by Stan Arnold
‘No,’ said Mrs Hathaway, looking very perplexed.
‘Well,’ said the consultant, ‘it must have been something pretty serious to get his face in that condition - he looks absolutely pulverised.’
‘No, we’re not here about his face - his face is so much better than it was - almost normal.’
The thought of what Aubrey’s face must have looked like when it wasn’t ‘almost normal’ flushed nauseously across the consultant’s features.
‘Well, then,’ he said placing his palms on his desk and breathing in quickly through his nose, ‘what do I have to deal with today? Is it worse?’
‘It’s his body - have a look for yourself,’ said Mrs Hathaway.
‘Right, Mr Brown,’ said the consultant, ‘could you please take your jacket and shirt off.’
Aubrey did what he was told.
‘And your tie.’
Aubrey did what he was told, again.
The consultant looked at Aubrey’s skin and assured them it was not a problem. His receptionist would phone through the fee and date for the operation, and follow it up with a confirmation in the post.
Mrs Hathaway and Aubrey left, and the consultant waved a professional, confidence-inspiring goodbye.
Once the door closed, he leapt across the room, wrenched open a filing cabinet drawer, and threw up into it.
He turned, leaned heavily on his desk with his head down. As he pressed the reception intercom, a thick stream of saliva dribbled onto the back of his hand.
‘Get a cleaner in,' he gasped, 'one with a strong stomach, cancel my appointments for the rest of the day, and get that list of locums - I need to give someone a job.’
One can only image his reaction if he’d asked Aubrey to drop his trousers.
Chapter 27
Charlie Sumkins had problems. Of course, there was the underarching problem that Mrs Hathaway was going to embark on a stack of suicidal missions for that stupid magazine, with any terminal outcome resulting in the exposure of his zero sperm count.
But everything else was going pear-shaped, too. He’d threatened Vlad and Vic because they’d failed to find Mick and Jim, the Implosion Productions runaways. And now, the V-Twins had scarpered. What was up with people? One little threat of an extended, painful death, and they were off like rabbits.
Then there was the cost of repairing the holes in the wood panels where he’d thrown the flick knives when failing to hear that whispered bit of the conversation at Daring Dooz. Extortionate! Nearly as much as cleaning blood off the carpet.
Plus, that devious, over-testosteroned Hathaway tart had phoned and made him promise to tell her as soon as he found out where Mick and Jim were. Given the sperm count business, he’d had to agree. But what the fuck was all that about!
He was also having international business difficulties; like the protection racket down under. His expensively trained protection racket specialist, Freddie ‘Figjam’ Foster, had decided to pack it in as he'd been recruited as a shop assistant at Estrange & York in Melbourne. And to add insult to injury, Estrange & York was one of the top payers. And to add more injury to that insult, Charlie’s lawyer in Melbourne was getting all piss-arsey about doing anything about it. That included a refusal to arrange for Freddie to get his just desserts - that’s as a shark pudding rather than a peach fucking melba.
There was trouble everywhere - the Nigerian suntan retail chain he used for laundering money from his Hong Kong greyhound burger scam. The Balinese dancing schools in Puerto Rico, where he stashed the undeclared income for his Sicilian Space Programme investment swindle. Everything was under fire - and when he wanted anything done, like in the old days, the bloody lawyers were quoting ‘new legislation’ and ‘tightening of anti-corruption laws’ and ‘international multi-agency responses’.
Sod them all! What he needed was the legal equivalent of a psychotic SAS brigade leader who'd taken one-too-many stun grenades. Someone who could just about remember where the accepted boundaries were, but would happily drive a kevlar-coated bulldozer, guns blazing through the whole fucking lot of them.
And by way of adding rancid Dream Topping on top of this whole, mouldy, cockroach-infested cake, some bastard had shoved the local freesheet paper under the door.
Freesheets were Charlie’s pet hate, especially the Soho Post-Intelligencer. It was full of photographs of media and arts-type ponces going in and out of the Groucho Club, with little captions saying things like ‘Tristram de Ville, artistic director of hit reality TV show How fast could you top your granny? flaunts his daring reinterpretation of the cravat.’
Charlie walked over to the door and picked up the fetid rag. He looked at the front page with disgust and, in a rare attempt to put current events into an historical perspective, muttered ‘Fuckin’ Caxton would do his conkers.’
He was just about to lob it into the wastepaper bin, when another rare event occurred - Charlie had a pleasant idea. He’d heard that, in the old days, people, even film stars, even Ealing comedy film stars, had used newspapers to shine their black shoes. As he was dressed in a jaunty check cap and matching check sports jacket, as worn by the dapper Basil Radford in Alexander Mackendrick's 1949 directorial debut, Whisky Galore, he decided to give it a go. He sat down, tore off the first page and immediately changed tack. There, on page three, dominating the drivel, was an advertisement with the headline:
NO CASE TOO TRIVIAL
NO COMPLAINT TOO PUERILE
Charlie read the advertisement. It was weird. Very weird. It might just be some deranged bastard. But, it was sort of talking Charlie’s language. And anyway, a solicitor advertising in the Soho Post-Intelligencer had to be at the end of some sort of tether. And that was a plus. People at the end of their tether, people who were desperate, people who would do anything to get what they wanted, even if they didn't know what they wanted, always made first-class recruits for his international criminal network.
But what if this bloke was no good? What if he had no bottle? What if he wouldn't do exactly what he was told? Well, if he’d sunk to advertising in that poxy rag, he was hardly a high flyer. Probably five years behind with his Law Society subs. If he was that insignificant, he could be quietly disposed of without throwing the legal world into turmoil.
Charlie picked up the phone, and dialled. What had he got to lose? And when had society-at-large not been improved by a member of the legal profession suddenly disappearing without trace?
The call woke Digby from a rather pleasant, alcohol-induced afternoon doze. Forgetting it might be a Neanderthal answering his advertisement, he attempted to respond in his most positive, corporately welcoming voice. Although, in truth, his speech was extremely slurred and featured dramatic variations in pitch and volume, similar to those made famous by 1950’s Radio Luxemburg.
‘Hello, thank you for taking the time out from your busy schedule to call me, Digby Elton-John, Solicitor-at-Law. How may my limitless legal expertise help solve your problems? And do please remember - I may be a little old-fashioned, I may be a teeny-weeny bit behind the times, but I am always - and I mean always - here for you.’
Charlie sighed deeply and began thinking about where best to dump the body.
Chapter 28
‘Saw your ad in that fuckin’ scandal sheet.’
Digby wasn’t the brightest solicitor never to have graced the hallowed halls the Old Bailey, but he realised, instantly, that his up-market, corporate-friendly approach was going to get him nowhere with a Neanderthal.
He changed tack, in a way that truly surprised him.
‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you?’ he snarled, sniffing nastily at the end of the sentence.
Charlie was impressed; no one had dared speak to him like that since he was running shopping errands for the Krays.
‘Fink you’re ‘ard enough?’ Charlie snarled back.
‘Guess you want a legal hobnail smackin’ into some bastard’s groin?’
‘That, and a lot more,’ said Charl
ie.
‘Say what gives, and I’ll deliver more sweet smellin’ shit than you can ‘andle.’
Charlie was warming to this person. He moved up from making plans for this poncey, time-wasting idiot’s death, to perhaps giving him a try-out, while watching over him like a king cobra with a particularly bad migraine.
‘International?’
‘Inter-fuckin’-national!’ exclaimed Digby. ‘I don't care where the shitheads are trying to slip one up your passage - La Rinconada, Motuo, the Mamanucas, Shag Rock, Tiahuanaco, Chickaloon, Exmoor - if you’re getting grief, I’m ready to wrench some ball bags.’
Charlie was impressed. Digby had just reeled off a whole load of places where his criminal tentacles hadn't reached - although X-More sounded familiar.
Digby was shaking and sweating profusely and, for the first time ever, was grateful for his life-long interest in philately and rare regional over-stamps.
‘What about cash?’ said Charlie through gritted teeth.
‘Cash?’ said Digby, aware that, for years, he hadn't had a client mention paying him, with the exception of the mystery thousand-pound cheque, a few weeks back.
‘Yeah, how much you chargin’ - like per day?’
Digby was ecstatic! A whole days’ work! Who said advertising didn't pay! He stayed in character.
‘I’m fuckin’ expensive.’
‘How expensive?’
‘Probably too expensive for you, arsehole,’ said Digby, aware he might be, as Neanderthals might put it, 'eyeballin’ a gift-horse in the gob'.
Charlie was getting a bit fed up with this, besides he was planning to watch the 1953, appropriately named Ealing comedy, Meet Mister Lucifer, before making plans to have that shit-faced Melbourne solicitor permanently knocked off his antipo-fucking-dean perch.
‘Look,’ said Charlie, ‘it’s £500 a day, plus expenses. Yes or no?’
Digby’s throat tightened, horribly. He stuck two fingers in his mouth to try and clear the airways. It worked.
‘Yes,’ he gasped.
‘I’ll phone when I want some bastard shafted.’
‘Yeah!’ said Digby, ‘and the £500 had better be in cash, in advance, or you can go fuck yourself.’
‘Fuck you too,’ said Charlie with what he regarded as a measured degree of charm. ‘Pleasure doin’ business with you.’
Charlie put the receiver down. The deal was done.
Digby took the phone off the hook, made a nice cup of cocoa followed by a bowl of tomato soup with toastie fingers, and spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Mozart on his gramophone in a vain attempt to rediscover his former self.
Chapter 29
Aubrey was on the make. The minute he returned from his Harley Street operation, and his eye-wateringly expensive recuperation period, his need to be pampered, looked after and generally over-indulged had assumed outrageous proportions. He’d also stopped smoking, mainly because his battered lips were incapable of gripping a cigarette. The upshot was, he felt he was entitled to stay in bed all day, and be waited on hand and foot.
The results of his punch bag beating were receding, and his face had now, more or less, re-arranged itself. But, as Aubrey’s normal, un-beaten up look was that of a man leaning heavily on death’s door, it was difficult to gauge how poorly he really was.
Each day, for three days, he’d had breakfast, lunch, dinner and light evening snack - including two take-away curries and ten jumbo cans of premium lager. This was the Shinkansen Tokyo-Osaka bullet version of the gravy train - first class, non-stop, all the way.
After three days intensive, Mrs Hathaway had had enough, and decided to stick a big spoke in its wheels.
She walked in on the morning of the fourth day and said firmly, ‘Aubrey, we need to talk’.
The tray with three soft-boiled eggs, lightly done toast in a rack and two cans of lager was nowhere to be seen. Through his half-closed eyes, Aubrey twigged the game was up, and slipped under the duvet where he had a three-minute coughing fit. His throat became so sore through forcing the coughs, he had to come up for air.
‘On the treadmill now!’ ordered Mrs Hathaway.
She grabbed Aubrey by the scruff of his pyjamas, dragged him out of bed and frog-marched him to the machine.
‘Aubrey Brown, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Do two miles, and then we’ll see about getting you a bit of breakfast.’
‘Press the red button to start.’
She left him with a threatening look, which Aubrey knew meant very serious business. She was half way through making some scrambled eggs, when a triumphant Aubrey returned to the kitchen covered in sweat.
‘I done it!’ he cried, holding up both arms in triumph.
‘No you haven’t,’ she said, without looking up from the pan.
‘I have.’
‘You haven’t.’
‘I have.’
‘You have only been running for a minute.’
‘I have done it,’ whined Aubrey. ‘I’m knackered!’
He flopped down on a kitchen chair.
Mrs Hathaway put the scrambled eggs to one side.
‘Let’s have a look, then.’
Ignoring the fact that Aubrey’s pyjamas presented a significant health hazard in a food preparation area, she turned and walked over to the treadmill.
‘See here,’ she said sternly. ‘It says you’ve run 200 yards.’
‘It’s all them flashin’ lights. I got confused. Got any grub?’
Mrs Hathaway returned and decided, come what may, to let him have both barrels.
‘Aubrey Brown!’
Aubrey sank back on the kitchen chair, drew up his knees and stared up at her with just a pathetic remnant of his ‘got any grub’ face.
‘Since we met, I’ve saved you from a grisly fate at the hands of Vlad and Vic, I’ve negotiated your continuing safety by confronting and manipulating one of the world’s top international crime bosses, I’ve bought you clothes, meals and alcohol, I’ve cooked, I’ve ironed and made sure you had a bath once a day and I’ve signed a contract with Daring Dooz worth £2 million, which has enabled me to pay for surgery to make you look a little more like a member of the human race. And what have you done for me?’
‘Er,’ said Aubrey, quietly.
‘Yes, that’s right - er!’
Aubrey’s ‘got any grub’ face had completely disappeared and had been replaced by something you might see on a six-year-old, half-way through an episode of Lassie, when it hears its kind old grandpa has got stuck down the mine shaft.
‘Sorry,’ he said, staring down at the Formica top. ‘I suppose I was just getting’ used to relaxing. You know, getting’ Charlie and all that out of my system.’ Aubrey looked up at Tallulah. ‘You’ve no idea what it was like turnin’ up there every day to get a good kickin’.’
He looked down again and continued his mumble.
‘I am grateful for everythin’ you’ve done. And if I seem ungrateful, it’s because I’m just a useless little shit.’
He started to snivel. Mrs Hathaway scurried round the table. Despite the fact that his pyjamas were soaked in sweat, and the smell was bordering on putrid, she crouched down and put her arm around his tiny shoulders.
‘Aubrey, listen to me. I know you’re useless. I know you’re little. And I know you’re a shit. But you’re my useless, little shit. I can see you have potential. I can already see a change in you.’
She felt particularly bad saying this, because, at that moment, she really couldn’t see any change, or any potential, in Aubrey, at all.
But he seemed comforted, so she carried on.
‘And do you know what I think? I think that with a little work, and a little understanding, we could possibly, maybe, perhaps, one day, have a future together, in some way, sort of.’
Aubrey looked up into her beautiful, pale blue eyes, and something happened that even Mrs Hathaway could never have anticipated, not even in her wildest dreams - a penny dropped. Aubrey wipe
d his eyes and nose on a paper napkin, and said quietly, ‘I’ll go and have a quick bath before breakfast - is that alright?’
‘Yes it is,’ she said, and, after a shocked pause, and a moment’s serious thought, added, ‘one egg or two?’
Chapter 30
It’s very difficult, if not disturbing, trying to get to know someone who continually flinches and makes ‘duck and dive’ head movements while they’re talking.
Mrs Hathaway understood about Aubrey’s conditioning at the hands of Charlie Sumkins. One word out of place, could result in various parts of his body ending up out of place. The solution was to keep moving, and if you couldn’t keep moving, have a panic attack.
It was very difficult, but, slowly, she began to guide Aubrey in a direction that would enable him to mix, albeit for short periods of time, with normal society.
She stopped him drinking. And that stopped the shakes. She introduced him to chamomile tea. And the shakes started again. So she switched him to chamomile tea with a drop of brandy and that seemed to strike an acceptable balance.
She took him for walks whenever she felt he was mentally strong enough to go outside. This went very well, apart from his tendency to throw himself at off-license windows and shout ‘Come to daddy!’
Back in the apartment, they had a ‘conversation hour’ each day. Initially, this lasted about five minutes, but gradually the time extended, particularly if the brandy to chamomile ratio was increased.
Tallulah would tell Aubrey a little bit about her life. Then Aubrey would tell her nothing about his. Tallulah would ask Aubrey his opinion on something, such as the country’s membership of the European Union. And Aubrey would say ‘What?’ in a flat tone which communicated that the topic of conversation was over. She took this as a success, because, at least, he was communicating. And communicating on a topic that didn’t involve lager, Indian food or his own personal safety.
However, she could clearly see this approach was going to take months, if not years, and she was already getting calls from Giles to say the yacht was ready, and had she found out where Mick and Jim were hiding.
