Chapter 9

I walked back to the cottage through the fading light. A man and a boy were making their way down to the beach. They were festooned with the arcane gear of beach fishermen. Long Rods, tackle boxes, paraffin lamps and the like seemed to hang everywhere and they were making heavy weather of it, trudging through the soft sand. The boy was animated, obviously excited. His father, for such I supposed the man to be, was patiently plodding in the child's wake. I looked up and tried to spot my guardian but Liam couldn't be seen. All the same, I knew he was there. It was both reassuring and terrifying at the same time.

I had been trying to work out who had killed Mickey the Mouth. I didn't like the man much but wouldn't have wished him dead. The obvious suspects were the Chechens, if that was what they were. Cornell's ikon story seemed to have been fabricated for our consumption. He knew of the link between Frau Meyer and Angela and learned of the sale. He probably guessed that I would keep digging, discover the link and then back off to protect Angela. It was subtle and would have been effective apart from that false start involving Angela's father. I couldn't believe the currency story. It just didn't fit. There was only one conclusion I kept returning to. Angela's father was alive and someone wanted to find him rather badly.

I decided to keep my speculations to myself. It was just a gut feeling. I hadn't a scrap of evidence but whenever my thoughts turned down that track, the little warm prickling sensation at the back of my mind grew stronger. The evening was as calm and still as the day had been. The clear skies promised another hard frost and the temperature was dropping by the minute as the sun dipped to sleep behind the land. I stopped for a moment just to take it in. I breathed in the promise of the night. My mind quietened. The spinning thoughts slowed and died, one by one. I looked for a moment of tranquillity. Resentment crept over me instead, catching me unawares. I suddenly found myself thinking, 'why me?' This was soon followed by the old childhood saw 'it's not fair!' No sooner had the phrase formed in mind the spell was broken. I could laugh at myself again, mocking the self-pity. After all, I now had Angela.

She was coming out of the studio as the dogs and I came in. Magic launched his soggy length towards and she knelt to fuss him. Trotsky looked in an interested fashion, too aloof to prostitute himself for an ear-scratching. She smiled up at me. " Hello, my Martin," she said and my heart gave a funny lurch. She was dressed in some sort of loose-fitting overalls and her hair was scraped back and held her at her nape with a band. Some loose tendrils of hair had escaped and she blew them from her face with puffed cheeks. Magic's tail was thumping manically against the wall. The tail of a flat-coated retriever is lethal to anything at retriever-rump level other than reinforced concrete. Angela sighed and rose. She sniffed at her armpit unselfconsciously. "Phew, I smell like an old bear," she said and grinned. "Time for a shower."

We took that shower together. I washed her hair and then minutely washed every inch of her, first with the soap and then with kisses. I wanted to make her come then and there but she eased away from me gently. "Later," she said. She giggled at my erection and then proceeded to 'wash' it enthusiastically. I groaned as my semen spilled out over her hand and spattered her thigh. Her eyes were soft with emotion, as if I'd given her an expensive gift. She languidly washed the pearly drops away then leaned her head on my chest. I held her close for a brief space as the water ran down over us. It was a perfect moment of peace in a strange and disturbing day.

Over a plain dinner we discussed Angela's forthcoming commission for Frau Meyer. By tacit agreement, we did not discuss the death of Mickey the Mouth or any other of the day's events. It was still all there, though, a spectre at the feast. I think we were all too worn down by the experience of living inside an enigma to face it yet again. Angela decided that she would honour her intention stated when we first met. She would 'do' Trotsky. A completely naturalistic piece, she promised. No tortured soul clawing its way through the twisted bronze. She threatened to do the twins but they refused with a laugh. "Sorry, darlin', we don't get our kit off for anyone but our wives," Niall had replied. Angela had been surprised; she didn't know they were both married.

"That leaves Martin," said Liam. "You could just twist some of those bronze rods into a big knot of spaghetti and say it was a portrait of a lawyer's mind."

This sparked off a series of 'Lawyer Jokes' at my expense. I responded with Irish Jokes, which Angela insisted had originally been Russian Jokes. We then got to plumb the depths with old Essex Girl Jokes. Angela needed some translations as the significance of Ford XR3i's was lost on her. No joke is funny when you have to dissect it so the evening petered out with Angela still plaintively pleading with me to explain why the answer to "How does an Essex girl turn off the light before sex?" was "She shuts the car door."

Niall and Liam had rigged up camp beds for themselves in the Studio. They complained that sleeping in the parlour was 'too noisy' and winked suggestively. Angela coloured up a nice bright shade of red as she caught their meaning. The head of the brass bedstead must have been hammering on the parlour wall, the two rooms being adjoining.

"Apart from that," said Niall, "your dogs fart abominably. At least, Liam claims it was them..."

We could hear their good-natured banter receding as we readied ourselves for bed once more. I knew they would take it turns to keep watch through the night, after the events of the day.

Angela once more tumbled me into our private world of soft embraces and thrilling touches. We made love twice before sleeping. The first time a gentle, loving, lingering journey to ecstasy, the second a raunchy, passionate gallop doggy-style, with Angela gasping harshly in Estonian as orgasm wracked her for the third or fourth time that evening. I haven't been with that many women, but Angela's capacity for orgasms was a brand new experience for me. She seemed to hit a plateau and then, out of the blue, she was scaling the peaks, hardly dropping down between one pinnacle and another. Sometimes, she seemed to be coming almost continuously with no break discernible between one climax and the next. I loved it. There can't be any better tonic for a man's ego than to have his woman trembling in a constant state of orgasm.

Afterwards, we lay chatting about it. Angela laughed at my wonderment.

"Sometimes," she said, "It never happens at all. If I'm tired or if I feel low, there is nothing. But when I feel safe and loved, my Martin, then, poof! I am like a string of firecrackers, one explosion following another. But you must not mind if it doesn't go that way every time. Sometimes, I might want just to make you happy and that will be enough for me."

I didn't really understand but claimed I did. It seemed the wisest thing to do.

Angela drifted off to sleep. She seemed now to have adopted a particular position, head on my chest, one leg flung over me. I have to say I loved it. My mind wouldn't let me go, however. It was a roiling mass of thoughts and theories that echoed round and round in my over-tired brain. It was maddening, whenever I felt I just might be dropping off, this thought would re-emerge to the forefront of my consciousness like a line from a song that you can't get rid of. 'He's alive! He's got to be alive!' To this day, I have no idea from whence this conviction had come. It was a certainty, as irrefutable as the dawn. Angela's father was at the bottom of this. I didn't know who had died in Gothenburg wearing his identity but I knew we would find no answers there. He'd covered his tracks well enough to fool British Intelligence and we weren't in their league.

I tried to think of something else, something dull and neutral, like tax, but it didn't work. When I eventually fell asleep it was through sheer exhaustion. I woke several times during that night. Once I heard a muttered exchange as Liam relieved Niall on watch and felt guilty. I ought to be taking my turn. Then I felt guilty that, if I did so, Angela would be left alone. I salved my conscience with the thought that I was protecting her. It was still dark when I woke for the last time. I heard one of the twins in the kitchen, filling the kettle. There was also the thump-thump sound of Magic's tail wagging against the floorboards. A voice was speaking; I couldn't hear the words but could tell, by the inflection, that someone was talking to Magic. The wagging thump intensified. It sounded like the dog had just conned someone into providing an unscheduled early breakfast. The pure familiarity of the sound relaxed me and I slept properly at last.