by Timlin, Mark
‘He’s unhappy, of course,’ she said. ‘But he has my brother and he thinks I’ll come to heel and return to the fortress.’
‘What fortress?’
‘That’s what I call where we live, the family home. It’s like a fortress full of armed men, but discreetly armed if you know what I mean.’
‘I think I can guess. And the someone you left behind?’
‘One of Daddy’s men. No, more than that. Daddy wouldn’t want me involved with a mere soldier. Frederick is the son of a good friend, a business associate of my father’s. He’ll do well in the business, go far, and he wanted to marry me.’
‘You weren’t so keen?’
‘I’d never marry Freddy.’
I got up from the table and took two cigarettes from a packet on the dresser. I lit them both and gave one to Jo. She pulled on it gratefully. I found an ashtray in one of the cupboards and placed it on the centre of the table, between us.
‘Did your family put pressure on you?’ I asked when we were settled again.
‘They’d like to see me barefoot and pregnant, married to one of the up-and-comers, so I split.’
‘Just like that?’
She laughed a mirthless laugh. ‘The family is strong, but we don’t live in the middle ages. Daddy is fairly modern in his thinking. Too modern for some of the old men. His idea is to let me out on a long leash.’
‘And then wind you back in when he’s ready,’ I finished for her.
‘Exactly.’
We sat in silence and finished our cigarettes and the dregs of our coffee.
‘Jo,’ I said, ‘I want you to sit still and listen without interrupting for just a minute.’ She looked at me wearily but remained silent. ‘What you’ve just told me obviously hurts you like hell. For you to have travelled half-way round the world to get away from your own family proves it.’ She started to say something but I shushed her. ‘Sweetheart,’ I said, ‘so what? Don’t get me wrong, it looms large in your life but who else cares? Why beat yourself up? You can’t be held responsible for what your family are or do. You’re out of it and your life’s your own. As you said, we don’t live in the middle ages.’
I sat back and lit another cigarette. I was smoking again, but I felt all shiny and new, puffed up and proud. Let the poor little people come to the amateur psychiatrist and in exchange for a cup of coffee and a Marlboro Light he’d solve their problems. Big man, big deal, big frightened phoney.
‘I know you’re right Nick,’ she said at last, ‘but I just feel so guilty. I don’t want anything to do with them, right? But the family paid my fare here, got me the flat and Daddy keeps putting money into my account, and I do love him so, whatever he is, and he calls me up and writes such lovely letters asking me to go home. I’m so confused.’
‘Life’s not so easy that we can just kick over the traces, walk away from places and people and forget them as if they never existed. Some involvement goes so deep that there are things and people you can never get out of your system. You’re tied together for as long as you live. However hard you try and deny it, you can’t. It’s one of those facts you just have to accept. As long as you have memory, that person or place lives with you. So don’t be confused – it’s the human condition. And that is the full extent of my philosophy and psychology lecture for this morning.’
She smiled at me. ‘Is it that simple?’
‘I don’t think it’s simple at all. It’s just that some truths are self-evident. Life is not simple is one, you are beautiful is another, I loved you the moment I first saw you is yet another. I refuse to let you go: now, that one is simple.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’
‘You can’t stop me.’
‘Oh, Nick,’ she said and held my hand. ‘I’m so glad I found you. It’s just that I thought I wasn’t good enough for you.’ If I hadn’t realised before, I realised then that under her brains and beauty there was a frightened little girl looking for reassurance. I held her hand tighter.
‘Good enough for me, are you kidding? Listen Jo, if this is going to be true confessions time, I think there’s a few things you should know about me.’
So I told her. I told her what a lousy copper I’d been. The bribes and the drugs and the scandals that had forced me to leave. I told her about Laura taking my daughter and leaving me because of the state I was in. I told her about the time I’d spent in mental hospital getting my life back together. She didn’t say a word as I explained about setting up as a private detective and the Bright case and how it finished in bloody murder and mayhem.
She waited until I stopped for breath until she spoke.
‘Why aren’t you in prison?’
I took the breath and went on.
‘I got hold of a policeman named Fox,’ I said. ‘Danny Fox, he was my old DI. Detective Inspector,’ I translated when she gave me a quizzical look. ‘He’s gone up in the world now, thanks to me. I was sitting on a mountain of cocaine and enough dirty pictures to bring down the government. I gave him the coke and George Bright in exchange for the photos which are now hidden somewhere safe and sound. Fox put up a hell of a fight but he gave in, in the end. It’s ironic – he was one of the prime movers to get me out of the force and now we’re on the same side. If anything happens to me the pictures will make an appearance, as public an appearance as possible. I don’t like the way it’s turned out, but without those photos I’m in a lot of trouble.’
‘Were you badly hurt?’ she asked.
‘You saw the scars,’ I said.
‘And I thought I was the only one who was fucked up,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of it about.’
‘Why did you get so involved? Why didn’t you just walk away? You had every chance.’
‘To make up for all the times I did walk away,’ I said, ‘when it was my job not to. All the times I just let things go because it was easy to turn a blind eye. I knew if I didn’t do something I was finished.’
She came and sat on my knee and kissed me.
‘Do you want me to go?’ I asked.
‘Go? Why?’
‘Because I’m involved in dirty business sometimes.’
‘No, Nick, I don’t want you to go. I love you.’
‘Say that again,’ I said.
‘I love you.’
We held each other like drowning people being swept through white water. We held each other until we were dizzy. Eventually we came up for air.
‘What shall we do?’ she asked naughtily.
‘It’s still early,’ I said. ‘I think we should go back to bed for an hour or so.’
‘What a good idea,’ she said, ‘I am feeling quite tired.’
‘You can sleep,’ I said, ‘I’ve got other ideas.’
‘You’re disgusting.’
‘Just how disgusting I hope you’ll find out over the next few days.’
14
We spent Sunday and Monday together. I was falling for Jo faster than a kid going down a fairground slide, and I have to tell you I was enjoying it twice as much. I had that kind of self-confidence that only pure stupidity breeds. I could see her relaxing too and she looked good.
On Sunday evening we wrapped up warmly and went to town. We wandered around the West End looking at the sights before we ate. By the time she’d got tired of looking at lumps of old masonry we were both cold and hungry and we found a little Italian place north of Soho with red checked tablecloths and waiters with eyes full of lechery and mouths full of wet, white teeth.
We both had spaghetti with clams and too much thin white wine that tasted of sunshine and grape skins.
As we sat over cappuccino I stole another of her cigarettes.
‘Skip school tomorrow,’ I said.
‘You’re a bad influence.’
‘Not so bad – you seem to be quite happy.’
‘I am,’ she replied.
‘So skip school.’
‘It isn’t school, it’s university, brother, and it’s important.’
She d
id take the day off and even though it was still cold the sun shone, and after I’d checked on Cat and her offspring Jo and I took the Jaguar down to Brighton for the day. She loved the town and we strolled along the front watching the sea smash over the pebbles.
‘One day all that will be sand,’ she said.
‘It’ll take a while,’ I remarked.
‘Only a million or so years.’
‘And when it is I’ll still love you,’ I said.
‘You big jerk,’ she said.
I grinned against the cold breeze and held her tightly. Somewhere under all the layers of clothing she wore her body was soft and warm.
‘OK, I don’t love you at all,’ I said.
‘Don’t say that. I can’t bear it.’
‘Now who’s a jerk?’ I asked.
She was crying and I caught the tears on her cheeks with the pad of my thumb.
‘Blowy, isn’t it?’ she asked.
I just smiled and she buried her head into my shoulder like a child.
We lunched in The Lanes and she bought expensive junk in every shop we passed. Which was plenty.
‘This is the most expensive place in England to buy stuff like that,’ I explained, ‘apart from Bond Street. You’re crazy.’
‘These are gifts for the folks back home. Italian businessmen and their wives are very big in antiques. Those women will have everything priced before I’m through the door.’
‘So you are going back?’
‘Eventually.’
‘For good?’
‘What’s good?’ she asked.
‘Being here with you,’ I replied. She held my hand tightly and slipped her arm through mine.
‘Let’s not talk about leaving,’ she said, ‘not when we’ve just found each other. I’ll be here for a long time.’
Even then I wasn’t convinced.
We took fish and chips back to my flat that night and washed it down with cold bottled Bud from the fridge. Jo had scored a fingernail-sized piece of dope from a classmate and rolled up a joint. We smoked it and drank more beer and made love. She fell asleep straight away, but I couldn’t drop off and lay on my back listening to her breathe and thinking about a story my father used to tell my brother and me when we were little. It was more of a proverb than a story really. It was about how any one of us who thinks he’s finally cracked it should beware. Because just as we’re feeling safe and warm, that’s when, unseen in the wings, is waiting a little faceless man with a long crooked stick who can reach out and pull our legs out from under us.
The thought of that dwarfish figure always used to terrify me. I hadn’t thought of the story for years, but suddenly that night the scary little man pranced around the room before me as if I was five years old again.
15
When the call from McBain’s accountant came it was too early in the morning. I was lying in Jo’s arms, half awake, half asleep, just dreaming off the top of my head. The telephone bell brought me back to reality with a shock. I rolled away from her, which elicited a groan, and caught the phone on its third ring. I scooped the receiver from its hook and cracked myself on the chin as I brought it to my ear.
‘Sharman,’ I mumbled into the mouthpiece.
‘Good morning,’ boomed a voice into my ear.
‘Sharman,’ I repeated, determined not to wish the intruder a good anything.
‘Is that Nicholas Sharman speaking?’
‘Yo.’
‘Good morning again. My name is Christopher Kennedy-Sloane. I handle investments for Mark McBain and do some accountancy work for him. Mister McBain has been in communication with my office. He tells us that he has retained your services to look into some anomalies in his financial returns when he was contracted to Mogul Incorporated.’
‘If I understood half of that I’d probably agree,’ I said.
‘Excellent, Mister Sharman,’ Kennedy-Sloane went on.
‘I think we should meet. I wonder if you are free at one o’clock today so that I can give you lunch.’
‘I suppose,’ I said.
‘Excellent. I have already taken the liberty of booking a table for two at a little bistro I know on Ludgate Hill. I hope that’s convenient?’
‘As convenient as any,’ I said.
‘I’m so pleased,’ said Kennedy-Sloane. ‘The restaurant is called The Tuck Shop. I’ve booked the best table in the place. I’ll see you at one.’
‘Super,’ I said.
‘Ciao, till one then. I’m so looking forward to it.’
‘Me too,’ I said and hung up right in his ear.
I jotted down the time and place and looked over at Jo who was still fast asleep. I checked the time. Ten of the clock. Mister Kennedy-Sloane had probably been at his desk for hours.
16
I cabbed it up to town on McBain’s expenses. The minicab driver from next door bored my socks off with his political views on the way to Ludgate Hill, but we eventually made it and he scribbled an ‘X’ on a receipt. I tipped him low and he snarled at me as he gave the old Granada some stick away from the kerb.
The Tuck Shop was hidden away in a tiny alley off the Hill itself. It was one of those restaurants where the waitresses dress up as somebody’s fantasy of schoolgirls. You know the style: like those old St Trinian’s films, all short gym slips, suspenders and high heels. Any self-respecting feminist would have a seizure at the sight. I wasn’t any too hip to it myself, but I’d agreed the meet and that was that. I followed the maitre d’, a sugar-plum sort of a guy in a black gown and mortar board, from the reception desk on the ground floor, downstairs to the restaurant where I was handed over to a waitress with a white shirt, school tie and the rest of the gear. She showed me to a table in the corner, showed her stocking tops, gave me the menu, took my order for a large vodka and tonic and left me to it.
Kennedy-Sloane was ten minutes late. The table I sat at whilst I waited was covered in a snowy white, heavy damask cloth and laid with weighty silver cutlery and gleaming crystal glasses. There were crudités and nuts to nibble at while I passed the time. Although the management thought that the women who worked there were cheap cunt they obviously had their eyes on the heavy expense account punters as customers. I sipped at the drink that the waitress had brought me. The cold clear liquid, with just a hint of lemon, pretty much matched my surroundings.
I knew Kennedy-Sloane before we met. There was a commotion at the doorway and all heads turned. The man who swept into the restaurant was short and fat, but powerful-looking as if he got his way most of the time. In one hand he carried a small briefcase, in the other a black leather Filofax heavy with pages. He wore a Burberry trench coat over his shoulders like a cloak.
‘Usual table,’ he said loudly as he made in my direction. He didn’t wait for a reply. The briefcase was dropped by his chair, the Filofax crashed onto the table like a side of ham and he slid the Burberry off his shoulders and tossed it to the waitress.
‘Take great care of it my dear,’ he said. Every word and gesture was used to the maximum effect. This guy was a real mover and shaker.
He tangoed round the table to introduce himself, light on his feet and hand outstretched in greeting. I half rose, nearly upsetting my drink.
‘Chris Kennedy-Sloane, don’t stand up,’ he bellowed as he shook my hand with a strong, damp grip and collapsed into the seat opposite me. ‘So sorry I’m late,’ he apologized. ‘Unavoidably detained with David.’ It could have been Bowie, Cassidy, Owen, Steel or the local butcher’s boy; he didn’t elaborate. Instead he clapped his hands and demanded champagne. ‘Blanc de Noirs,’ he cried and the waitress vanished in the direction of the cellars.
He lowered his voice and leaned over the table towards me. ‘What a fucking dump,’ he said. ‘Don’t you agree?’ I must have looked surprised and he laughed delightedly. ‘I picked it especially to give you a view of the stockbrokers and money men in their natural habitat. What a disgusting sight. But the food’s good.’
He pulled a pa
cket of Gauloises from his jacket pocket. ‘Cigarette?’ he asked. I shook my head. Whilst he extracted the untipped smoke from the soft container, tapped it all over the table and lit it with a gold Dunhill, I checked him out.
He was wearing a tan suit, cut comfortably and stylishly baggy over his soft body. Under the jacket he wore a thickly striped green and white shirt. His tie resembled a rain forest in full bloom. I half expected a monkey to pop out of the foliage and steal a peanut off the table at any moment. On his right wrist he wore a gold Rolex that twinkled with chips of diamond. The whole outfit would have financed the Brixton DHSS for a week. His hair was blond and thinning, although some expert trichologist was fighting a grim rearguard action. I guessed the next stop would be Paris for a weave. And then what? I wondered.
The champagne arrived without a fanfare, but I guessed for the money it cost it deserved one. Kennedy-Sloane tasted it with great solemnity. I half expected him to spit the first mouthful into the ice bucket on the next table.
‘Excellent,’ he pronounced. Both the waitress and I smiled at each other with relief. As I caught her eye I noticed that she bore a strong resemblance to Jo, but I put it down to love.
I swallowed the remains of my vodka and hit the wine trail. The champagne was dry and bright and made my scalp sweat. I sucked at my teeth as the warmth filled my insides. I was off and running and the colour was pink.
‘Mister Sharman,’ Kennedy-Sloane said. ‘Or may I call you Nicholas?’
I nodded.
‘Shall we order?’
I looked up at the waitress who stood at attention beside us in her ludicrous uniform, pen and pad in hand. ‘What’s good?’ I asked.
Before she could reply Kennedy-Sloane butted in.
‘May I?’ he asked.
‘Why not?’
‘Soup, Chateaubriand, cheeseboard,’ he ordered. ‘Best in the City – and with the steak a bottle or two of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.’
He was a wine expert, I could tell. He was one of those guys, what he didn’t know about wine you could write on the back of a postage stamp. What I didn’t know about wine would stretch from London to Brighton. But I would bet I could get as pissed as him on it.
