Sod it. I was too tired to cope with the semantics of right and wrong. I finally felt myself sliding into blackness and wondering why I hadn’t managed to get Jane’s phone number.
When I woke up, the electronic twins were playing their virtual reality game dressed in pants, T-shirts and little else. They were oblivious to my presence, wrapped in their helmets which were issuing high-pitched noises like a swarm of angry bees. Beyond the noise I thought I heard Marcus cursing from the kitchen about some idle bastard not doing the bastarding washing-up.
I joined him, rubbing my cheeks to get back some feeling of normality. It felt a little like the aftermath of a visit to the dentist, and I wondered if the drink had been spiked or if I’d been sleeping on my face. Whatever, I felt like death on a plate and managed to point at the coffee jar in his hand and raise two fingers to indicate my need for something spoon-floatingly strong.
‘I’ll have some of that,’ I confirmed, just to check my mouth was still in working order. ‘What’s up? You sound cross.’
‘Cross? I’m bloody furious,’ he muttered angrily, and yawned at the ceiling, showing me his teeth and a furred-up tongue. He looked even worse than I felt, with an unhealthy pallor which wouldn’t have been out of place in a mortician’s.
‘Why? Didn’t you have a good time last night?’
‘No, I bloody didn’t. It was a wash out. Tess didn’t turn up and Basher was seriously pissed. And I mean seriously. He was looking for a fight when I left, the bloody maniac.’
Tess? Basher? Who they?
Tess, it turned out, was a girl Marcus had been hoping to see at the party. She’d said she would probably drop by, but in the end hadn’t. He’d been keen to get to know her for months, he said, but was fast coming round to the idea that she didn’t share the feeling.
‘You should have taken her in the first place,’ I said, suddenly the old experienced hand at this party business. ‘No wonder she’s a bit cool, you taking your brother instead of her.’
He shook his head and poured our coffee. ‘Yeah, well, it’s not that simple. She’s kind of involved.’ He looked quickly at me. ‘I don’t mean married – but she has a bloke. Nice guy, too.’ He looked gutted by his own sense of dubious chivalry.
Great. First Susan, then me – now Marcus. It must run in the family. Condemned by our genes to be unfaithful or to bring it about in others. Like the Borgias, only engaging in secretive sex rather than cruelty.
‘So what about this Basher, then?’ I said, changing the subject. ‘Who is he?’
Marcus instantly forgot about the involved and untouchable Tess and looked up at the ceiling with an expression of despair. ‘His name’s John Lyons but everyone calls him Basher. Christ, it was seriously uncool,’ he said, his voice dropping to a whisper, as if he was in awe of this mysterious person. ‘It was his party, see. He was the bloke I was talking to in the front room – the one who looks like a prop forward.’
‘The cash-rich investor you mentioned?’
‘That’s him.’
‘I remember.’ I did, too. Thick-set, dressed in a rugby shirt with an upturned collar and looking as if he’d run into the goalposts several times too often. Christ, what was wrong with calling each other John or Peter or Christian or whatever? All that palaver at the font was a waste, otherwise.
‘Well, when he holds a party it seems he likes throwing himself into the fun with the lads. The party’s for business, right, but he’s all for leaving that for later. Anyway, the trouble was, while he was getting off his face with the rest of us, he discovered someone had been upstairs shtupping his wife.’
‘Shtupping?’ That was a new one. My vocabulary was widening by the day. Much more of this kind of exposure and I’d be able to mingle down there with da kids big time.
‘Yeah. Sleeping with… as in sex. Can you believe it – in his own house!’ Marcus looked truly shocked, as if the mysterious shtupper had transgressed some deeply sacred law of hospitality whereby visitors to one’s house simply did not partake of one’s hospitality and wife all in the same spirit of freedom.
On the other hand, put like that, it did sound pretty low-level. A bit like helping yourself to a slug from someone else’s wine glass.
‘How did he find out?’ I asked, and forced down a mouthful of coffee. It was thick as tar and just as bitter, and personally, I’d already lost interest in the psychotic Basher, and badly wanted to go somewhere to throw up. It had been a long time since I’d drunk enough to make me feel this bad, and I wondered how many glasses of wine I’d knocked back without realising while under the spell of the languorous and incredibly sexy Jane.
‘Someone saw his wife dragging some bloke upstairs and disappearing into a bedroom.’
‘Bloody cheek,’ I said, barely able to stop myself making a snide comment about how it would never have happened in my day. It would have been a lie in any case, because it would and frequently did. ‘You just can’t believe some people, can you?’
To my surprise, Marcus looked sideways at me, giving the impression of a leer. Now we were all lads together again. ‘Right. Not that I blame him, the lucky bastard. You should see Basher’s wife; she’s seriously hot. Some of the guys said she likes putting it about behind Basher’s back, but I thought it was all talk. I mean, Basher’s running a serious business and all that, but they say he’s not the sort of bloke to mess with. He comes from somewhere out beyond the Mile End Road and knows a lot of people.’ He gave me a kind of knowing look and a nod as if that was supposed to mean something.
‘Goodness,’ I obliged. ‘Beyond the sound of Bow bells? He must be a rough customer.’
‘Huh? Oh. Right. Anyway, if he catches this bloke, they reckon he’ll bury him in pieces somewhere in Hackney Marshes. Some say it wouldn’t be the first.’
I sighed and decided Marcus’s feverish imagination had got the better of him. Or maybe this Basher character thought being considered a bit of a gangster was good for business. What a moron.
‘Mind you,’ Marcus continued with an unhealthy snigger, ‘between you and me, I’m not sure I’d say no if Jane asked me, you know?’
Jane? Did he say Jane?
Images of a sensuous body in – but mostly out of – a green dress floated across the front of my mind, followed by the not unwelcome memory of her naked shape thrusting energetically and sinuously beneath me on the guest bed. At least it explained how she knew her way around the house.
Oh, Christ on a skateboard. What have I done?
‘Would I have seen this lady around the house, do you think?’
‘You must have – unless you were already blind drunk. She was wearing a green silk dress. It didn’t leave much to the imagination, either. She’s a bit of a show-off, I hear.’
‘Right,’ I murmured as casually as I could muster, my stomach going into a nosedive. ‘I think I saw her. Ginger-ish hair? Pretty?’
He pretended to look shocked. ‘You noticed? Hey, I hope you weren’t the guilty party, were you?’ Then he sniggered as if that was beyond believable and waved an apologetic hand. ‘Sorry – just kidding.’
Fortunately, before he saw the look of guilt which must have stitched itself across my face, his phone rang and he went off to answer it. It left me time to compose myself and try to come to terms with what I’d gone through in the space of a few hectic days. Separated, locked out, locked up, financially and socially-ostracised and now the unwitting cuckoo in another man’s nest. If I’d been reading about it in the Daily Mirror, I’d have been shocked and dismayed by my unseemly behaviour. All I could do right now was wonder if the name Basher was an honorary title or whether he was really as violent as Marcus thought. I told myself if he ever did find out who his wife had been dallying with I could simply deny it. After all, Marcus clearly thought I was way past such a thing.
‘It’s Hugo,’ said Marcus, handing me the phone. ‘He’s got news.’
I took the phone, glad of the distraction. ‘Hugo?’
‘
Ah. Jake, old boy,’ he boomed. Juliette must have allowed him back into the marital bedroom with all his tackle in one piece. ‘Marcus sounds terrible. Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine. Hasn’t found hair of the dog yet.’
‘Ah. What it is to be young, eh? Mind you, you don’t sound too chirpy yourself, old sport. Rough night, was it?’
‘A quiet night in, actually,’ I lied. ‘Thinking about my future, that’s all.’ Or lack of one, I might have added. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Want a job?’
‘Of course. Where and what?’ I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil off a side table. A job away from there was sounding more attractive by the minute. The further away the better. With large angry men in rugby shirts and venal lawyers driven by Susan’s need for a quick kill, my survival chances were beginning to seem equal to those of a blind, three-legged wildebeest on the Serengeti.
He gave me a name, address and phone number and said, ‘Give this chap a call soonest. Charles says he’s got just the job for a well-travelled man with a clean passport. Cash in hand and you’re as free as a bird to select your own timetable. Suit you?’
‘More than you know,’ I breathed fervently. It sounded like freedom. Freedom I could manage. And something on which to focus other than destitution and dismemberment.
‘Good.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘Don’t you want to know what it involves?’
‘Not really. As long as there’s some travel and I get paid in real money.’
‘Oh, there’s travel. Lots of it, if I know Red.’
‘Red?’
‘Charles’ nickname at school. Better not let on I told you, though. He gets a bit sensitive about it.’ He sounded slightly sombre at that and I wondered briefly what he was getting me into. On the other hand, Hugo was the least adventurous person I knew. Anything out of the ordinary run of commercial practice would have given him kittens. Even travelling on the Circle Line was something he regarded as an extreme sport. Evidently, this wasn’t far enough off the wall to prevent him passing it on to me.
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’
‘Good stuff, old chap. By the way, I’d hold on to that severance cheque if I were you. I could get someone to cash it, but you’d lose too much on the trade. Who knows, if Susan comes round, you might get to keep some of it. Behave yourself, won’t you?’
‘Too late for that,’ I told him. ‘And Hugo – thank you.’
I skipped breakfast with Marcus, mainly because he kept going on about the mysterious man at Basher’s, and how he was sure he’d end up propping up a motorway flyover if he was ever identified. The idea seemed to give him some sort of perverse delight, and I wondered what he would say if he knew it could be me taking a dive into an East London cement mixer.
‘You make it sound as if this Jane woman didn’t actually have anything to do with it,’ I put in, feeling a little peeved. ‘It takes two to tango, you know. She must have been a willing party.’
‘I know. But that’s not going to help the guilty fella.’
‘How come?’
‘It’s what one of Basher’s mates said – right before Basher chucked him through the front window.’
FIFTEEN
I took out the piece of paper with the details Hugo had given me. Charles Clayton, it read, and a phone number. The address was in Mayfair.
I rang the number and a voice remarkably similar to Hugo’s answered: just as posh and with a definite vein of authority running through it. ‘Clayton.’
‘Jake Foreman,’ I said. ‘Hugo said to–’
‘Yes,’ he interrupted briskly. ‘Come and see me. One hour.’ The phone went dead so suddenly it left me wondering if the man on the other end had fallen off his chair.
I trailed slowly across town, stopping for coffee on the way to kill time and mull over the events of the last few days. I enjoyed the coffee but the mulling was fruitless; all it got me was a new level of depression. I eventually arrived outside a Georgian townhouse with black, wrought-iron railings lining marble steps up to a glossy, black door. An entry-phone at head height bore the initials ‘CJ’. Nothing else.
I pressed the button and heard the door buzz, then click open. I was puzzled until I noticed the cold eye of a camera pointing down at me. Clayton evidently took his security seriously.
Inside was a run of deep-pile carpet leading up to an antique desk, behind which sat a man who, apart from his natty pinstriped suit, would have looked more at home on a building site. His face was broad and craggy, topped by a severe brush-cut, and he was staring at a computer screen on the desk before him with his meat-like hands resting on the keyboard.
‘Go right through,’ he said without looking up, and gestured towards a door behind him.
As I passed, I saw the computer screen held a frozen image of myself on the doorstep, and alongside, another image in pale greys showing the jumbled silhouettes of keys and coins in my jacket pocket. Curiouser and curiouser.
I knocked on the door and stepped inside a luxurious office decked out with shelves of books, glass display cases full of silver ornaments and a large desk. I got the impression of quiet good taste backed up by solid money.
Behind the desk sat a good-looking man in his mid-forties wearing a dark blue suit and striped shirt. He pressed a button on a console and ordered coffee, and pointed to a button chair in front of the desk. He didn’t offer to shake hands.
‘Hugo tells me you’ve run into a spot of bother, job-wise,’ he said, tapping a slender brass paperknife on the edge of his desk. His cuffs were brilliant white and starched, and his fingernails looked as though they had been expertly manicured. It made me feel as if I’d spent the night sleeping rough in Hyde Park.
‘Redundancy,’ I replied. There is something deeply personal about confessing to another man – an evidently successful man like Charles Clayton, especially – that you are no longer employed, that you have no place on a career ladder and see no immediate sign of regaining it. It was like admitting to your mother that you’d taken up some deviant sexual practice. Not that I’d ever done that.
‘Tough shout,’ he commented sympathetically. ‘Happens all the time, Jake, believe me. Lots of people working for me have been in the same boat. Military people, mostly, like myself. But it’s all the same in the end. A job’s a job.’
A few seconds ticked by, during which he seemed to have fastened on another point in time altogether. Then the door opened and the large minder from out front appeared with a tray holding two tiny china cups of coffee, with sugar and cream.
I waited until the man had closed the door, then asked Clayton what the nature of the job might be.
‘I run a multi-level security consultancy,’ he explained, slowly stirring his coffee with a solid silver spoon. ‘One of the levels is a courier service. Small packets, envelopes, that sort of thing – always within hand luggage size and usually one item at a time.’ He smiled genially. ‘It’s a high cost-per-item delivered, but our clients demand the best. We provide it.’
It sounded simple enough. Too simple, in fact. It reminded me of the packages I’d delivered for HP&P which had reeked of illegality. A small worm of concern began to move in my gut. But only a small one. However, I had to ask the obvious question.
‘Why send them by hand? Why not by post or FedEx?’
He looked as if he’d been expecting it. ‘Because they’re high-value items. Too much to leave in the hands of normal services. They’re often time-sensitive, too, and need to be delivered when the client says so – not before and not after. And certainly not when Federal Express or UPS happen to have one of their little vans in the area. Problem?’
‘As long as it’s not drugs,’ I said, recalling a line from a film. It seemed a sensible if slightly dramatic thing to say. ‘I don’t carry drugs.’
‘I should bloody hope not, otherwise you won’t be working for me.’ He fixed me with a cool stare. ‘I need absolute reliability, punctuality and self-discipline. Ordin
arily, the kind of people meeting those criteria come from a military background, but Hugo assures me you can match them. He rates you very highly. What did you do for your previous employers, incidentally?’
I’d been thinking about how much I could tell him on the way over. With Dunckley’s warning still fresh in mind, I knew the full truth would be too risky. But at the same time, I guessed this man would soon pick up on anything less than fact. So I met him halfway, giving him a vague rundown of where I’d spent the years travelling to and from, the sort of people I’d been dealing with at both ends of the line, but little in the way of real detail. He raised his eyebrows once or twice, but said little until I wound up.
He nodded a few times, which meant he either believed me or knew more than he was letting on about my previous work. Hugo, no doubt.
‘Excellent,’ he said finally. ‘You’ve managed to tell me almost nothing about your former employers, which is fine. I do know a little bit about HP&P already, in any case.’ He moved a slim manila envelope around on his desk. ‘They’re not people with whom I would ever do business… they or their new owners. You should consider yourself fortunate to have been let go.’
That was pretty blunt, and the look he gave me made the hairs on my neck move.
‘What do you mean?’ Whatever it was it sounded unpleasant, and confirmed my worst fears.
‘They have a reputation, that’s all I’ll say. As for your boss Dunckley, as unimpressive as his appearance might be, he’s particularly bad news. I’d advise you to give him a very wide berth, no matter how badly you feel about your… circumstances. You wouldn’t come out of it well, believe me.’
Smart Moves Page 10
