Blood is Dirt

‘It looked like a warning to me. Don’t see, don’t hear, don’t speak.’

‘To who?’

‘Anybody that’s got half a mind to be nosy.’

‘From who?’

‘A big man. Probably the guarantor you talked about who said it would be fine to go out into the cocotiers and pick up two million dollars of an evening … What the hell were you thinking of, Bruce?’ said Bagado, suddenly annoyed.

‘I’ll tell you exactly what I was thinking of, and I’m not proud of it.’

‘Ten thousand dollars?’

‘You got it in one, Bagado. You’re wasted here, you should be a criminal psychologist.’

‘Criminal?’ he asked the inside of the car.’ I suppose it bloody nearly was, what you did.’

He looked off out the window and shook his head. We drove on in silence. The unsaid thing still inside me, bigger than a full set of luggage.

‘Has Heike spoken to you?’ I asked, unable to bear listening to the roar of the road any longer.

‘Aha!’ said Bagado.’ No.’

‘What was the “Aha!” a but?’

‘Nearly an hour and a half for you to get it out.’

‘What?’

What’s been on your mind since first thing this morning. You’re improving.’

‘I am?’

‘A year ago you’d have waited until nightfall and the third whisky.’

‘I’ve given up whisky.’

‘During the week.’

‘It hasn’t helped.’

‘Take it up again.’

‘The gout’s still niggling.’

‘I don’t suppose you know that there’s almost no incidence of gout in Scotland.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘They don’t think whisky brings it on. Beer, red wine, port’s more the thing.’

‘What about the purine?’

‘The purine?’

‘All the Arbroath smokies, the oak-smoked kippers, the tinned pilchards, the wild salmon leaping up the glens – all that purine.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘Purine brings on gout.’

‘And you think …?’ Bagado roared and then settled back.’ You better go back on the whisy before the rest of your brain packs in.’

I gave him a bit of slab-faced silence after that. He didn’t notice. So I told him what had happened before I left home this morning.

‘Maybe she doesn’t like you,’ he said.

‘Give it to me straight, Bagado. I can’t take all this faffing around the bush.’

‘Well, I don’t mean permanently. Just for the time being. She’s gone off you. It happens. I asked a woman in Paris once how she came to kill her husband. She said it all started when she saw him cleaning his ears with his little finger and wiping it on her furniture.’

‘I took your call in the living room, went back into the bedroom and she was off me. No reason. Just dead to me as if she was in a state of shock.’

‘Maybe in your distracted state you scratched yourself, you know, unattractively.’

‘That’s interesting,’ I said, dismissing it.’ So what d’you think that was al about back at the office? The Gerhard thing.’

‘Maybe that an attractive woman like Heike could do better than the deadbeat she’s decided to live with.’

‘Deadbeat?’

‘Your expression, I think.’

‘Deadbeat?’

‘I don’t think that’s it, by the way. She doesn’t mind you being a deadbeat.’

‘But I’m not a deadbeat. A deadbeat’s someone …’

‘It’s part of it, but it’s not it.’

‘I’m not a deadbeat. I get up in the morning. I go to work …’

Bagado gave me the yackety-yack with his hand.

‘What was your annual income last year?’

‘Come on, she’s got a job, Bagado. It’s different, for God’s sake. I’m a street hustler – different ball game altogether.’