by Knight, Ali
When the taxi reached the corner Greg looked behind him to make sure she was no longer there. He slipped off his wedding ring and put it in his pocket. It was a habit he’d got into whenever he left the house.
6
Troy was trying to remember a Rolling Stones song about St John’s Wood but the words wouldn’t come to him. He lay in the king-sized bed and thought about Mick Jagger instead, imagining how many women he’d slept with; then he tried to think of his own tally. Troy was competitive, but the woman’s yakking at the dog in the kitchen across the hallway was distracting him from his counting, and that annoyed him. Was she the oldest woman he’d had? Not by a long way. Was she the richest? She had a St John’s Wood address but it was only a mansion flat. He leaned up on his elbows, his mind zoning in on the task ahead. She wasn’t the richest, but he was going to make absolutely sure she was the most lucrative.
He pulled open the drawer of her bedside table. The Rolex glinted at him. He moved fast to her dressing table and opened the right-hand drawer (he’d noticed last night that she was right-handed, which meant she would store her valuables on that side), and scanned the contents. He saw some small rocks set in rings, a couple of gaudy Arab-looking necklaces, nothing too big league. She’d have a safe somewhere. He glanced round at the pictures on the wall, wondering which one it was hidden behind.
‘D’ya take sugar?’ she called. He heard the clattering of cups from the kitchen, the whoop of plastic on the fridge door as it opened.
‘No thanks, Marcia.’ It always paid to be polite. That generation cared more for the niceties than his own, he reasoned. He repeated their names in the morning, to show that he’d remembered. The drinking of last night was an act, so his mind was clear. After all, he was at work; he wasn’t going to fuck it up. She was from Detroit, had been in Dubai and had ended up in London with two fat divorces behind her. It hadn’t been hard to follow her and her friends to the bar at the Hilton and alleviate her loneliness.
He started to dress, putting the pilot’s uniform back on. Women of a certain age really did fall for that shit. It was a wonder to him every time. He’d carried her over the threshold last night and she’d given a little yelp of pleasure and desire. It’s what they expected a pilot to do. His fake uniform drew women to him like moths to those smelly candles they were so keen to burn. He conjured up an era when flying was fashionable and elite; he helped them tap back into their younger selves, made them remember good times. She didn’t notice that he’d memorized her alarm code – his old thieving habits were proving hard to break.
He wandered into her en suite and washed his hands carefully. He looked in the medicine cabinet, hunting for ammunition. He saw the usual array of products that attempted to stop the clock: an HRT prescription, extortionate anti-wrinkle creams, toothpaste for sensitive teeth, post-surgical bandages. Here was the toolkit of the sixty-something divorcee bent on keeping one hand on the mythical tree of youth. Troy wasn’t going to condemn her for that. He admired her attempts to make the effort, because he understood. They were separated by a generation but their concerns were the same: they both had a desperate need to cling to physical perfection and the respect it brought. You couldn’t be loved if you weren’t respected. He slammed the bathroom cabinet shut. There had been a time when all that women wanted was a man who looked and behaved like him. A good-looking, good-time guy, flash with the cash and an animal in the sack. But now, at forty-two, he was constantly being asked about property: what he had, where it was, who really owned it. Women had changed; they wanted hard-cash money now, bricks-and-mortar wealth. He needed to get it as much as he needed to whiten those teeth. He grimaced in her backlit bathroom mirror and examined his gums. Receding. They were being beaten back by age and genes, crumbling under the pressure. Fuck that. He felt a rush of anger at his imperfections. Marcia was going to pay for a trip to the cosmetic dentist and add to his Caribbean retirement fund.
He heard her back in the bedroom, the yappy dog with her, and came out to meet her. She was dressed in something pink and too short, her hair a brassy yellow in the morning light. She had two cups on a silver tray and was keeping up the stream of banal chit-chat. It was probably one of the reasons Harvey ran into the arms of the blonde a generation removed from his wife. Troy vaguely remembered Marcia’s replacement: lots of curly hair and she chewed gum.
‘So what have you got planned for today, honey?’ Marcia was teasing him.
‘Marcia, tell me why you hated Harvey so much.’
The colour drained right off her face. Even the dog fell silent beside her. ‘What do you mean?’ Her voice was a whisper.
‘Harvey. Your first husband. He fell from the twelfth floor. He must have done something to really piss you off.’
She had recovered slightly, her back stiff and formal. She tried to gather her babydoll at the neck to protect herself from his onslaught. ‘How do you know Harvey?’
‘Oh I don’t. But I know you paid, and I know how much.’ Troy pointed his finger at her. ‘You clever little bitch. You waited and took your revenge long after he left you. The first flush of a new marriage is perfect cover—’
She was a fighter. She ran to the side of the bed and hit the panic button. ‘Get out of here!’
Troy leaned back against the armoire and picked something out from beneath his nail. ‘You paid £40,000 to Darek to have Harvey killed. Revenge, jealousy, pride, I don’t care. You paid once, but now you’re going to pay again.’
‘Who the hell are you? You’ve no proof!’
‘I’ve plenty.’
‘Liar!’
‘Room 392 at the Florina Plaza in Dubai. A hot night in March four years ago. Harvey took an unfortunate tumble from his balcony wearing only a bathrobe. Don’t look so shocked, you know how I know all this. You hired and paid Darek, who paid me to do the job.’ He picked up her mobile and threw it on the bed. ‘Phone the security company.’
She was shaking, mute, ugly blotches of red on her cheeks, but she didn’t move. Troy was calm, he still had time. ‘Life with Harvey wasn’t all bad – you have Arabella.’ A strangled gasp came from Marcia. ‘She’s got a nice life partying in Chelsea. I wouldn’t want to ruin that. This is simply a business decision, Marcia. I want what the middleman got.’ Her face was now deathly pale again. ‘I like you, Marcia, that’s why I came to you before ruining Arabella’s pretty face. You of all people understand the power of a pretty face. It made you your fortune. Now you’re sharing a little of that fortune with me. This way, no harm done.’
Marcia was panting now, as if on a treadmill at the gym, but she didn’t move. ‘We can do it your way, if you want.’ Troy moved to the bedroom door and made to leave.
His going shocked her into sound. ‘Wait!’ She grabbed the phone and made the call to the security company to cancel the alarm, then she dropped down on the bedcovers, her legs unable to support her. ‘I haven’t got that kind of money.’
Troy grinned. He had her right where he wanted her: vulnerable in her babydoll get-up, in her bedroom. The fleeting passion of last night was like a soiled tissue she was keen to throw away. ‘Open the safe.’
He saw her swallow nervously. ‘I don’t have a safe.’
‘Oh Marcia. That wasn’t very smart.’ Troy slowly shook his head before moving swiftly to the picture hanging next to the built-in wardrobes. A bullfighter swirled a red cape in front of a charging animal. He tossed it to the floor to reveal the safe.
‘How do I know you won’t plague me?’ She sounded old.
‘Marcia, I’m a fair guy, I really am. It’s just a shame that there are so many people who seem unable to play by the rules. I took the risk so I should receive the reward. But I have since discovered that the parasite in the middle gets the lion’s share. Trickle-down economics is really just what it says on the tin. A trickle. So I want what Darek the middleman got. No more, no less. Now, let’s start with the rocks Harvey gave you, shall we?’
Five minutes later he left with
her cache of jewellery in a Louis Vuitton luggage bag. He started to walk towards Regent’s Park, where a weak sun was beginning to shine. With each step he felt lighter, younger. It had worked like a dream. The crazy bitch had coughed it all up. He was nigh-on fifty grand richer because Marcia’s phone number was on Darek’s list. Darek, who was so anal he had kept a paper trail of the jealousies and hatreds of his clients and how much they had paid to try to alleviate those emotions that had set up home in their guts and weren’t letting go. And now Darek was dead and he had the list. It could turn out to be the luckiest bit of paper he’d ever come across.
Knowledge is power – the truth can make you a king. Troy liked the feeling of wielding the sword of truth. It cut down everything before it.
7
Nicky ducked under the sign that berated passengers who came this far. She stared down the dark track and took a step back. He was mad. She wasn’t going down there.
Adam retreated out of the gloom and came towards her, holding out his hand. ‘Come on.’
‘I’m not doing it. This is nonsense.’
‘Do you want to see the graffiti or don’t you?’
‘Yes, but I want to live more!’
A train crawled past, slowing down for its approach into Charing Cross Station. He’d been so enthusiastic to show her a huge painting by a hot new graffiti artist that she had become infected by his energy and ended up meeting him near the river. The work, by ‘The new Banksy’, was painted on the bridge over the Thames, but now she’d realized how they were to get there she changed her mind. This was what twenty-year-olds did, not married women the wrong side of thirty-five.
‘It’s perfectly safe – how do you think the artist got over there to paint it?’ He had a point. ‘Come on!’ He grabbed her hand and she liked the feel of her own in his. It was their first prolonged physical contact and she didn’t want it to end. They walked over commuter litter blown down the tracks and past tools and barrels and boxes left by workmen. Another train passed, honking angrily.
They came out into the light of the bridge. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Just trust me and you won’t go wrong.’
They edged out across the river, the sun glinting off the twisting mass of rails that disappeared into the distance and round a bend to Waterloo. She felt the fear of where they were again; this was one of the busiest stations in Europe, with trains coming and going all the time.
‘How do you know about this place?’
‘I followed a graffiti artist I recognized one evening and ended up here.’ He gripped her hand tighter. ‘Right, we’re going to cross now.’
‘Cross?’ Nicky thought she hadn’t heard right. Cross a mainline railway? She looked up and down the tracks, trains shifting between points, switching tracks, travelling at different speeds. It was like being in a demented computer game. It was madness. ‘No. We can’t cross.’
‘Come on, Nicky!’
‘I’m not bloody Lara Croft.’
‘I think you’ve got potential. You might find you enjoy it.’
And the truth was that she understood what he meant. His disregard for safety, his desire for kicks and danger, his search for an adrenalin rush – she found she was responding to all this.
‘Get back,’ he said, shoving her hard up against the metal struts of the bridge as a train passed by them, so close she felt the wind it created brushing her cheek.
Grace’s death had robbed Nicky of the remains of her youth. She had stepped over into a world where unspeakable horrors lurked in corners, where life wasn’t carefree and consequence free. While she loved Greg, Adam brought the spontaneity and risk of her younger years bubbling to the surface. She didn’t want a life half lived. She took a deep breath. ‘I’m in.’
Adam held her face in his hands. ‘You won’t regret it,’ he shouted as a train wobbled past them. ‘Follow me exactly.’
He started out across the tracks.
‘What about the third rail—’
‘Don’t touch any rail,’ he interrupted.
The tracks were wider than they looked and the other side seemed far away. About a third of the way across fear began to expand inside her. She could hear the clanging of points as they changed, the hum of the shiny metal rails. She didn’t dare look up, scared that what she saw would make her panic and run – and who knew then what danger she might be in? She gripped Adam’s hand harder, his knuckles a bony lifeline. Finally they were across and she half staggered on the small loose stones piled by the side of the tracks. Her heart was pummelling the inside of her chest. She didn’t let go of Adam’s hand as he led her out over the river, because she couldn’t bear to feel herself outside his comforting orbit; she didn’t want reality to leave her exposed.
A little further on Adam turned into a triangular space with high cement walls made by the struts of the bridge below them and she could finally retreat a little from the trains. She looked around her at the spray cans that littered the ground as Adam commanded her to stand right back against one of the walls. Nicky gave a gasp. So this was why graffiti artists risked their lives for their art. The wall in front of her had a huge mural of Red Riding Hood painted on it, her red cloak fanning out behind her, her hair a blonde punk interpretation. In her hands she held a spray can of paint, aiming it like a gun, and above her head were the words ‘Fear makes the wolf grow bigger’. Red Riding Hood’s eyes contained a steely glint that it was impossible to ignore. The enclosed space, the inability to walk away from the work because of the train lines, meant its full power caught the viewer head on.
‘Now that’s what I call art,’ Adam said.
They were suspended over the middle of the Thames, the breathtaking view of the beating heart of the city flowing away beneath them, Red Riding Hood’s blood-red cape caught in the wind off the river.
‘It’s amazing,’ was all Nicky could say.
‘Worth the danger?’ Adam asked. Nicky nodded, adrenalin surging through her body. She hadn’t felt so alive in years. ‘Life is about taking risks, confronting your fears. Otherwise what’s the point?’
Nicky laughed. ‘Fear makes the wolf –’
They finished the rest together: ‘– grow bigger.’
He suddenly looked serious and grabbed her hand again. ‘We need to go. The transport police will be here in a minute.’ He led her back the way they had come and she felt at that moment that she would follow him anywhere. This day was a divine hiatus, a break from her real life. They walked back onto the platform past several gawping passengers. ‘Shit! The police are here!’ She followed his gaze and saw two policemen hurrying across the concourse. They sprinted down a walkway and out into Villiers Street. As she ran along she started giggling and then she started laughing and she found she couldn’t stop. Such happiness surged through her that she had to double over near Embankment Tube. This was all so gloriously silly, so young at heart. Adults didn’t run, they walked. Greg might stride, his sturdy legs eating up the ground, but he didn’t run. There were probably moments when Adam skipped.
‘Nicky Ayers, you’ve got some balls, I’ll give you that! I never thought you’d go for it!’
‘Then you really don’t know me at all, Adam Thornton!’ He was looking at her through his laughter with amazement – and desire.
They jogged across the river and down onto the South Bank, her heart only now beginning to return to something like normal.
They passed the National Film Theatre and Nicky went in to the bar to buy a bottle of water. As she inched forward in the queue she felt a swirling mixture of adrenalin, excitement and shock. Adam had taken her back to her younger self, her self before her marriage and before Grace’s death.
Just as she was looking for her money for the water she was shoved roughly from behind, careering awkwardly into the woman in front of her in the queue. She turned round, astonished and annoyed, to find a small woman with spiky blonde hair, and wearing a cropped T-shirt that showed her taut brown tummy, balling h
er fists. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Leave Adam alone.’
Nicky realized in an instant who she was. ‘Bea.’
‘See, he’s told you about me. We’re still together, so hands off.’ Her bottom lip jutted forward in a pout that Bea probably thought was attractive. And she had a kind of image that made an impression. There was a smattering of freckles across her nose, which was fine and upturned, and her skin was stretched tight across her cheeks. She looked like a vindictive elf.
Nicky could feel her anger mushroom. She wasn’t going to be pushed around. She also didn’t like the idea that she was being followed; it was creepy and unsettling. ‘If you’re still with him, go off and find him. He’s just over there.’ She pointed towards the river. ‘And leave me in peace.’ Bea narrowed her eyes, which were hard and unyielding; her small breasts sat high on her ribcage, exposed under the tight and see-through T-shirt; her skinny legs showed under the denim mini. She was an acrimonious bundle of hatred. Nicky sensed the wiry strength in her thin arms and had no doubt that Bea could fight nasty if she wanted to. Nicky glanced at the barman, who had suddenly found something of great interest to study in the ceiling tiles, while people behind her in the queue shifted and craned for a better look. She felt ridiculous, as if she’d been dragged back through the years into a teenage argument. ‘You’re not so sure now, are you?’
‘I’m not giving up.’ The queue shifted forward. ‘I’ll enjoy making your life hell.’ She grabbed the water bottle from Nicky’s hand and threw it on the floor, where it skidded and spun towards some stools. ‘Bitch!’
