Armadillo by William Boyd Page B

graded and further refined the amount of the loss adjuster’s bonus, Lorimer considered that he could be looking at six figures. There was one other matter that troubled him, however.
    ‘Mr Hogg,’ he began slowly, ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, but why, after all this, has Torquil come to work at GGH?’
    Hogg gulped lager, noisily expelled carbonated breath.
    ‘Because Sir Simon Sherriffmuir asked me, as a personal favour.’
    ‘Why would he do that? What’s Torquil to Sir Simon? ‘
    ‘His godson.’
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Yeah. As clear as a gnat’s chuff, eh?’
    ‘Do you think Sir Simon knows something?’
    ‘Have another cider, Lorimer.’
    12. The Specialist. Hogg says to you: ‘It’s a big world, Lorimer Let your mind play with the concept “armed forces” for a moment. That concept contains your army, your navy and your air force, not to mention ancillary or subsidiary services – medics, engineers, cooking, sanitary, police, etcetera. These larger subdivisions are divided in turn into battle groups, army corps, regiments, wings, battalions, flotillas, squadrons, troops, flights, platoons and so on. All very organized, Lorimer, all very neat and proper, all very above board and as obvious as a warm white loaf, sliced. Thoroughly thought-through, plain for all to contemplate and analyse.
    ‘But in your armed forces you’ve also got your specialist élite units. Very small in number and with vigorous and highly demanding selection procedures. Many fall by the wayside. The choice is fundamental, is absolute, membership very restricted. SAS, SBS, Navy Seals, your Stealth bombers, spy planes, saboteurs, your FBI and MI5, agents and sleepers in the fields. Secrecy shrouds them, Lorimer, like a shroud. We’ve all heard of them, but we know next to fuck-all about them, in brutal reality. And why is this the case? Because they do vitaljobs, jobs of vital importance. Covert operations. Counter-insurgency. Still part of the larger concept of “armed forces”, yes – but a tiny sub-sub-sub-section, and, also to be borne in mind, one of the armed forces’ most deadly and violently effective components.
    ‘That is us, Lorimer. This is the analogy to hold on to. Like them we are specialists, the specialist loss adjusters. Everyone knows what a loss adjuster does in the wider, above-the-board, larger world. But, just like the élite forces, no one really knows what us specialists get up to. But that large world needs us, Lorimer. Oh, yes. Just as the armed forces have to rely in certain circumstances on the SA S or the bomb-makers or the assassins. You see, only we can do certain jobs, the difficult jobs, the discreet jobs, the secret jobs. That’s when they call the specialist loss adjusters in. ‘
    The Book of Transfiguration
    ‘Mr Rintoul?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘Lorimer Black. GGH.’
    ‘Oh yeah. How you doing?’
    ‘Fine. I thought I should let you know that we are going to contest the claim on the Fedora Palace.’
    ‘Oh. Right.’ Rintoul paused. ‘What’s that got to do with me?’
    ‘It’s got everything to do with you.’
    ‘Don’t get you.’
    ‘You set fire to that hotel because you didn’t want to pay the penalty charge.’
    ‘Fucking lie. Lies.’
    ‘We are going to contest the Gale-Harlequin claim on the grounds of your arson.’
    Silence.
    ‘I thought it only right to let you kno.’
    ‘I’ll kill you, Black. Fucking kill you. Say nothing or I’11 kill you.’
    ‘This conversation has been recorded.’
    The phone was slammed down and Lorimer hung up, his hand trembling slightly. However many death threats he had received in this job – a good half-dozen or so – they still unnerved him. He took the cassette from his answer machine and popped it in an envelope, marking it ‘Fedora Palace. Rintoul. Death threat’. That would go up to Janice for the master file which was kept in Hogg’s office. On the tape Rintoul had not actually admitted he had started the fire so it would