2cool2btrue (14 page)

B
y midday the next day neither Piers nor Guy is in, and I seem to be the only one vaguely bothered about it. Neither mobiles are answering this time either so I decide we’d better find them.

“Scarlett. Scarlett.” I try waving at her.

“Hang on, bud, I’ll send her an email,” says Zac, being helpful for once.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him, getting up.

I tap her on the shoulder and she jumps. “What, for goodness’ sake?” she says, taking off her headphones and switching off her Discman.

“I was just thinking it’s odd that we haven’t seen Piers yet this morning and we haven’t seen Guy for nearly two days.”

“No, that’s true,” says Scarlett. “Perhaps they’re at a meeting. Let me check their diaries.”

“I think we ought to have heard something though, don’t you?”

“Erm, let me just have a look at what they’ve got booked in at the moment,” murmurs Scarlett, tapping away and glancing at her screen.

“No, you’re right, there’s nothing here in their diaries, so they’ve obviously been murdered.”

“Thanks Scarlett, very helpful.”

“Oh, I’m just kidding, don’t worry, Charlie. They’ll ring in soon I’m sure.”

“I suppose so, but it just bugs me that they piss off like this. Someone must know where they are—haven’t they got friends or something?”

“You’ve met them,” says Zac.

“They must have some friends,” says Scarlett. “Let me ring their home numbers.”

A few moments later she reports that both answer machines are on.

“Like I said, they’ll be in later, I’m sure,” she says, putting back her headphones.

I look round at Zac who is, as usual, nearly horizontal with one leg crossed loosely over the other. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says “Lesbian in a man’s body.” He shrugs his shoulders and looks back to his screen.

I decide to go out and get a cappuccino.

By midafternoon, I’m quietly satisfied that I
was
right to worry, unlike the others, but at the same time I’m decidedly unnerved. We’ve all left more messages for them everywhere we can think of.

“Mind you, creative people
are
like that,” says Scarlett. “When I worked in the music business people would disappear for days and then just turn up again. They’re highly sensitive, highly strung.”

“Really? What they hell had they been doing?”

Scarlett thinks about it. “Drugs usually.”

I’m the last to leave the office. I ring my old mate Ben, and we decide to go for a pint. We were at college together but then he got a sensible job in the City. He’s read about the site.

“Saw that picture of you in the paper. You looked a total jerk, if you don’t mind me saying,” he tells me over a beer.

“No, you’re right, I did look like a jerk.”

“How’s it going then with this thing?”

“Really well,” I say, wondering whether to be honest. “We’ve hit our target for visitors.”

“What are your margins like?”

“Margins?”

“Profit
margins.”

“Oh, yeah of course. Profit margins.”

He smiles. “Well, how are they?”

“Too early to tell…oh, all right, fuck off, smarty pants. I don’t know. I don’t really have a lot to do with that.”

The smile turns more patronising. “Let me get this straight: you’re the marketing director and you don’t know much about the profit margins.”

“It’s early days, we’ll have to wait and see.”

“What about the projections? I mean the profit projections—”

“I know what you mean. Look, Ben, all right, I don’t know but I’m sure they’re healthy.”

“What about the business plan?”

“Bugger the business plan, I don’t know.”

“Okay, just wondered. You should ask your fellow directors, though. What are their names? Piers and Guy?”

“Yeah, you’re right, perhaps I will.”

Except there’s one slight problem. I turn the conversation round to him and his new job at the bank.

By the time I get back to the flat it’s gone ten and Lauren still isn’t home from seeing Peter, so I make myself some baked beans on toast with extra butter and tomato ketchup.

I wake up feeling cold and uncomfortable on the settee. There is something I don’t recognise on the telly. The reason I’ve woken up is that Lauren has just come in.

“Oh, hi, hon, you still up?” she says, kicking off her shoes.

“Yeah,” I groan, “must have fallen asleep.”

“Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

“Sure.” I yawn and stretch. “What time is it?”

“Erm, just after three.”

“What?”

“Just after three. You fell asleep in front of the telly.”

“Never mind about me, where have
you
been all this time?”

In the cold, blue, flickering light of the telly Lauren looks surprised and irritated.

“What do you mean, ‘Where have I been?’”

“It’s bloody three o’clock in the morning, I thought you were just going for a drink or something.”

“Then we had something to eat and then we went to a club Peter’s a member of.”

“Till this time?”

“Yes,
Dad.”

“Sorry, it’s just a bit late, that’s all.” I pull myself up feeling groggy and dizzy.

“I’m getting a bit fed up with this, Charlie. I told you I was seeing Peter tonight and I don’t expect you to be holding a stopwatch against me.”

She walks out and I sit back down again with my head in my hands.

Next day there is still no sign of Piers and Guy.

“I’m going to their homes,” I tell Scarlett.

“Good idea. I can’t think of anything else to do,” she says seriously. Scarlett serious. Now I’m really worried.

“What about your friend Nora?” says Zac.

“What about her?”

“She knows Piers, doesn’t she?”

“Actually she does, doesn’t she? She might have some idea where he is or at least who might know.”

I ring her.

“Hey Charlie, thanks for the other night. It was nice.”

“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it? Nora, I was just wondering if you’d heard anything from Piers.”

“Piers? No, why?”

“He seems to have disappeared. And Guy. We haven’t heard from either of them for days.”

“Really? What, nothing?”

“No, they haven’t been into the office. We’ve tried to track them down on their mobiles but there’s no answer.”

“How bizarre.”

“It is a bit, isn’t it? Never mind, just wondered if you’d heard anything. You do know Piers anyway, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do. Look, I’ll try to get hold of some of his other friends.”

“Thanks Nora, let me know if you hear anything.”

She sounds distracted for a moment. “Yes, of course. Sorry, when did you last see them?”

“Piers came in on Thursday but we haven’t seen Guy at all since Wednesday.”

“Mmm. Almost all week. And no one’s heard anything from them?”

“No. Nothing.”

“Bit worrying isn’t it?”

“It is a bit. Anyway, as I say, if you hear anything just give me a ring.”

“Yep, will do. Do you think the site will suffer without them? They are the leading lights aren’t they?”

“They developed the concept, that’s true.”

“And raised the finance.”

“Yes. Anyway, as I say, it was just in case you hear something.”

“Sure, sure. So it’s just the three of you left.”

“Yeah, well no. Not
left
as such; I’m sure Guy and Piers will be back soon. I just wish they’d told us where they were going, that’s all.”

“Are you going to their homes?”

“Might as well, have a quick look around, see if there’s any sign of life.”

“Where do they live?”

“Guy lives in Chelsea and—”

“Piers lives in Fulham, doesn’t he?”

“Er, yeah, that’s right. Anyway—”

“What about the police?”

“I’m not sure. It’s difficult. I don’t want to alarm people unnecessarily. I think we’ll give it a few more days. Presumably if they’re missing their family or friends would do that.”

“That’s true.”

“Anyway, I’ll keep you informed.”

“What’s Zac’s surname again?”

“Zac’s surname? What’s that got to do with anything? Nora, you’re not going to write about this in the bloody paper are you?”

“Well, I don’t know. I mean, it might help, mightn’t it?”

“Help bugger up the whole thing completely, you mean. Look, you’d better not.”

“Okay,” she says halfheartedly.

“Nora, please don’t.”

“Oh, honestly Charlie.”

“I said ‘don’t’!”

“And I heard you. I’d better make some calls. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

I set off to Chelsea first of all, having made the others promise to call me the minute they hear something. I’m sure everything’s fine but it’s beginning to dawn on me that of three of us “left” as Nora puts it, I’m the only one with any sort of responsibility or common sense. I realise that the suit I’m wearing today is Armando Basi, bought by 2cool, and that most of what I wear these days comes from the company, via our stylists or via my smart, new, totally transparent, 2cool-branded credit card. Like I say, I’m sure it’s all kosher and aboveboard, but if there were something, well, dodgy, I’d have to admit that I’ve had my fair share of goodies from this little operation. Even my skin is glowing from a free facial, courtesy of a new men’s grooming studio we’ve hooked up with.

Guy lives in a basement flat not far from South Kensington tube station. I walk down a tiny staircase and peer into the window. The living room itself is traditionally furnished with an old chesterfield couch, patterned rug and some repro landscape paintings. There is a fireplace with some china ornaments on it and some invitations. Next to it is a large telly.

On the floor, on the chesterfield settee, on the shelves either side of the chimney breast and on almost every available space, are piles of paper and magazines. Hundreds of them. Thousands probably. Some neatly stacked up, some toppling over. A sock hangs limply out of one pile. There are precariously balanced towers of thick glossy magazines all around the floor and on the coffee table, which must make watching telly almost impossible.

There is not much else I can do, other than knock on the window hard and shout through the letterbox. As I do, a gentle gust of cold, stale air greets me. If anything, this visit has made me feel more anxious.

There is no answer from Piers’s small terraced house in Fulham, either. He has the same kind of country-house-in-a-London-box furniture but the place is sort of casually messy, not maniacally so. Again I bang on the window and do some pointless shouting before setting off along the street. I ring Scarlett and tell her that I’ve drawn a blank and I’m coming back to the office. After I finish the call, something makes me turn just before I’ve got to the main road, and I see a bloke taking photographs. He looks pretty professional—angler’s jacket full of gear, automatic rewind on his camera, another camera around his neck.

He is definitely shooting Piers’s house.

The next day, Saturday, for once I’m up before Lauren is awake and I dash out to buy the
Post.
Walking back to the flat I begin to flick through. There is nothing on the first few pages. I smile at a picture of someone I know from my old agency, advertising a laptop by looking harassed as he walks across an airport concourse. What a crap shot. That guy just cannot act. But when I turn the next page there is a massive picture of me, plus one of Piers, next to a smaller one of his house.