An earlier self would have rejected these subtleties out of hand. But Marty had changed. Being in the Sanctuary had changed him, Carys’ ellipses had changed him. In a hundred ways he was more complex than he’d been, and part of him longed for a return to the clarity of black and white. But he knew damn well that such simplicity was a lie. Experience was made up. of endless ambiguities-of motive, of feeling, of cause and effect-and if he was to win under such circumstances, he had to understand how those ambiguities worked.
No; not win. There was no winning and losing here: not in the way that he’d understood before. The fox had run to the left, and he had a thousand pounds folded in his pocket, but he felt none of the exhilaration he had when he’d won on the horses, or at the casino. Just black bleeding into white, and vice versa, until he scarcely knew right from wrong.
30
Toy had rung the estate in the middle of the afternoon, spoken to an irate Pearl, who was just about to make her exit, and left a message for Marty to call him at the Pimlico number. But Marty hadn’t rung back. Toy wondered if Pearl had failed to pass the message along, or if Whitehead had somehow intercepted it, and prevented a return call being made. Whatever the reason, he hadn’t spoken to Marty, and he felt guilty about it. He’d promised to warn Strauss if events started to go badly awry. Now they were. Nothing observable perhaps; the anxieties Toy was experiencing were born out of instinct rather than fact. But Yvonne had taught him to trust his heart, not his head. Things were going to fall down after all; and he hadn’t warned Marty. Perhaps that was why he was having such bad dreams, and waking with memories of ugliness flitting in his head.
Not everyone survived being young. Some died early, victims of their own hunger for life. Toy hadn’t been such a victim, though he’d come perilously close. Not that he’d known it at the time. He’d been too dazzled by the new pools he was introduced into by Whitehead to see how lethal those waters could be. And he’d obeyed the great man’s wishes with such unquestioning zeal, hadn’t he? Never once had he balked at his duty, however criminal it might have seemed. Why should he be surprised then if, after all these years these same crimes, so casually committed, were in silent pursuit of him? That was why he lay now in a clammy sweat, with Yvonne sleeping beside him, and one phrase circling his skull:
Mamoulian will come.
That was the only clear notion he had. The rest-thoughts of Marty, and Whitehead-was a potpourri of shames and accusations. But that plain phrase-Mamoulian will come-stood out in the dross of uncertainty as a fixed point to which all his terrors adhered.
No apology would suffice. No humiliation would curb the Last European’s anger. Because Toy had been young, and a brute, and he’d had a wicked way with him. Once upon a time, when he’d been too young to know better, he’d made Mamoulian suffer, and the remorse he felt now came too late-twenty, thirty years too late-and after all, hadn’t he lived on the profits of his brutality all these years? Oh, Jesus, he said in the unsteady rhythm of his breath, Jesus help me.
Afraid, and ready to admit to being afraid if it meant she’d comfort hull, he turned over and reached for Yvonne. She wasn’t there. Her side of the bed was cold.
He sat up, momentarily disorientated.
“Yvonne?”
The bedroom door was ajar, and the dimmest of lights from downstairs described the room. It was chaos. They had been packing all evening, and the task had still not been finished when, at one in the morning, they’d retired. Clothes were heaped on the chest, of drawers; an open case yawned in the corner; his ties hung over the back of a chair like parched snakes, tongues to the floor.
He heard a noise on the landing. He knew Yvonne’s padding step well. She’d gone for a glass of apple juice, or a biscuit, the way she so often did. She appeared at the door, in silhouette.