by Jessie Keane
‘Let’s take this upstairs,’ said Marcus, standing up and coming over to her.
‘Yes, why don’t we?’ said Clara, and preceded him up the stairs and into the flat over the club.
Marcus closed the door and leaned against it and looked at her.
‘Are you totally bloody crazy?’ he asked.
‘Me?’ Clara threw her bag onto a chair then turned and faced him. ‘Excuse me, I’m not the one who invited my bloody mistress to my own wedding.’
‘I didn’t invite Paulette. She turned up. What was I supposed to do, kick her out?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, are you jealous then?’ He was watching her closely.
‘Oh, don’t flatter yourself. But I do expect to be treated with a little respect, and I don’t think that was very respectful.’
‘Oh, I am sorry, your majesty,’ he said.
‘Don’t mock me.’
‘Clara.’ Marcus pushed away from the door and came and stood right in front of her.
‘What?’ She eyed him warily.
‘I don’t think you understand the situation here. I’m not old Frank the rent man and I’m not a poofter like Toby.’
Clara’s stare hardened. ‘Don’t call him that. Don’t you dare.’
Their eyes locked. ‘Good Christ,’ said Marcus. ‘You actually felt something for that poor bastard, didn’t you? Perhaps you have got a heart and not a block of ice after all.’
Clara gulped. Every time Toby’s name was mentioned, she felt close to tears. It crucified her that his life had ended so horribly. But she wasn’t going to start trying to explain her feelings to a hard nut like Marcus.
‘Just don’t call him that. Never call him that. OK?’ she snapped.
‘Clara?’
‘What?’
‘You can’t order me about and expect to get away with it.’
‘I wasn’t aware that I was ordering you about.’
‘You were, you stroppy mare. So come on. What’s the big mystery? Where did you get to?’
‘I went to see Jasper. Toby’s boyfriend.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he might have known something about the fire. He was there the night it happened.’
‘What did he tell you?’ Marcus looked interested now.
‘He left at ten. According to him, Toby was fine then. By two o’clock, when I got home, the place had burned down and Toby was as good as dead.’
‘Maybe he’s lying,’ said Marcus.
‘Maybe. They were arguing, he said. About me, about Toby’s marriage to me.’
‘Or maybe it’s down to someone else.’
‘Don’t say me, for God’s sake. That’s what Jasper said.’
‘What about Toby himself? Christ, Clara, he had enough secrets, God knows. Was Jasper his only boyfriend, do you think? Maybe there was something else going on.’
‘I can’t see why Toby would start the fire to get an insurance payout,’ said Clara, holding her head in both hands. ‘I’ve thought about it over and over again, and I just can’t see it. He had no money problems. I knew the business inside-out, it was thriving. And he adored that house. Besides, he was clever. You know he was. He’d have had the sense to do the thing a lot more carefully than that, if he was going to.’
‘Sears then. What about him? He was trying to frighten Toby into handing over the clubs, and it got out of hand. Or maybe he didn’t realize Toby was at home that night. And speaking of Sears . . . ’
‘Yeah? What about him?’
‘Seriously. No more wandering off alone. I’ve been hearing rumours around the streets.’
‘About what?’
‘They’re saying he’s put a contract out on you.’
‘He what?’
Marcus nodded. ‘There’s a price on your head. So no more fucking around. Word is, you’re to be delivered up to Sears, Clara. Dead or alive – but preferably dead.’
Clara sat down hard on a chair as he spoke the words. ‘What did you say?’
‘He wants you dead. Big surprise.’
‘What should I do then?’ she asked blankly.
‘Stay close. In fact,’ Marcus gave a winning smile, ‘I think it’s time we did a little socializing – as a married couple.’
87
Marcus’s mother was a tiny withered thing who lived in a stately mews house in Chelsea. She was dressed for her son’s visit with his new bride in a dark navy velvet gown that had probably cost a working man’s weekly wage. The gown had a neckline edged with creamy guipure lace. She had cold black pebbles where her eyes should be, and a perfectly coiffed head of startlingly white hair. She opened the door to them, supporting herself on an ivory walking stick.
‘She’s older than you’d expect,’ Marcus had warned Clara on the way over in the E-type. ‘She had me when she was forty-nine.’
‘Black hair!’ said Marcus’s mother, leading the way into an overheated sitting room where she sat down by the fire. She laid the walking stick at her feet and stared at Clara. ‘Well, well. She’s got black hair, like yours. Like mine, too. I had black hair once. I was a beauty, you know.’ The gimlet eyes held Clara’s. ‘An absolute catch. But there’s something Celtic there, maybe Irish, with her pale skin and blue eyes. It’s a pretty effect, anyway. Whereas in us It’s dark eyes and dark skin to go with the hair. I think that’s something Latin.’
‘Hello, Mrs Redmayne,’ said Clara, wondering how this doll-like creature could have produced a fabulously robust bruiser like Marcus. She was glad now that Marcus had told her about the late age at which his mother had him – this woman looked old enough to be his grandmother. And she had a chilly judgemental glint in her eye that made Clara decide instantly that she didn’t like her at all.
‘Mother,’ said Marcus, going to her chair and kissing her cheek, while his mother’s eyes remained glued to Clara.
‘She’s got a confident look about her,’ said the old lady, and it didn’t sound like a compliment. Clara thought that this old cow would have preferred someone like Bernie – compliant, meek, easily intimidated – someone she could dominate.
‘Well . . . ?’ the old lady said, and held out her hand.
For an instant Clara thought the woman was holding out a hand to her; but then Marcus produced a blue Tiffany box tied with white ribbon from his jacket pocket and laid it in his mother’s palm. She didn’t open it. She merely nodded, lips clamped tightly together in grim satisfaction, and put it aside on the small table beside her chair.
‘Sit down,’ said the old lady.
Clara sat. This is going to be a long afternoon, she thought.
‘So – what do you think of her?’ asked Marcus on the journey back to the Calypso.
‘She’s a monster,’ said Clara.
Marcus smiled. ‘Yeah. Thought you might have that in common.’
‘I’m not a monster.’
‘Don’t suppose she thinks she is, either.’
Clara stared at his face, intent on the traffic. ‘What, you think I’m like her? You think I’m like that? You think that every time you see me – I’m guessing it is every time, isn’t it? Yes, I thought so – you have to present me with a gift? That’s not true, Marcus. Not at all.’
He glanced at her. ‘No?’
‘No.’ Clara thought of trying on the jewels with Toby, the great laughs they’d had. Toby had gifted her with rubies, emeralds, diamonds – and most of them had been lost in the fire. Worse – far, far worse – he had been lost too.
Some things you just couldn’t replace.
She was starting to know that now. She had no family to speak of any more. She’d lost Frank, who had at least been kind to her, and Toby, who she’d loved dearly. Now, what did she have? A husband who married her as a business deal, to get her clubs and have her in his bed.
She’d listened to him talking to his mother today and thought, Yes, that’s what drives him. He had told the old witch that he’d taken over Clara’s clubs. Not strictl
y true – they were equal partners – but Clara hadn’t argued the point. And she had seen something like hope in his eyes as he’d said it. But his mother had seemed unimpressed.
I bet he’s been trying to impress her forever, thought Clara. Trying, and failing. And bringing gifts to her feet, like a dog that longs for a pat of approval from its master.
‘We were bombed out during the war. I must have been, oh, fourteen, fifteen,’ said Marcus as he drove through the traffic. ‘And the thing I remember? She didn’t look for me to see I was all right. When it was over, I found her grubbing about on her hands and knees, searching for her jewellery box among all the bricks and shit and stuff that had blown in on our fucking heads. That was all that mattered to her.’
Marcus drove into the alley beside the club’s side entrance, and Clara got out as soon as he killed the engine. She heard a ‘pop’ like a kid’s toy gun going off, and something punched into the open car door, sending a quiver of vibration up her arm.
‘What the f—’ she said in surprise, and then Marcus came barrelling around the front of the car and knocked her flat to the ground.
Another ‘pop’ and a second hole appeared in the gleaming red finish of the car door. Another one zinged off the top of the bonnet.
‘Keep down,’ said Marcus by her ear.
What else could she do? Flattened under Marcus’s weight, she could only lie there and wait for one of those bullets to find its mark. Someone was trying to shoot her. She couldn’t believe it, but it was true.
Someone was trying to kill her.
‘Crawl around the front, we’ll get to the other side and then we’ve got some better cover,’ said Marcus.
Clara was almost too scared to move, but Marcus shoved her forward and she moved around the motor’s long bonnet. Another shot dinged into the car, and she had a horrific flash of it thudding not into metal but into her body, smashing its way into her flesh, her bone, her veins, stopping her heart.
‘Oh Christ,’ she gasped as they got round the other side, in between the club door and the car. The shots were all hitting the far side, whoever was shooting at them must be up in the office building on the other side of the alley, maybe even up on the roof of that building. One of the bullets hit the front tyre, and the E-type sagged wearily.
When the club door opened, Clara nearly bolted for it in panic.
‘Wait,’ said Marcus, taking hold of her arm.
Another shot fired. Another. Then another.
‘He’ll have to reload now. Let’s go,’ he snapped, and shoved her ahead of him toward the club door.
It was the longest few steps Clara had ever taken. At any moment she expected to feel the numbing impact of a shot in her back, but none came. She was in the door, Marcus running behind her, and then it was slamming shut and the sniper had had time to reload, because two shots crashed into the closed door as they backed away from it.
‘Jesus!’ she cried out in terror, clinging on to Marcus.
‘It’s OK, it’s over,’ he said, and his face looked bleached, almost grey; she’d never seen him looking so grim.
Over? Of course it wasn’t.
Clara wiped a hand over her eyes.
Someone had just tried to put a bullet in her. She didn’t know who’d fired the gun, but she certainly knew who’d ordered it.
88
‘You want to go where?’ asked Marcus the day after the shooting. He’d been out for most of the day, not even telling her where or what he’d been up to.
‘David Bennett’s studio, I want to talk to him.’ Clara’s voice was edged with irritation. She’d been about to go out to hail a taxi, but her legs had turned to jelly at the thought of stepping out of the door. Now she was getting the third degree.
‘Someone tried to kill you yesterday,’ Marcus reminded her.
‘I know that!’ she snapped. She was trying not to think about it. Trying to carry on as normal. Only nothing felt normal any more. She was relieved that Marcus hadn’t come near her last night; on top of all that had happened, it would have been one shock to the system too many. Irritatingly, though, while there was relief, there was also this niggling feeling of so where the hell was he? With sodding Paulette?
‘And you were going to walk out the door alone?’
‘I’ll go mad, cooped up in here.’ Actually, she didn’t think she could have gone out alone. She felt limp with fear at the thought, and she hated that.
‘Better cooped up than dead,’ said Marcus.
‘So come with me. Bring the pit bulls too.’ Clara indicated the two burly men who were propping up the bar while their boss and his wife were having this conversation. ‘Let’s go mob-handed, why not?’
‘Is this important?’ asked Marcus.
Clara thought of Sal, eviscerated. Poor bloody Sal, selling her body for profit and winding up dead for her trouble. All for the entertainment of men who would snigger and wank over the images of her in those stark black-and-white shots.
For a moment Clara felt too choked to speak. Instead, she pulled a couple of the remaining photos out of her bag and showed them to him. ‘That girl there – she used to work for me. She’s dead now, murdered. So yeah, it is important.’
Marcus stared at the prints. Then he handed them back to her. ‘OK. Let’s go.’
‘Oh Christ, not you,’ said David when Clara stepped into his studio’s tiny reception area.
He was sitting at the desk, matching up negs to proof prints. There was a stack of wedding albums on one side of the desk, a pile of 8 x 6 pictures on the other. He looked impatient, annoyed.
Probably misses Bernie’s input on the grunt work, thought Clara. Well, good.
Marcus followed her in. The pit bulls stationed themselves outside the studio door.
‘Yeah, me again. Wanted to ask you something,’ said Clara.
‘What, for Chrissakes? Can’t it wait? I’m up to my arse here . . . ’ The phone started ringing and he snatched it up. ‘David Bennett Studios, can I help you?’ he asked in a completely different voice. He was silent, listening. Then he said. ‘You see, I did explain this to the bride. To your daughter, yes. It’s what’s known as anomalous reflectance. That is, the bridesmaid’s dress was lilac, but it’s come out pale blue. It’s caused by the chemicals in the printing reacting to certain dyes in the dress.’
David rolled his eyes and rubbed at his brow as the person at the other end of the phone spoke again.
‘We tried that, adjusting the colour balance, but the other bridesmaid’s dress is pink, and adding extra cyan made that too dark and also gave a pink cast to the bride’s white dress, so it was no good. It does happen, I assure—’
Marcus snatched the phone out of David’s hand and threw it back onto the cradle.
‘What did you do that for? That was the bride’s mother, now she’s going to think I put the phone down on her. Can’t this wait?’
‘No, it can’t,’ said Clara. ‘Those pictures of Sal . . . ’
‘Not this again. The police have asked me about this. Now you. I don’t know a fucking thing. I took some photos, I was paid for them. That’s all.’
Marcus stood there, looking down at David. ‘And who is this anyway?’ David demanded. ‘What’s with the goons outside? What—’
Marcus leaned over and grabbed the front of David’s collarless granddad shirt. He pulled David over the desk. Some of the albums thunked onto the floor. Marcus stared into David’s startled eyes from inches away.
‘I’m Marcus Redmayne,’ he said. ‘That’s who the fuck I am. Those are my goons outside the door. This is Clara Redmayne, my old lady. So you keep a civil tongue in your head when you speak to her. Got it?’
‘All right, keep your hair on!’ David blustered, struggling against Marcus’s grip.
Marcus shoved David back down into his chair. He sat there, winded, eyes wide, looking from Marcus to Clara and back again. Marcus stepped back, waved a hand to Clara, indicating that the floor was hers.
Clara didn’t know whether to be impressed or annoyed.
‘Those pictures,’ she said, looking down at David like he was shit on her shoe. ‘I want to know details of who you sold them to. Did someone actually commission the damned things to start with?’
‘I’ve said all this. The police gave me a caution over it. People have asked me before about taking stuff like that. I turned them down. But when I needed the cash to get started with this business . . . ’
‘Yeah, and then you forgot your high-minded scruples, I know. When did you take them?’
‘Last summer. Around June.’
Just a few months before Sal was killed, thought Clara.
‘You got off lightly, didn’t you,’ she said. ‘People can get banged up for producing pornography, David. And when it involves kids, the cons inside can get rough.’
Clara heard Marcus sigh heavily behind her. She ignored him.
‘All right, all bloody right!’ David burst out. ‘Jesus, like any of it matters any more anyway! A cellar club owner paid me to take them and he said I could sell them on afterwards, reprint them anytime I wanted because it made him look good.’
‘How the hell could it make him look good?’ asked Clara.
‘Made him look fearsome, see? Ferocious. The bastard’s built like a bull.’
‘I don’t get it,’ she said.
‘Yasta Frate set me up in business here. He’s the one who paid for the sessions. Drafted in the girls and the boys too.’
‘The children, you mean.’
‘Them, yeah.’
‘Yasta Frate,’ said Clara. ‘Haven’t I heard that name before? Who is he?’
‘He’s the guy in the photos. The West Indian.’
Something went click in Clara’s brain as she remembered what Jan had told her about Yasta Frate. He was Jan’s landlord. And he had been Sal’s, too.
