Doctor Who_ The King of Terror - Keith Topping [7]
‘Saucy minx!’ Paynter paused, amused that Barrington was still brooding.
‘English sensibilities, mate. Too much Nick Hornby. Too many hours on your own with your Clash collection.’
15
‘Always hated them,’ said Barrington with a sly grin.
‘Do you know, they speak highly of you too?’ noted Paynter as the waitress approached with the coffees. ‘I was talking to Joe Strummer only the other day about you. He said, “Do you know what’s wrong with that Mark Barrington, Geoff?” I said. “Yes Joe, he needs a good woman to sort him out.”
’ The waitress set the cups on the table and turned to Paynter who pulled a twenty-five guilder note from his elegant leather wallet and handed it to her.
‘You have nothing smaller, yes?’ she asked.
‘I’m afraid that’s the only size they’re made in,’ replied Paynter with a look of insolent delight. A sullen expression crossed the waitress’s face as she plucked the note from his hand without further comment.
‘Funny country this you know?’ said Barrington. ‘Even the money looks like it was designed by someone on drugs.’ He nodded towards the swirling splash of pink-purple colouring on the note as it disappeared into the bar till. ‘We haven’t paid for the first round yet,’ he noted after the change had arrived.
Paynter thought for a moment. ‘You’re right. That guy went off duty. He doesn’t seem to have told Queen Beatrix over there that we owe her a debt.’
He winked broadly at Barrington. ‘Tell you what, if Interpol come looking for us we just wave this and claim diplomatic immunity.’ He thrust his security pass towards Barrington’s face. ‘We’re the Force, son, and we ain’t had our breakfast!’
Barrington slipped out of his tan suede jacket, placing it over the back of the metal-and-plastic seat. Before him, over the balcony beyond, lay the sprawling terminals of Schiphol airport. He dug two fingers into the tight breast pocket of his electric-blue shirt and removed a collection of banknotes held together with a money clip.’ I’ll get the next one, skipper.’
‘Innit marvellous!’ said Paynter, running a hand over his chin to find a day’s growth of stubble had suddenly sprouted. ‘My old dad was a bit of a card.
Actually, if truth be told, he was a boorish, misogynistic bigot. But he knew a thing or two about the ways of the world.’ He swept a hand out, indicating the scurrying insect-like humanity beneath them on the airport concourse.
Arrivals and departures. ‘You take Johnny Foreigner, here . . . ’
‘Oh God, here we go again,’ said Barrington. ‘This is going to be another example of Paynter’s First Law of National Stereotyping, isn’t it?’
‘No, no, no!’ said Paynter in an embarrassed, rapid staccato. ‘I’m just saying that your average foreign national can have his behaviour quite easily predicted.’
Barrington had heard it all before. Many times. ‘This being the cue for a series of obvious, oneline observations on the national characteristics of everyone who wasn’t born in the United Kingdom?’
‘That’s a bit cynical,’ said Paynter, mock-hurt in his voice.
16
‘Italians?’ Barrington asked quickly.
‘I’m sorry?’
Barrington repeated himself. ‘Italians. National characteristics?’
Paynter had taken the offered bait. ‘I can see where you’re going with this, Mark,’ he noted. Hook, line and sinker, seemingly. ‘It’s about perception, isn’t it? I’m a soldier, I see the world as one big war zone. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person!’
‘Italians?’ Barrington asked again with a lavish smile of victory.
‘They’re greasy and cowardly,’ said Paynter in irritation.
‘And lousy
drivers . . . ! And the French talk loudly in restaurants. And the Germans are arrogant . . . ’
‘I thought you’d have saved that one for the Americans.’
Paynter, though, was having none of it. ‘Nah. Yanks are flash, aren’t they?
Have wealth, will flaunt it. They don’t have a class culture over there, they have a money culture.