Gun Street Girl (20 page)

Catherine knocked on the connecting door about twenty minutes later. I didn't answer and she knocked again, then opened the door. I saw her body silhouetted through the thin material of her dressing gown as she stood in the doorway.

‘Surprise, surprise,' I said. ‘I saved you some ice.'

‘It's not what you think.'

‘It never is, sweetheart,'

‘Don't call me sweetheart, you sound like a trick.'

‘Pardon me, I'm sure.'

‘I'm scared,' she said.

‘I told you I don't think those guys will come back tonight. It's tomorrow we have to worry about.'

‘I'm still scared.'

‘And you want the protection of my manly body. Don't make me laugh. You can take care of yourself – you nearly killed me this afternoon.'

‘I'm sorry about that.'

‘And that's all it takes. “I'm sorry” and everything's all right. Why don't you go see Elizabeth?'

She shrugged. ‘She's gone to bed. I don't think she wants to see me.'

‘I don't think I do either.'

‘Can't you ever say anything nice? You're just a bastard like all men.'

‘Do you want me to apologise for what I am?'

‘You should. You think I came in here to get laid. I only came for a bit of company.'

‘Get a dog.'

‘You fucking bastard.' If she'd turned on the waterworks then I would have told her to get lost, but she just looked me straight in the eye. ‘That was a lousy thing to say.'

She was right. ‘I'm sorry,' I said, and I was.

‘I didn't come here to get laid,' she said. ‘I've been laid enough, thank you. I've had enough fucks to last a lifetime. What do I need you for? Or any man? I've had enough men to know what they're good for. Not much I can tell you. Anyway, Nick, you're looking at damaged goods.' She posed in a mockery of provocation. She arched her spine and threw her head back, put one hand behind her head and caught her hair in a bunch, and licked her lips until they shone wetly in the half-light. I have to tell you she looked good. Too good to resist. ‘Damaged goods, Mister Private Eye.' And then she did start to cry. A long mournful sound that raised the flesh on my back and made the short hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

I moved towards her but she waved me away and went into my bedroom. I didn't follow her. What she was going through had to be handled alone, or not at all. When she wanted company she'd let me know.

I sat down, lit a cigarette and took a whack at the gin. It tasted oily and sweet and cold and I emptied my glass. I looked at the door, but left her alone and made a fresh drink. She came back into the room after about twenty minutes.

‘Drink?' I asked.

‘I've had too many already.'

‘One more won't make much difference then.'

‘Okay, just a weak one.'

I mixed her a little gin and a lot of ice and tonic and gave her the glass. She took it in both hands and sat on the sofa.

‘Sorry about all that,' she said, and leant back against me. ‘Must we have the air-conditioning on in here?'

‘No, not if you don't want it on.' I went to the unit and fiddled with the controls and opened the french windows. It began to get warmer immediately.

‘That's better,' she said and patted the seat next to her. ‘Come and sit down.'

And even though I knew what was going to happen, and even after all we'd said, I went. As I sat she put down her glass and turned towards me. She said nothing and I said nothing in reply. She moved towards me and I could feel her body heat. She came into my arms. She felt slightly damp under the silk dressing gown she was wearing. Her mouth fastened onto mine like a leech onto a fat vein and she chewed at my lips like someone getting the last slivers of meat from a chop bone.

Did I respond? Did I ever. I held onto her like a drowning man holding onto a lifebelt. My hands began to caress her and she obviously liked it because she pulled up the skirt of her dressing gown and lifted her leg over mine and jammed her thigh into my groin and kept it there. She was both soft and hard under the smooth silk and as I ran my fingers down her back and over the rich curves of her bottom, the material was smooth with no bump of underwear.

We went at each other like slaughterhouse dogs.

It was sex, pure and simple. No talk or thought of love, no talk or thought of anything much. Just dirty, sweaty sex. It was filth and we both got off on it.

She made my body hum, too. We hardly spoke at all. We just let our nerve ends do the talking and the only sounds were more animal than human.

The sofa was too small and I dragged her into the bedroom. It was freezing in there. I slapped off the air-conditioning and tore off her silken robe and threw her onto the bed. I crawled all over her, and she crawled all over me and there wasn't an inch of each other we didn't explore.

When we called half time, there was no slice of orange, just a shared cigarette and more gin which we cooled with the remains from the ice bucket. When I lit the Silk Cut my hands were wet. I dried them on the bed sheets which were wetter. She draped herself in her robe which stuck to her body like a second skin, damp and dirty in the faint light from the other room.

She leaned over me with the cigarette in her mouth. The robe fell away from her breasts which were as damp and dirty as the silk she wore.

‘More,' she said. Not begging or any of that shit. Just stating a fact. I took the cigarette from between her lips and dropped it into my glass where it hissed in the dregs of the gin.

We were caught in the grip of a vicious spiral of downwardly mobile hedonism that might not end until we self-destructed on some far-flung reef of carnal pleasure and were washed up on a bleached beach of cut glass, but we went along with it like kids after candy.

More she wanted and more she got. And by the time we'd both had more, our bodies were sore and bruised from the friction and my bandage was wet with fresh blood.

There seemed to be nothing I could do that would quench her desire. I fucked her in every orifice, but there constantly seemed to be more hungry holes to fill. Finally I could take no more and I fell asleep on top of her as the dawn clambered through the windows.

When I woke up there was no trace of her except for the cigarette in the glass by the bedside and I wondered if I'd dreamt the whole thing.

I came to finally about nine. I hadn't slept so well in months. I lay in my sleazy bed and thought about the previous night. I didn't know how I felt. A bit like the cat that got the cream and a bit of a jerk.

I rolled out of bed eventually and hit the shower. I let scalding water pummel some life back into my tired body and then turned the temperature to cold and let that pummel some life back into my tired brain. I tried to keep my bandage dry but didn't totally succeed. I shaved and cleaned my teeth and got dressed, then went looking for a cup of coffee.

I went down to the breakfast room. It was deserted. I ate breakfast alone and not even a servant came to interrupt my solitude. I'd much rather have eaten in the mucky little café in Tulse Hill where I normally went. At least there was some company and you could borrow someone's paper.

I left the dishes on the table and went back to my room. As I walked through the door the phone rang. I looked at my watch. It was ten o'clock precisely. I picked up the receiver. ‘Hello.'

Silence.

‘Hello,' I said again.

‘Mr Sharman, it's Vincent.' His voice sounded strange.

‘Vincent, what do you want?'

‘I need to see you.'

‘Well, come and see me then.'

‘I can't. I'm down in the garage, would you come down?'

‘What's it all about?'

‘I can't tell you on the phone, just come down.'

‘All right, Vincent,' I said. ‘If you insist.'

I took the lift down to the garage level and walked in. The Rolls stood there, gleaming, with the driver's door open. The garage telephone receiver was off the hook and it hung down the wall by its curly wire. The concrete bunker smelt of petrol and exhaust, polish and, way back, old dirt and cold decay.

‘Vincent,' I called.

No answer. My voice echoed around the interior of the garage. I went over to the car. Vincent's cap was lying on the driver's seat. The keys were in the ignition and the ignition was switched on far enough to allow all the power options to operate, but the engine itself was off. I heard the hiss from the air-conditioning system and I killed the ignition. Silence.

‘Vincent,' I called again. Again my voice bounced off the walls and dropped to the floor like a tennis ball with loads of bottom spin.

I stood for ten seconds, then I heard something from behind the wall that separated the garage from the rest of the cellars. I turned on my heel and walked towards the empty arch and looked into the dusty darkness.

Someone touched a switch and fluorescent tubes winked on. I scrunched my eyes up against the glare. Vincent was standing, spreadeagled, facing one wall with his hands against the concrete. His uniform was dirty and crumpled and his hair was mussed. A short, wide man with thinning black hair, wearing a lightweight, beige, two-piece suit and a slightly darker shirt buttoned to the collar, sans tie, was standing beside Vincent with a heavy automatic pistol fitted with a silencer stuck into the chauffeur's kidneys. Another, taller, man with ginger hair, a leather jacket and chinos was leaning against a metal tool cabinet next to the light switches. He was wearing black leather gloves and in his right hand held another pistol, similarly fitted with a silencer tube.

‘G'day,' he said. Even if his accent hadn't been Australian, and the voice the same voice that had threatened to kill me in my room two nights before, I would have recognised the gun and gloves anywhere. ‘I thought we told you to be out of here last night,' he said.

‘Something came up.'

‘You should have gone.'

‘I know, I'm a fool to myself sometimes.'

‘You can say that again.'

‘The police are still around,' I said.

‘You don't say. Mates of yours, are they?'

‘Maybe.'

‘Maybe, huh? Maybe's right, mate. Got any with you?'

He didn't wait for an answer, but pushed away from the cabinet, dusted down his sleeve and walked round me, keeping the gun trained on my middle. He looked back into the garage. I followed him with my eyes but didn't move a muscle.

‘No, I thought not,' he said. ‘You don't like the cops, do you? And they don't like you. We're here for our money, pal.'

‘Why tell me? I don't hold the cheque book around here. I'm just on hire.'

‘I don't suppose you do, and we know exactly where you fit in. But as you decided to stay, you're going to get the money for us.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘I do.'

‘What would you say if I told you there wasn't that sort of money around?'

‘I'd say you were telling me lies. So don't spoil my morning. It's been fun so far.'

‘The money is just not available.'

He laughed and showed a set of perfectly capped teeth. ‘The situation has changed. Have you spoken to Catherine Pike this morning?'

‘No.'

‘No, he says. And you won't, mate.'

I felt an itching premonition alone my spine. ‘Have you hurt her?'

‘No, she's in fine shape. A real good-looking woman. I wouldn't mind a go at her myself, but I know where she's been, don't I son?' His eyes slipped towards his mate and then back to me.

‘You do,' said the wide man.

I wondered if he did. ‘Does she know where you've been?'

‘Very amusing, I like a man with a ready wit,' said the ginger man. ‘But don't get carried away with it or I'll have to alter your clock.'

‘We're not even introduced and you're already getting playful,' I said.

‘We know who you are, that's what's important. Now just lean against the wall next to the other monkey there and we'll see if you've been down the store and picked up another of those little peashooters like the one we took off you the other night.'

‘Not even a slingshot,' I said.

‘Against the wall or I'll rearrange your bloody face.'

I did as I was told. He stashed his pistol under his jacket and gave me a thorough frisking. I tried not to flinch when his hands roughly touched the wound on my side. The wide man moved slightly so he could cover both Vincent and me with his gun.

‘All right,' said the ginger man when he'd finished.

‘I told you,' I said. ‘But maybe touching men is your thing.'

‘Shut it,' Ginger said, taking his pistol out again and casually swinging it between Vincent and me. ‘Now, to get back to young Catherine. We've decided that the only way to get our money is if we've got some real bargaining power. So Mr Lorimar's taken her on a little trip. He's known her a long time and he's not as choosy as me.'

‘You slag.'

‘Naughty, naughty. Don't get personal, Sharman, or I'll hurt you.'

‘Where has he taken her?'

‘Wouldn't you like to know? But I think we'll keep that our little secret until you' – he pushed his gun into my face for emphasis – ‘get us the cash in untraceable old notes. Then she'll be back safe and sound. Sound as a pound. Yeah, man?' His eyes slithered to his accomplice again.

‘That's right,' said the wide man.

‘Is he telling the truth?' I asked Vincent.

He looked sheepish but said nothing. I took it as an affirmative.

The ginger man put his fingers to his lips. ‘I didn't say you two could have a convo about it. Take my word, Sharman, she's ours and ours she's going to stay. Now, no police, just one million pounds sterling and the whore is yours.'