The meanest Flood

and he’s a master of public relations.
    He’s three years old and he reaches out of his poverty to enchant millions of people in the richest nations of the earth.
    The woman sitting next to Danny on the plane looked across at the photograph on his lap and shook her head. ‘Terrible,’ she said.
    ‘Wonderful,’ he told her. He didn’t bother to explain.
     
    He booked into a non-smoking room in the Scandinavian Hotel in Kongensgate, a couple of minutes from the centre of Oslo. There was a satellite TV and a direct-dial telephone in his room. He could press his trousers while watching an in-house movie, iron his shirt while listening to the radio and drink an old malt from the mini-bar. He was provided with a full-size mirror, an alarm clock, a hairdryer, a bathrobe and an assortment of soaps and shampoos. A corner of the room was given over to a kitchenette and on closer inspection he found he had fax and voicemail facilities and access to in-house shops with newspapers, tobacco, souvenirs and books. In addition to all of this he would be welcome at the hotel swimming pool and fitness centre and there were facilities to ensure that he enjoyed himself riding horseback, crosscountry or downhill skiing, biking and ice-skating.
    For his valuables the Scandinavian Hotel had a safety deposit box and could offer him a dry cleaning and laundry service as well as the usual room service between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. After that the heartless management of the place would throw him on to his own resources.
    With the aid of an Oslo shopping-map which he had picked up at the station, Danny found his way to Calmeyers gate. He took up a position from which he could see the entrance to the block of upmarket flats which were home to Holly Andersen, another exgirlfriend of Sam Turner, another whore.
    Not that the magician had anything against whores. On the contrary, he had one of his own in Jody who had become his life companion since his mother passed away. Danny’s mother had not been a whore, she had been a lady. He remembered her with her hair parted in the centre and arranged smoothly on either side of her face in a Madonna braid. He remembered the bow of her lightly painted lips and her starched apron and the great sadness she bore in silence for the last years of her life. She was an Anglican who had no secret longings for Catholicism. Her relatives and some of Danny’s school-friends thought she was stern and dry and austere but they didn’t understand. She was a good woman. She was pure.
    Jody was a slut and a harlot. He shouldn’t have left her with J. C. Nott while he was out of the country. They’d be rutting day and night, the artist and the tart.
    And there was Marilyn Eccles, a woman who could prove to be a great nuisance. Danny was aware of his charisma, that it attracted women to him. And he was aware also that he couldn’t control it. This woman, for example, he could live without. But it wasn’t an immediate problem. Marilyn Eccles was back in England. She couldn’t get under his feet for the time being. In Oslo he was safe from her.
    Two women passed the magician and went into an exotic seafood shop with crayfish and lobsters in the window. When they left the shop they entered the flats. They were wearing gloves and holding hands. One of them was Holly Andersen. She had aged since the photograph that Danny had of her. The time-span between the photograph and now was twenty years but the lines on her face spoke of at least thirty. Blue jeans and boots and a quilted jacket. She wore a woollen hat with ear-flaps and traditional Lapp patterning. Her hair was shorter than in the photograph but still blonde.
    Danny waited until his toes turned numb. He walked the length of Calmeyers gate and back again. A large Norwegian man went into the flats. Later two teenagers arrived on bicycles. An old couple came down the street, she walking with the aid of a stick, and they entered the building. But there was no sign of Sam Turner.
    For long after it got dark Danny watched the flats. It might be that Turner wasn’t as bright as the magician had anticipated. That Sam Turner hadn’t come to Oslo at all. It was possible. The man may not have believed that Holly Andersen was next on the list. Or he may have seen that she was next and simply not cared. He could have run in the opposite direction or even holed up in York in the house of one of his friends.
    The magician had not contemplated failure. He had divined that