2cool2btrue (26 page)

“Nora, I said stop the car. You can park in one of these side streets and we’ll get a taxi.”

“We’re nearly there now, aren’t we?”

“No.” We
are
actually but I can’t stand this. We must have used up our luck by now.

“It’s at the end of this street, isn’t it?”

Outside it is dark and wet. I look in vain for cabs but there are none.

“Okay, but let’s take it slowly from now on.”

“Of course,” she says, putting her foot down.

We find Fairisle Road soon afterwards and decide to leave the car at the beginning of it, just off the main road. I do the parking since even Nora admits she’s not too hot on that.

Fairisle Road is a Victorian terrace in which most houses are shabby but still inhabited. There are five that are seriously dilapidated and number seventy-nine is in the middle of them. There is no sign of life from it whatsoever. My first thought is that Anastasia must have made a mistake. Surely even a squat must have something to show that it’s inhabited. I walk up to the gate and open it. The downstairs windows have been boarded up with corrugated iron and there is a pile of litter, Big Mac containers and rubbish around the front door.

“This place looks deserted,” I say to Nora, willing this to be the case.

“What a perfect place to hide, then,” she says brightly, a drop of rain hanging off her nose. “Go and try the door.”

I look at her for a moment, wondering whether there is still time to call the police and get out of here.

“Go on.”

I walk up to the door and knock gently, hoping that if there is anyone inside they won’t hear me.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says, pulling me out of the way. She boots the door as hard as she can, staggering backwards with the impact.

“Nora!”

“Well, what are you? The Avon Lady?”

Unfortunately the door, obviously rotten and with a rusted old lock,
has
given a bit. There really is no excuse for not trying again.

“Psst,” hisses Nora.

I look round and see a couple walk by, giving us a surreptitious glance as they pass. After a few moments I give it another assault. I have to admit to a touch of macho self-satisfaction as it opens properly with a shove from my shoulder.

“I hope whoever’s in here is deaf,” I whisper to her.

We both peer in. I shudder involuntarily at the thought of rats. The place smells of rotting wood, damp and urine. I nearly gag. “We can’t possibly go in without a…torch,” I say, as Nora produces one from her bag. Oh, shit.

“Luckily someone’s come prepared,” she says.

In the light of the torch the place itself doesn’t look too bad. It’s very grimy, with wallpaper and even bits of plaster hanging off the walls in the hallway, but the floorboards look sound. Nora steps inside and I follow her.

“Close the door,” she whispers.

Reluctantly I push it closed behind us. We move further in, and on the right is a doorway to the living room. I’m so close to Nora that I’m almost pressing up against her. She flashes the torch around. The room is empty except for a deckchair and some old lager cans dotted around a filthy rug. The hearth shows signs of a small, incompetently constructed fire.

We move on along the corridor. In front of us are the stairs and behind them the way to the kitchen. We choose the kitchen route, a tense, shambling, two-person conga. I’m beginning to think about a big drink after we get out of this.
If
we get out of this. There are more old lager cans and wine and whisky bottles in the kitchen plus some cardboard boxes. Oh, shit, obviously full of giant rats. They say you’re never more than ten feet away from a rat in London; we’re probably inches away from them. Don’t they go for your jugular? Or your genitals? Or is that wild dogs?

“Go back,” hisses Nora.

“Why?” I gasp.

“Because there’s nothing here.”

“Oh.” I turn to head backwards and it’s then that we hear a creak from above us.

I turn to look at Nora and she holds the torch up to her scared face. Suddenly all the comparisons with the
Blair Witch Project
which I’ve been suppressing come flooding into my mind, and I’m ready to just sprint out of there—what the hell.

“Did you hear that?” says the mask of terror in front of me.

“Yes, it came from upstairs,” I say, taking the torch from her and holding it in such a way as to give her a more gentle, flattering light. Which is, of course, for my benefit, not hers. “Let’s get out of here.”

Even she seems to be contemplating a fast exit for a moment.

“There must be someone up there.”

“Exactly! So let’s get out of here.”

She takes the torch off me and moves back towards the hallway. I’m breathing more steadily already at the thought of escape but she stops at the foot of the stairs.

“Come on,” I tell her.

“Just a quick look upstairs.”

“No, for fuck’s sake. I told you, this isn’t
Scooby Doo.
Let’s just go…Nora?” The step creaks and by the light of the torch I can see her beginning to walk up. “Come back.”

But she ignores me and carries on up. Helplessly, I follow her. There is another creak from the second floor. We get halfway and she turns round for a moment, but it’s obviously just to check that I’m still here behind her. Finally we are on the landing. The street lights throw a gentle yellowy light into the front bedroom. It is empty apart from the obligatory cardboard boxes. The torch is shaking in Nora’s hand, I notice.

Although there is no actual noise, somehow we both sense it at the same time: there
is
someone in the room next to us. The door is closed, and there is total blackness at this end of the hallway. Again Nora turns to look at me, her face a mixture of fear and curiosity in the harsh torchlight.

This is the moment. I’m a big bloke, I’ve got the element of surprise. Don’t think about it, just do it. I turn the handle and throw the door open as fast and as hard as I can.

Initially it moves smoothly and easily but a split second later it comes into contact with someone or something. From behind me I hear Nora scream and she drops the torch, a flash of light revealing a shadowy figure in the room. Already reeling from the impact of the door, it has no chance of seeing off a badly aimed but forceful blow from my right fist. It feels like I’ve hit someone’s head or cheekbone.

“Awwwfff!” There is a crack as a head hits the crumbling plaster of the wall. I stagger back for a moment but realise that it isn’t
my
head so I take a deep breath and look round for Nora. She is nowhere to be seen in the inky blackness of the hallway.

“Nora?” I’m still whispering.

“Yes?” she gasps.

My heart and lungs are both hammering away so hard that I can hardly get the words out. “I think I hit someone.”

“Sounded like it.”

We both stand in silence. I’m almost bracing myself for my assailant to come back at me but there is nothing except the sound of the traffic outside and the distant thump of a reggae beat from across the road. The pain from my hand begins to kick in, a dull, throbbing ache. I hope I haven’t broken something.

“Where’s the torch?” I whisper.

“I don’t know, I think it’s broken.”

“Oh fuck, it’d better not be,” I say, stepping back very slowly and bumping into her. We both crouch down and begin to feel around on the damp, rough floorboards for it.

“Got it,” she says. A second later the light begins to flash around crazily as she shakes it back into life.

“Give it here,” I hiss. I take it and shine it into the bedroom.

There is a figure on the floor, lying motionless. I think I’m going to be sick for a moment, then I’m conscious of Nora looking round from behind me.

“Who is it? Is he all right?” I can hear her words and I want to go and find out but somehow my body won’t move.

After what seems like hours but can only be a few moments, she pushes past me and walks gingerly into the room, looking behind the door. I’ve at least managed to shine the torch in there. She looks around for a moment and then crouches down by the body.

“Oh, my God! It
is
Piers,” she says in a strange, husky voice. I see her touch his face and then reach down towards his wrist. She holds it for a moment and looks back at me.

“Well?” I hear myself whisper.

“He’s dead.”

W
hat made you think I was dead?” asks Piers brightly.

“You had no pulse,” snaps Nora as if he’s not playing fair by still being alive.

“Well, obviously he had a bloody pulse,” I tell her.

“Oh, very clever, Dr. Doug Ross. Next time you knock someone out cold
you
can check they’re still alive.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

“Actually,” says Piers. “You might be right. I play a lot of squash and I’m pretty fit so I’ve probably got a very slow pulse, that’s all.”

“Oh, shut up,” Nora and I chorus. We look at each other in surprise and then look away crossly. Why the hell didn’t I call the police right away? I decide I’ll do it as soon as we leave, whatever Nora says. How did I get talked into this, anyway? I’m still feeling a bit sick and faint after the shock of thinking I’d killed someone.

“Gosh, my head hurts, though,” says Piers, rubbing the side of his forehead which is already beginning to swell.

“Good,” I say. My hand is killing me. I can hardly straighten out my index finger. Bang goes any more hand-modelling work.

“Charlie,” says Nora. “I think you should apologise to Piers.”

“What?
Me
apologise? After what he’s put me through?”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” says Piers.

So far we’ve ascertained that after deciding to go AWOL Piers stayed in a cheap hotel in Earls Court for a few days before realising that with his picture over so many newspapers he wasn’t safe. “I wore a false beard but it kept falling off,” he told us, sadly.

“How annoying,” I say.

“It was pretty embarrassing, especially when you’re having a curry. Obviously I couldn’t even take it back to the shop after that, either.”

The fact that all the stress, humiliation and misery I’ve suffered over the last few weeks has been caused by this idiot makes me feel a whole lot worse. I can’t even boast that I’ve been exploited and tricked by a proper villain.

According to Piers he bumped into Anastasia in a late-night supermarket in Earls Court Road and being a very shrewd sort she recognised him through his fiendish disguise. They started talking drugs, of course, and so she came up with the idea of staying at one of the squats used by his drug contacts. A bloke called Twange or something found him this place.

“It was pretty grim at first but I’ve made it quite cosy, haven’t I?” he says, pointing to the tent he’s erected in one corner of the room. Inside is a sleeping bag and there is a tiny gas stove set up in the middle of the floor. I might have known he’d been a Boy Scout. “Loo facilities are bit basic. It’s round to the right if you want to go.”

Nora and I, sipping whisky out of brightly coloured plastic camping cups, decline. With the whisky warming me, I feel ready to ask Piers some more questions. I just can’t think where to begin but, of course, Nora starts first.

“So, Piers, can I just check, have you actually done anything that’s against the law?”

“Erm, not really,” he says thoughtfully, feeling the side of his head again. “It’s not our fault that 2cool didn’t actually make any money, well not enough money, anyway. We told all the investors exactly what it was and how it worked, they saw the prospectus, it was all legal and aboveboard.”

“But they’re not stupid. There are some very shrewd, experienced business people who’ve put money into it,” I point out.

“They knew what they were laying themselves open to. The point is that it was young and hip and fun and glamorous, and so everybody wanted a piece of it. Pop stars, movie stars, designers—they all thought it was going to be like the best sex they’d ever had, which it was, of course. And as for those older ones, it was their children or mistresses or whatever who persuaded them. It all made sense. We were just a bit vague about revenue streams, that’s all.”

“You mean how it would actually make any money?”

“Yeah, I mean it did make
some
money, you know, through selling those luxury products and things, just not enough. People were always using the site, reading the articles, doing the competitions, looking at the porn, but the buggers just weren’t buying anything or giving us any of their cash. We did sell some advertising space on it but even then it wasn’t enough.”

“But didn’t the accountants say something about all this money we were spending, you know, with the launch party and everything?” I ask.

“Oh, all the time, you know what they’re like. Penny pinchers!”

“So you’ve done nothing wrong?” repeats Nora.

“Oh, no,” says Piers. “More whisky?” We both accept another splash.

“So, if you did nothing wrong, why are the Fraud Squad all over us?” I ask him, taking another sip.

“I don’t know. One of the investors must have said something to them I suppose. Or perhaps the accountants became suspicious because they’d never seen anyone spend money so quickly and go into the red so fast. Also, let’s face it, for the police, it was a high-profile case—can you imagine if they
had
managed to make an arrest?” He whistles and pours himself some more whisky. “It would have given them huge a PR coup.”

That arrest could have been me, I realise. “So they won’t find anything dodgy in the accounts?” I ask.

“Well,” says Piers, frowning thoughtfully. “The accounts
are
a bit of a mess, as you know.”

“I did notice.”

“But there is nothing actually illegal.”

“So when Josh Langdon says he’s thinking of taking us, I mean, 2cool,” I say choosing my words carefully, “to court to get his money back, because it was obtained under false pretences, he’s talking rubbish?”

Piers smiles enigmatically. “Oh, I don’t think Josh’ll be taking us to court somehow. I don’t think any of our main investors will be rushing to cause trouble. Don’t worry about that, mate. Anyway,
caveat emptor,
I say.”

“What?”

“Let the buyer beware,” says Nora. “It’s Latin.”

“So why did you disappear and leave me to handle it all?”

“Sorry about that, mate. It was all getting a bit too hot to handle and then Guy disappeared—”

“Where is he?” asks Nora before I can get the question out.

“I don’t know,” says Piers, looking, for once, as if he has realised how serious the situation is. “That’s the thing. He just vanished that night. I haven’t heard from him since.”

“We thought you’d both gone together,” I say.

“Oh, no.”

“That morning, you came into the office looking like shit and said you’d had a bit of a night of it. That was when—”

“I
had
had a bit of a night of it, a hell of a night of it in fact. I’d been looking for him everywhere: at his flat, ringing his phone, asking his friends. All night and nothing. I didn’t hear a word from him.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” I ask.

Piers shrugs his shoulders. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

“So you have no idea where he is now?” asks Nora before I can question Piers’s logic.

“No. Mind you, bit of a funny character, our Guy. Never could quite figure him out,” he says, conspiratorially. This just gets worse and worse.

“So, are you going to come back then, to the office I mean?” I ask.

“We-e-e-ll, bit difficult. I’ll think about it if you don’t mind.”

“For God’s sake, Piers, you can’t just leave me to handle it on my own. The police are on my back every day. Not to mention the press.” Nora seems to ignore the dig.

“The cops being a bit of a nuisance are they?”

“More than that, they’ve taken away the computers, half the paperwork—all those bills,” I say, suddenly remembering the drawers and boxes full of paper that had given me such a heart attack. “I’ve never seen so many bits of paper.”

“Did you manage to sort that lot out? I always was a bit crap at filing. Kept meaning to ask Scarlett to do it.”

“They’ve been to my flat, and yours and Guy’s,” I tell him.

“Oh, dear. What
will
the neighbours say?” He laughs. “Anyway, like I told you, we haven’t actually done anything wrong, it’s just that we spent rather a lot of money rather quickly, that’s all. 2cool could still come back with a vengeance, like a phoenix rising from the—”

“Don’t be stupid,” I tell him.

“Oh, okay.” He takes another sip of whisky.

“I could just ring the police now, of course,” I say slowly.

“No,” says Nora. “That’s not fair.”

“Fair? What’s fair? I’ve been hounded, humiliated, beaten up—”

“Beaten up?” says Nora, looking at me, concerned.

“Some bloke tried to.”

“Ooh, nasty,” says Piers. “But you gave as good as you got, yeah?” He mimes a left hook.

“I didn’t have to,” I say, too overwhelmed and confused to be macho about it. “He walked into the door and then fell downstairs.”

Piers looks quizzical and then suddenly roars with laughter. “Hang on, was he about my height, bit thinner?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Orangey brown hair?”

“I couldn’t tell really, he had a biker’s helmet on.”

“Oh, that’s definitely Shagger,” he laughs. “Old Shagger Potts. We used to call him Shagger because he never got any. God, he’s a clumsy bastard. Worse than you,” he tells Nora. “Specially with that stupid helmet on. So he wants his money, does he? Huh, back of the line for you, Shagger!”

“Anyway, Piers, the point is, are you going to the police or are you going to stay here?” I ask.

“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll stay here. Lie low for a bit.”

“I
do
mind, actually.”

“Charlie, come on,” says Nora. “Like Piers says, they haven’t actually done anything wrong, just been a bit spendthrift.”

“And I
am
trying to find Guy for you,” says Piers. “Of course.”

“How?”

“I’ve got people looking for him as we speak, and if he contacts anyone it’ll be me.” He sees my sceptical look. “I’ve got my mobile, it’s just that I don’t leave it on, I collect my messages a couple of times a day.”

I take a long look at Piers. Wearing a blue and white striped preppy shirt, a pair of chinos which are remarkably clean given his squalid surroundings, and a pair of scuffed Docksiders, he stands next to his schoolboy tent, in this derelict, rat-infested shit hole. I decide to leave him to wallow in it. Besides, at least he can’t wreak any more havoc here. I get the feeling that if he were interrogated by Slapton—even with a good lawyer present—he would end up digging himself into a hole that he couldn’t get out of, and somehow I’d end up falling into it as well.

“Come on, Nora, we’d better be going.”

“Cheers then,” says Piers, putting down his cup. “Good to see you again.”

I laugh bitterly. “Yeah, and you.”

“Keep in touch,” he says. “Just leave a message on my mobile if you hear anything and I’ll call you right back. Oh, Nora. You haven’t got any chocolate, have you?”

“No, Piers, sorry,” she says.

Even she seems a bit exasperated by him by now.

With me holding our torch and Piers illuminating us from overhead with another one, we carefully make our way out. I really do hope there are giant rats in that place. Lost in thought, I wander back down the road. At least it’s stopped raining. We get to the car and I stand by it, waiting for Nora to open the door.

“Want a lift home?” she says.

At this point I come back to earth. “No, ’course not. Sorry, Nora, but we can’t risk you driving this thing again without a license or insurance or anything. Look, let’s get a taxi and your friend will have to pick it up tomorrow.”

“Oh, okay,” says Nora, clearly relieved that she doesn’t have to repeat her hair-raising performance behind the wheel.

We find a minicab office and an enormously fat man, overflowing a typing chair, assigns a driver who, even before we’ve got north of the river, has offered us a selection of good quality leather coats which his brother imports, together with a mobile phone, cheaper than we can find in a shop, and some CDs. In a break during the sales pitch I say to Nora, “You’re not going to write about that, are you?”

“About Piers? No.” I’m trying to work out what she’s thinking, but she’s looking out of the window and won’t look round at me.

“I mean, in some ways it doesn’t matter to me whether you do or not,” I say.

“But I wouldn’t. We agreed, remember?”

We drive on in a silence broken only by a special deal on some carpets which are going for just £20 each.

“What did Piers mean about Josh Langdon and people not taking us to court? I was glad to hear him say it but I don’t quite understand why he’s so confident.”

“I’ve no idea,” she says, looking out of the window.

By the time we’ve reached Vauxhall Bridge it’s decision time. Do we go to hers or do we say goodbye in a minute and go our separate ways? The fact that she’s fiddling furiously with a stray piece of thread from her jacket suggests that she’s also aware of the dilemma. As we zip up to Victoria at frightening speed, a shit-hot deal on portable CD players falling on deaf ears, I make my choice.