Her hair – a backcombed bleached blonde creation that defied gravity via the application of so much lacquer it deserved its own Greenpeace protest cordon - towered at least another eighteen inches above her head.
If a wardrobe and an oompa loompa had met and mated, then Jonas’ mum might have been the result.
Not realising he’d already gone, she continued to berate him.
“Jonas,” she called after him, “Let me know how the interview goes.” She turned to me, shrugging a shoulder to reinstate a bra strap the size of circus tent rope, while the torrent of words continued. “I don’t think he’d even know if I died until the microwave dinners ran out; a slave to his technology he is. Sorry about the mess. I just got back from Dubai. Fabulous place. Go twice a year, switch off the blackberry and just chill. Anyway, listen to me wittering: What can I do for you? I’m Naimee, by the way, Naimee Cambell.” She held a hand out.
“You’re Naomi Campbell?” I asked.
“Naimee. No relation,” she deadpanned.
I introduced myself and Caz, then: “I wanted to talk about Dave Walker.”
“Ah,” she nodded, a hard look coming in to her eyes. “Miserable, was he? He does have a bit of a dourness about him. But he’s a decent grafter. Unless he shat in the vichyssoise I don’t do refunds. The invoice’ll be with you by the end of the week and I expect payment in full.”
I realised that the Himbos had obviously not phoned their agency to announce the murder of one of their numbers; or, if they had, that the news had not yet reached Naimee. Then I remembered the switched off blackberry, the long haul flight.
“He’s dead,” I told her.
“Oh,” she tilted her head in a way that made it look like she’d either heard the mating call of a phoenix, had a stroke, or wanted to present the impression of someone considering the brevity of mortality, the cruelty of humanity and the poetry of absence. Then she said “My pussy needs seeing to.”
My jaw dropped.
What on earth does one say at a moment like this? Caz, of course, having been trained by basilisks, had the perfect rejoinder: “We’ll wait.”
“Oh no,” Naimee cried, “You’ve got to have a look.”
I considered methods of temporary blindness.
Naimee opened a deep drawer, displaying a carved apart cardboard box containing, she informed us, a kitten called Heinz “Like the Ketchup.”.
“Hello, my little snookums,” she said in baby talk that might have approached cuteneness if the intonation hadn’t made it sound like Boris Karloff doing baby talk. A giant, orange Boris Karloff.
We waited as she fed and fussed over the cat, who, in the style of all cats, behaved as though he wouldn’t have cared if she’d spontaneously combusted and burnt to the ground in front of him. Which, based on the amount of lacquer in her barnet, was not an entirely impossible concept.
The keeping of kittens in the cutlery drawer wasn’t the weirdest thing I’d ever seen, but, the feeding complete, Naimee suddenly heaved a sigh, picked the cat up, cuddled it to her monumental bosom, and began sobbing quietly.
I looked at Caz, who raised an eyebrow, as if to say “Here we go again,” and, patting the weeping orange giant on the shoulder, made some soothing noises, and guided her to the kitchen table.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” I asked, kicking into standard operating mode in my family whenever someone was crying.
I filled the kettle, as the two women spoke quietly. Eventually, Naimee’s quiet sobs faded, as I opened cupboards in search of cups.
“They’re in the top one, over the sink,” Naimee said, murmuring to Caz about how “Poor Dave. He wasn’t a bad ‘un, just miserable as fuck. What happened to him.”
As Caz attempted to fill Naimee in on the demise of her employee, I pulled open drawers in search of teaspoons, wondering, as I did so, whether I’d uncover, perhaps a terrarium or a basket of puppies.
But apart from the usual drawers full of tea towels, one of napkins and the traditional drawer full of crap that nobody ever throws away – Christmas cracker novelties, tape measures, pens, mismatched cufflinks and a novelty dreidl – I couldn’t find the tea spoons.
When Caz got to the bit about the cause of Walker’s demise, Naimee renewed her crying, but this time with a little more volume and a sob that made it sound like someone was trying to start up a misfiring Motoguzzi in the kitchen.
Midway through this expression of grief, she stopped dead.
“’Ere,” she said, “Why’s he poking round my drawers?”
“Teaspoons,” I said, all attempts to banish the new mental picture of Naimee Cambell’s drawers failing, and was delivered of a sniff, a gesture towards a drawer on the opposite side of the kitchen, and, as I found the spoons and served the tea, Naimee recommenced her sobbing.
At length, it subsided, and, the kitten snoozing in her lap, Naimee sighed heavily, swallowed half a mug of tea in one go, and smiled sadly at me.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “it was quite a shock.”
“I can imagine,” Caz opined, pulling a litre of Courvoisier from her bag, and dropping a triple shot into the teas “For the shock,” she said, recapping and replacing the bottle, before gesturing to us to drink up. “I mean: you go away on holiday, and when you get back, well, this. Did you know him well?”
“Know him?” She sighed, started to tear up again, and turned into Sartre. “How well can you ever know anyone?”
Caz nodded sagely, swigged from her tea, and looked to me as if to say well, I tried.
“How long had Dave worked for you?” I asked, trying again.
She puffed out her cheeks, did some mental maths, stroked Heinz, and finally came up with “Forever. He was the first waiter I hired. He’d been working at some fancy Italian place, but it went bust, and he was out of a job. I think the owners had done a runner or something, cos he was owed money, and didn’t even have that month’s rent, so he was desperate. Asked for an advance, which I would never normally do.
“But I did, in this case. He seemed – I dunno – honourable.” She said the word as though it were Unicorn.
“And you know what?” She went on, “ He was. He was as honest as the day was long. Which was probably what made him so fucking miserable.” She laughed. “I was always getting complaints from customers: Couldn’t you get him to smile; He scowled all through the starters. I even had one woman reckon he made her husband cry. Turns out the old man was a right bastard to the wife, so Dave had given him a few home truths.”
She gulped back a bubbling sob, smiled sadly at the cat, swigged from her mug of spiked tea, and refocussed on me. “But apart from that – the stuff you learn when you work with people – I hardly knew him.”
“Did he have any family?”
She stared vacantly into space for a moment. “Not that I know of. Oh, wait, I think there might have been a sister. I remember him saying, once, that he was going to see his sister.” She nodded. “But I have no idea where she lived, or what her name was.”
“He didn’t really make an effort to make friends. Or to talk much, to be honest,” she said. “He just did his job, complained if anyone else wasn’t doing theirs, and went home.” She sniffed loudly, “I don’t even know if there was anyone at home.”
“Where did he live?” I asked, and she gave us Dave’s address. While I was at it, I asked for the contact details for Darryl Filip and Troy. They might, I figured, know something. Like Pythagoras’ Theorem. Unlikely, but we had to try.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The alarm woke me from a dream about Nick’s wife.
In the dream, they were dancing a tango together her draped sensuously over him as he dragged her around the floor contemptuously. My view was from a balcony looking down on them, and he would periodically look my way and mouth the word “Help,” at me, then, a second later, they would have turned around so that she was facing me, and she would look up, languorously, and smile a smile that was cruel and possessive an
d cold and final.
It was only as I was rising from the dream that I realised he’d been dancing with Veronica Lake, and wondered how the fuck a late night supper of tuna salad with capers and beans had inspired that little touch.
The air was already hot, so that moving became a chore, but I threw an arm across and slapped the alarm off, then rose to a seated position, and reached for my phone.
I’d switched it off last night after declining an incoming call from Nick for the fifth time, and, on switching it on, I could see that he’d tried to call three more times before switching to texts.
He’d left three voice mails too.
But, really, what could there be to say? I’d dreamed of his wife as a heartless femme fatale, but what did I even know about her? She hadn’t existed until two days ago.
I’d been coming out of a long term relationship when I met Nick. I’d spent many years with Robert, only to discover him shagging the window cleaner, and I’d never felt so humiliated, so angry in my life.
The humiliation had been compounded by the triumphalism of the bastard window cleaner, and I’d asked myself for ages afterwards how anyone could take so much pleasure in someone else’s unhappiness till I’d realised that Andy – a man so stupid he thought a homeopath was a gay serial killer – was a greedy immature shit.
So here I was: Did I want to be the window cleaner?
I’d dreamed jealously of Nick’s still nameless wife, as though the fact he’d kept her hidden was her fault, but it wasn’t.
I scanned the texts. The expected entreaties to me. “Please call me.” “We need to talk.” “This isn’t what it looks like,” (which made me snort. It looks like you’ve got a wife, Nick. One you never even mentioned to me. Am I missing any of this?) And finally “I’m going to come round to see you. Please let me explain. You mean a lot to me.” (Which, I realised, was not quite I can’t live without you.)
I sighed, dropped the phone on the bed, stood, and went to the bathroom.
Nick could wait; I had other fish to fry this morning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Right,” I dropped into my chair, and looked around the table.
The ASBO twins – differentiated now by the fact that Dash was sporting a red sunburned forehead – sat facing me, and Caz to my right. Caz, this morning, looked a little more her usual model of cool sophistication, apart, that is, from the vigorous fanning of herself with a copy of Victuallers Monthly.
“Can we make this quick,” she begged, “Only if I don’t stick my head back in the fridge soon this maquillage will be collecting in a puddle in my décolletage.”
The twins looked at each other in confusion.
“It’s French,” I clarified for them.
“And it means why on earth am I sitting in the super-heated kitchen of a dingy pub when everyone I know has gone to Cannes to at least escape from the heat?”
“Innit hot in Cannes?” Dash asked.
“Not on Yuri Arkhipova’s yacht, it’s not.”
The twins nodded, as though all of that made perfect sense now, and I wondered if I was the only one who had no idea who the Fuck Yuri Arkhipova was. “So,” I called them back to the matter in hand, “what have you got for me?”
Ray dipped into a bag at his feet, extracted a laptop, and flipped it open . He tapped a few buttons, then looked back up at me. “You wanted to know about the wife. He blew his cheeks out. There’s a lot. Wasn’t sure how much you wanted, but here goes:
“Sophie Bourne. Born third July 1975 to John and Elsie Barton of 23 Havelock Grove Dagenham. Nothing of note as a kid. She won a few dancing competitions, appeared as Eliza Doolittle, Ophelia and the Virgin Mary in various school productions.”
“You got all this from the internet?” I asked.
“Oh, you can find out almost anything from the web, Ray smiled. “Especially if – well, I’ll get to that. She finishes school, goes to college, then moves to the US in ’95.”
“Any particular reason?” I asked. “Was she, for example, following a man?”
Ray shook his head. “Nothing obvious. She arrives there March ’95 and there’s no sign of a man until she meets Kent Benson who, at that point, is a Movie producer.”
“Anything I’ve heard of?”
“Only the classics. Space Zombies on the Moon was one of his, as was The Caustic Avenger.” Ray saw my blank look and shook his head. “Don’t worry: I’ve never heard of them either. They were crap; straight to DVD if they were lucky. Some stuff I read suggested he made films that were designed to lose money in some sort of scam.”
“So,2 I drew him back to the point: “The wife.”
“Girlfriend, at that stage. They meet on The Caustic Avenger. She’s playing – according to imDb – Hooker #3. And they hit it off. By the time the film’s out on DVD, she’s moved in with him, and the two are engaged.
“About a year or so later, Kent transitions away from being a Movie producer, and Sophie stops being Hooker #3 and becomes a personal trainer and yoga instructor. Then a year later, they patent The Drastic Band.”
“The Drastic Band?” A bell was ringing.
“The Drastic band,” Ray repeated. “So called, cos it’s cheaper than a gastric band but produces physical changes that are twice as drastic. It’s basically an exercise gimmick that uses huge elastic bands to make Fat Yanks sweat more. They could get it online – thanks to Kent and Sophie’s infomercials – for one nine nine ninety nine, or four monthly payments of fifty dollars, and to be honest, the idea of paying two hundred notes for a bloody elastic band would probably make me sweat more than the workout.”
“I remember this,” I said, recalling the tall, slim brunette in the fluorescent one piece swimsuit, her perfect white teeth and a cut glass British accent. “They sold them here too, didn’t they?”
Ray nodded. “Within a year or so, the two of them are married, living in a mansion in La Jolla, with a yacht, his ‘n’ hers Porsches, and a couple of million in the bank.”
“I sense there’s a ‘But,’” I said.
“Not so much a But, more a Uh-Oh. Turns out, Sophie pinched the idea for the Drastic Band. Back when she was a Yoga teacher, she gets friendly with another instructor, name of Julie Roth, who shows her a prototype fitness idea she’s been working on: The Fit stretcher.
“It’s a fluorescent pink elastic band with various what they called proprietary aspects: basically built in rubber balls that make the thing look like a ball gag, and a ‘tension ratchet’ that tightens the elasticity and makes the workout harder. It is, basically, the Drastic Band, only simpler. As soon as the millions start pouring in, Julie Roth’s on the phone to a lawyer, and the Kent and Sophie show hits a bump.
“Gets better: the case is thrown out of court, and Julie Roth is last seen swearing revenge on the couple. Which she – sort of – gets. ‘Cos the attention – the case was all over the American media – stirs up a few lawyers to look into the claims of what they’re now calling “The Drastic System,” and before you can say Ambulance chaser, the company’s been hit with a class action for a few dozen fatties who’ve been left with minor spinal injuries from using the bloody thing.
“Course, by that time, the papers have had a good old rummage round in both of the proprietors’ lives. Turns out Sophie – classy Brit though she appeared – may have done some research for the part of Hooker #3 by actually being one for a few months before she met Kent.
“And Kent – apart from being a movie producer and fitness guru, has been what started off being called an Entrepreneur, and ended up – in a lot of the papers I checked – being called a grifter. He had a string of failed business ventures behind him, and in most cases, he’d walked away with as much cash as he could carry days before the whole thing caved in.”
“Charming.”
“Then – with everything piling up on them – this happens.” Ray dipped back into the bag at his feet, pulled a bunch of printouts from it, and piled them up on the table. T
hey were reproductions of newspaper pages with headlines like Fitness Guru Overboard? Has band Babe Been ABducted ? And Sophie: Cops Are Involved.
“The couple have let the staff go. The housekeeper was the last one, and she was fired a month earlier. Kent Benson spends the evening out with his lawyer, gets home just after midnight and heads to bed. Apparently, the two had separate bedrooms. Next morning, when he gets up, there’s no sign of the wife, and the couple’s boat – well, the reports say ‘boat,’ but it looks more like a yacht to me,” he held the picture up, and glanced at Caz, who – now our resident expert on the difference between a Yacht and a Boat – nodded
“Not a Superyacht, but more Yacht-ey than Boat-ey” she said using all the technical terms at her disposal.
Ray nodded his agreement with her diagnosis, and continued: “Anyways, next morning, the thing is missing.
“He assumes she’s taken it out for the day, and heads off to more business meetings. Except, it subsequently turns out he lies about this, cos he cancels his morning’s meetings, and ends up with the first meeting taking place at three that afternoon. What he was doing till then is still a mystery.
“What isn’t a mystery is that the boat was found by the coastguard at about 8.30 that evening, by which time Kent was having dinner with an actress called Dina Horn. When he reached home, the police are at the house. The boat’s been found alright, but there’s nobody on it. Subsequent checks show that Kent made 4 calls that day to Ms Horn, a couple to his lawyer, two to his dentist, and not a single call to his wife, who he hasn’t seen since 9am the previous morning.
“The police quickly moved from Sophie fell overboard through Sophie’s faked her own disappearance – the life dinghy was missing from the boat – and end up, eventually, with Kent’s done the wife in.”
“Any specific reason he’d do that? I’m assuming Dinah Horn’s not that pretty.”
“The money’s all gone. All the millions they made on The Drastic Band has pretty much been spent on law suits, lifestyle and pointless efforts to expand into a string of gyms. Old Kent is facing ruin, and Sophie has a life insurance policy worth eight million dollars.”
Death Of A Nobody Page 11
