The Snowman (16 page)

Cora had rustled up a car from somewhere, a battered Beetle painted all over by a previous owner with flowers, suns and stars and moons and angels that were now being eaten away by rust.

“You want me to drive a thing like that?” asked Blum incredulously, when she picked him up from the hotel in it.

“You don't have to do the driving,” she replied coolly, and nor did he – she steered the car skilfully through the traffic jams of Frankfurt and out into the country. The sun was even shining, a cold and slightly rusty sun that suited this concrete desert.

“Ghastly, isn't it?”

“Depends how you see it. I don't think the people here would be happy to swap places with Mr Haq, though I bet you can eat better in Pakistan.”

She laughed.

“Aren't you going to tell me where we're going?”

“Let's make it a surprise for you.”

“With 100 grams of cocaine in my pocket I'm not too keen on surprises.”

“Let's say it's a nice surprise.”

The housing estates were fewer and farther between now; they were driving through open country. Old snow lay everywhere, and flocks of crows flew over the dark forests of fir trees. Blum shivered, although the heating in this old banger actually worked.

“You seem to know your way around. Have you lived in Frankfurt long?”

She wasn't to be drawn out. “What are you really planning to do with the money, Blum? You can't be serious about investments in the Bahamas.”

He sensed that the question really mattered to her. Lighting a cigarette, he looked out at the frozen countryside.

“Some day I'd like to live on a little island with a few friends. It doesn't have to be in the Bahamas. Maybe I'd run a bar, nothing too smart, a nice cool little place down by the harbour where you could see the boats through the window. Perhaps a few chairs outside under an awning, for tourists. A dish of the day, otherwise just sandwiches and drinks, but the best available. You could go fishing, visit the casino on the neighbouring island now and then. Everyone could do as they liked. Once a week I'd go to the brothel with the vice-consul and the English novelist and the liquor smuggler, to hear all the stories. I know you don't like stories, but maybe you don't need them. Memories are crap, but stories hold life together. Sometimes, when you have the horrors, only a good story will help.”

After a while she asked: “Could I come and live on your island?”

“It wouldn't be
my
island, Cora.”

“Your bar, though.”

“Yes, it would be my bar.”

“Could I visit your bar?”

“So long as you didn't make a fuss. The fuss that women can make – well, that's another story.”

“You know I don't like stories.”

“I wouldn't forbid you the place, not straight away,” said Blum smiling, and stubbed out his cigarette.

“I like you, Blum,” she said quietly, staring ahead at the straight, empty road.

“I like you too,” he murmured. It was a long time since a woman had last told him she liked him – the tourists and whores didn't count – but now he sat silent in the rickety car, and in the silence he felt confusion and suspicion growing in him. Was Cora like the tourists, was she a whore too? Or was he so poisoned by suspicion that he could see nothing but calculation even in such words? They drove on, still in silence.

Finally Cora turned off the road where a path ran across the fields and parked the car outside a garden run wild. He saw the metallic gleam of a Mercedes 450. There was a white bungalow in the garden, and further away, on the outskirts of the woods, an old farmhouse. Smoke curled from its chimney. Blum recognized the man who came to the bungalow door as they walked through the garden. This time he was wearing a Shetland pullover instead of a duffel coat, but with his beret, his grey moustache and his jutting chin he could still have been Trevor Howard as Major Calloway, or at least Trevor Howard's double.

“What'll you drink – sherry, port, gin? Or would you like to try the local cider?”

“I'd like a beer if you have one.”

“Of course. Will you see to it, Margot?”

Margot saw to it. She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, an ethereal dark-haired beauty beside whom Cora was a figure in the purest rustic Baroque manner. The bungalow was well furnished, its rural style relieved by a good deal of glass and technological devices. The rugs alone were worth a fortune, Blum estimated, and among the pictures he spotted a Corot which wasn't necessarily a forgery. You could see the back garden and the dilapidated-looking farmhouse through the glass wall of windows. A log fire crackled on the hearth. Not a bad life for a retired fashion photographer.

Margot brought the beer. Heineken. The master of the house drank a sherry, the women said they didn't want anything. Instead, they kept a conversation going. After a while Margot said she wanted to show Cora something, and they went into the next room

“The girls are old friends,” said James, raising his glass to Blum.

“Cora says you're only photographing frogs these days?”

James smiled as ironically as Major Calloway in the film when he is discussing Westerns with the writer Holly Martins. Not that Blum was any Joseph Cotten.

“Frogs will soon be extinct, did you know that, Blum?” He put another log of wood on the fire. Then he sat down in a leather armchair, crossed his legs in their white jeans, and said: “So you're in the cocaine business?” What was it Calloway had said to Martins? “I didn't know there were tigers in Arizona.”

Blum said something about a good opportunity. You took things as they came. These days you had to be adaptable. If something would make a profit you couldn't hold back like a gentleman, those days were past. And who went about all day with a copy of the narcotics laws in his pocket?

Not James for one. “I have certain reasons for taking an interest in cocaine,” he said.

“I can imagine. You feed it to the frogs, do you?”

“Yes, Cora mentioned your sense of humour. Don't you take it yourself?”

“I could develop a taste for it. Particularly with the stuff I have at the moment. Genuinely first class. Amazing what one can yet discover.”

“How do you mean?”

“At twenty I discovered a taste for sex, at thirty for whisky and now for cocaine. Where will it all end?”

“I'd say you were going onwards and upwards. May I try it?”

Blum handed him the pillbox. James took a pure gold cocaine set from the secret drawer of his desk and sniffed the snow through a ten-pound note. Bank of England notes, he said, were best for the purpose – only notes from the old series, though; the paper of the new ones wasn't as good. Blum allowed himself a pinch too. The stuff flew up his nostrils as if of its own accord. He had not stinted, and the effect of the cocaine took his breath away for a moment. Carefully, he lit a cigarette. It did not explode. He slowly returned to his flesh and
blood body, but his mind was still high in the air above the valleys. Ice sparkled in the sun on the glaciers.

“Very clean,” said James, who was resurfacing too. “Hardly cut with anything.”

“Hardly? Not at all! Straight from the producer.”

“Really? Did you buy it there yourself?”

“Not exactly, but the people I got it from are 100 per cent reliable. They buy only the very best of the best. This stuff comes straight from the Andes. Peruvian flake, if you know what that means.”

“And how much do you have for sale?”

Blum flicked a mote of dust off his sleeve. He saw Cora and Margot walking up and down the garden, with a Dalmatian running around among the hedges.

“You can have enough,” he said. “The question is, can you afford it? This stuff is bloody expensive.”

There was a superior smile on James's face. Calloway, with his major's salary, couldn't have afforded that smile.

“Within reason, I can pay any price. You see, I'm buying for various acquaintances who don't want to feature personally in any deal. All of them people at the very top – of industry, the press, art, politics.”

“Politics?”

“How do you think politicians can stand the job? Wine tastings and beer festivals aren't always enough for them.”

“I thought only Hitler needed this kind of thing.”

“Hitler was an eccentric. Today cocaine is a status symbol, and the more stylish politicians would like to be in on the act. I myself, of course, am entirely non-political, but it can sometimes be useful to have such connections.”

“Naturally,” said Blum. “Of course, that doesn't exactly lower the price.”

“Politicians don't earn much, my dear fellow.”

“No one believes that these days, not even people at beer festivals,” said Blum. He was enjoying this conversation. Things were definitely looking up.

“What would you want for 100 grams?”

“Only 100 grams? Why not take a pound? Then I can give you something in the nature of a discount for quantity.”

But James played it down. He stroked his moustache as if to ensure that every single hair was in place – perhaps he had given up smoking and now didn't know what to do with his fingers – and frowned heavily. Later, perhaps, he said; he was sure they would keep in touch. As he spoke his eyes wandered over the figures in the garden.

“A hundred grams would do for a start. Of course, I shall have to find out if we can come up with the money in a hurry . . .”

Blum's hand holding the beer glass was suspended in mid-air. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I don't suppose you'd be particularly happy with a cheque. So we must get the cash together.”

Blum put the glass down on the table without drinking from it. “Why do you all have such trouble finding cash? Everyone keeps saying cash is in short supply, cash is difficult, cash is a problem. And yet you're all rolling in money.”

“You yourself, as a businessman . . .”

“Oh, never mind the soft soap! You just see me as a miserable rat of a dealer to be strung along until you can pull a fast one on me—”

“I don't see why you're so agitated—”

But there was no holding Blum now. All his anger and pent-up fears insisted on breaking out at last. He could understand wretched addicts having difficulty
getting the dough together, he said, but they'd do it and pay cash down, even if it was all in small change. As for the smart alecs in the arts and crafts line, he was fed up to the teeth with them. And if politicians were going to plead cash-flow problems, they'd better buy their stuff by the gram on the open market. Or next time they went on some foreign development aid trip . . .

“If you have two days to spare,” James finally said, soothingly, “of course you can have your cash.”

“But I don't have two days to spare. Didn't Cora tell you? You're forgetting that I'm running all the risk in this business.”

“I've been buying cocaine for years, and I've never yet heard of one of the big dealers being busted. Suppliers maybe, yes. They picked one up in Munich the day before yesterday. You'll have heard about it. I hope it wasn't your man. But dealers really are very seldom busted . . .”

“It wasn't my man. You think I'd be stupid enough to have the stuff packed in coffee cans?”

James did not think so. He took another small pinch.

“Get me political protection,” said Blum, tapping out the rhythm of his remarks with a cigarette, “and I'll accept any kind of payment – even in stocks and shares.”

“You don't mean that seriously.”

“I do.”

“We're not living in some banana republic, for heaven's sake. Political protection, give me patience! Your own stuff has gone to your head.”

Blum lit his cigarette and blew the smoke in James's face.

“As I said, I keep well out of it.”

“But you're right in the middle of it, my dear fellow. Let me tell you something, right now I'm getting myself political protection from the USA. You don't believe me? Then call this number. An office in Frankfurt. The ICA. Obviously it's a cover organization. Ask for a Mr Hackensack. Harry W. Hackensack. My friend Harry. Of course that's not his real name, but Hackensack will do. Go on, call him. He'll tell you. Banana republic? You must be joking.”

James wore a rather pained expression. He really must have learned it from Trevor Howard.

“I'll do no such thing, Blum. We had better agree on the price now. I really am not particularly interested in the details of your trade.”

“I knew it – the way you see it I'm only a supplier, I'm inferior.” Just in time, Blum noticed the changed expression in his customer's eyes, and put the brakes on. After all, he was not a frog. Then James smiled his impersonal smile again.

“How much do you want for 100 grams, then?”