‘It’s not that. It’s just…’
‘What?’
Dylan passed us, heading back up towards the offices. He gave me a pointed stare, and a quick glance up at the CCTV cameras.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘let’s talk later.’
Caddy looked at me as though she was about to refuse, then at the last minute, ‘Whatever.’
I had three private dances booked in the Blue Room before the end of the Friday evening. The final booking, when I was already tired, came as a surprise to say the least. I went into the room and found that the only person sitting in there was Dunkerley.
He looked pleased with himself, lounging on one of the sofas looking as if he owned the place.
I wanted to turn around and leave again, but if he was in here he must have paid. If he’d paid, then I was going to make myself very unpopular by asking to have him thrown out.
‘Good evening,’ I said. ‘What brings you here?’
‘I wanted to see you,’ he said, a smug smile on his face. I had to fight the urge to smack it away.
‘That’s nice,’ I said. ‘Would you like a fast dance, or a slow dance?’
‘Mm,’ he said. ‘Surprise me.’
I went through my list of music quickly, trying to find something that was even vaguely appropriate to dance to for the benefit of a man I couldn’t stand. All the music was in this list because I liked it and I had routines worked out for all of them. Whichever one I picked I probably wouldn’t use again because it would always remind me of dancing for this horrible man.
I found one. Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Don’t Cha’. It wasn’t one they appreciated in the club as a rule – it was a little over-used.
I did the dance; I even did some of my best moves, before winding down by gyrating in front of him, spinning and twisting. I watched his self-satisfied smug-ugly face change. At the end, he applauded.
I went straight from the Blue Room upstairs to the offices. Nicks was standing guard at the top of the stairs. Dancers didn’t usually come up here unless they’d received a specific invitation, and then only with a chaperone.
‘I’d like to see Fitz,’ I said to him.
‘I’ll ask him,’ he said. ‘You wait here.’
I did as I was told. I felt hot and uncomfortable, not even sure what the fuck I thought I was doing. But knowing I had to do it anyway.
A few moments later Fitz emerged from the main office, at the end of the corridor on the right. He shut the door behind him and came over to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, giving him my best Viva smile. ‘I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Come with me,’ he said. He led me to the far end of the carpeted corridor. I’d never been down here before. It was a smaller sitting room, almost like a waiting room – chairs and sofas around the edges of the room, a potted plant in the corner. A desk near the door. Fitz sat on one of the chairs and I sank gratefully down into the chair next to his.
‘I’ve been having some problems with a guy at work,’ I began. ‘He recognised me here a few weeks ago, and he’s been making it really difficult for me there.’
Fitz’s face was impassive. He was waiting for me to get to the part where it became his problem.
‘He wanted me to do a private dance for him but he wasn’t prepared to pay for it, so Helena got him to leave. I didn’t think he’d come back, but he’s here, now.’
Still no response. I was starting to feel like I was making a huge mistake.
‘He just booked me for a dance and I did it, so he’s changed his mind about paying. But he’s staying in the club, he’s hanging around, and I don’t like it. I think he’s going to try and follow me home.’
I had nothing to support this theory but nevertheless I’d finally got to the part that concerned Fitz. While I was working for him, I was almost his property, and anyone seeking to disrupt that easy relationship was not going to be allowed to carry on.
‘What’s he look like?’ he asked.
‘Tall, bald head, quite fat, light grey suit, glasses.’
‘Sounds a charmer.’
I smiled and looked down at my bare knees. ‘I’m not easily scared, Fitz. I can take care of myself normally. I don’t like asking for help.’
‘I know that,’ he said softly. ‘But this is bad for business, whether he’s paid up or not. I can’t have him distracting you while you’re at work here. I’ll make sure he doesn’t follow you home. Alright?’
I nodded gratefully and stood. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your meeting.’
‘No worries.’
I went back to the end of the corridor and turned at the top of the stairs. He was watching me go. Checking me out, or making sure I wasn’t going to try and nose around some of the other rooms? I still wasn’t sure he trusted me.
I was just in time for my last dance. I was tired so I made it a slow one, erotic, taking it about as far as it was possible to go without another person. At the front of the audience, looking pink and sweaty, was Dunkerley. At the back, in one of the VIP booths, Fitz, Nicks and Dylan. They were talking, helping themselves from a half-full bottle of Russian import vodka and watching me.
When it was over I blew a kiss to the few men who were still sitting at the front despite the fact that it was nearly dawn and they should have been at home tucked up in their beds next to their wives long ago. I went back into the dressing room and got changed into my jeans and trainers and fleece, wiped off the make-up and tied my hair up in a ponytail behind my head. I said goodnight to the other girls who were still there, and let myself out the back way.
The back street was quiet and grey with the approaching dawn. There was no sign of Dunkerley, or anyone else for that matter. I’d been kind of hoping for an escort to take me safely home, maybe Dylan, or even Fitz – maybe I’d even have been alright with Nicks, at a push – but there was nobody.
I walked round the front to find a cab.
At work on Monday, they told us Dunkerley was off sick, that he was going to be off work for a while. There was a lot of gossip about it, of course. I heard a suggestion that Human Resources had put him on garden leave for some sort of harassment, and that he’d been asked to resign. There was even a rumour going round that he was genuinely ill, seriously ill, and that he might not be able to come back.
All I knew was that I didn’t have to see his smug fat head again, and for that I was profoundly grateful.
Twenty-four
Jim Carling came with me to look for baths. I was grateful for this; despite the cross words first thing in the morning, I was starting to really like Jim. Aside from ferrying me cheerfully everywhere I wanted to go, he kept up the conversation about boat ownership and whether or not it would be possible to make your way around the world in a boat of this size, and, if so, where would you go? We had fun with that one. Jim wanted to go to the Far East. I said I wasn’t going to go anywhere in the Indian Ocean because of the threat of Somali pirates. All of this was arbitrary anyway because I had never driven a boat before, much less negotiated the open sea.
We didn’t come back with a bath, although there were some reasonable ones in a reclamation yard in Sittingbourne. I was on the lookout for a hip bath, maybe even a genuine Victorian one, something I could manage to connect to the boat’s plumbing without too much hassle.
We stopped and had lunch in a café at a garden centre – jacket potato for me, ploughman’s for him – with pots of tea. It felt very domestic, this – shopping for home improvements at the weekend.
‘Is there anywhere else you need to go?’ he asked.
I laughed. ‘You don’t have to be my taxi,’ I said. ‘It’s very kind of you but I wouldn’t want to take advantage.’
We drove home to the marina, and, because it seemed like the most appropriate thing to do with the fading afternoon, we went back to bed. The boat was chilly. I took him by the hand and into the bedroom. He was skilful and patient, his big hands decisive and firm.
By the time we’d tired ourselves out, it was dark. I went to the galley and lit the woodburner to warm the boat up, and then came back to bed. I thought for a moment he was asleep but he moved to let me under the covers, and pulled me against him.
‘It should start to warm up soon,’ I said. ‘The stove’s really efficient when it gets going.’
‘Mm,’ he said. ‘I should think about going home.’
‘Really?’
‘I don’t have any clean clothes. And I need to do stuff at home – laundry, you know.’
‘Oh.’
He was kissing my arm, making the hairs on it rise in anticipation. ‘You could come home and stay with me.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘Why?’
I laughed. ‘I don’t sleep well on dry land.’
‘You don’t have to actually sleep.’
It was at that moment that I realised. I wanted to share it with him. Maybe not all of it, but enough to make him understand.
‘I have to stay on the boat.’
‘Why?’
‘The men who came on the boat and tied me up – I think they were looking for something. If I leave the boat, they’ll come back.’
‘What were they looking for?’
‘I’m not sure. I just know that they turned the boat upside down and I assume that means they were looking for something.’
He sat up in bed, bunching the pillows behind him, and turned on the light overhead. ‘If you don’t know what they were looking for,’ he said with impeccable logic, ‘how do you know they didn’t find it?’
I blinked at him.
‘You have to tell me, Genevieve.’
‘No, I don’t.’
He shook his head slowly. ‘God,’ he said, more to himself than to me, ‘why am I even here? This is fucking crazy.’
‘Look,’ I said, trying to comfort him, ‘I’m not scared of them, not really. They are bad people but I’ve dealt with them before. I just need to figure out a way to get whatever it is off my boat so that I’m not a target for them any more.’
‘Caddy Smith,’ he said, ‘you knew her, didn’t you?’
I nodded my head.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘You said her name was Candace.’
‘Don’t play dumb, Genevieve. You knew it was her when you saw her in the water. You lied on your statement.’
‘No, I didn’t. It was dark. I saw a body. It looked like her, but I wasn’t sure.’
‘You’ve got to tell me, Genevieve. What do you mean, you’ve dealt with them before? Who are they? What do they want from you?’
I didn’t answer.
He got out of bed and started to dress in his clothes which, once again, were scattered all over my bedroom floor. I watched him silently, wondering which bit of the whole bloody mess had sparked off this sudden change in the mood. Just because I didn’t want to make everything worse? Just because I didn’t want to tell him about all the crap at the Barclay? What was he planning to do, anyway – go and ask Fitz nicely to leave me alone?
He was nearly fully dressed now, pulling his jumper over his head.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked.
‘I’m going home,’ he said. ‘Crazy as it is, the offer’s still there if you want to come with me. But I’m guessing you won’t.’ He was so angry. I could tell, it was more than anger, it was fury, and, worse still, disappointment. When he’d finished dressing he came over to the bed and kissed me hard, fiercely, as if it might be the last time. I put my arms around his neck and tried to pull him back to bed but he wasn’t having any of that.
It was a kiss goodbye.
It was on my second visit to Fitz’s house that everything began to change for all of us: for Fitz, for Dylan, for Caddy, and for me.
I’d been looking forward to it all week, not just because these weekends were going to be giving such an impressive boost to my savings, even if I hadn’t managed to negotiate a better pay deal for it; this time, Caddy had agreed to do the party with me.
Added to which, not having to deal with Dunkerley at work was a bonus. Gavin had been promoted to being our temporary manager, and it was pretty much like working for your best mate: we got on with things as we always had, but it felt more as though we were having a laugh about it instead of stepping over each other’s twitching bodies in the desperate fight to close deals.
It wasn’t Dylan who collected me that evening, but Nicks. He sat in the car outside until I was ready and stayed there; I let myself in to the back seat and then we drove off into the traffic.
‘Where’s Caddy?’ I asked.
He moved his shoulders in some kind of lazy shrug and then barely said a word to me the whole journey. I plugged into my music and listened to it, going over my moves in my head, planning where I could make tweaks, considering what I would do if the option arose for Fitz to bend the rules again. I’d kind of set the precedent now by doing it once; it was more or less accepted that I would be asked to do it again. No matter. The money was the important thing. If it got me closer to the boat, I was prepared to do it. And if he wanted me to go further still? No point worrying about it now. I would decide when the time came.
We pulled up to the rear of the house this time, and I went straight in through the back door to the kitchen. As before, the caterers were busy preparing food, a sit-down meal by the look of it.
I found a comfy chair in the corner and kept myself busy with a notebook I’d brought with me, full of plans and ideas and clippings from various boat magazines. I was so engrossed in it that I didn’t even notice Dylan until he was standing right beside me, eclipsing the light from the kitchen.
‘Hi!’ I said, pulling one headphone from my ear. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
He looked at me without expression. ‘You’re not on till later. They’re having dinner in the dining room in half an hour. Fitz wants to know if you’d like to join them.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘Nope.’
‘Just me?’
‘You and a few others. There’s a seating plan.’
‘Oh. Dylan, do you know where Caddy is? She’s supposed to be here too.’
‘She’s upstairs, I think.’
I accepted this without comment, pissed off that my evening of entertainment with my best buddy was not turning out quite the way I’d hoped. What the hell was she doing upstairs? Had she found some nicer room to use as a changing room?
‘Am I sitting next to someone I should know about?’ I said.
‘You’re between Fitz and Leon Arnold.’
I dropped my voice to a whisper. ‘Who’s Leon Arnold?’
He looked at me as though I’d asked the wrong question. ‘Owns a yacht. You’ll get on well with him. And, if you don’t, you should pretend to.’
It was another test, I realised. Good job I’d brought enough outfits with me so that I could select something suitable for an evening meal. I went to the downstairs bathroom and got changed, put make-up on and twisted my hair up into a French pleat that I hoped looked classically elegant.
The dining room was empty but the table was laid for ten; through open doors the other side I heard sounds of polite conversation, a woman’s laugh, so I went to the door cautiously and looked through.
They were all in there – Fitz and some other men, one of whom I recognised from the last party. There were women in there too; I recognised a girl from the Barclay – Stella? She’d danced there a few times, but usually she worked at one of Fitz’s other clubs. And standing next to Fitz, resplendent in a jewelled black cocktail dress and a pair of killer heels, was Caddy. She gave me a little wave.
Three of the girls were on their own in a corner, giggling over some private joke. I saw Fitz cast a displeased glance over to them before carrying on a conversation with the man to his right. I went over to the girls with a glass of champagne I’d lifted from the tray of a passing waitress and said to them quietly, ‘Ladies,
aren’t you supposed to be mingling?’
Two of them looked worried, but one of them – an acid blonde with pale blue eyes, said, ‘Fuck’s it got to do with you?’
I treated her to a warm smile. ‘Doesn’t pay to piss Fitz off,’ I said sweetly, ‘and he’s already looking daggers at you. Just a bit of friendly advice.’
As I left them and headed for Fitz, the girls seemed to come to their senses and they split from their cosy huddle, making their way towards the remaining guests.
‘Viva,’ Fitz said to me as I approached. ‘Come and meet Leon.’
Fitz slipped an arm around my waist and kissed my cheek as I shook Leon Arnold’s hand. He was maybe fifty, the same height as me, with a shaved head and capped teeth. A good suit, a diamond stud in one earlobe.
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ I said. ‘I understand I’m the lucky girl who gets to sit next to you at dinner.’
He looked as though he might take a bit of warming up, but what the hell? I was already thinking of my potential bonus for sorting out Fitz’s girls and for softening up Mr Arnold for whatever scheme Fitz had planned for him. What I hadn’t reckoned on, though, was the look Caddy was giving me. She wasn’t smiling. She was looking at me as though I were something she’d found on the sole of her shoe.
‘Hey,’ I said to her, as we filed in to dinner, ‘I was wondering where you were.’
She didn’t seem to hear me. Whatever. This wasn’t the time or the place.
Over dinner, the topic of business seemed to be strictly off-limits. Stella told everybody about an audition she’d had, to dance in a music video; one of the other men, a younger version of Fitz, told her he was looking for girls to appear as extras in a film he was producing. After that they were all over him.
I chatted to Leon Arnold over dinner, asked him about his yacht, about cruising around the islands in the Mediterranean. More than once I cast a glance in Fitz’s direction to check I was doing the right thing. He gave me a smile which reassured me. The rest of the time he was busy talking to the man who was sitting on the other side of him, an older man with a neatly trimmed grey beard. Caddy seemed to have been tasked with entertaining him – she kept her focus on him and away from me.
Revenge of the Tide Page 19
