Mr. Flood's Last Resort(38)

Gabriel studies it with dismay until the waiter is back behind the counter. Suddenly a thought appears to hit him. He feels around in his breast pocket and pulls out his wallet.

“What if I gave you an advance, you know, to help you get started planning the trip. Would that speed things up a bit?”

As I watch him count out a pile of notes I wonder what he wants from Bridlemere. It must be something really valuable: a big rock of an uncut diamond, the Holy Grail in a presentation box? If the Antiques Roadshow ever featured weird shit there would be ten episodes on the bottom step of the staircase alone.

Gabriel puts his wallet back in his pocket and picks up his sandwich. He eats with a kind of passive guzzle while he watches me. He gestures to the pile of money on the table. “Take it. For your expenses.”

“What is it you’re looking for, may I ask? Maybe I’ve come across it when I’ve been clearing the house?”

He smiles patronizingly. “I doubt it.”

“I’ve had a good root around.” I pause for dramatic effect. “I’ve even gone upstairs.”

“Really?” An expression of panic crosses his face.

“Really.”

He squints at me as if he is making a quick calculation. Then takes another bite of his sandwich. “As I said,” he says, chewing, “I doubt it. It’s just something trifling.”

“Your father . . .” I hesitate.

“Yes, Maud?”

I look into his eyes, wondering if I can trust him. “Would you say he is largely harmless?”

A smile stretches thinly across his suddenly reptilian face. Perhaps there’s really a little green lizard inside his fat man’s suit.

“Of course. Utterly harmless,” he says. “A pussycat.”

I frown.

“Look, Maud,” he says. “All I need is one day and a key. You have the back-door key? If you lend it to me I can have one cut ready.”

“You don’t have a key to your father’s house?”

“No. He’s a little paranoid about that. He doesn’t want people spying about the place.”

“Why is that?”

“Why? No reason. He likes to keep himself to himself.” He smiles sourly. “Or else maybe he thinks I want to lie in wait, bump him off.”

Gabriel lays into his sandwich.

I imagine him, loafers oiled, his footstep quieter than a light-stepping mouse. It’s the dead of night and the new-cut key turns silently in the lock. Then Gabriel is inside, slinking through the house with his nasty father-murdering ways. Clad in a black polo neck and a balaclava, plump and deadly, like a homicidal blood pudding. A length of fuse wire and a filleting knife in his manbag.

Does Cathal Flood deserve that?

I look at Gabriel and he looks back at me, as rancid as the fried egg that decorates his chin.

He finishes his sandwich and wipes his fingers on a napkin. “Of course, who wouldn’t want to bump him off at times? He’s a difficult man.” He taps the money on the table. “So, Maud. Do we have a deal or not?”

I see the look in his eyes—cold, dead eyes. I may be about to swim in a dirty ocean with a badly coiffured shark.

*

“FOR WORK like this you need a relic.” The knight puts down the sack in his hand and lowers himself into Gabriel’s vacated seat with a great clanking and scraping of invisible armor. “Just think of the level of protection you could achieve with the hem of St. Bernadette’s shroud or St. Joseph’s phalanges.”

I glance up at the waiter; he’s playing with his mobile phone and looking bored. I’m the only customer and I’ve been nursing my coffee for nearly an hour.

St. George (cavalry, chivalry, herpes) levers off his helmet and pushes his gauntleted fingers through his mid-length bob. It’s a style that doesn’t suit him and that he wears resentfully; it strikes an incongruous note against his unshaven jowls and the great burgundy bulb of his drinker’s nose.

He studies me; his gaze is pitiless. “You think you’re tough, kiddo, but you’re not.”

“I do all right.”

“Do you know what you’re taking on, Maud?”

He looks over his shoulder then heaves up the sack, unties the mouth of it, and rolls the contents out onto the table. The teaspoons and the saucers are undisturbed by the bloody head of a mammoth reptile that comes to rest with one glazed yellow eye staring up at me. Its mouth is open in a razor-toothed smirk; its forked tongue flops through the sugar bowl.

“Killed that.” St. George produces a rag from the skirts of his chain mail and wipes his hands. “Slippery little shit. Quick on its claws.”

“Fair play to you.”

“Could you do the same? Don’t lie to me now, Maud, look at its teeth.”

“With the right equipment, a lance and so forth.”

St. George gives a cynical laugh. “You have grit.” Then he stops and leans forwards, his face deadly serious. “Which is just as well: I’ve seen your dragons.”

He stands up with the grating sound of wrenching iron, bangs his breastplate, and lurches off through the window of the café. The reptile head fades too, its grin last of all. It hangs awhile in the air, ancient and malevolent amongst the dirty coffee cups.