Brighton Rock by Graham Greene

Boy,’ Jim Tate repeated. ‘That’s ten to one.’
    ‘Twelve to one.’
    ‘The odds have shortened. There’s been quite a packet laid on Black Boy this week. You wouldn’t get ten to one from anyone but your old friend.’
    ‘All right,’ Ida said. ‘Put me on twenty pounds. And my name’s not Turner. It’s Arnold.’
    ‘Twenty nicker. That’s a fat bet for you, Mrs What-ever-you-are.’ He licked his thumb and began to comb the notes. Half-way through he paused, sat still like a large toad over his desk, listening. A lot of noise came in through the open window, feet on stone, voices, distant music, bells ringing, the continuous whisper of the Channel. He sat quite still with half the notes in his hand. He looked uneasy. The telephone rang. He let it ring for two seconds, his veined eyes on Ida; then he lifted the receiver. ‘Hullo. Hullo. This is Jim Tate.’ It was an old-fashioned telephone. He screwed the receiver close into his ear and sat still while a low voice burred like a bee.
    One hand holding the receiver to his ear, Jim Tate shuffled the notes together, wrote out a slip. He said hoarsely, ‘That’s all right, Mr Colleoni. I’ll do that, Mr Colleoni,’ and planked the receiver down.
    ‘You’ve written Black Dog,’ Ida said.
    He looked across at her. It took him a moment to understand. ‘Black Dog,’ he said, and then laughed, hoarse and hollow. ‘What was I thinking of? Black Dog, indeed.’
    ‘That means Care,’ Ida said.
    ‘Well,’ he barked with unconvincing geniality, ‘we’ve always something to worry about.’ The telephone rang again. Jim Tate looked as if it might sting him.
    ‘You’re busy,’ Ida said. ‘I’ll be going.’
    When she went out into the street she looked this way and that to see if she could see any cause for Jim Tate’s uneasiness, but there was nothing visible: just Brighton about its own business on a beautiful day.
    Ida went into a pub and had a glass of Douro port. It went down sweet and warm and heavy. She had another. ‘Who’s Mr Colleoni?’ she asked the barman.
    ‘You don’t know who Colleoni is?’
    ‘I never heard of him till just now.’
    The barman said, ‘He’s taking over from Kite.’
    ‘Who’s Kite?’
    ‘Who
was
Kite? You saw how he got croaked at St Pancras?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I don’t suppose they meant to do it,’ the barman said. ‘They just meant to carve him up, but a razor slipped.’
    ‘Have a drink?’
    ‘Thanks. I’ll have a gin.’
    ‘Cheeryo.’
    ‘Cheeryo.’
    ‘I hadn’t heard all this,’ Ida said. She looked over his shoulder at the clock: nothing to do till one: she might as well have another and gossip awhile. ‘Give me another port. When did all this happen?’
    ‘Oh, before Whitsun.’ The word Whitsun always caught her ear now: it meant a lot of things, a grubby ten shilling note, the white steps down to the ladies’, Tragedy in capital letters. ‘And what about Kite’s friends?’ she asked.
    ‘They don’t stand a chance now Kite’s dead. The mob’s got no leader. Why, they tag round after a kid of seventeen. What’s a kid like that going to do against Colleoni?’ He bent across the bar and whispered, ‘He cut up Brewer last night.’
    ‘Who? Colleoni?’
    ‘No, the kid.’
    ‘I dunno who Brewer is,’ Ida said, ‘but things seem lively.’
    ‘You wait till the races start,’ the man said. ‘They’ll be lively all right then. Colleoni’s out for a monopoly. Quick, look through the window there and you’ll see him.’
    Ida went to the window and looked out, and again she saw only the Brighton she knew; she hadn’t seen anything different even the day Fred died: two girls in beach pyjamas arm-in-arm, the buses going by to Rottingdean, a man selling papers, a woman with a shopping basket, a boy in a shabby suit, an excursion steamer edging off from the pier, which lay long, luminous and transparent, like a shrimp in the sunlight. She said, ‘I don’t see