‘Oh yeah? Watch me!’ she yelled back, her own head coming forward, her shoulders crunching up just as aggressively. Jon hadn’t paged her yesterday; she’d thought of nothing else since she left his apartment, had checked the bloody thing’s batteries multiple times, to make sure they were charged, had propped it on the back of the loo while she took her evening shower, with the door open enough so that she could hear it if it beeped, had stayed up till midnight, way past her usual bedtime, just in case he got a late-night urge to summon her. But he hadn’t got in touch. He seemed to have decided that ‘unique’ and ‘confusing’ weren’t attributes that interested him enough in a woman, even in the short-term. All the frustration and misery of Jon’s rejection flamed up in her now. As Lubo lunged for her, she didn’t know if he meant to kiss her or to hit her, and she didn’t care. Any duty nurse was accustomed, unfortunately, to dealing with patients who were drunk, or on drugs, or off their meds, and while there were usually orderlies to help, it was not the first time an angry man had charged at Aniela. She wasn’t at all fazed by it.
In fact, it’s a real pleasure to be able to handle this how I always want to – the way you can’t in a hospital—
Taking a step back, Aniela snatched up one of the chairs that was tucked under the central table in the reception area, braced her legs wide, and as Lubo came charging towards her, arms outstretched, she sidestepped him, swung the chair back, and cracked it into his side. He went down like a cartoon character hit with an anvil.
‘Aniela! Oh my God!’
The front door had swung open: Melody was standing there, silhouetted in the frame, a takeout coffee cup in each hand, staring in horror at the scene before her.
‘Did he break in?’ Melody rushed forward, putting the cups down on the table, bravely standing by Aniela’s side. ‘Was he trying to steal the drugs? Should I call the police, or did you do that already?’
Lubo hadn’t been completely knocked out by the smashing blow across his torso; he was groaning, scrabbling around on the floor. His jacket was stained, his trainers dirty. With great embarrassment, Aniela realised how plausible this scenario seemed to Melody, that Lubo was an opportunistic burglar or drug addict, taking advantage of the holidays to rob a clinic. For a moment, she was tempted to lie, out of pure shame.
But that would mean Lubo being arrested, and that wouldn’t be fair...
‘He’s my ex-boyfriend,’ she admitted, her head hanging. ‘I just broke up with him and kicked him out of my flat, and he didn’t take it very well.’
‘You broke my arm!’ Lubo moaned. ‘You bitch!’ ‘Hey, don’t talk to her like that!’ Melody snapped. ‘Aniela doesn’t just go round whacking people – I bet you deserved it!’
She looked at Aniela. ‘You’re kicking him out of your place, right?’ Aniela nodded.
‘Has he got your keys?’
‘Yes—’
‘Well, you can’t let him go back there on his own – he could change the locks and squat it! Look, let’s get a cab over there now, pack his stuff up and put it outside for him.’ She bent down next to Lubo and pulled his keys out of his jacket pocket, holding them up triumphantly. ‘Then he can just pick it up whenever. Okay?’
Aniela was dumbstruck.
‘Did you break his arm?’ Melody asked.
‘Of course not,’ Aniela said contemptuously. ‘With the amount of padding he’s got? All I did was knock him over. He’s faking for sympathy.’
‘All right then. You!’ Melody prodded Lubo with her foot.
‘Get up, go on—’
She stood over him menacingly till, complaining, he hauled himself to his feet.
‘Out you go,’ she commanded, stalking over to the door, dragging it open and gesturing at the street outside with all the authority of an actress who had recently played a super-heroine in a Hollywood film. It worked with amazing success: still cursing, Lubo shuffled out.
Melody slammed and locked the door behind him triumphantly, then turned to Aniela.
‘Right,’ she said martially. ‘We’ll go out through the lobby, and get Kevin to put us in a cab, just in case he’s hanging around. And then we can get to your place before him and put all his stuff out. Any probs, we’ll call the police.’
Aniela shook her head in disbelief.
‘Melody,’ she said softly, ‘you’re a really good friend.’
‘I bloody am, aren’t I?’ Melody said, laughing. ‘Look what a top friend I am!’ She picked up the Tetra Pak paper cups from the table and handed one to Aniela. ‘I even brought you coffee!’
Dasha
‘You don’t want a divorce after all?’ Dasha stared blankly at her husband. ‘What the fuck, Grigor?’
They were in Grigor’s private sitting room, off his bedroom. The penthouse had been designed with a master suite of rooms which comprised two bathrooms, the huge bedroom, and a sitting room, all running along the river side of the building and giving directly onto a huge private terrace. As jolly and sociable as Grigor was, there were times when he wanted to shut the world out, and he was extremely protective of his personal space: on the rare occasions he did call in one of Diane’s girls for some fun and games, he always entertained her in a guest bedroom, never his own.
For anyone else but his wife, this meeting would have taken place in one of the many other public areas of the huge penthouse. And Dasha knew her husband as well as she knew herself: as soon as she had been ushered in here, she had known, not only that the conversation would be serious, but that Grigor had forgiven her for the scene she’d made on Christmas Day. A samovar was set up, ready to go: Grigor had poured her a cup of Russian tea, served himself, and then sat down cosily in the wingback Poltrona Frau armchair that was paired with the one Dasha was occupying.
‘Ahh,’ he had observed, settling in it contentedly. ‘German design, Italian leather.’ He patted the armrest. ‘Best in the world.’
Dasha, though longing to ask him why she was here, had managed to keep her mouth shut and wait: it had only taken a few more minutes before Grigor dropped the bombshell about the divorce being off.
‘Tell me, Dasha,’ he said eventually, stirring his tea. ‘Have you heard from Dmitri at all in the last few days?’
Dasha frowned, trying to work out why Grigor was asking her this. Her brows drew together; though her hair was bleached to within an inch of its life, she didn’t have the same procedure performed on her brows, which were naturally dark, and heavily pencilled for extra emphasis. The contrast was, to put it politely, striking.
‘He rang me yesterday,’ she said carefully, wary of giving away any unnecessary information until she knew where Grigor was going with this. ‘What does this have to do with you not wanting a divorce, Grigor? Are you fucking with me? Because if you’re fucking with me, or trying to play our sons against me, I swear, I’ll cut your heart out and feed it to the animals in the zoo—’
But Grigor was holding up his hand and shaking his head in a way that she recognised as a genuine denial.
‘Dasha, Dasha. Listen,’ he said, sipping his sweetened dark tea. ‘Did Dmitri tell you anything about what he was up to?’
‘Why?’ Dasha was immediately suspicious; she drew her back up straight in the chair, shaking out her mane of hair, a lioness in defence of her cub. ‘What’s going on? Tell me, Grigor!’
Grigor exhaled deeply.
‘Dmitri’s run away with Zhivana Fyodorova,’ he admitted.
‘Run away! With—’ Dasha nearly choked on her tea; she managed to put the cup down on the gold-leaf-topped table beside her without spilling it, but it was a close-run thing. ‘Gospodi!’ She sat back in the chair, the full deliciousness of this news flooding through her, a smile spreading across her face as she absorbed it. ‘Well!’ she said eventually with relish. ‘Well! So Zhivana Fyodorova decided that she’d rather fuck a nice plump young dick than a wrinkled old one that needs Viagra to get it up! I can’t say I blame her. I feel exactly the same way myself.’
&nbs
p; ‘Dasha!’ Grigor said disapprovingly. ‘Those are your son’s and husband’s penises that you’re talking about!’
‘I’ll say anything I want to about them,’ Dasha snapped. ‘I’ve washed Dima’s dick when he was little more times than you’ve had hot dinners. And I’ve sucked yours more times than—’
‘Please! Enough!’ Grigor held up his hand again. ‘The point is that the alliance has been made. That’s what Mikhail Fyodorov and I wanted, and now we have it.’
‘Alliance? So Dima and the little Fyodorova noodle are getting married?’ Dasha asked incredulously.
‘They bloody well will be,’ Grigor said grimly, ‘if Mikhail Fyodorov and I have to march them down the aisle ourselves at gunpoint. Dmitri’s made his bed, and he’s going to have to damn well lie in it now.’
Dasha pulled a face.
‘I’d rather have you than Dima marrying that little wet noodle,’ she observed disingenuously. ‘What kind of grandchildren is she going to breed? They’ll have less personality than a potato dumpling!’
‘Maybe they’ll get it from their grandfathers,’ Grigor said complacently. ‘Sometimes the fire in the belly skips a generation.’
Dasha shrugged.
‘Well, what’s done is done.’ She raised her eyebrows at her husband. ‘And at least we know for sure now that he’s straight. I don’t mind telling you, I had my doubts.’
As Grigor spluttered into his tea at his wife’s bluntness, she picked up her own cup again, the strong sweet brew an extra fillip to her suddenly excellent mood. Her husband had been humiliated, rejected by the drippy little girl with whom he’d tried to replace her; her beloved son had made an excellent alliance; all in all, this news was the best Christmas present she could possibly have received. She stared out of the glass windows to the view beyond, the surrounding skyscrapers and office towers on the far side of the river basin which were almost all lower than Limehouse Reach. She could see their helipads, their gardens, their terraces, look down on them from this elevated position. It was hugely satisfying.
‘So, naturally, this means that there’s no need for a divorce,’ her husband was saying. ‘I’ll call off the lawyers. No sense in wasting money, is there? I don’t mind saying, Dasha, I’m not unhappy with how this has all worked out. At my age, a new young wife—’ He blew out a long breath. ‘I’d probably have had a heart attack trying to keep up with her. It was Fyodorov’s idea, you know. He was set on me marrying her. Said boys of her age weren’t interested in her, and he thought she’d suit an older man.’
‘Most Russian boys wouldn’t be,’ Dasha agreed. ‘They want a girl with a bit of flash and sparkle. Someone with confidence and sex appeal.’ She looked down complacently at her leather miniskirt, her sheer dotted burgundy tights and stretch knee length boots. ‘A woman who knows how to dress so a man will notice her. Dima has more American tastes.’ She sighed. ‘That’s what happens when you educate them abroad, I suppose.’
‘Dasha.’ Her husband leant over to pat her knee. ‘It was just business, you know, this whole remarriage idea. Nothing personal. It was never personal. And you must admit I was going to be very generous to you.’
‘Just business,’ Dasha echoed.
‘Yes! Of course! Nothing more! I know things were said in anger, but you know me – I don’t hold grudges. And you shouldn’t either. It’s over.’ He smiled. ‘Soon we’ll be seeing our son walk down the aisle, and I want us to be sitting there, holding hands, happy that he’s happy. And then there’ll be grandchildren! Let’s face it, Alek is a real playboy – he isn’t going to settle down any time soon. Little Dmitri’s the one making us proud right now.’
And Dasha smiled back at him.
No divorce! I keep my status as Grigor’s wife, I’m not humiliated by being set aside for a younger woman – if anything, it’s Grigor who’s humiliated, because his fiancée ran off with his son, for God’s sake!
Finishing her tea, staring again with great smugness at the modern urban landscape outside, at all the apartments and penthouses with smaller terraces, fewer balconies, less expensive real estate than the one in which she was ensconced, Dasha could not have felt happier or more satisfied with her life.
My clever son! My clever son has solved my problem, taken care of his mother! I’ll make sure to give him a really wonderful wedding present—
But then a thought struck her with horrifying force.
The hitman! I’m going to have to call him off – I only hope to God it isn’t too late... there’s more than enough money for both me and Grigor and the boys, and as a widow, I’ll have much less status than I do as Grigor’s wife. Damn it! Now I want the bastard to stay alive!
‘Dasha? What is it?’ Grigor said, staring at her. ‘You’ve gone white – you look like you’ve seen a ghost!’
I hope I’m not looking at one! his wife thought, staring back at him. I hope that man hasn’t set in motion some plan that can’t be undone... She put down her empty cup and rose swiftly to her feet.
‘I must rush,’ she said. ‘I’ve just remembered some very urgent business I need to take care of...’
Jon
What the hell’s happened to her?
He looked up at the clock. He’d never minded it before, the fact that it was a projection from a little box across the room; now, for some reason, it annoyed him intensely. Stupid fucking pretentious yuppie crap – just put a fucking clock on the wall and be done with it. Striding across the room, he located the box, switched it off and then, for good measure, pulled the damn thing’s plug out of the socket.
I don’t need a damn clock anyway. I know what time it is, I always do. And the only appointment I have here is Aniela, coming round at twelve noon to check up on me – and I sure as hell don’t need a clock for that, because every day she’s been precise to the minute...
It was nearly one. If she’d been planning on coming today, but some emergency had delayed her, she would have called to let him know. No doubt about that: Aniela was as punctual as she was professional.
So there was only one explanation: she wasn’t coming at all. And why should she? he asked himself. Why the hell should she? A woman has her pride. What did you expect her to do? She told you she wanted to hook up with you, no strings attached. She was even ballsy enough to make a joke about you paying her. And all you did was tell her you were confused. Why should she show up here again? She’s probably sitting down in the Clinic, licking her wounds and feeling like a fool.
He really hated the thought that he might have made Aniela unhappy. That she might be feeling stupid, or unwanted.
Because I do want her. Real bad. I kept waking up last night and wishing she was there next to me. I was this close to paging her at three in the morning.
Ah, fuck it. Fuck it all to hell.
It was either punch a hole in the wall, or pick up the phone. And Jon was much too careful of his hands to start slamming them into concrete. So he picked Option B, taking the handset, checking the printed info sheet on which all the contact details for the Canary Clinic were listed, and dialling the number of Aniela’s pager. A recorded voice told him that his call had been logged, that the owner of the pager would know he had rung, and that he could hang up now.
The relief with which he did so was huge. He felt as if he’d been lugging a seventy-pound kitbag on a ten-mile training run, and had finally been able to haul it off his shoulders and drop it to the ground. She’ll ring back. She has to – I’m her patient. Or she might just come straight up. His heart leaped. Either way, I’ll be seeing her real soon...
Shit, I should jump in the shower! Why didn’t I think of that before I paged her? What an idiot!
Frustration had spurred him to work out even more than usual that day, and he looked down ruefully at his T-shirt, which was sticking to his chest with sweat. Grabbing the phone – so he’d hear her if she called – he dashed to the bathroom, pulling off his clothes as he went, hopping with one foot still caught in the sweatpants h
e’d dropped to the floor. He figured that he’d have just about time to rinse himself off and get some fresh gear on before Aniela could possibly check her pager, see it was him who called, and make it up from the Clinic. Not even waiting for the water to warm up, he was in and out of the shower with lightning speed, towelling off, dumping his sweaty clothes into the laundry basket and dashing into the bedroom to pull on some fresh ones.
And then, after that crazy rush, for over three hours he did sweet fuck all. He just sat there waiting for a woman, something he had never done in his life before, the tension building, feeling more like shit than he could ever remember feeling as a grown man. Wondering if she’d ever call or show up, or if he’d blown things with her, irretrievably and for ever, by not jumping all over her offer the day before.
What was I thinking? he asked himself despondently. A woman I find insanely attractive not only accepts that I used to kill people for a living, but tells me she’ll have sex with me while I’m here, no pressure to commit, no strings attached – and I just gawp at her like a goldfish and talk about how I’m really more used to dealing with hookers? I should get my head examined!
He huffed out a bitter laugh as he caught a glimpse of his bashed-up face in the floor-to-ceiling window. If she never shows up again, I deserve it.
His internal clock told him that it was past four in the afternoon. Okay, maybe she’s taking a day off to calm down – maybe she’s planning to come by tomorrow at noon, as per normal—
Bad Angels Page 36
