue.’
‘Consistency is a much undervalued asset in modern times, my friend. Best to get to know a place. And besides, there’s good-lookin’ women later on.’
The builder vibrates slightly on his stool. Something about this unnerves him.
Fortner takes another long draw of Guinness. ‘So how are things?’ he asks. ‘Everything OK at Abnex?’
‘Good, actually. Alan’s on holiday this week so we can get things done without him breathing down our necks.’
‘That’s always good, when the big chief takes off. You gotta hope they never come back.’
‘But I’m skint. I got hit for a parking ticket and a council tax bill first thing on Monday morning. That really pissed me off.’
‘You forget to feed the meter?’
‘No. Parked it on a double yellow near Hammersmith. Got towed.’
‘Shit. They swoop those guys, like a fucking SWAT team. You gotta be careful.’
‘The council tax is worse. I live in a shithole but I’m paying a fortune.’
‘Back taxes?’
‘Yeah, it’s been building up over the last year. I couldn’t afford to pay so I just let it drift.’
‘Foolish, my friend. Foolish. You should have come to me. I’d have helped you out.’
Fortner gives me a paternal pat on the back and I thank him, saying in the nicest possible way that I have no intention of borrowing money off him.
‘The council tax,’ he says, ruminatively. ‘What is that, like the poll tax only with a different name?’
‘Exactly. It’s like when they change a chocolate bar. Snickers - the new name for Marathon; council tax - the new name for exactly the same tax that caused riots in Trafalgar Square and the downfall of Margaret Thatcher. It’s just had a PR makeover and now suddenly everyone is prepared to put up with it. And it’s just stripped me of two weeks’ wages in one shot.’
Fortner drains his pint with a long, satisfied gulp and says it’s his round. Mine is still only half-empty. It takes him some time to get the attention of the barmaid, a local girl who has served us