by Peter May
Lee, for all that he had consumed, seemed quite sober. He sat down at a shiny, glass-topped table, and started cutting lines of coke through the reflections. “Join me,” he said.
I glanced at Ruairidh. This really was not something I wanted to do. But I could see from his eyes that he didn’t want us to refuse.
Lee seemed oblivious. “I love this shit,” he said. “I don’t think I could get through these shows without it.” He looked up, that infectious grin of his spread across his face. “And I love you guys. I couldn’t have done this without Ranish. It was just perfect.” He took out and rolled up a £20 note and hoovered a line of coke into his right nostril. Then he passed the note to Ruairidh. “I’ll let you into a little secret.” He leaned in, something intimate in his demeanour. “I’m to be the new head designer at Givenchy. They’re going to announce it next month.”
“Wow! Congratulations,” Ruairidh said, with less enthusiasm than perhaps Lee expected. I think he was distracted by the knowledge that he was expected to snort the next line of coke. I watched as he drew the white powder into his nostril, and nearly choked on it. As he handed me the £20 note I could see in his eyes that the elation had already kicked in.
I didn’t want to do it. But I knew it was what Lee wanted. A celebration of the news he had just broken. An intimation that we were special to him. And for the first and last time in my life I snorted cocaine. I felt it choking and burning in my nasal passages and throat, before suddenly I was floating on a cloud of euphoric self-esteem, and wanted to hug and hold this funny, buck-toothed, talented gay man and never let him go. Even though right then, in that moment of cocaine clarity, I understood for the first time that Lee Blunt was entirely and only about power, control and ego.
The reviews were peerless. Lee’s catwalk rendition of the Highland Clearances was the highlight of British Fashion Week. It received reams of coverage in the fashion pages of all the dailies, and photo features in the magazines and weekend supplements. Ranish Tweed went viral. Suddenly our phone never stopped ringing. Everyone wanted a piece of the cloth phenomenon that was Ranish.
Those Savile Row tailors who had been polite but lukewarm when I went cold-calling were now calling me, asking for appointments, flying up to the island to select their patterns and place their orders. Those contacts I had made in Japan were submitting orders, without a karaoke bar in sight.
It was more work than we could cope with. We were forced to take on half a dozen more weavers, and cut an exclusive deal with the mill at Shawbost to finish our product. And although I wasn’t happy about it, Mrs. Macfarlane employed my old childhood friend Seonag Morrison to keep the accounts and run the office, which at that time was still in the front room of our house.
Seonag had graduated from a course in business and computer studies in Manchester, before getting herself married, and then pregnant. And with her kids just recently started school, she was now back on the job market. Relations between us had cooled off in our late teens, and I would have preferred someone else, but I couldn’t argue about her qualifications for the job.
In spite of the orders now rolling in, we continued to have a major cashflow problem, which wasn’t going to sort itself out until we started completing and delivering. It was Seonag who alerted us to the fact that although it was now nearly three months since we had supplied our tweed to Lee, he had still not paid. She had noticed the unpaid invoice and thought it was probably an oversight, so had issued a reminder. Still no payment. Then she had tried phoning Lee’s fledgling company in London, but nobody would take her call.
So Ruairidh called Lee on his mobile. He made no mention of the unpaid bill, but told him that we would be in London next week, and that maybe we could meet up for a drink. Lee suggested the pub in Shoreditch where we had all got drunk together after the show.
Ruairidh and I were both unaccountably nervous when we got the tube out east to keep our rendezvous with him. And before we went into the pub Ruairidh said to me, “Don’t you say anything about the money. Just keep him sweet. I’ll do the talking.”
Lee was with a group of friends. A black guy who we had met before and went by the odd moniker of Cornell Charles Stamoran. Cornell wore bumsters and a pork pie hat and was chatting to a couple of strangely theatrical young men who looked as if they had stepped straight from the pages of an Evelyn Waugh novel. They had clearly been drinking for some time, and Lee greeted us with sloppy kisses, and over-enthusiastic hugs that nearly had all three of us on the floor. On the wave of a hand from Lee, Cornell ordered drinks for everyone.
Lee was loquacious, slurred words tumbling from his mouth so quickly they were tripping over each other on the way out, and I knew that he had been consuming much more than just alcohol.
“Day after tomorrow,” he said. “The Givenchy announcement. Off to Paris to sign the contracts and then a press conference. Gonna be amazing!” He put his arms around me and very nearly crushed me. “Hear things are going great for you up there, darling. You so deserve it, you guys, so deserve it.”
Ruairidh sipped on his beer and said, “Yeah, lots of orders coming in. Which is great. But we’re still a young company, Lee, no capital behind us and a real cashflow problem. It would seriously help us out if you could settle up for the cloth we supplied for the show.”
Like a fist beyond your peripheral vision that you never saw coming, Lee’s mood changed. “What the fuck? You want fucking money from me? You want money? You’re kidding me, right? I put your fucking cloth in the limelight, I make it world-famous. And you want me to pay for it?” He stabbed a finger into Ruairidh’s chest. “Do you have any idea how much it costs to put on a runway show? Do you? Do you? No you fucking don’t. I have to beg, borrow and steal every fucking penny for it. Cos no other fucker’s going to pay.” He waved his hand in the air, spittle gathering on his lips. “Not until I’m on the payroll at Givenchy. Every fucking farthing’s coming out of my own pocket.”
I tried to be reasonable. “Lee, come on. That order used up all our resources. Buying the yarn. Paying the weavers. Paying the mill.”
He turned on me. His face ugly now. “And you’re getting your reward for it now, bitch, aren’t you?” I don’t know what he was thinking, but his hand came up to my neck, closing around it as if he intended to choke me. In fact there was no pressure in his fingers. They were caressing more than choking. But it was enough to send Ruairidh off the deep end. He lunged at Lee, pushing him back against the bar. Drink and glasses went flying. But for a man so clearly under the influence of alcohol and drugs, Lee’s reactions were swift and unexpected. A fist flew into Ruairidh’s face and sent him crashing backwards over a table. I could hear my own voice screaming above others raised in anger and protest.
Ruairidh was on his feet quickly, blood pouring from his nose, and he hurled himself at Lee. Both men staggered backwards until they fell together to the floor, Ruairidh on top, each trying to punch the other, but too close to land blows of any account.
Cornell tried to pull Ruairidh off and his hat went flying. The Evelyn Waugh boys shrank back into the crowd of drinkers which had gathered quickly around the fight.
I was screaming over and over, “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” It was like a playground scrap between two twelve-year-olds. As Lee got to his knees Ruairidh landed a blow full in his gut and vomit exploded from Lee’s mouth all over the floor.
Then loud male voices cut above the uproar. Two large uniformed policemen dragged the brawlers apart and hauled them both to their feet. A huge, shaven-headed barman slammed a baseball bat on to the counter top and bellowed, “You’re barred!”
Everything had happened so quickly, blown up from nowhere to flat-out warfare, that there had been no time for thinking. For considered, rational responses.
Now, after hours to dwell on events in a featureless interview room in Shoreditch police station, Ruairidh was still seething, but silent. At first I had wept, but the time for tears was long past. All I felt now was anger and r
egret.
It turned out that the police station in Shepherdess Walk was just a stone’s throw from the pub where we had been drinking, which is why police had arrived on the scene so quickly. We had been separated from Lee and the rest, and statements taken. After which we had been left to stew for what seemed an interminable length of time.
The light outside was starting to fade in the late afternoon when a shirtsleeved sergeant opened the door and nodded his head towards the exterior. “Okay, you two, hop it.”
I rose uncertainly. “You mean we can go?”
“Yes, go. As in depart. Leave.”
“But . . . what’s happening? Are we being charged?”
“Nope.” The big sergeant looked less than happy about it. “Mr. Blunt has already made reparations to the landlord of the pub. No one’s pressing any charges. Though I’d like to throw you all in a cell somewhere for wasting our bloody time.” He jerked his head again over his shoulder. “Go on, go!” Money, it appeared, could fix almost anything.
Outside we walked down the steps straight into a crowd of reporters and photographers. Flashes popped in the gloom of the dying day. There was no sign of Lee or his friends. Only a clamour of voices punctuated by the flashing of the cameras.
“What happened, mate?”
“Who hit who?”
“Where’s Blunt?”
“What started the fight?”
I wanted just to go, to push past them without a word and find a taxi at the road end. But Ruairidh was still eaten up by his anger, face bruised and bloody. He was determined to have his say. “We’re just a young company from the Scottish islands,” he said. “Ranish Tweed. Trying to make a living. We very nearly bankrupted ourselves supplying Lee Blunt with the cloth he wanted for his Clearances runway show. And now he won’t pay us for it. The man who’s going to be the next head designer at Givenchy!”
I drew breath involuntarily. This hadn’t even been announced yet. Pens scribbled in the dying light. But Ruairidh wasn’t finished.
“A bloody millionaire. So tanked up on coke and vodka that when we ask him for our money, he attacks us. His hands round my wife’s throat.”
One of the reporters said, “When you say coke you mean cocaine?”
“Yes. And God knows what else.” Ruairidh snorted. “The bastard’s happy enough to pay for the damage done to the pub, but he still won’t pay us.”
The tabloids were full of it the next day. Front-page headlines. About the fight in the pub, Ruairidh’s rant outside the police station. One photograph of his bloodied face was captioned, Lee Blunt’s own version of the Highland Clearances. Even the broadsheets carried the story, and the consequences of it all followed swiftly. Givenchy, the day after, announced a young Italian designer as their new in-house head of design. No mention was made of Lee. And it was clear that the couture giant wanted nothing to do with the violent, drug-crazed British designer, as one lurid headline had labelled him.
It was the end of a short, sweet relationship, and Lee Blunt’s path and ours never crossed again.
Until now.
CHAPTER TEN
Niamh was looking at herself in the mirror, barely able to recognize the pale waif who stared back at her with bloodshot, shadowed eyes, when the knock came at the door. Her hair was still wet from the shower, and hanging in corkscrews around her face. It was not a face she wanted to present to the world, but the damage was done, and it would be a long time in repair.
She had no idea what to expect when she opened the door, heart hammering in a kind of dread anticipation. Lee stood there in the gloom of the hallway, and she was still surprised by how tall he was. He had put on weight. There was grey now in his hair, which to his credit he was not trying to hide. The suggestion of a goatee which had played around his jaw when they first met had developed into a full-grown beard, perhaps to disguise a burgeoning double chin. He was, for Lee, very conservatively dressed. A three-piece suit, white shirt, dark tie. Perhaps he had felt it more appropriate given the circumstances.
He stepped into the room without invitation and wrapped his arms around her. “Oh, my darling Niamh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And to her embarrassment, unexpected tears bubbled up like water in a hot spring, and he held her even more tightly as she sobbed in his embrace.
He took her hand then and led her to the bed, where they sat together on the edge of it, side by side. She wiped away the tears with the flat of her hand. It was all so ironic somehow that Lee should be the first to offer his condolences.
He said, “I read all about it in the papers when I flew in this morning. I saw a piece on the TV news last night about the explosion in the square, but I had no idea then that it was Ruairidh.” He squeezed her hand and put his other arm around her. “I just had to come over. You know how I always felt about you, Niamh. You and me, we had something very special.”
They sat in silence for some moments. Niamh had no idea what to say.
“I . . . I just wanted to say how sorry I am for what happened back in the day,” Lee finally blurted. “We were so young. And stupid.” He shook his head. “I should have made it up to you a long time ago.” He paused. “As it turned out, Ruairidh did me a favour. If I’d got that job with Givenchy it would have been like strapping myself into a straitjacket. As it was, I put all my energies into my own company, which I probably wouldn’t have done. And the Blunt brand wouldn’t have been what it is today. In a way, I’ve got Ruairidh to thank for all that.” She was staring into her lap, but aware of his head turning towards her. “What happened?”
She shrugged listlessly. “Someone wanted him dead. Probably both of them. The police think it’s murder.”
There was shock in Lee’s voice. “But why?”
“Apparently they were having an affair.”
Now astonishment. “Ruairidh and Irina?”
She nodded.
“I can’t believe it. Why on earth would Ruairidh choose that little Russian mouse over you? It’s not possible.”
“The police think that Irina’s husband, Georgy, probably planted the bomb. An act of jealous revenge.”
“They’ve got him for it?”
She shook her head. “No. He’s gone missing.”
“Oh, my darling.” He put both arms around her again. “My poor, poor darling. This is so horrible for you. And I still can’t believe it. What was Ruairidh thinking? If you were mine I would never have let you go.”
From the depths of her wretchedness, Niamh somehow managed to find a smile. “I think, Lee, if I were to be yours I’d need something a little more between my legs.”
Which elicited a roar of laughter. “Oh. My. God. Niamh. you are . . .” He shook his head. “Impossible. I’m lost for words.” He stood up, suddenly, still holding her hand. “Let me take you home. I’ve got an executive rental jet at Orly. I can fly you back to the island.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not allowed to leave Paris.”
Frown lines carved themselves deeply between his eyes. “Why?”
She sighed. “The investigation is ongoing. At first they thought I might have done it. And I might still be a suspect.”
“Well, that’s just ridiculous. Anyone who knows you, knows you couldn’t possibly have done such a thing.”
She looked up at him. “Really? Who knows what anyone is capable of in the right, or wrong, circumstances?” Her eyes turned down again. “And, anyway, I can’t leave without Ruairidh.”
His frown deepened. “Ruairidh?” Then it dawned on him, and his face dissolved into sympathy. “Oh, yes. Of course.” He hesitated awkwardly. “How long will they keep him?”
She shook her head, fighting the urge to weep again. “God knows. I suppose there are things they have to do. A post-mortem. Lab testing. DNA.” She didn’t even want to think about it.
“Well,” he said. And he took her other hand and pulled her to her feet. “You might not be allowed to leave Paris, but you certa
inly don’t have to be stuck here in some awful hotel room. I’m going to take you out on the town. Anywhere you want to go. Anywhere you’d like to eat.”
She breathed her despondency at him. “I don’t think I want to go anywhere or eat anything ever again, Lee.”
“Oh nonsense. Dwelling on it all is only going to make it worse. The first thing we need to do is take your mind off things. And I’m the very one to do that.”
She shook her head. “No, I couldn’t, Lee. I can’t.”
“Nonsense! I’ve got a car waiting downstairs. Put a face on. I’m taking you out of here.”
It was early evening by the time Lee returned Niamh to her hotel. The square had reopened now, she noticed, windows in the Café Fluctuat Nec Mergitur had been replaced and the tables set out around it were full of young people sipping at pre-dinner aperitifs. A kind of defiant return to normality. It took no time, it seemed, for new skin to grow over fresh wounds, even if those wounds still ran deep beneath the surface. On the face of it, nothing had happened the night before. Parisian nightlife continued as it always does. Only the line of police vehicles and the armed officers who stood around in groups, still smoking, betrayed the nervousness of a city that had seen too many of its citizens violently murdered in these last few years.
The only thing that had changed from this same time the previous evening was that two people were dead. They would never play a part in the return to normalcy. Neither would Niamh. Her world could never be the same again.
Lee’s driver dropped her off at the door of the Crowne Plaza. Lee kissed her and hugged her goodbye on the back seat and promised to call very soon. She slipped out into the warm evening air and made her way stiffly towards her own reflection. It divided in front of her to let her through and into the lobby.
