The Devil You Know

“Of course.” I nodded solemnly, as if checking out the soundness of the familial support network was something I always did before I started in on the magic tricks and the wacky slapstick. Peter was the birthday boy—just turned fourteen. Too old, probably, for clowns and conjurors and parties of the cake-and-ice-cream variety. But then, that wasn’t my call to make. They also serve those who only pull endless strings of colored ribbon out of a baked-bean tin.

“I’ll leave you to set up, then,” Dodson said, sounding dubious. “Please don’t move any of the furniture without checking with me or Barbara first. And if you’re setting up anything on the parquet that might scratch, ask us for pads.”

“Thanks,” I said. “And mine’s a beer whenever you’re having one yourself. The term ‘beer’ should not be taken to include the subset ‘lager.’”

He was already heading for the door when I threw this out, and he kept right on going. I was about as likely to get a drink out of him as I was to get a French kiss.

So I got down to unpacking, a task that was made harder by the fact that these cases hadn’t moved out of Pen’s garage in the last ten years. There were all sorts of things in among the stage-magic gear that gave me a moment’s—or more than a moment’s—pause. A Swiss Army penknife (it had belonged to my old friend Rafi) with the main blade broken off short an inch from the tip; a homemade fetish rigged up out of the mummified body of a frog and three rusty nails; a feathered snood, looking a bit threadbare now, but still carrying a faint whiff of perfume; and the camera.

Shit. The camera.

I turned it over in my hands, instantly submerged in a brief but powerful reverie. It was a Brownie Autographic No. 3, and all folded up as it was, it looked more like a kid’s lunch box than anything else. But once I flipped the catches, I could see that the red-leather bellows was still in place, the frosted viewfinder was intact, and (wonder of wonders) the hand-wheeled stops that extended the lens into its operating position still seemed to work. I’d found the thing in a flea market in Munich when I was backpacking through Europe. It was nearly a hundred years old, and I’d paid about a quid for it, which was the whole of the asking price, because the lens was cracked right the way across. That didn’t matter to me—not for what I principally had in mind at the time—so it counted as a bargain.

I had to put it to one side, though, because at that moment the first of the party guests were shepherded in by a very busty, very blonde, very beautiful woman who was obviously much too good for the likes of James Dodson. Or the likes of me, to be fair. She was wearing a white bloused top and a khaki skirt with an asymmetric hang, which probably had a designer name attached to it somewhere and cost more than I earned in six months. For all that, though, she looked a touch worn and tired. Living with James Supercop would do that to you, I speculated; or, possibly, living with Peter, assuming that Peter was the sullen streak of curdled sunlight hovering at her elbow. He had his father’s air of blocky, aggressive solidity, with an adolescent’s wary stubbornness grafted onto it. It made for a very unattractive combination, somehow.

The lady introduced herself as Barbara in a voice that had enough natural warmth in it to make electric blankets irrelevant. She introduced Peter, too, and I offered him a smile and a nod. I tried to shake hands with him out of some atavistic impulse probably brought on by being in Hampstead, but he’d already stomped away in the direction of a new arrival with a loud bellow of greeting. Barbara watched him go with an unreadable, Zen-like smile that suggested prescription medication, but her gaze as she turned back to me was sharp and clear enough.

“So,” she said. “Are you ready?”

For anything, I almost said—but I opted for a simple yes. All the same, I probably held the glance a half moment too long. At any rate, Barbara suddenly remembered a bottle of mineral water that she was holding in her hand and handed it to me with a slight blush and an apologetic grimace. “You can have a beer in the kitchen with us afterward,” she promised. “If I give you one now, the kids will demand equal rights.”

I raised the bottle in a salute.

“So . . . ,” she said again. “An hour’s performance, then an hour off while we serve the food—and you come on again for half an hour at the end. Is that okay?”

“It’s a valid strategy,” I allowed. “Napoléon used it at Quatre Bras.”

This got a laugh, feeble as it was. “We won’t be able to stay for the show,” Barbara said, with a good facsimile of regret. “There’s quite a lot still to do behind the scenes—some of Peter’s friends are staying over. But we might be able to sneak back in to catch the finale. If not, see you in the interval.” With a conspiratorial grin, she beat her retreat and left me with my audience.