The meanest Flood

stayed in a guesthouse, Sam. Celia told me. You’ve been away for three days and you haven’t talked to anybody. OK, you had a job to do, so you didn’t actually go out of your skull, but you’ve had time to yourself and you’ve been digging up memories and worrying about the business and about Angeles. This is how you are, Sam. I know this because I’ve known you for years. Now you’re back you’ll be talking non-stop for a week, trying to catch up on all the talking you missed while you weren’t here.’
    ‘How’s Angeles? She all right?’
    ‘She’s fine. But you know that because you’ve phoned her every night. And if you’re so worried about her, how come you get off the train and come to the office? If it’d been me away in tropical Nottingham the first thing I’d do is go and see Janet and Echo. I’d’ve left the office until tomorrow.’
    Sam sighed. ‘She’s at work. If Angeles’d been at home I’d’ve skipped the office altogether. There’s nothing to do here, apart from talk to you. You got any work on?’
    ‘Nothing that I can’t leave for a game of snooker.’ ‘On pay? I’ll bet you can leave it. You wanna play snooker with me while I’m paying you to work?’
    ‘Sounds good to me,’ Geordie said. ‘Of course, the final decision is yours.’
    ‘Get your coat,’ Sam said. ‘I’m in the mood for you.’
     
    After the game (two frames to Sam - highest break twenty-seven - one to Geordie), Sam Turner walked home. He’d got rid of the big house that his ex-wife Dora had left him and moved into a small house off Clarence Street. Bought it for cash, straight out, no mortgage. Had a guy come in and decorate it. Celia, his secretary, and Marie, another operative in Sam’s business and an old friend, had helped him buy the furnishings, make sure the colours went together. They told him what he liked in the way of a table and chairs, a second-hand chaise-longue which had woodworm in the legs but which the woman who sold it had treated with chemicals. He brought some shelving out of Dora’s old house to store his paperbacks and a new CD player; and he kept the double bed because he’d never been able to sleep in a single one. And because Angeles stayed over at least once a week. Except last week. And the week before.
    He stopped at the shop and bought himself a frozen dinner - almost fat-free lasagne - and put it in the gas oven to cook while he mended the puncture in the front tyre of his bike. Took the wheel off and brought it into the kitchen. There was a thorn which had gone through to the inner tube and Sam covered the hole with a patch and sprinkled the area with French chalk. When he’d finished he took a fingerful of ecologically friendly heavy-duty hand cleaner and worked it into the muck and oil on his hands. Seemed to work fine, which was part surprise and part relief. He had tried the same brand of stain remover the previous week and ended up with haemoglobin patches on the front of his fake Paul Smith shirt.
    Still had time for a shower and shave before the lasagne was ready. He played ‘Baby Blue’ while sitting at the coffee table in the living room and stuck his fork into the food, saw the police car pull up outside the house and the two plain-clothes goons get out and walk along his path. Sam couldn’t help it: the sight of the fuzz coming to his front door made him want to run. It was a physiological response; like he’d downed a handful of French blues, his heart pounded and he looked around for the quick way out of there.
    They gave that knock they teach them in training school, four hard thumps with the side of the fist. Designed to make you shit yourself and it worked every time.
    And I’m an honest guy, Sam said to himself. He’d been fitted up with a dope cache a dozen years before and served some time for that, and when he was on the booze he’d steal anything from anywhere, but usually he was honest Sam. You would think twice about buying a second-hand car from the man, but that was down to appearances rather than reality. And it didn’t often happen that he had a second-hand car to sell. The last three he’d paid the wreckers a tenner to take away.
    There it was again: thump-thump, thump-thump, the hammering on the door synchronized with his heartbeat, as though the cops were demanding access to his soul as well as his house. But he didn’t run. He put on a snake-skin exterior and opened the door. ‘You just delivering something or you