by Ali Knight
I paused, making it clear I thought he was an asshole. I turned to Gabe and pointedly said, ‘Sorry, do you mind if I sit here?’
Gabe glanced at Rory who was slouched with his elbows wide, glanced in faint pity at me and said, ‘Not at all.’
‘Thank you so much.’ I began to get on the stool, then dropped my bag and bent down, collecting the things that had spilled out, apologising. I flashed him my chest; it was all quite straightforward.
He got off his stool immediately to help. Rory ignored us both.
I finally got back on the stool and faced him full-on. I pretended a double take and smiled. ‘Haven’t I met you somewhere before? I’m sure I have, but I can’t place you.’ I gave him a long stare, which he couldn’t ignore. I’d reeled him in.
I know a lot about pushing the right buttons. Is this manipulation? Entrapment? It’s a human right to flirt with the opposite sex, to make a fleeting contact that makes our lives worth living. But taking a number and phoning up later is something else. That’s cheating. That’s what a wife pays me to find out.
‘I’m not sure,’ Gabe said diplomatically.
I ordered a whisky from the barman. I saw it was what Gabe was drinking and mirroring behaviour is a successful tactic when flirting. I’ve learned over the years that men like you to drink whisky because most women don’t. It sets you apart from the Chardonnay gluggers – and from their wives. I took a sip and stared at Gabe again. ‘I’ve got it, I’ve seen you in the building. You work in Sentinel House, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I’m on the fourth floor.’
I faked a puzzled look. ‘Let me see, is that Something Holdings?’
‘GWM Holdings. We do property.’
I nodded. ‘That’s it. What’s that like these days? Boom times I bet.’ He nodded politely, his interest pitched at low. I held out my hand. ‘Melissa Fulton. I’m on the sixth floor, with the PR lot. I do high-end electrical goods, if you’re interested.’
He shook my hand. ‘Gabe Moreau.’ His hand was warm, his skin smooth.
‘Pleased to meet you, and cheers.’ He half raised his glass with mine. ‘So, you having a stressful start to the week, to be in here at five forty-five, or are you a lush?’ I asked.
That made him smile. Up close, it was a good smile. ‘Well, my work has been unusual lately, to say the least.’
‘Oh? How?’ I asked.
He didn’t bite. If I was hoping for something about Milo or Vauxhall I was set for disappointment. ‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked.
‘I’m off to a launch of a new range of French-made blenders – you know, the type stocked only in Selfridges and Harrods and sold direct to high-end show flats, that type of thing.’
‘Oh, that might be useful,’ he said. ‘Do you have a card?’
‘Of course.’ I pulled out my purse and got out a card that I’d had made in the Underground a few hours before. I could feel the thrum of excitement that he was walking into my trap. ‘How many show flats does GWM have at any one time?’
‘About twenty that are live now, more coming on-stream over the next six months.’
He picked up my card and began to tap it on the side of the bar.
‘Well, you should give me a call, maybe there’s something we can do for you.’ I held up my whisky. ‘Cheers again.’ This time he chinked his glass against mine. ‘Here’s to four walls and a roof. There are worse ways to make a living.’
He didn’t agree or disagree.
That whisky tasted good sliding down. ‘So do you live in London? I can hear the trace of an accent.’ He nodded. ‘Do you like it?’
‘That depends.’ There was a pause and he put his drink back on the bar as he formed a thought. ‘Listen, when you go somewhere high – I don’t know, Primrose Hill, or Greenwich Park, and you look out, what do you see?’
‘The skyline of London.’
‘But what in particular?’
‘I don’t know, the Post Office Tower, the Shard …’
‘Exactly,’ Gabe said, becoming more animated. ‘You see high things. But you know what I see? Cranes, the machines that build the future. The future of this city is up. I see the buildings that aren’t even there yet. And I get excited about the worlds to be created in that air, the homes and jobs that will be seventeen storeys up. The love stories, the legacies that we can create.’
‘Wow.’ It wasn’t difficult to look adoringly at a man high on his own theory and passionate about expounding it. ‘You certainly like your business,’ I breathed.
‘To me it’s not a business. It’s a vocation.’ There was a small pause. ‘I come from somewhere where for a while it was all going backwards.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Every day someone was killed, families were destroyed, history was obliterated. The world was unravelling. It’s hard, being here, now, in such a safe place, to imagine such a thing.’
‘It sounds terrible. Where is this place you’re talking about?’
He ignored my question. ‘Where do you live? I don’t mean which part of town, I mean in a big place or a small flat?’
‘Well, I live by myself.’ I made sure to get that information out there. ‘Hell, isn’t everywhere always too small?’
Gabe shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. We need to transform how we live in spaces. If you took all the objects out of your house, how much bigger would it be?’
‘Well, a lot.’
‘That’s the challenge. You see, I don’t want to build houses, I want to build dreams. I want people to be able to fulfil their potential, be who they want to be in the greatest city on earth.’
‘Just a small-scale ambition then.’ I took a slug of whisky.
He looked at me penetratingly. ‘I find English people funny and also quite charming. They always deflect. Just when it gets interesting they have to make a joke.’
‘I’ve got one: an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman go into a bar …’
He didn’t laugh. ‘See, sliding away from the stuff that matters.’ I began to feel the tingle of success. He was flirting. I sensed Rory leaning forward to not miss anything. ‘Anyway, I believe housing is a problem that just needs to be looked at in a different way. It’s not about money or planning – although those things are important – a home is where people build on the past, renew their family histories. I want to build innovative, new homes that will last a thousand years.’
‘Bad news for my blenders. I’m afraid we work on the assumption that consumers think it looks dated in three years.’ He laughed at that. ‘I thought those beds that came out of the wall were the naffest thing ever.’ I was laying a trail, seeing if he would bite.
He nodded and drained his drink. ‘But a bed that transforms into a sofa at the touch of a button? Now that could be great.’
A phone beeped and he pulled it out of his jacket pocket and read a text. I glanced down at his trouser pocket, but could see nothing that looked like the other phone.
‘Let me get you another,’ I said as I tried to catch the barman’s eye.
‘Make no mistake, there’s a battle going on at the moment over the soul of this city and it’s all to do with housing and where everyone is going to live. If housing is done wrong, you can’t ever recover from it. It’s there, looking at you, its ugliness staring down at you. It’s a bit like families, I guess, the mistakes hurt for generations.’
He could hold a room, could Gabe Moreau. ‘I guess so.’ I tried a little giggle. I’m not the giggling type, but it’s a winning flirting strategy. ‘It must give you the biggest buzz when you work hard and compete and win?’ Flattery see, it gets you everywhere. It gets a man caught by a sex detective.
He looked rueful. ‘It’s supposed to.’
‘So it doesn’t work with you?’ His mouth pressed into a hard line. He gave me a sideways glance full of a meaning that I wasn’t sure I was interpreting correctly. The last of my whisky flamed down my throat. ‘So what does give you a buzz?’ I as
ked.
He ran the tip of his finger around the rim of his empty glass. I held my breath.
‘Making up for past mistakes.’
‘Do you have past mistakes you regret?’ I asked.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘I certainly do. But I thought it was as my mother always said, because I’ve always lacked self-control.’
He had leaned nearer to me, and I caught a faint trace of his aftershave. His forearm on the bar was inches from mine. He was flirting with me for sure. Rarely had it been so much fun. The barman headed towards me. ‘This round is on me,’ I said.
But he pulled his phone towards him and put it in his jacket pocket. ‘I have to go. Enjoy your blender launch.’
It was so sudden, such a switch of mood that I felt the pang of disappointment. ‘Do you have to go so soon? I was enjoying our conversation.’
He smiled. ‘Bye.’
And he was heading for the door with not a lingering glance or moment of regret.
Rory waited a full three minutes to make sure he was really gone before he hopped over a seat and put a consoling hand on my shoulder.
‘So, what did you think?’ I asked Rory. ‘He seemed bang up for it, didn’t he?’
‘Jesus, Maggie, could you make it any more obvious? You need to flirt with them, not jump in their lap!’
‘What? He was coming on to me, I’m sure of it.’
Rory made a scoffing sound. ‘It’s debatable.’ In an exaggerated American accent he said, ‘Hot for you, honey? Not in a million.’
I said nothing, feeling strangely resentful about Rory’s interpretation of what had just happened. Gabe had left my fake card on the bar. It sat there like a rebuke. And I couldn’t hide the prick of disappointment in my stomach.
CHAPTER 29
Maggie
Four weeks and four days before
My failure spurred me on. I ditched my tailing of Gabe, leaving Rory to go back to the taxi and wait for him. Having a drink had loosened something in me, I had an itch that needed to be scratched. I phoned Dwight. I told myself that it was for professional reasons, that I wanted an update on the Milo murder, but anyone who knew me could have called me out for that. I just didn’t like to be rebuffed.
He sounded pleased to hear from me. ‘You got a recorded confession yet?’ he asked.
‘Ha ha. Wishful thinking never hurt.’
He suggested we meet for a drink later in the week and I pushed him to bring it forward to tonight, to right there and then. An hour later I walked into a pub on Palace Street in Victoria to find him sitting at the bar.
I got on a bar stool next to him and ordered a double gin and tonic. Dwight got in another beer.
‘So let’s talk about your case this time, not mine,’ Dwight said. ‘The suspicious wife still paying you?’
I nodded. ‘But I’ve got no joy yet.’
‘So is he or isn’t he cheating?’
We were knees together on our stools. I thought about his question. ‘Oh, I’m sure he’s cheating, but you know, I can’t work him out. I tried a honeytrap and got nothing. I thought he was going to take my card, but he left it behind.’ I took a drink. ‘And then the wife, she’s hired me, so she’s hard as nails behind this English rose exterior. She’s calculated, yet I think she’s vulnerable too.’
‘Relationships are messy. You win some, you lose some.’
‘I hate losing.’
Dwight made a noise. ‘So do I. Losing in my job means having to face a family that haven’t got justice.’
‘Gabe seemed a bit preoccupied when I had that drink with him, but then after what’s happened recently that’s not a surprise. Of course the other way to look at Milo’s murder is it could be serving as a warning to Gabe and his company.’
‘It’s far-fetched …’ Dwight tailed off. ‘Unless he contacts us and says that, we’ve got zilch. I wonder how he’ll feel if he discovers his privacy has completely disappeared.’
‘Orwell would have been horrified.’
‘Indeed. What’s your Room 101 moment?’
I smiled and took a large gulp of alcohol. I could feel the evening sliding away into an alcoholic haze. ‘That’s easy. Not being believed. Seeing something, clear as day, and everyone else saying it never happened. Being fitted up by the CIA or MI5 of whatever, your prints somewhere you never were, your DNA on a murdered body. You know what’s true, and no one else trusts you.’
‘OK, you’re paranoid, I get it. Mine’s more straightforward: falling. Off a building, a cliff, out of a plane, I’ve got a terrible fear of heights. You ever seen Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger? Vertical Limit?’ Dwight grinned and shuddered.
‘You ever worked a jumping case?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I think I’d find that difficult.’
Somewhere in the distance was the sound of large-scale drilling, the area round Victoria – once a grubby amalgamation of faded mansion flats and civil service buildings – being razed to the ground and big ugly buggers of buildings thrusting skywards, another part of the crazy paving of London’s building boom.
‘You hear that?’ I said. Dwight looked confused. ‘So much concrete being poured, foundations metres thick. How many bodies are under this new city, do you think?’
‘Jesus, woman, I thought policemen had twisted outlooks. We’re positively happy clappy compared to you.’
‘Before I find you, I make the clients pay the big bucks,’ I said under my breath.
‘What’s that?’ Dwight asked, and I shook my head.
‘Nothing, just a silly phrase. Come on, let’s drown our sorrows with another drink,’ I grinned.
Dwight was studying me over his beer glass. ‘Tell me, how does it feel when a honeytrap fails?’
‘You’re asking me if I take it personally?’
‘Do you?’
‘Of course not, it’s just work.’
He grinned. ‘You’re lying. But you know, Maggie, if you’d honeytrapped me, I’d have failed.’
I love that moment, when the cards are laid out, intentions made clear and a new road back to a warm bed is opened. ‘You got a girlfriend?’
‘Not at the moment.’
‘Then you’ve failed nothing at all. You’re simply being a man and thank heaven for that.’ I reached forward and held his chunky knee.
He smiled. ‘Let’s have another drink.’
‘Make mine a double,’ I grinned.
Three hours later we were back at his flat and I got a closer look at those powerful thighs. They were every bit as good as I remembered. We upended a lamp by his bed and probably kept the neighbours awake. I peeled myself out from under sticky sheets as the morning light began to fill the room and headed home.
I have a man problem, I’m not gonna lie. I have a need problem, and I have a sex problem. I don’t have to give my hard-earned cash to a shrink to be told it’s a pathetic need to be wanted, to be loved. My family never wanted me. So, years later this is the result, I guess. Nothing or no one has ever been enough to stop me doing what I do. Maybe one day I’ll meet someone who is enough, this mythical person who can tame me, who can make me stop looking, stop exploring. But I know he doesn’t exist. The past has made me this way, and unless some seismic event can knock me off course, I’m sailing into a future of full-on promiscuity.
Dwight didn’t wake as I closed his bedroom door. As I made my quiet and sated way towards the Tube my mind kept straying to a man’s back clothed in a blue Oxford shirt. I’ll catch you yet, I thought, I’ll catch you yet.
CHAPTER 30
Maggie
Four weeks and one day before
Two days later we lost Gabe. Rory was in the taxi outside GWM’s offices, Simona was in Praed Street, and I was in the toilet of the sandwich shop. According to Rory, Gabe came out of the building, spent a long time waiting in the sunshine on his side of the street, then weaved dangerously through moving traffic to the opposite pavement as the lights changed to red and wa
lked away down a side street.
I got a panicked call from Rory on my mobile, telling me to leave it running down my leg. I hustled back out to the street to find Rory stuck at the lights. I knew from experience this light was long and we couldn’t turn right because there was a line of traffic eager to catch the green. ‘Go,’ I commanded Rory, who got out and began to follow on foot.
I had to pull a U-turn, which would annoy the world and his wife. The lights changed, and I held up half of central London as I swerved into a new line of traffic. I eventually cut left a block north of Rory and stop-started down a slow-moving one-way street.
Five minutes later Rory rang, out of breath. ‘I’ve lost him. He was ahead of me, he turned the corner, and he was gone!’
I drove around in an ever-increasing grid of streets, searching left and right. Rory ducked into John Lewis, jogged through an underground car park in the nearby square, checked doors and windows, doubling back on himself.
We got nothing. Eventually I picked Rory up on the corner of Harley Street. I banged the wheel in frustration. We had a major fuck-up on our hands.
I left Rory on the street corner where he’d last spotted Gabe and drove the taxi back to wait outside his office. Two hours later I saw Gabe walking down the street from the direction of Oxford Circus Tube.
I couldn’t be sure but I thought he might have been wearing a fresh shirt.
I felt a strange sensation then. Did he know about us? Was he yanking our chain? But the overriding sensation was that he had outsmarted me. My honeytrap had failed, and I’d lost him for a crucial two hours.
There was something about that man, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. He was either the smartest cheat I’d ever tailed or the most innocent. And if he was innocent, what game was Helene playing?
I phoned Rory and five minutes later he was back in the cab, sweating and in a bad mood. ‘I think he’s changed his shirt,’ I said.
‘How can you be sure?’
‘It looks fresher.’
‘Where the fuck did he go?’ wailed Rory. ‘Does he know about us?’
