Territorial Rights by Muriel Spark Read Free Book Online

smartly across the road to the garage. There the car, fresh from a wash, polish and overhaul, was waiting for her. She paid sternly, folded up her receipt with precision and put it away in her bag. Then she drove off to Coventry, to the private investigation agency where she had an appointment. She stopped once before she got there on the very outskirts of Coventry to park the car. There were a few golden trees and the leaves lay on the pavement as if Coventry were pastoral as of old. Then she took a taxi to her destination.
    The offices of GESS (Global-Equip Security Services) Ltd were one floor up a narrow stair in a run-down side-street, so that it was inside the main entrance door that the difference abruptly emphasised itself. The offices had an established legal atmosphere in that there was a lot of wood prematurely aged for the purpose on the walls of the interior. The entrance hall was lined with this dark wood, with bare wooden floors, highly polished. Anthea was asked to take a seat by the receptionist, who then explained, ‘Mr B. is on the phone.’ Anthea seemed to try not to look at the receptionist; she seemed embarrassed to be there, as if the place was a pawnshop or a Roman Catholic confessional which one might be seen going into or coming out of. A folded brochure lay on the table beside her. Somebody had left it open, or perhaps it had been deliberately placed in a certain position for clients like her. Anthea could read without moving her head one of the columns suggesting, in an inscrutable order of syntax, what GESS could offer, discover, cure. …
    Missing persons
    Backgrounds checked
    Polygraph (Lie Detector) Examinations
    Complete Crime Laboratory
    Uniformed • Armed Guards • Plain-clothes • Negligence
    Motion pictures
    Matrimonial Escorts
    Latest modern Equip
    Apprehensions and Tailing
    Fidelity Department
    Skip Tracing
    Construction and Plant Protection
    Prompt • Precise • Discreet
    Bureau of Ethics and Charisma
    Male, female operators
    Anthea looked back up the list and stopped at ‘Fidelity Department’. That must be me, she thought, and looked up to find the receptionist staring at her. ‘Mr B. is still on the phone to Brussels,’ said the girl. ‘But you’re a few minutes early, anyway.’
    Anthea looked at her watch and then said, ‘What is the gentleman’s name did you say?’
    ‘The clients use only the initial of our executives. Your executive is Mr B.’
    ‘Mr B.,’ Anthea repeated.
    ‘Security,’ said the girl as if it were a sad, well-worn response in the litany of her working days. Her hand went to the box in front of her. There was a click. She then droned to Anthea, ‘Mr B. is free now. Will you come this way?’
    Mr B. not only smiled as Anthea entered his office, but in a sense continued to smile. Even when he got up, took her hand, and said, ‘Mrs Leaver. I’ve been expecting you,’ he had that extraordinary expression, so that it looked as if he had been smiling and waiting for her a long lifetime.
    She sat in the chair he had waved her into. It was not quite a smile that he gave but a shape of mouth and lips that he had been born with, a wide, fat-lipped mouth. Behind his glasses his eyes were not smiling; they were abstractly looking at the situation in hand, his client. He was fair, robust, in his early thirties. Who would have known but that his mouth-smile with the fruity closed lips might have got him into trouble in a court of law, before a judge and jury, should he have been giving evidence in a desperately serious case. His desk was clear of papers. He took from a side-drawer of the desk a foolscap-sized, photo-copied form and laid it in front of him.
    ‘Now, then.’ He took up the desk-pen. ‘Full name and address, telephone. …’
    Her determination and her storm-trooper attitude had not lasted but Anthea was sufficiently in possession of herself to say, when Mr B. came to ask her to sign the form, ‘Before I do that, we must discuss the