And the same tenderness in her voice again, the Louisa that she longed to be rather than the one who spoke for her.

'No problems?' Osnard asked lightly.

He had found the hospitality whisky and two gla.s.ses. He handed one to Pendel.

'Everything hunkydory, thank you. She's a woman in a million.'

Pendel stood alone in the stockroom. He took off his day suit and out of blind habit hung it on its hanger, the trousers from the metal clips, the jacket nice and square. To replace it he chose a powder blue mohair, single-breasted, that he had cut for himself to Mozart six months ago and never worn, fearing it was flashy. His face in the mirror startled him with its normality. Why haven't you changed colour, shape, size? What else has to happen to you before something happens to you? You get up in the morning. Your bank manager confirms the end of the world is at hand. You go to the shop and in marches an English spy who mugs you with your past and tells you he wants to make you rich and keep you as you are.

'You're Andrew, right?' he called into the open doorway, making a new friend.

'Andy Osnard, single, Brit Emba.s.sy boffin on the political treadmill, recently arrived. Old Braithwaite made suits for m'dad and you used to come along and hold the tape. Cover. Nothing like it.'

And that tie I always fancied, he thought. With the blue zigzags and a touch of Leander pink. Osnard looked on with a creator's pride while Pendel set the alarm.

CHAPTER FIVE.

The rain had stopped. The fairy-lit buses that bounced past them over the pot-holes were empty. A hot blue evening sky was disappearing into night but its heat remained behind because in Panama City it always does. There is dry heat, there is wet heat. But there is always heat, just as there is always noise: of traffic, power drills, of scaffolding going up or down, of aeroplanes, air-conditioners, canned music, bulldozers, helicopters and - if you are very lucky - birds. Osnard was trailing his bookie's umbrella. Pendel, though alert, was unarmed. His feelings were a mystery to him. He had been tested, he had come out stronger and wiser. But tested for what? Stronger and wiser how? And if he had survived, why didn't he feel safer? Nevertheless re-entering the world's atmosphere he appeared to himself reborn if apprehensive.

'Fifty thousand bucks!' he yelled to Osnard, unlocking his car.

'What for?'

'What it costs to hand-paint those buses! They hire real artists! Takes two years!'

It was not something Pendel had known till this moment, if he knew it now, but something inside him required him to be an authority. Settling into his driving seat he had an uncomfortable feeling that the figure was nearer fifteen hundred, and it was two months, not two years.

'Want me to drive?' Osnard asked with a sideways glance up and down the road.

But Pendel was his own master. Ten minutes ago he had persuaded himself he would never walk free again. Now he was sitting at his own steering wheel with his jailer at his side and wearing his own powder blue suit instead of a stinking jute tunic with Pendel on the pocket.

'And no pitfalls?' Osnard asked.

Pendel didn't understand.

'People you don't want to meet - owe money to - screwed their wives - whatever?'

'I don't owe anyone except the bank, Andy. I don't do the other either, though it's not something I confess to my customers, Latin gentlemen being what they are. They'd think I was a capon or a poofter.' He laughed a little wildly for both of them while Osnard checked the driving mirrors. 'Where are you from, Andy? Where's home then? Your dad features large in your life unless he's a figment. Was he a famous person at all? I'm sure he was.'

'Doctor,' said Osnard, without a second's hesitation.

'What sort? Major brain surgeon? Heart-lung?'

'GP,'.

'Where did he practise then? Somewhere exotic?'

'Birmingham.'

'And the mother, if I may ask?'

'South o' France.'

But Pendel couldn't help wondering whether Osnard had consigned his late father to Birmingham and his mother to the French Riviera with the same abandon with which Pendel had consigned the late Braithwaite to Pinner.

The Club Union is where the super-rich of Panama have their presence here on earth. With appropriate deference, Pendel drove under a red paG.o.da arch, braking almost to a halt in his anxiety to a.s.sure the two uniformed guards that he and his guest were white and middle cla.s.s. Fridays are disco-nights for the children of gentile millionaires. At the brightly lit entrance glistening four-tracks disgorge scowling seventeen-year-old princesses and thick-necked swains with gold bracelets and dead eyes. The porch was bordered with heavy crimson ropes and guarded by big-shouldered men wearing chauffeurs' suits and ident.i.ty tags for b.u.t.tonholes. Bestowing a confiding smile on Osnard, they glowered at Pendel but let him pa.s.s. Inside, the hall was wide and cool and open to the sea. A green-carpeted slipway descended to a balconied terrace. Beyond it lay the bay with its perpetual line of ships pressed like men-of-war under banks of black stormcloud. The day's last light was quickly vanishing. Cigarette smoke, costly scent and beat music filled the air.

'See the causeway there, Andy?' Pendel yelled, flinging out a proprietorial arm while he proudly signed his guest into the book with the other. 'Made from all the rubble dug out of the Ca.n.a.l. Stops the rivers from silting up the navigation channel. Those Yanqui forefathers of ours knew a thing or two,' he declared, though he must have been identifying with Louisa, for he had no Yanqui fore-fathers. 'You should have been here when we had our open-air movies. You wouldn't think it was possible, open-air movies in the wet season. Well it is. Know how often rain falls in Panama between six and eight of an evening, wet or dry? Two days per year average! I see you're surprised.'

'Where do we get a drink?' Osnard asked.

But Pendel still had to show him the Club's newest, grandest acquisition: a silent, gorgeously panelled lift to raise and lower geriatric heiresses nine feet from floor to floor.

'It's for their cards, Andy. Night and day, some of those old ladies play. I suppose they think they can take it with them.'

The bar was in Friday-night fever. At every table revellers waved, beckoned, slapped each other on the shoulders, argued, sprang about and shouted one another down. And some took time off to wave to Pendel, press his hand or make some ribald joke about his suit.

'Allow me to present my good friend Andy Osnard, one of Her Majesty's favourite sons recently arrived from England to restore the good name of diplomacy,' he yelled to a banker called Luis.

'Just say Andy next time. No one gives a toss,' Osnard advised when Luis had rejoined the girls. 'Any heavy hitters out tonight? Who's all here? No Delgado, that's for sure. He's in j.a.pan playing hookey with Pres.'

'Correct, Andy, Ernie's in j.a.pan, and giving Louisa a nice rest into the bargain. Well I never! Who have we here? Well, that is a turn-up for the book.'

Gossip is what Panama has instead of culture. Pendel's eye had fallen on a distinguished-looking, moustachioed gentleman in his mid-fifties in the company of a beautiful young woman. He wore a dark suit and silver tie. She wore tresses of black hair over one naked shoulder and a diamond collar big enough to sink her. They were sitting side by side and upright, like a couple in an old photograph, and they were receiving the congratulatory handshakes of well-wishers.

'Our gallant top judge, Andy, back among us,' Pendel replied in answer to Osnard's prompting, 'just one week after all charges against him were dropped. Bravo, Miguel.'

'Customer o' yours?'

'Indeed he is, Andy, and a highly valued one. I've got four unfinished suits plus a dinner jacket invested in that gentleman, and until last week they were destined for our New Year's sale.' He needed no further prodding. 'My friend Miguel,' he went on, exercising the kind of pedantry that persuades us that a person is being most particular about the truth, 'came to the conclusion, a couple of years ago, that a certain lady friend whose welfare he had made his personal responsibility was bestowing her favours on another. The said rival being a fellow lawyer, naturally. In Panama they always are, and mostly US-educated, I regret to say. So Miguel did what any of us would do in the circ.u.mstances, he hired an a.s.sa.s.sin who duly put an end to the nuisance.'

'Bully for him. How?'

Pendel recalled a phrase of Mark's culled from a lurid comic that Louisa had confiscated. 'Lead poisoning, Andy. The professional three shots. One to the head, two to the body, and what was left of him all over the front pages. The a.s.sa.s.sin was arrested, which in Panama is highly unusual. And he duly confessed which, let's face it, isn't.'

He paused, allowing Osnard an appreciative smile and himself an extra moment for artistic inspiration. Picking out the hidden highlights, Benny would have called it. Giving his fluence its head. Juicing up the story for the benefit of your wider audience.

'The basis of the arrest, Andy - and of the confession - being a cheque for one hundred thousand dollars, drawn by our friend Miguel in favour of the alleged a.s.sa.s.sin and banked here in Panama on the somewhat risky a.s.sumption that banking confidentiality would provide immunity from prying eyes.'

'And that's the lady in the case,' Osnard said, with quiet appreciation. 'Looks as though she'd put on quite a turn.'

'The same, Andy, and now joined to Miguel in very holy matrimony though they do say she resents the limitation. And what you are seeing tonight is a triumphant demonstration of Miguel and Amanda's return to grace.'

'h.e.l.l did he swing it?'

'Well, first of all, Andy,' Pendel continued, very excited by an omniscience that stretched well beyond his knowledge of the case, 'there is a backhander of seven million dollars spoken of, which our learned judge can well afford seeing he owns a trucking business which specialises in the informal importation of rice and coffee from Costa Rica without troubling our overworked officials, his brother being a very high official in Customs.'

'Second of all?'

Pendel was loving everything: himself, his voice, and the sense he had of his own triumphant resurrection.

'Our highly judicial committee appointed to examine the evidence against Miguel came to the wise conclusion that the charges lacked credibility. One hundred thousand dollars was regarded as a grossly inflated price for a simple a.s.sa.s.sination here in Panama, one thousand being more the appropriate figure. Plus name me the trained top judge who signs a personal cheque to a hired a.s.sa.s.sin while being of sound mind. It was the committee's considered opinion that the charges were a crude attempt to frame a highly honourable servant of his party and country. We have a saying here in Panama. Justice is a man.'

'What did they do with the a.s.sa.s.sin?'

'Andy, those interrogators had another word with him, and he obliged them with a second confession confirming that he had never met Miguel in his life, having taken his instructions from a bearded gentleman in dark gla.s.ses that he met once only in the lobby of the Caesar Park Hotel during a power cut.'

'n.o.body protest?'

Pendel was already shaking his head. 'Ernie Delgado plus a group of fellow saints in the human rights area had a go but as usual their protests fell on stony ground, owing to a certain credibility gap,' he added, before he had even thought what this might be. But he rolled straight on like a driver in a runaway truck. 'Ernie being not always what he's cracked up to be, which is known.'

'Who to?'

'Circles, Andy. Informed circles.'

'Mean he's on the take like the rest o' them?'

'It has been said,' Pendel replied mysteriously, lower-ing his eyelids for greater veracity. 'I'll say no more, if you don't mind. If I'm not careful, I'll say something contrary to Louisa's best interests.'

'What about the cheque?'

Pendel noticed with discomfort how the little eyes, as in the shop, had become black pinholes in the bland surfaces of Osnard's face.

'A crude forgery, Andy, as you suspected all along,' he replied, feeling his cheeks heat up. 'The bank teller concerned has been duly relieved of his post, I'm pleased to say, so it won't happen again. Then of course there's the white suits, white playing a very big part in Panama, bigger than a lot of people understand.'

'h.e.l.l's that mean?' Osnard asked, the eyes still bearing in on him.

It meant that Pendel had caught sight of an earnest Dutchman named Henk who habitually bestowed strange handshakes and talked in confidential murmurs about mundane matters.

'Masons, Andy,' he said, now seriously bent upon deflecting Osnard's gaze. 'Secret societies. Opus Dei. Voodoo for the upper cla.s.ses. Reinsurance in case religion doesn't do the job. Very superst.i.tious place, Panama. You should see us with our lottery tickets twice a week.'

'How d'you know all this stuff?' Osnard said, giving his voice a downward trajectory that made it carry no further than the table.

'Two ways, Andy.'

'Which are?'

'Well, there's what I call the grapevine, which is when my gentlemen get together of a Thursday evening, which they like to, quite by chance, and have a heart-to-heart and a gla.s.s of something in my shop.'

'Second way?' The close, hard stare again.

'Andy, if I told you that the walls of my fitting room hear more confessions than a priest in a penitentiary, I'd still be underselling them.'

But there was a third way and Pendel didn't mention it. Perhaps he was not conscious of being in its thrall. It was tailoring. It was improving on people. It was cutting and shaping them until they became understandable members of his internal universe. It was fluence. It was running ahead of events and waiting for them to catch up. It was making people bigger or smaller according to whether they enhanced or threatened his existence. Downsize Delgado. Upsize Miguel. And Harry Pendel on the water like a cork. It was a system of survival that Pendel had developed in prison and perfected in marriage, and its purpose was to provide a hostile world with whatever made it feel at ease with itself. To make it tolerable. To befriend it. To draw its sting.

'And of course, what old Miguel is doing now,' Pendel ran on, deftly slipping loose of Osnard's gaze and smiling across the room, 'he's having what I call his last spring. I see it all the time in my profession. One day they're your normal nine-till-fivers, good fathers and husbands and a couple of suits a year. Next day they turn fifty, they're coming in for the two-tone buckskins and canary jackets and their wives are ringing up asking whether I've seen them.'

But Osnard, for all Pendel's efforts to divert his interest elsewhere, had not ceased his watch. The quick brown fox's eyes were aimed at Pendel's, and his expression, if anybody in that mayhem had troubled to study it, was of a man who had struck true gold and didn't know whether to run for help or dig it alone.

A phalanx of revellers descended. Pendel loved every one of them: Jules, my goodness, lovely to see you, sir! Meet Andy, chum of mine - French bondseller, Andy, problems with his bill.

Mordi, what a joy, sir! - young wheeler-dealer from Kiev, Andy, came in with the new wave of Ashken.a.z.is, reminds me of my Uncle Benny - Mordi, say hullo to Andy!

Handsome young Kazuo and child bride from the j.a.panese Trade Centre, prettiest couple in town - Salaams, sir! Madam, my sincere respects! - three suits with extra trousers and I still can't do his other name for you, Andy.

Pedro, young lawyer.

Fidel, young banker.

Jose-Maria, Antonio, Salvador, Paul, infant sharedealers, witless white-a.r.s.e princelings known otherwise as rabiblancos, bug-eyed traders of twenty-three worrying about their manhood and drinking themselves impotent. And somewhere between handshakes and backslaps and see-you-Thursday-Harrys, Pendel's murmured commentary, about who their fathers were and how much who was worth and how their brothers and sisters were tactically distributed among the political parties.

'Jesus,' Osnard marvelled devoutly, when they were finally alone again.

'What's Jesus got to do with it, then, Andy?' Pendel demanded a little aggressively, for Louisa did not permit blaspheming in the house.

'Not Jesus, Harry, old boy. You.'

With its teak thrones and scrolled silver cutlery the restaurant of the Club Union was designed to be a feast of opulence, but the curiously low ceiling and emergency lighting make it more like a deep shelter for errant bankers on the run. Seated at a corner window, Pendel and Osnard drank Chilean wine and ate Pacific fish. From each candlelit encampment diners priced each other with discontented eyes: how many millions have you got - how did he get in here? - where does she think she's going in those diamonds? Outside the window the sky was by now pitch black. In the lighted pool below them a four-year-old girl in a gold bikini was being walked gravely through the deep end on the shoulders of a brawny swimming instructor in a skullcap. Beside him waded an overweight bodyguard, hands tensely out-stretched to catch her if she fell. At the pool's edge the girl's bored mother, dressed in a designer trousersuit, painting her fingernails.

'Louisa's what I call the hub, Andy, not wishing to boast,' Pendel was saying. Why was he talking about her? Osnard must have mentioned her. 'Louisa is a one-in-a-million top secretary of incredible potential not yet fully realised in my opinion.' It was a pleasure to him to make things right with her after their bad telephone conversation. 'Dogsbody doesn't cover it at all. Officially, as of three months ago, she's PA to Ernie Delgado, previously of the law firm of Delgado & Woolf, but he's given up his interests for the sake of the people. Unofficially, the Ca.n.a.l administration is in such a flux from the handover, what with your Yanquis going out one door and your Panamanians coming in tike other, that she's one of the few with a clear head who can tell them the score. She greets, she covers, she papers over the cracks. She knows where to find it if it's here, and who's nicked it if it's not.'

'Sounds like a rare find,' said Osnard.

Pendel swelled with marital pride.

'Andy, you are not wrong. And if you want my personal view, Ernie Delgado is a very fortunate man. One moment it's your high-level shipping conference to be prepared for, and where's the minutes of the last one? The next it's your foreign delegation wanting to be briefed, and where on earth have those j.a.panese interpreters got to?' Yet again he felt an irrepressible urge to chip at Ernie Delgado's pedestal: 'Plus she's the only one can speak to Ernie when he's got a hangover or is suffering the serious criticism of his lady wife. Without Louisa, old Ernie would be belly up and his very shiny halo would be acquiring quite a lot of rust-spots.'

'j.a.panese,' said Osnard in a trailed, contemplative sort of voice.

'Well, they could be Swedish or German or French, I suppose. But it's more your j.a.panese than most.'

'What sort o' j.a.panese? Local? Visiting? Commercial? Official?'

'I can't say I know, Andy.' A silly, over-excited giggle. 'They're all a bit alike to me, I suppose. Bankers a lot of them, I expect.'

'But Louisa knows.'

'Andy, those j.a.ps eat out of her hand. I don't know what it is about her, but to see her with her j.a.p delegations, doing her bowing and her smiling and her come-this-way-gentlemen - it's a privilege, is what it is,'

'Bring work home, does she? Weekend work? Evenings?'

'Only when she's pressed, Andy. Thursdays mostly, so that she can get herself clear for the weekend and the kids while I'm entertaining my customers. There's no overtime paid and they exploit her something rotten. Though they do pay her the US rates, which makes a difference, I'll admit.'