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The Queen of Sheba

      Lena had rung to say she’d just remembered her car needed a new MOT so we agreed we’d take my car and I’d pick her up from Finsbury Park. I hooted as I drove past her house then double-parked a couple of doors down.

      Through the rear-view mirror and in the light from the lamp-posts I saw her come out of her house and walk towards the car. She was wearing her long straight maroon coat, her hair was loose and shiny and she looked exotic and mysterious. My own efforts at glamour had been to change my round dark glasses to small rectangular ones, and to put on my charcoal grey Jigsaw suit with the bootleg trousers.

      As Lena settled herself into the passenger seat she asked, ‘Where’s your number plate?’

      ‘What?’

      ‘Where’s the back number plate? You have no back number plate.’

      ‘Oh my God, it hasn’t dropped off again. I thought that was just in summer, when it got hot. I stuck it on with some …’ I tried to remember the name.

      ‘Sticky-back plastic?’ Lena asked brightly. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked.’

      ‘It’s dropped off,’ I said.

      ‘Yes.’ Lena put on her best understanding voice. ‘Where do you think it dropped off?’

      ‘I don’t know. It could have happened anywhere.’ An idea was forming in my mind but I didn’t want to deal with it. ‘It could have happened weeks ago, months ago, I never look at the back of my car.’

      ‘You would have been stopped by the police by now if it had been that long. Where have you been in the last day or two?’

      ‘Here, there, you know.’

      ‘Did you hear anything?’

      I looked at her.

      ‘You know, when it dropped off?’

      We were at Stoke Newington Green. I signalled and pulled into the side of the road, got out of the car and walked round to the back. Lena followed. There was no number plate.

      I looked under the car, in case the number plate was hibernating underneath where the spare wheel should be.

      ‘We could retrace your steps over the last twenty-four hours.’ Lena seemed to relish the prospect of a game of hunt the number plate. I ran my hand along the bumper. ‘We should organise this methodically. We could do it tomorrow morning. Frankie? Frankie, what is it?’

      ‘Look at that,’ I said, ‘not a mark on the rest of the car. You wouldn’t even think it had been bashed.’

      ‘Bashed?’ Lena said uncertainly.

      I took a deep breath and decided to come clean. ‘Last night someone banged into the back of the car and then came round and punched me in the face.’

      ‘What? Your client’s husband?’

      ‘Yes … no. Let’s get back in the car.’ We settled back into our seats and I switched off the lights. ‘It wasn’t my client’s husband.’

      ‘Who was it then?’

      ‘I don’t know, someone called P. J. Kramer.’

      ‘Billy J. Kramer?’

      ‘No, P. J. Kramer. I don’t know who he is, he’s been following me. And I – well, I’ve been following him.’ I was fiddling with the ignition key.

      Lena scrunched round in her seat to face me. ‘I don’t understand.’

      ‘Nor do I.’

      Her face was creased with such anxiety it was contagious and with a jerk I started the car. ‘Don’t do that,’ Lena said.

      I switched off the engine.

      ‘Now explain.’

      ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I began. ‘Did I tell you I represented Saskia the other day?’

      ‘You never tell me the names of the people you represent,’ she said, regretfully. ‘But Saskia … How is she? Why does she need a family lawyer? She hasn’t had children, has she?’

      ‘Let’s just say I represented her, but there was a man at court who seemed interested in her. Then she disappeared. I thought she might be at Gino’s last night. She wasn’t but he was, so I followed him and he ended up banging into the back of the car and punching me in the eye.’

      ‘Did you tell the police?’

      ‘I was drunk, I couldn’t tell them. And anyway, it didn’t seem right to get the police in. It’s all just hunches on my part.’

      ‘A punch is not a hunch.’

      ‘No, but in a way it was my own fault.’

      ‘Because – why? Don’t tell me, you were driving really provocatively. Frankie, I told you there is never an excuse for violence.’

      ‘Don’t lecture me, Lena,’ I said. ‘I just have to think now what I’m going to do.’

      ‘You could go and see if the number plate is there, where it happened.’

      ‘But that means going back …’

      ‘Well, you’ve got to, because if the number plate is there and you don’t find it, he will and then he’ll be able to find you.’

      ‘Oh God.’

      But in the end it wasn’t him who found me – it was the police. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

      When I told Lena where it had happened we agreed that there was no point going all that way back up to Highgate, especially since we were both looking so glamorous for our evening out. As we drove down towards Old Street, we assured each other that there were two possibilities. If we went to Waterlow Park and the number plate was gone, there would be nothing we could do, but it would ruin our evening. And if it was still up there, lying in the road, it was unlikely to be stolen while we, along with most of the population of London, were out having a good time.

      At Old Street roundabout I was still trying to convince myself that all this had a logic and was true. When we found a parking space right outside the club I knew we had made the right decision.

      The club was still quite empty. ‘This is one of the good things about being older,’ Lena said. ‘We arrive early and so we get a seat. Youth doesn’t arrive, on principle, till it’s standing room only.’ I wasn’t sure I liked being included in her comments about age. I felt I should do something childish and petulant to highlight our age difference, but I couldn’t think of anything, so I sulked.

      The room was dark and small, about the size of a living room that’s a good size for a party. Tables formed a semi-circle round a raised dais, each table boasting a flickering night-light. We chose a small table near the front and I went to the bar to order a bottle of Californian Chardonnay. Already the room was beginning to fill up with women who looked the same age as me and Lena, who took all the tables. As I sat down again I was feeling old on my own account, but it meant I could stop sulking. Lena poured the wine. It was chilled and fruity and I began to relax.

      Lena knew someone involved in the management of the club so she explained, ‘When there’s no act the stage is where the dancing happens.’ But a small neat woman in a tux stepped into the spotlight on the stage and announced that tonight there was an act, a singer. I was disappointed, I had got used to the idea of a loud band and dancing so I could forget all the things that wouldn’t leave my mind: Saskia and my black eye and my unreliable car and my lack of work.

      When the act stepped on to the stage half an hour later the club was almost full. She looked tired, in her late thirties or early forties, and had thick coarse blonde hair. She wore a black beaded sheath which accentuated her full figure, and her black patent high-heel shoes highlighted her good legs. She tapped the microphone and I could see her hand trembling

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