Read Online Armadillo by William Boyd - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: William Boyd
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, english, Mystery & Detective, Detective and Mystery Stories, Psychology, Suicide, Mystery Fiction, Satire, Self-Help, Conspiracies, Dreams, London (England), Life Change Events, Insurance companies, Businessmen, Romanies, Sleep disorders, Central Europeans, Insurance crimes, Insurance adjusters, Boyd
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Gale-Harlequin PLC and was to be known, improbably, as the Fedora Palace. The building had been three-quarters completed when fire had broken out on the eighth and ninth floors late one night in what was to be the duplex gym and sauna facility. It quickly spread, completely destroying three other furnished and finished floors below with considerable collateral damage due to smoke and the thousands of gallons of water needed to extinguish it. The claim was in for £27 million. A structural engineer’s report indicated that it might be cheaper to demolish the building and start again. This was the new way with insurance: repayment in kind. You ‘lose’ your watch on holiday and make a claim – we give you a new watch, not money. Your hotel burns down and you call the company – why, we rebuild your hotel for you.
Lorimer decided to walk down to the river; it was still cold but there were shreds of lemony sunshine breaking through the ragged clouds that were being bustled westwards across the city by a stiffish breeze. He strode briskly down Beech Street rather enjoying the cold on his face, collar up, hands deep in his flannel-lined pockets. Should have a hat on, eighty per cent of heat lost through the head. What kind of hat, though, with a pin-striped suit and a covert coat? Not a brown trilby, look like he was going to the races. A bowler? He must ask Ivan, or Lady Haigh. Ivan would say a bowler, he knew. In summer you could wear a panama, or could you?
It was round about Smithfield Market that the sensation crept up on him, the strange feeling that he was being followed. It was like those times when you’re convinced someone has called your name, you say ‘Yes?’ and turn but no one steps forward. He sheltered in a shop doorway, looking back the way he came. Strangers hurried by – a girl jogger, a soldier, a beggar, a banker – and continued on their ways. But the sensation was undeniable, all the same: what alerts you? he wondered, what sets it off? A particular pattern of footstep, perhaps, persistently in your aural range, neither overtaking nor falling back. He moved out of his doorway and made for the Fedora Palace – there was no one following him. Fool. He smiled at himself – Hogg’s paranoia was infectious.
From the outside the hotel didn’t look too bad, just blurry soot scorches on the window embrasures up high, but when the site manager showed him round the scarred and blackened gymnasium space, the buckled and blistered floor, he had acknowledged the sheer efficiency of fire, the potency of its destructive force. He peered into the central service and lift shaft: it looked like a smart-bomb had swooped down and detonated itself. The heat had been so intense that the concrete cladding of the shaft had actually started to explode. And concrete is not normally noted for its percussive qualities,’ the manager observed soberly. It was worse on the burnt-out, completed floors: here the damage was recognizably domestic – charred beds, sodden, blackened shreds of carpet and curtain – and, somehow, more pathetically relevant and wasteful. Overlaying it all was the sour, lung-penetrating stink of damp soot and smoke.
‘Well,’ Lorimer said, feebly. ‘About as bad as it gets. When were you meant to open?’
‘Next month, or thereabouts,’ the site manager said cheerfully. He was not a worried man, it wasn’t his hotel.
‘Who were the contractors?’
It turned out that the fitting-out of various floors had been subcontracted in the interests of speed: the upper floors were being done by a firm called Edmund, Rintoul Ltd.
‘Any problems with them?’
‘Some hassle with a stack of Turkish marble. Delayed. Quarry on strike or something. Usual cock-ups. They had to fly out there theirselves, chase it up.’
Down below in a Portakabin Lorimer was given copies of the relevant contracts, just to be on the safe side, and surrendered his hard hat. Hogg was right: there was a smell off this one
Lorimer decided to walk down to the river; it was still cold but there were shreds of lemony sunshine breaking through the ragged clouds that were being bustled westwards across the city by a stiffish breeze. He strode briskly down Beech Street rather enjoying the cold on his face, collar up, hands deep in his flannel-lined pockets. Should have a hat on, eighty per cent of heat lost through the head. What kind of hat, though, with a pin-striped suit and a covert coat? Not a brown trilby, look like he was going to the races. A bowler? He must ask Ivan, or Lady Haigh. Ivan would say a bowler, he knew. In summer you could wear a panama, or could you?
It was round about Smithfield Market that the sensation crept up on him, the strange feeling that he was being followed. It was like those times when you’re convinced someone has called your name, you say ‘Yes?’ and turn but no one steps forward. He sheltered in a shop doorway, looking back the way he came. Strangers hurried by – a girl jogger, a soldier, a beggar, a banker – and continued on their ways. But the sensation was undeniable, all the same: what alerts you? he wondered, what sets it off? A particular pattern of footstep, perhaps, persistently in your aural range, neither overtaking nor falling back. He moved out of his doorway and made for the Fedora Palace – there was no one following him. Fool. He smiled at himself – Hogg’s paranoia was infectious.
From the outside the hotel didn’t look too bad, just blurry soot scorches on the window embrasures up high, but when the site manager showed him round the scarred and blackened gymnasium space, the buckled and blistered floor, he had acknowledged the sheer efficiency of fire, the potency of its destructive force. He peered into the central service and lift shaft: it looked like a smart-bomb had swooped down and detonated itself. The heat had been so intense that the concrete cladding of the shaft had actually started to explode. And concrete is not normally noted for its percussive qualities,’ the manager observed soberly. It was worse on the burnt-out, completed floors: here the damage was recognizably domestic – charred beds, sodden, blackened shreds of carpet and curtain – and, somehow, more pathetically relevant and wasteful. Overlaying it all was the sour, lung-penetrating stink of damp soot and smoke.
‘Well,’ Lorimer said, feebly. ‘About as bad as it gets. When were you meant to open?’
‘Next month, or thereabouts,’ the site manager said cheerfully. He was not a worried man, it wasn’t his hotel.
‘Who were the contractors?’
It turned out that the fitting-out of various floors had been subcontracted in the interests of speed: the upper floors were being done by a firm called Edmund, Rintoul Ltd.
‘Any problems with them?’
‘Some hassle with a stack of Turkish marble. Delayed. Quarry on strike or something. Usual cock-ups. They had to fly out there theirselves, chase it up.’
Down below in a Portakabin Lorimer was given copies of the relevant contracts, just to be on the safe side, and surrendered his hard hat. Hogg was right: there was a smell off this one
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