Femme Fatale

by Dominic Piper

  ‘This isn’t too much for you is it?’ she says, with a smile in her voice. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get uncomfortable.’

  ‘It’s a regular and important part of my morning routine.’

  ‘What – massaging the back of a deliciously naked woman?’

  ‘Can’t start the day without it. Anyway, you’re not naked. You’re wearing a dark red suspender belt.’

  I notice for the first time that her lingerie matches the colour of her eye shadow. Classy and unusual: I wonder what was going through her mind when she thought of it.

  ‘True,’ she says. ‘Would you mind?’

  I undo the back of the belt and let it fall over her hips. She arches her back and stretches her arms out to the sides. I’m only glad I’m not sitting in front of her.

  ‘Wow. Is that coffee? It smells good. I really need some right now.’

  ‘I’ll get you a cup.’

  ‘Don’t knock anything over in the kitchen!’

  ‘Witty as well as smart. I’ve hit the jackpot.’

  I pour two large cups out, put them on a tray and head back into the bedroom.

  ‘This is from a bean-to-cup coffee maker,’ I say. ‘Your tongue will thank me.’

  ‘I thought it had done that already.’

  She takes a few rapid sips of coffee and closes her eyes. I use the opportunity to allow myself a quick salacious appraisal of her naked body. The words voluptuous and indecent come to mind. She opens her eyes and I look away, but not rapidly enough. She smiles and wrinkles her nose at me.

  ‘This is fabulous. Have you got any food? I’m starving.’

  I check in the kitchen. Nothing. Then I remember a thing that came through the door last week. London Town Breakfast Delivery. I find their laminated menu and take it into the bedroom. Annalise chooses three stacks of buttermilk pancakes with raspberry and pecan topping while I have two halloumi, bacon and mushroom English muffins. I give them a call. Twenty minutes or you get it for free and the next order you make is free as well. That’s what I like to hear.

  ‘What are we going to do for twenty minutes, Daniel?’

  ‘Do you play chess? Wait. Let me get my wallet.’

  ‘I don’t charge. Unless it’s a turn-on for you, that is.’

  ‘You could tell?’

  She grins. ‘Maybe it’s a turn-on for me, too.’

  I find my jacket and check the pockets. My wallet isn’t there. I check all the pockets again. Still nothing. I find the black jeans I was wearing last night and it isn’t in there, either. Did I take it out when we got back last night? No. No time. I try to remember the last time I used it. That would have been in The Spice Market. I try to think. I can remember the guy giving me back my credit card. I remember putting it in my wallet. I remember putting the wallet in an inside jacket pocket, no doubt about it.

  I check the pocket one more time then take a look around the flat.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m weird after last night, Daniel. I’ve never been like that before.’ She walks up behind me and presses her body against mine. ‘It was as if someone had turned on a light, do you know what I mean? My whole body was tingling. I was ready for anything.’

  She sighs. I can smell her sweat and her sex.

  ‘I can’t find my wallet anywhere. Have you got a credit card? Sorry about this. Very impolite, getting you to pay.’

  ‘Did you lose it last night? When you were, you know…’

  She digs her fingernails into my shoulders and moves in closer. I feel her grind herself against me. I can feel her smoothness and her heat.

  ‘It was just seeing what you did to those guys. It didn’t have an impact at first. It took a few minutes. Then…mmmmm. My God. I thought I was going insane. I felt faint with it.’

  I can feel her nipples hardening against my back. She’s trembling. I try to think what’s in the wallet. Two credit cards and a few of my business cards. Maybe sixty pounds in cash. That’s it, really. There’s a number I can ring to stop the credit cards. It’s on my mobile. At least that didn’t get mislaid. I turn to face her. Her arms are around my neck immediately. She writhes against me, grinding her hips, biting my neck. She still smells of the perfume she was wearing yesterday: Plum Japonais by Tom Ford. It’s sensual and heady. I’m having difficulty concentrating.

  ‘Just thinking about it right now is driving me crazy,’ she says, her voice low and husky. ‘My mouth is dry. I can feel my heart thumping in my chest. I feel so ashamed. Can we cancel the food order? I’m on fire.’

  ‘I think it’ll be a little too late. They’re probably on their way. Listen – get your credit card out. I have to make a phone call. When we’ve eaten we can talk about it again.’

  ‘Do you promise?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘God. I feel so bad. Am I a bad person? I try to help people…’

  I cancel the cards and persuade Annalise to get a robe on just before the breakfast guy arrives, seeing as how she’ll have to pay him. The robe is black silk. Someone left it here a while ago, but I forget her name. The way it hangs on Annalise’s body makes your head spin. The guy leaves. We take the food into the kitchen and I make some more coffee.

  ‘Maybe someone will hand it in,’ she says, cutting a slice off her pile of pancakes with a fork. They look delicious. I wish I’d ordered them instead of my muffins.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘It isn’t too important. The wallet wasn’t expensive. The cards are cancelled.’

  ‘Is there any ID in there?’

  ‘Business cards. Name and mobile number. Nothing else. If someone wants to call, they’ll call.’

  ‘Are you going to check that car park out? Just in case?’

  ‘I may do. When are you in work?’

  ‘Eleven. The squeaky floor out there. Is that a nightingale floor?’

  ‘Yes it is. How did you know that? Most people think it’s something that needs to be fixed.’

  A nightingale floor is a seventeenth-century Japanese invention. A primitive security measure, really. There are strategically placed nails beneath the floorboards which squeak loudly when walked on. It’s a noise you can’t sleep through.

  ‘I read about it,’ she says. ‘There’s a book called Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn. Was it expensive to have made?’

  ‘Three thousand.’

  ‘Wow. What d’you think happened to that girl last night?’

  ‘I don’t know. How old do you think she was?’

  ‘Hard to say. A teenager, definitely.’

  She places her fork on the side of her plate and sips her coffee.

  ‘She was out pretty late,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe. Depends on her age.’

  She undoes the belt on the robe and lets it fall off her shoulders onto the floor. The swell of her heavy breasts is making my brain fry.

  ‘Can we talk about last night again now?’ she purrs.

  ‘Where would you like to start?’

  ‘Right at the beginning.’

  *

  An hour and a half later we’re in a cab heading for Orange Street. I get dropped off at the top of Whitcomb Street and Annalise continues on to Fulham. I retrace my steps from the moment I realised something was wrong until I’m at the entrance to the car park. It’s open now and the interior is brightly lit.

  I take a walk inside. There’s no indication of what went on here last night. The floor is clean and there’s a strong smell of disinfectant. They probably have people come in at the crack of dawn and give it the once over before it opens, in which case someone must have found my wallet by now and either kept it or handed it in. There are no staff around to ask.

  After two or three minutes I realise I’m wasting my time, so decide to get back to the flat, pick up my gym stuff and go down to Soho Gyms in Macklin Street to try and sweat some of the alcohol out of my system.

  I decide to walk. Just as I’m turning into Charing Cross Road, my mobile goes off.

  ‘Hello. D
aniel Beckett,’ I say.

  There’s a crackling on the other end. I can hear muffled talking, as if someone’s got their hand over the phone.

  ‘Mr Daniel Beckett?’

  The voice is male, precise, old-sounding and with a trace of an Oriental accent I can’t immediately place. Chinese?

  ‘Yes. This is Daniel Beckett. How can I help you?’

  He laughs as if I’ve just made some incredibly funny joke. It sounds so mad that I find I’m laughing myself.

  ‘I think perhaps that I can help you, Mr Beckett. My name is Mr Sheng. I have your wallet.’

  ‘My wallet. Really.’

  ‘Yes. I thought we might make some arrangement for you to collect it. If, of course, it is convenient for you.’

  ‘Of course it is. Well that’s fantastic. Thank you. Where are you?’

  ‘Do you know Newport Place, Mr Beckett?’

  ‘Yes. It’s, er, off Lisle Street.’

  ‘That is correct. You will see the gay bar on the left corner. Walk past that and keep on that side of the road. Stroll along for a short while, then you will see a restaurant called The Blue Lantern. The restaurant will not be open for business, but the front door will be open. Just come in. I will be inside, ready to welcome you. With your wallet!’ He laughs again. Cheery guy.

  ‘I’m in Charing Cross Road now. I’ll be there in five minutes.’

  ‘Excellent. I will see you soon, then. Goodbye, Mr Beckett.’

  He clicks off, but he hasn’t done it properly. I can hear a bit of chatter and recognise the long vowel sounds of Cantonese and then the line finally goes dead.

  Interesting. I’m assuming he’s connected to the girl in some way. I can’t think of any other explanation. I don’t have any memory of dropping my wallet during that little altercation, but I must have done. Did she pick it up and keep it? Perhaps she thought it belonged to one of her attackers and might prove useful. Could she have been that sharp? I can’t really see when she’d have had the opportunity. She was on the floor when I got there and then ran out when I’d finished. I’m sure I’d have noticed if she’d bent down and picked something up.

  I walk past Leicester Square tube station and turn left into Little Newport Street. You immediately know you’re in Chinatown by the Hanzi characters on the street signs, the smell of Chinese cooking and the orange paper lanterns slung from building to building, celebrating who knows what.

  I dodge past the piles of bin bags and avoid the constant scaffolding as I walk along. There are Chinese restaurants, estate agents, herbal medicine centres and hairdressers on my side of the road and The Hippodrome Theatre on the other. I can see the gay bar that Mr Sheng mentioned about fifteen yards ahead, just at the point where the road becomes pedestrianised. There’s a telephone kiosk and some bollards, and five seconds later I’m turning right into Newport Place.

  I walk past five more Chinese restaurants, a betting shop (of course) and a bureau de change before I spot The Blue Lantern. The scents around here are beginning to make me feel quite hungry. Then something odd happens. There’s a young, tough-looking Chinese guy leaning against a street sign across the road from The Blue Lantern. He’s smoking an untipped cigarette and looking like he’s at a loose end, but he clocks me immediately and doesn’t take his eyes off me.

  When I’m about six feet from the restaurant entrance, he points to the door and says, ‘In that way, mate.’

  I look at him, smile and say ‘Thanks.’ He smiles and nods in reply.

  And then I’m inside The Blue Lantern.

  3

  AND ALL THAT JAZZ

  I’ve patronised a lot of Chinese restaurants in this area, but I certainly missed this one and I can’t imagine why. It looks incredible.

  It’s much larger inside than you’d suspect from the entrance and whoever designed it was excessively fond of red oak. The floors are made from it and so is the delicate lattice work which adorns the walls and the ceiling.

  Behind the unmanned reception desk is a large diptych of a scary-looking, red and yellow Chinese sorcerer’s mask and the whole place is bathed in warm yellow light from the low-hanging basket lanterns, giving it an intimacy that belies its size. You could just as easily bring a woman on a date here as use it for someone’s birthday celebration.

  It smells woody, clean and new, is simultaneously traditional and ultra-modern and was probably built and/or decorated sometime in the last couple of months. There’s money here: whoever owns it must be making a packet.

  Despite the name of the place, there are no blue lanterns featured in the décor. Maybe that was too vulgar and obvious for whoever designed it. At a rough guess, there are about thirty tables, each one six or seven feet away from its neighbour. It could be packed out and you’d still have privacy, if you wanted it.

  I’m looking up at the ceiling, with its impressionistic, swirling bamboo patterns when I hear soft footsteps. I look down and see a slim and smartly-dressed Chinese guy of maybe seventy or even eighty approaching me.

  He’s smiling and has a hand outstretched, ready for shaking, even though he’s still about twenty feet way. He walks with a slight limp and I can see a faded semi-circular scar on his right cheekbone, as if, a long time ago, someone tried to gouge one of his eyes out with a broken bottle and missed by a few lucky inches. A well-lined face and a full head of snow white hair. I walk towards him.

  ‘Mr Beckett! I am so pleased to meet you. Thank you for coming at such short notice. I didn’t know where you would be. In London, I mean to say. Shall we sit down? Anywhere will do. They are all the same.’

  We shake hands. He looks mildly surprised when I match the slight bow he gives me. We sit down opposite each other at the nearest table. I’ve got my back to the entrance, which I don’t like, but I’ll put up with it just this once. He’s wearing a black-faced Hublot watch, which is worth about eight thousand. His suit is tweed and well-cut. Looks like a Savile Row job. Silver Givenchy cufflinks, white shirt and a black silk Jacquard tie. Money.

  The table is partially made up: no cutlery but a few pieces of crockery. I realise that they’re willow pattern, but in black and white rather than the traditional blue and white. Very cool. Mr Sheng follows my glance and points at the design on a small plate.

  ‘The doomed lovers turned into doves by the gods.’ He leans forwards. ‘But that was a later addition to the story, Mr Beckett. The real meaning of the willow pattern became romanticised. But first things first!’

  He reaches into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, produces my wallet and hands it to me. I take it with two hands.

  ‘Thanks very much. You’ve saved me a lot of trouble.’ I stow it away without checking the contents. Mr Sheng looks surprised.

  ‘You did not want to check whether your cash and credit cards were still inside?’

  ‘No. I’m sure everything will be in order.’

  He laughs and looks at my face, but he’s not making eye contact. I wait for him to say something.

  ‘Do you like jazz, Mr Beckett?’

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘Ornette Coleman?’

  ‘He’s OK.’

  I’m out of my depth. Help.

  ‘I’m sure you have a good idea how I came by your wallet, Mr Beckett.’

  ‘Not a good idea, but an idea, Mr Sheng.’

  He likes this. He smiles and nods his head. ‘Some friends of mine visited the car park in the early hours of this morning. Your wallet was on the floor. It was in shadow. It would not have been hard for you to miss it. In case you were wondering, the girl whom you so effectively defended is my grand-niece. She is fifteen. Her name is Li-Fen.’ He shrugs. ‘They call her Lily in her school. We still have to have our western names!’ He leans forwards. ‘When will it end?’

  He has a good, long laugh at this, which is distracting enough for me to not notice the teenage girl who has appeared from somewhere and is standing right next to me. Mr Sheng introduces us. It’s Li-Fen. I stand up and shake her
hand. She looks shyly to the floor as I sit down again, but not before giving Mr Sheng a barely discernible and confirmatory nod of the head. This is him, she’s saying.

  If it wasn’t for the swollen lip, the start of a nasty black eye and the scratch down her face, I don’t think I’d have recognised her. Part of it was all the excitement and the lack of proper light in the car park, but her clothing is different, too. Last night her dress was conventional and smart, but this morning she looks like a typical London teenager: tight black jeans with the knees out, flowery Andy Warhol Converse trainers and a Jim Morrison t-shirt.

  She’s holding a medium-sized cardboard gift box. It’s green, yellow and red with a stylised drawing of a pagoda on the side and the words ‘Thank You’ in an Oriental-style font on the folded-over top. It looks like a US Chinese takeaway carton, but bigger and classier.

  ‘I’m sorry to have put you to so much trouble, Mr Beckett,’ she says, still looking downwards.

  Her voice has the cadences of Cantonese, but there isn’t really an accent. Mr Sheng looks at her and smiles. He does a lot of smiling.

  ‘That’s quite alright. It was no trouble at all,’ I say.

  ‘You yourself were in danger,’ she says. ‘Thank you. And please give my thanks to your lady friend, also. She was kind. I am sorry I ran away. I was frightened.’

  ‘Quite understandable. Forget it.’

  ‘I have made some traditional Chinese candies for you. I hope you will accept this gift. It is a gesture of my gratitude. There is quite a variety: sesame cake, almond cookie, grass jelly, lime coconut bar and many others. I think you will find them tasty and zestful.’

  It sounds like this is a prepared speech. I wonder if it was Li-Fen who prepared it or someone else.

  ‘There is no need to give me a gift, Li-Fen.’

  ‘But please, Mr Beckett. I’m sure you will find them most delicious.’

  I decline three times in all before accepting. She places the box in front of me with both hands, looks at Mr Sheng and they exchange delighted smiles. They’re both pleased and surprised that I know their customs. Tempting as it is, I don’t open the box to look at what’s inside, as I know this will seem rude to both of them.