“You do look stronger today,” she said. “Much stronger. Oh, Ore. You gave us such a fright.”
He took her hand and kissed her palm. “Sorry, darling. Sorry for everything.”
“You weren’t to blame. It was Lovejoy and his, his … creature.”
Without releasing his hand, Justina pulled the visitor’s chair closer to the bed and sat.
“Who are those men?” Ore asked, breaking the short silence.
“What men?”
“The skinny guy in the uniform. He’s been hanging around in the hall outside ever since they moved me into this room. I keep seeing him when the nurses open the door. And now you’ve brought another one with you. What’s going on?”
Justina kissed Orestes’ cheek and wiped away her lipstick with a finger. He needed to shave but at that moment she didn’t care. Gently, she pulled him forward and fluffed up his pillows.
“The doctor said your concussion was very serious and they had to, what did he say? Induce a coma? Yes, that’s correct. They put you to sleep to help stop your brain from swelling. We were all sick with worry. But after the surgery they woke you and you are improving, yes?”
Ore rolled his shoulders, but kept his head still while doing so. “Stiff neck, thumping migraine, scarred head, but yes, it’s a definite improvement on being comatose.”
She leaned in and kissed him again, this time full on the lips. “Orestes Constantine, I love you dearly, but you are a silly, silly man.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“I said, I love you, Ore.”
“Yes, I love you to, darling. But the other thing? I’m silly? Why?”
Justina allowed a chuckle to bubble up and escape her lips. “I don’t know why you are silly. It must be a trait of all Greek men.”
“A joke? You’re making fun of me? Why are you happy? I’m in hospital with a broken head, we’re losing our home and business, but you’re giggling like a schoolgirl. And you still haven’t explained the men outside the door. Come on, tell me what’s been happening.”
Justina stopped smiling and leaned back to take a full view of her handsome, if battered and bruised, husband.
“How much do you remember of the day of the accident?”
Discomfort flickered over Ore’s face as he struggled to sit up straighter only to collapse back against the pillows. Sweat appeared on his forehead. “Oh, God. The gun. Those men are cops, come to arrest me for trying to buy a gun!”
“Shush, Ore,” Justina soothed, resting a hand on his shoulder. “No need to worry. It is nothing to do with the gun. Those men are here to protect us, nothing more. I’ll explain everything if you answer one question.”
Ore stopped struggling and, breathing heavily, looked into her eyes. “You want me to take a test?”
“One question only.”
“And then you’ll answer my questions?”
“I promise.”
He exhaled loudly. “Ask away, you … bully.”
She giggled.
“On the day you were injured, I signed for a registered letter and put in on the office desk. Since the attack, I’ve searched, but cannot find it. What did you do with the letter, Ore?”
He frowned, either because he couldn’t remember, or he was embarrassed about what he’d done, Justina couldn’t tell which.
“Letter? I-I can’t … Wait a minute, I remember now. I ran the bloody thing through the shredder. Lovejoy and his pressure tactics totally pissed me off.”
“Aha, I knew it,” Justina said, pointing a finger at him. “As I say, you are silly, silly man. You should always open your post.”
He gave her his, ‘little boy lost’ look. “Have a heart, love. What are you banging on about?”
“That letter contained a cheque for nearly ten thousand pounds, and you put it in the shredding machine. If that is not a silly thing to do, I cannot say what is.”
Ore’s open mouth looked ready to catch flies. “Ten grand? Who the hell would send us ten grand?”
“A very nice man called Vincent Abernathy.”
Ore lifted a hand to cover his open mouth. He wanted to catch no flies.
“Abernathy?” he said. “Hang on, was he the guy who gave me first aid?”
“Yes, Ore,” she said. “That is the very man.”
Ore closed his eyes. “Oh, God. Ten grand. I destroyed ten thousand pounds?”
“It would appear so,” Justina agreed, unable to prevent herself laughing as the recently won colour drained from her darling husband’s stunned face.
Chapter 23
Wednesday 28th October—Sir Brandon Banner-Hardy
The Corpulent Canard, Hounslow, London
Sir Brandon Banner-Hardy hid a bored yawn behind a monogrammed handkerchief. The small man wore a white jacket and trousers, blue and white striped apron, a gingham skullcap, and stood over Sir Brandon’s table, bowing and obsequious. Jordan Christie, the head chef of the Corpulent Canard, a Heston-esque figure with black horn-rimmed glasses and a gap between his front teeth, rattled on. In effect, he told them about how he’d prepared, seasoned, and ‘sphericised’ his home grown garden peas to make them look and taste like, well, garden peas.
BB tried to make it look as though he was listening intently. He was paying through the nose for the little twerp’s reputation and needed to keep the guy sweet. Sweeter than his reconstituted peas, at any rate. Plenty of restauranteurs would poach the man from under BB’s nose if he gave them half a chance.
How the diminutive prick could talk such twaddle to anyone and still keep a straight face was a complete mystery, but he did, and the normal clientele—bless their silk shirts and designer dresses—absolutely lapped it up. The same patrons also called months in advance for a reservation and didn’t baulk at paying a small fortune for the cuisine served up by the TV celeb with his three Michelin stars.
Not tonight though, oh no. Tonight was too important to allow anyone but friends, colleagues, stakeholders, and other sycophants into the restaurant. BB filled the place with his acolytes and with people he owned to make sure everything went perfectly. Nothing could go wrong in front of his latest marks, the ones he’d flown in from all over the world on leased private jets.
“…and you see the result,” Christie finished, finally ending his delivery.
BB looked down at the little green balls and the other miniature vegetables apparently dropped into his bowl from a great height. They swam in a puddle of clear liquid that could have been tap water, but was billed as fresh tomato consommé.
“A work of art,” BB said, earning another bow from the internationally renowned chef, aka, the ‘twit in the funny hat’.
“Bon appetite,” Christie said in his nasal Midland’s accent and backed away, hands clasped to his flat belly.
Could anyone ever trust a skinny chef?
BB expanded his chest, threw open his arms to the moneymen, his potential investors, and said, “Dig in, my friends. You are going to love this. I promise you.”
And if you don’t, who the fuck cares? At least you’ll have something to tell all your rich friends.
Three Japanese, two Saudis, and a Russian, picked up their silverware and started eating. All but the Russian chose the correct spoon. BB half expected the ignorant peasant to pick up the bowl and lap at the contents with his tongue. Still, good table manners meant fuck-all when your family owned most the coal mines in Kemerovo. Manners mattered even less to BB when the same family was falling over itself to invest in the London property market.
Lord above, if Ivan belched aloud and picked his nose between courses, some of the planted guests would probably do the same to make the man feel right at home. BB owned the place, he owned the crowd, and they could damn well enjoy the colourful floorshow.
He took his time over his bowl which, strangely enough tasted okay. Acceptable, but hardly worth twenty pounds a spoonful.
He looked around at all the diners in their fancy clothes, wolfing down the meals he�
�d bought for them, each reacting as though enraptured, and found it difficult not to burst out laughing. But oh no, that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. He’d hold off laughing until the funds hit his bank account.
The Corpulent Canard and the six others in the chain were not only making millions in profits, they also served as a great place to schmooze the stakeholders and the investors. An acceptable face for his empire. His dissolute father, who’d shot BB’s inheritance into his arm and forced his son to marry a chinless heiress, would have been so proud, during his occasional lucid moments. He never lived to see it though, dozy, doped-up fool.
At the end of the first course, Ivan didn’t belch or pick his nose, but wiped his mouth delicately with the Egyptian cotton napkin provided. Surprise indeed.
“Good?” BB asked, catching the eye of each special guest in turn.
They all nodded enthusiastically, adding praise in garbled English, apart from the Arabs, whose perfect diction matched his own and demonstrated the benefits of a classical education bequeathed by the former Empire. One of the Saudis had actually attended the same prep school as the next in line to the UK throne.
BB clicked his fingers and the uniformed waitresses—selected for their looks as well as their skills at delivering silver-service—swooped in to clear the bowls and the bread baskets. A second team set the table for the fish course. Christie had promised some sort of reconstructed, or deconstructed, or renovated, sushi, or sashimi, or some such. Anything to keep the Nips on side.
The fish course allowed him time to think.
In spite of the tension he’d felt boiling in his guts since learning of the carnage in the Chelsea penthouse, the food was so far, slipping down rather well. In the days since Fenella returned home with the tale of how she’d seen the result of Alfie and the gorilla’s ‘quarrel’, BB had doubled his personal close protection team. He’d also revamped his security protocols, but nothing had happened to cause any real concern. No threats, no anonymous mail or phone calls. Nothing.
Brutus, BB’s head of personal security, had geared up for a visit by the man Fenella had called an “old guy with a weird sense of humour.” But the same man who’d escorted her to the taxi and saved her blushes failed to make any contact with BB. What was his name? Carstairs? Carruthers? He couldn’t remember. Fenella couldn’t have been more vague if she’d done it deliberately. Since her mother’s ‘accidental’ overdose, the daft girl had turned from an average but compliant child into an empty-headed socialite.
Despite appearances to the contrary, it was clear the man, Carstairs—yes, that was it, Carstairs—had killed the gorilla and left Alfie Lovejoy a broken, paralysed lump. No bloody good to BB now, not from a hospital bed. The cripple couldn’t even provide a decent description of his attacker. Average height, slim build, thirty-five to fifty-five years old, dark wavy hair, and a greying beard. Could have been any one of a million men in London.
So far, the combined resources of the police and BB’s team of hired private investigators had failed to find any trace of the man, but BB could live with it. The sly bugger had done part of BB’s job for him when he wiped the building’s surveillance recordings clean and, after BB had greased a load of sticky palms, the ‘fix’ was in. The police were treating the whole incident as a drug-related lover’s tiff, and Tugboat’s death as self-defence. The Coroner’s Inquest would produce a verdict of Death by Misadventure and, given Lovejoy’s medical condition, the Crown Prosecution Service wasn’t likely to bring the case to court. Best of all, Fenella’s presence at the scene would remain a secret.
BB forked another morsel of fish into his mouth. It tasted like salt-cured cod. Nice, but hardly the reinvention of century promised on the menu.
As for Lovejoy, Brutus would ensure he kept his mouth shut in return for the round-the-clock medical care he needed—at least until the fuss died down. After that, the cripple would meet with an unfortunate accident. Easy enough to arrange. At some stage in the not too distant future, the useless fuck would probably roll his wheelchair down a flight of stairs. Poor unfortunate fellow.
It wasn’t as though Lovejoy’s loss mattered a damn. Irrespective of his aspirations, the piece of low-life slime would never have amounted to much inside the company. By snapping his fingers, BB could find a hundred men to fill Lovejoy’s place. On top of everything else, Fenella was better off without the prick leading her astray.
BB snorted. Lovejoy actually thought his liaisons with Fenella had gone unnoticed. Just went to show how deluded the man actually was. Lovejoy’s departure was no great loss to the firm.
All in all, it had turned into the perfect outcome for BHCL and BB’s other business interests.
As for the elusive Carstairs, BB had no idea of the man’s true motives for the attack in the penthouse. More than likely, Lovejoy had pissed all over some other lowlife’s flowerbed. Probably some sort of turf war, or an actual drug deal gone wrong. Like as not, Lovejoy had tried to branch out on his own little side business.
Moron. Good riddance.
Although employing people from the lower echelons had some merit—they worked for peanuts and weren’t averse to getting their hands grubby—they were not the most reliable of creatures.
BB mopped his plate with the handmade bread provided and surveyed the room, mentally washing his hands of the bothersome and unpleasant penthouse incident.
He soaked in the atmosphere and smiled at his vacuous, but well-heeled guests. Inwardly, he smirked. One way or another, he owned them all, every last one of them. Altogether, he counted three senior police officers, a junior government minister, half a dozen MPs, and dozens of local authority councillors and planning officers and their ‘significant others’. All in his hip pocket, either bought or coerced into submission. In general, things looked good, but BB was nothing if not cautious.
In the wake of Lovejoy’s demise, and to lower any potential media exposure, he’d placed a moratorium on pressuring the Greek family, but time was growing short. While work on the upper floors of Hardwicke Row was progressing nicely, he’d been forced to put the street level refurb and the Bistro extension on hold, which was causing a bottleneck. The contractors were charging by the day and the excess charges had started eating into his bottom line.
Time to push ahead with the programme, and that meant sending in the bully boys to clear the Constantine-shaped logjam. But first, he needed to raise the capital for his next great project, the Thames Estuary Development. After all, the greatest businessmen never risked their own money.
The ‘twit in the funny hat’ surpassed himself with the main course. It arrived on silver platters to rapturous and spontaneous applause from the whole room. For each table, he’d created a representation of the London skyline in food, with some sort of grey-brown gelatinous slime representing the Thames. Christ knew what the London Eye was made of, but the flashes of light shining through the windows in the houses of Parliament had to be pure edible gold.
The meal was costing him an absolute fortune, but the investment would be worth it to lock in the venture funding and, judging by expressions on his investors’ faces, the contracts were all but signed.
He allowed a self-congratulatory smile to form, but before BB could instruct the waitresses to start serving, the heavy velvet curtains in the far corner of the room billowed. Seconds later, a man he didn’t recognise entered dining area. He stood near the curtain, rubbernecking the place like a goddamned tourist. Neatly trimmed grey beard, long grey hair tied back in a loose ponytail, and bespectacled, he looked like a street poet or an academic in his shiny suit.
Clearly a hick on a once-in-a-lifetime visit to see how the other half ate, the Professor must have arrived on the ridiculous off-chance of finding a cancellation.
Pathetic creature.
BB tipped a nod to Brutus, but, as usual, the big man was way ahead of him. He spoke into his wrist mic like a real-life Secret Service agent, and two dark-suited men materialised in the reception area
. They spoke quietly, checked the newcomer’s identity, and waved a sleek-looking metal detector over him.
The Professor smiled at the attention and probably assumed it de rigueur for anyone visiting such a high-value establishment. If the bodyguard insisted on it, the ignorant rube would probably have allowed a public cavity search just for the chance to dine in one to the world’s most exclusive eateries.
BB snorted at the ridiculous image running through his head.
After the electronic search, the Professor said something to Brutus’ men, and pointed to the main door. Whatever he said must have satisfied their curiosity. The security guards exchanged looks, and one spoke into his wrist mic.
“Brutus, what’s happening?” BB asked, hiding his mouth behind his napkin.
The head of security pressed the jack harder into his ear and listened before answering. “Apparently, this is a surprise presentation. It seems that Lady Fenella arranged it before her … sabbatical.”
Brutus nodded, and the men next to the Professor disappeared behind the curtains.
“Did she clear it with you first?” BB asked.
Brutus scowled and shook his clean-shaven head. “No, Sir Brandon. You know what she is like.”
BB sighed. “I do indeed. The girl never could follow instructions. Just make sure your men are awake.”
“Yes, Sir Brandon. They are.”
“I don’t see anyone. Where are they?”
Brutus, eyes locked on the Professor, raised his wrist and pressed the earpiece again. “Alpha teams, report in.”
He listened for a few moments.
“Beta teams, report.”
Another pause.
“They are all in position and fully aware of the new arrival. We are secure, Sir Brandon.”
“But where are they, man?”
“Out of sight. I did not want an overt display of strength to upset your guests. Alpha teams are inside the building, Beta teams are outside, front and back. I have one man in the kitchen, one on each of the exits, and those two at reception. I have also two men on the street in front, and another two in the rear car park. As I said, Sir Brandon, this place is locked down safe and we are all good. In my opinion, you can enjoy your meal and the floorshow.”
Ryan Kaine: On the Defensive: Book Three in the Ryan Kaine Action Thriller Series Page 20
