The Human Pool by Chris Petit

should a man who had been on national television end up making crappy programmes for the Middle East?
    The mask slipped once, maybe, when he said, ‘My affairs never last. I’m too fickle and vain. Terrified of growing old.’ He gave his best telegenic smile. There was bound to be a Mrs Carswell. Perhaps his unexpected display of conscience was a cover for a wider disingenuousness. I felt nostalgic for the skinheads.
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    When I left, Dora took a cigarette break and we stood in the alley. ‘I didn’t mean it to be awkward,’ she said.
    I shrugged and told her I was going back to have dinner with an old Nazi. I could imagine us never seeing each other again. We would disintegrate as fast and unexpectedly as we had started.
    â€˜I admire what you do. I haven’t told you before,’ she added. She was sounding remarkably sincere. ‘You should come and work here for a while, undercover.’
    We connected for the first time that day. Dora walked me to the end of the mews, head leaning into me, conspiratorial again. She was learning how the place worked, she said. The staff were there to be propositioned, discreetly. Not everyone came across, and those who didn’t were told to refer guests on. The place was an up-market dating agency. It even had its own hotel nearby, a knocking shop. I asked Dora if she participated.
    â€˜I’m tempted. I was offered enough to pay for two years’ studying for going to bed with a rich Arab. A big Hollywood star pays one of the boys $100,000 to have sex with him whenever he’s in London.’
    I asked what Carswell thought.
    â€˜Take the money and run.’
    â€˜What do you know about Carswell?’
    â€˜Apart from being nice and charming? Not a lot. I’m waiting to see if there’s a twist.’
    â€˜See what you can find out about him for me.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Because I can’t work him out. Because he’s spy story stuff. Because men like him always have another agenda.’ Because it gave me a degree of control. Using Dora was my revenge.

Hoover
    FRANKFURT
    I SLEPT BADLY BECAUSE of the time zone difference, having flown into the future with a head too full of the past. I lay awake and fretted about why I was there. The face in the bathroom mirror looked rough when I got up mid-afternoon.
    At my age, the simple day-to-day tasks get harder to negotiate—the reception desk, ordering the meal, the shop counter—but downstairs everything turned out fine. The receptionist was friendly and efficient, but didn’t hurry in spite of the queue building up; she told me where I could get a tour bus, marking a street plan treating me like I was only a tiny bit simple, for which I was grateful. The waitress in the café humoured me by letting me try out my German. The afternoon was fine, very much like ones I remembered, the green of spring softer than back home, the sky more of a washed blue.
    When I got back to the hotel there was a welcome message from Karl-Heinz suggesting dinner that evening, and apologising for not being able to meet before. There was also a letter for me. It was a copy of a fairly recent newspaper cutting, an obituary of a man named Jaretski. There was no note. The stamp was German.
    According to his obituary, Jaretski had been a successful German financial businessman knocked down and killed by a tram in Strasbourg. It noted that he had served in the war, without specific reference to what he had done.
    I had been in Strasbourg briefly during the war, but could not remember any Jaretski, although the name was vaguely familiar. There was no photograph. I felt the slow, familiar skin crawl of fear. Someone knew where I was in Florida. Now someone knew where I was in Frankfurt. Both book and obituary seemed to be messages specific to events that had happened over fifty years ago. Why now, and who was behind it?
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    Sometimes I catch sight of myself unawares. Nothing prepares