by Angela Dyson
With a theatrical bow and smiling beatifically, she flourished the car keys in my face. “I got them darlings.”
We hugged her ecstatically, besieging her with questions and demands as to how she’d managed it.
“No,” she laughingly shrugged us off. “Come on, let’s go home. I think what we most need now is a drink. I’ll tell you all about it when we get back.”
Fifteen minutes later we were lounging in her sitting room, Flan and I with large glasses of Merlot and Mr. H. with a hefty tumbler of whiskey.
“After what we’ve been through tonight, a drop of the hard stuff is required,” he grunted taking a generous swallow. “Now, Flan my dear, do please tell us…”
“Yes,” I interrupted having already downed half my wine. “How the hell did you manage it?”
“It was simple really,” Flan returned airily. “When he answered the door I apologised for disturbing him but explained that I was taking my evening constitutional later than usual and had suddenly come over quite faint.” Her voice dropped to a tremulous register. “If I could just trouble you for a glass of water young man?” she mimicked, sounding very Miss Havisham. “He asked if I wanted him to call someone or could he get me a cab but I said no, I just needed to sit down a moment and catch my breath.”
“And he bought it?” I asked incredulously.
She looked hurt. “Darling, why shouldn’t he?” her eyes twinkled dangerously. “And you know I really am frightfully good at this sort of thing; I’ve told you before that I should have been an actress…”
“So, what happened then?”
“Well he led me into the kitchen and sat me down with some water. Really Clarry, are you sure he’s up to no good? He seemed rather a nice young man.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” I muttered darkly. “And so… the keys?”
Flan sat back on the sofa, nestling into Mr. H.’s shoulder and clearly enjoying being the centre of attention. “Well, as he led me out towards the front door, I stealthily scooped them up from behind the phone and noiselessly slipped them in my pocket. Easy!”
I grinned. Flan could have her moment of glory; she certainly deserved it. Without her… well… I didn’t like to think where we’d be now. I stretched and yawned, suddenly exhausted. Had the risk even been worth it? I couldn’t work it out. I was just too tired to think straight. Home and bed that was all I was fit for now. Home and bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
We’re told that the sleep of the just, of the innocent, is the soundest. Not true. I slept so heavily and so deeply that I woke up with a sleep hangover, woolly in the head and heavy in the legs. A run wasn’t going to do it. I needed to swim. Grumbling because I still hadn’t got around to renewing my gym membership, I thought of the public pool down on the Broadway.
Eleven o’clock on a Wednesday meant that it wasn’t busy and so I was able to get in twenty lengths without being elbowed in the ribs or kicked in the crotch. Go to a public pool at peak times and you can come out black and blue, from the flailing limbs of the madly keen as they plough aggressively through the water perfecting their backstroke.
Coming up for air and leaning my elbows on the side, I watched two young mums over in the shallow end dunking their squidgy gurgling babies in and out of the water. Their voices echoed off the white tiled walls and I could hear them complaining about sleepless nights, endless nappies, and the alarming plummet of their libidos. But, it was clear by the look on their faces that the feeling of those happy crowing infants in their arms was compensation enough. Lucky them. Time to go. If I stayed there any longer I’d probably disappear into some hormonal hyperspace and I was so not ready for any of that.
A quick scoot around the supermarket and I was back home. I made a huge sandwich from a stone-baked baguette and a wedge of creamy brie I’d got at the deli counter and then chucked in a few salad leaves, to make up the green content and to distract myself from the amount of fats and carbohydrates I was about to wolf down. Sitting at the kitchen table with this and a mug of tea, I felt, at last, able to reflect over last night’s doings.
All morning I’d been trying to push aside my mixed emotions. At the start, it had been such a rush. It had felt dangerous and badass and then… near disaster. The fear I’d felt, the risk I’d put all three of us in, and my total lack of any coherent idea of how to get us out of the situation, even now made my face flush and my skin crawl, but I didn’t want to dwell on this conflict of reactions. It was too disturbing. Still chewing I got up and went into the sitting room to find my notebook, then returned to the kitchen table and sat staring at a blank white page.
After everything we’d risked; what had I learnt? That Simon was a neat freak and boringly careful about his diet didn’t seem enough somehow. I thought about the papers I’d gone through. He was clearly financially comfortable. That much was obvious. The big fat pension plan and the £200,000 investment and dividend from… what was the name of that company? I got up and took the stairs at a jog to retrieve the shirt I had worn last night from the washing basket. Yes, there was the note I’d made: Lehman Black Investments. They were probably some flash money-moving house in the City but then again their address in The Seven Sisters Road didn’t sound particularly impressive. However, it was easy enough to find out.
My spare room is thankfully nothing like Simon’s in that guests do stay in it occasionally. It doesn’t double as an office, but is big enough to have Grandma P.’s old roll-top desk against one wall where I keep my computer.
As I sat down, I glanced at the piles of old bills and receipts that I kept meaning to file and then chucked them into the wastebasket by my feet. Much better. I should come in here more often.
I looked up Lehman Black Investments. Nothing. I found companies with similar names, mostly big players, American firms whose home pages were punchy with details about investment strategy and solid expertise, but after half an hour when my eyes were beginning to bug, I still hadn’t found anything on Lehman Black.
I gave up. I’m just not patient enough for this kind of research. I sighed and looked at my watch. It was after three o’clock and I was due at the restaurant at six. I’d promised to phone Laura today and was surprised that by this time she hadn’t called me.
I called her office and got put through to her secretary, Mandy, a motherly lady in her forties with tiger-striped highlights and a six-month-old bulldog puppy called Hastings, whose framed photograph she kept on her desk. She told me that Laura had unexpectedly had to go to Norwich for a few days to handle a particularly complicated will.
“She said you might phone and that I was to give you her hotel number, but you might be lucky and get her on her mobile if she’s between meetings.”
I thanked her, hung up, and dialled Laura’s mobile.
“Hi love, how was last night?”
“Clarry hi, I’ve only got a minute as I’m dashing off to meet a client, but thanks it was great. Lovely place the Lighthouse.”
“And Simon?”
“Oh,” her voice softened. “I’m getting more and more in to him. And I really like the fact that he didn’t automatically assume that at the end of the evening, we’d have sex. You know, the way guys always do.”
I grunted. I knew.
“Not that I wouldn’t have been up for it last night,” she sighed. “But this trip was a last-minute thing and I had to get up at five o’clock. Anyway, how are you getting on? What have you managed to find out? Quick, tell me because I’ve got to go.”
“Not much yet, I’ll tell you when I see you, but there is one thing that would be helpful. What were the other houses he sold and who were the buyers?”
There was a silence and then her voice low and unsettled down the line,
“Clarry, what’s going on?”
“Nothing sinister, I promise,” I crossed my fingers. “I just need to get at the facts and…
”
“OK, OK. I haven’t got time now. I’ll get Mandy to call you back with the details. Look I’ve got to go. Bye, take care.”
“When are you coming back?” I asked, but found that I was talking to myself.
Whilst I waited for Mandy to get in touch, I made another mug of tea and thought about Simon’s diary – The Vine, tomorrow night at six thirty in Camberwell again. I looked it up. The Vine was a Greek restaurant, on Camberwell New Road. Could Camberwell be The Suit’s turf? Perhaps he was Greek? Well whatever nationality he was, I wanted to know what his connection was to Simon and it just so happens that I really like those little pastry triangles stuffed with cheese and spinach.
My mobile rang.
“Hi Clarry, I’ve got the information you wanted. How are you by the way?”
“Fine thanks Mandy and you? How’s Hastings?”
“Not very well behaved. He insists on sleeping on our bed and Stuart gets cross with him because of the snoring and tells him to get off, but when he looks at me with those big brown eyes and starts drooling, I can’t resist him and…”
“Who… Stuart?” I asked, rapidly losing the thread of this doggie inspired stream of consciousness.
“No Hastings. You should see him Clarry. He’s got so big and his paws are…”
“That’s cute Mandy, it really is. But about those houses…”
She gave me the addresses. “And the buyers?” I asked.
“The one in South Park Road was purchased through Dunstan Stead by Cornett Developments Ltd.”
“A development company? Laura didn’t mention that.”
“Well it bought it right enough. I’ve got its address. Do you want to make a note of it?”
I jotted it down and she continued.
“And the one in Bathgate Road by Marble Developments Ltd.”
“Another developer?”
“Well yes, but that’s quite common you know.”
“Oh, OK. I just didn’t know that, and the address is?” I made a note of it and started to say my goodbyes.
“And Cutler Farrow solicitors acted for both purchasers. Is there anything else Clarry? I need to finish a letter before I head home,” Mandy added.
“No thanks, you’ve been really kind thanks.” I thought a moment and asked, “What address do you have for the firm of solicitors?”
She read off an address in Nunhead and rang off.
I looked down at my notes: lots of information that meant absolutely nothing to me. I glanced at my watch. It was nearly five o’clock and I had some serious work to do on myself before I was fit to be seen by the public.
The whole of the basement had been booked for an office do by one of the claims division from a local insurance company. It would be a table of twenty. Stephanie, my fellow waitress for the evening, arrived just after me and gave me a hand shifting the tables from individual twos and fours into an L-shape with, we reckoned, just enough room for me to squeeze around the chairs if I sucked in my stomach.
“Anyway,” she said. “The director says to me… who are your inspirations? Your theatrical role models? So, I had to think a moment and then told him that Kristen Stewart had been a big influence on me in Twilight.”
“Good answer.”
She wiped the rim of a glass on her apron. “He didn’t seem to think so. Said I was too lightweight.”
I circled the table with a small white side plate looking for where I’d missed its spot. “What was the part?”
“A cat food commercial.”
Upstairs the kitchen was gearing up for a heavy night. Midweek we normally manage with two chefs and Jose the kitchen porter, but because of the party there were three on tonight and the place was buzzing with a controlled energy.
Alec, the thin wiry sous-chef was julienning spring onions and cucumber for miniature duck spring rolls that were to be one of the starter specials.
“Hey Clarry, this duck won’t keep until tomorrow, it needs shifting. How about a deal? Whichever of you…” he gestured with his Sabatier to include Steph, “flogs the most; gets to take me home and perform wild sex acts on me.”
Steph and I – a united front and very used to his suggestions – folded our arms and regarded him with raised eyebrows.
“Darling Alec,” Steph drawled. “We’d like to, we really would but we’ve met your lovely wife and she doesn’t look to us like the understanding sort. But, promise to save us each a portion of the cherry cheesecake and we’ll see what we can do.”
He grinned and then shooed us away. “Laurence has got one of his moods on so keep out of his way,” he warned just as the bellowing of Laurence, the head chef, could be heard from deep within the walk-in fridge.
It was something about why the fuck had Tim, the gentle but hapless commis chef, only thought fit to prep a handful of artichokes when even an idiot on his first day at catering school knows that veal medallions with artichoke demanded a fuck of a lot more than that? Tim’s stammering excuses were lost on us as Steph and I fled the kitchen. Rule number one for waiting staff: never get under the feet of a chef in a temper – they carry knives.
During the early lull, I gossiped with Dave about the problem of finding an experienced bar person who wasn’t a drunk and didn’t have his hands in the till and commiserated with Steph about the lack of a leotard wearing opportunity in a production of The Merchant of Venice set in a 1980’s City Trading floor that she had recently auditioned for.
“I think you were just lucky with Mustard Seed Steph.” Being one of Titania’s fairy retinue last year in A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream at Regents Park and wearing only a flesh coloured body stocking for the whole summer had, apparently, quite ruined her for modern dress.
Now it was nearly ten o’clock and the party was deteriorating before my eyes. So far, twenty people had consumed, between them, over forty bottles of wine and these combined with a round of beers and gin and tonics at the start of the evening, were taking their toll on the party spirit. A bread roll fight had broken out between a couple of claim handlers, and there’d just been a suggestion of a round of tequila body slammers.
Whilst doing my best to avoid high-flying baguettes and trying to restrain myself from kicking the testicles of a belligerent salesman in a joke-tie who kept pinching my bum, I brought in their puddings, took orders for more drinks, and offered coffees, which no one was ready for.
The evening limped on, but finally just after midnight we managed to oust them. The senior manager was so drunk he slipped me three £10 notes on top of the 12 per cent service charge on the bill. As he tried to squeeze his not inconsiderable bulk into someone else’s suit jacket, clearly the property of a much smaller man, he was practically crossed-eyed from the strain and from trying to sneak one more look down my cleavage.
With relief I watched him gingerly negotiate his way up the stairs and then with a sigh, I turned resolutely to start clearing the wrecked tables. At least I had the cherry cheesecake to look forward to.
CHAPTER NINE
Cornett Developments had its registered address in Maida Vale and the company directors were a Mr. C. Lianthos and a Mr. S. Zakiat. There was also a set of abbreviated accounts. I made a note of the names but the figures meant nothing to me. Marble Developments was registered in Catford and this time there was only one director, Mr. C. Lianthos again. Interesting. I considered the name. Could it be Greek? I fished out my mobile.
“Flan? Hi it’s me. Fancy going out to dinner tonight? Great. It’ll be an early one; I’ll pick you up at six.”
What to wear? The look this season was apparently classy, provocative, but untouchable. Try translating that into a wearable outfit. Eventually I settled on a black suit with a short skirt and a curvy jacket.
We parked a little up the street from The Vine at about six forty five. We had spotted Simon’s car parked just around the corne
r in County Grove, had positioned ourselves carefully, and at ten minutes past seven had watched him leave the restaurant and drive off.
“Now let’s just play this one by ear shall we Flan?”
“I am so relieved that you have decided to use your real name after all. I’d have definitely called you Clarry at some point and blown your cover.”
“Blown my cover. Where are you getting these expressions?”
She laughed, wrapping a long turquoise silk scarf around her throat. “I’ve been watching those American cop shows with all the initials but I switch channels whenever there are any dead bodies. So, tell me, what’s the plan?” “Oh, I see,” she said when I didn’t reply. “We are going out to dine in a restaurant located in the back of beyond, in the hope of scraping an acquaintance with a man that may not even be there and about whom you know nothing, except that he is rather good-looking in a Mediterranean kind of way and that he appears to have dealings of some kind with Simon Whatshisname?”
“That’s pretty much it,” I replied.
“And if he is there and we do get talking to him, how exactly are you going to ascertain if he does know Simon and indeed what the exact nature of their relationship is?”
“I am planning to… to ascertain…”
She waited and drew out a patient, “Yessss?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” I retorted. “Something’s bound to occur to me. Come on let’s do this.”
“By the way,” she flicked an appraising gaze over my suit as I locked the car. “You look very grown up tonight darling.”
“I am grown up.”
“Oh, I know, I know, it’s just that you usually appear more… more…”
“More what? Scruffy, is that what you mean?”
“Casual,” she brought out the word decisively. “I know that’s how you young people dress nowadays, but it’s nice to see you looking sophisticated for a change.”
