Pay Off (11 page)

'What's going on?' he pressed. 'What in God's name would you want to hire a man like that for?'

I suppose Iying is like eating raw oysters, the first one is the hardest, you've got a psychological barrier to cross, but once it's done you never look back, it just gets easier and easier. I had no trouble with lie number two but if I'd had a life-size portrait of myself in the attic, done in oils and framed in gilt, then the face would have started to blemish, the skin to wrinkle and age.

'This client I wanted a girl for is going to need looking 87 after while he's in London. That guy there was recommended to me, and I asked him to recruit another two. There's quite a bit of money involved, I suppose he just wants to confirm who he's working for.' That sounded about as solid as a self-assembly kitchen unit, because if it was bodyguards I'd wanted then I would obviously have gone to Tony, but he let that pass.

'What do you want to do with him?' he asked.

'Let me talk to him. I'll point out the error of his ways.'

'I could get my two friends there to give him the good news.'

'No, I don't want him hurt, he was just a little overenthusiastic. Can I borrow them for a few minutes, though?'

'Sure. They won't break.'

I walked over the bridge and down to the path where the three of them sat like a row of brass monkeys. I stood in front of Iwanek and he looked up at me, unsmiling.

'Satisfied?' I asked, and I knew I had to be careful because everything I said would be relayed back to Tony and I was in enough trouble already. He just kept looking at me, curious rather than afraid.

'Are you satisfied?' I repeated. I had to convince him that I was in control, a hard man who could cause him a lot of grief if I chose to. The two men sitting like a couple of bookends would go a long way to persuading him, and if the worst came to the worst I knew they could hurt him badly. But then I'd run the risk of losing him.

'You wouldn't have expected me to accept the sort of job you offered without knowing what I was getting into,' he said, and the tone left me in no doubt that he was the hard man, not me.

'You've already accepted the job and you took my money. It's too late to be checking up on me. You're hired and there's no going back. You've given me a dilemma, Jim. I can't have you following me all over London, now 88 can 1? You'll get in my way. But if I break your legs, correction, if I get these two to break your legs, then you'll be no use to me. What shall I do, Jim? Advise me.'

'These two don't worry me,' he said, and I believed him. 'But I've got the message. I wanted to know who you are, what you do, and the sort of circles you move in. I still don't know what you're up to, but I've an idea now of the sort of business you're in. I won't bother you again. Give me a call when you're ready.'

He got to his feet and walked off without a backward look, leaving me to escort the two heavies back to Tony.

'I don't suppose you'd tell me what you're up to even if I asked,' he said. 'So I won't.'

'I'll be all right,' I replied. 'I know what I'm doing.'

I didn't hear a cock crow and the sky didn't split open to unleash a bolt of lightning, but I knew I'd lied three times and that the third lie had slipped off my tongue like butter off a hot knife. I left Tony behind and went off in search of a cab, having added years to the hypothetical portrait in my hypothetical attic.

The evening sky was threatening rain as McKinley braked sharply in front of Sammy's flat, sharply enough to throw me forward but not sharply enough to snap the seat belt and send me tumbling over the bonnet. Not quite. The taxi driver who'd managed to slam on his brakes and squeal to a halt three inches from our rear bumper hit his horn angrily, reversed his cab and drove past glaring at McKinley who took not a blind bit of notice.

'I'll wait here, boss,' he said.

'You're double parked, Get-Up, but we won't be long,' I 89 replied, but I was only halfway out of the Granada as she came through the front door and down the steps.

She'd curled her red hair and it bounced and shimmered as she walked, the ends stroking her bare shoulders. Her dress was long and black and could have been worn to a funeral if she'd wanted to be gang-raped by the pall bearers. It was slashed from the ground to just below her waist on both sides and her long brown legs flashed in and out as she clicked down the steps on high heels. Three things held the dress up, two thread-like silver chains across each shoulder and the swell of her breasts. Around her perfect neck was a single strand of pearls matched by a smaller group on her left wrist. It was all the jewellery she was wearing and Sammy didn't even need that.

'You look delicious,' I said as I reached for her hand.

'Don't I just?' she laughed, and I helped her into the back seat and slid in beside her. 'I hope you appreciate all the effort that went into creating this work of art.'

'You'll be telling me next that bodies like yours don't grow on trees.'

'They don't grow like this at all without a great deal of work. A lot of exercise, a lot of care and attention, and a lot of money.'

'You make it sound like owning an expensive car, looking after the bodywork and keeping the engine in good running order.' She crossed her legs as I spoke and her slender foot brushed against my trouser leg.

'That's a fair comparison,' she said, and already her hand had found its way to my knee, circling it thoughtfully. 'But some collectors' cars are more than a hundred years old. I'll be lucky if I stay in concours condition for another five. And it's not as if I've only had one careful owner.'

Now she was laughing, eyes sparkling as she tilted her head to one side and looked my face over. She reached up and stroked my right ear, nipping the lobe between finger and thumb. 'Where are we going?' she asked.

We weren't going anywhere because McKinley was twisted round in the driver's seat, mouth agape, eyes eating up Sammy and what the hell, who could blame him? She'd turn more heads than a road accident dressed like this.

'Let's go, Get-Up,' I said, and as he turned back in his seat his eyes were the last thing to move. He sighed, deeply and sorrowfully, like a poodle being asked to leave the bed of his mistress. He put the car into second gear and drove away from the kerb in jerks and jumps before switching the wrong indicator light on.

It took thirty minutes of McKinley's stop-start driving before he dropped us in front of the four-storey grey stone building in Berkeley Square which houses Spencers, a restaurant used mainly by advertising executives and media salesmen and anyone else on no-questions-asked expense accounts.

The square was clogged up with. traffic and any nightingale brave or stupid enough to venture there to sing would be coughing up phlegm for a month. Several horns honked as McKinley leant over and asked what time he should pick us up.

'Just hang around, Get-Up. I won't be long,' I told him. 'Find a parking space nearby and keep your eyes on the front door.'

I took Sammy by the arm and together we walked up the stone steps, past the twin bay trees standing guard duty either side of the door and through the bar.

The food in Spencers tended to be overcooked and overpriced and the decor completely over the top: vivid flock wallpaper, cheap paintings in expensive gilded frames, and huge ornate chandeliers with electric candles flickering annoyingly. But it did have one advantage over any of a dozen other places I would quite happily have taken Sammy to - Ronnie Laing could be found there three or four evenings a week, often dining alone. He used Spencers as his 91 canteen, always had the same table, was treated like a longlost relative every time he crossed the threshold and knew the menu by heart. He tipped well, usually took the maftre d's advice on food and let the wine waiter choose his drink. They couldn't have loved him more if he'd rolled up his sleeves and pitched in with the washing up.

A phone call earlier in the evening had confirmed that Laing had booked a table, and as Sammy and I were shown to a booth I saw him sitting in a corner facing the entrance, on his own and halfway through a plate of mussels, either a large starter or a small main course.

'We'll sit here, if you don't mind,' I said, as the waiter tried to steer us away from Laing, and I pointed to one of the small circular tables about twelve feet from where he was sitting. I recognized him from the photographs that had appeared at the time of the takeover but he wouldn't have known me from Adam. He didn't go to the funeral. He didn't go to either of them.

'Not at all, sir,' said the waiter through clenched teeth, and the 'sir' was very much an afterthought as he pulled out the chair for Sammy. Unfortunately it was the chair facing away from Laing and the waiter barely concealed his dis- dain as I slid into it myself and motioned her to take the other one. He rushed round to pull out the second chair and was rewarded with a toe-curling smile from Sammy and a long lingering look down the front of her dress.

I wondered if it would be enough to make him forget my breach of etiquette but he handed Sammy a menu as if he were passing her a love letter and pushed one at me as if he were serving me with a summons, so I guessed it would take more than Sammy's superb figure to wipe that one out. What the hell, tonight I wasn't going to be winning any prizes for good manners so I might as well start as I meant to go on.

'A double whisky, a malt, and you'd better make it a good one,' I said in the sort of voice you'd use to tell an 92 Alsatian to walk to heel. Then I stuck my head into the menu until he tapped his pencil on his notepad, coughed, and asked, 'And for the lady?' with the accent heavily on 'lady' as if offering Sammy his sympathy for being with a lout like me.

'Good Lord, she's got a tongue in her head, man. Ask her yourself.'

Sammy kept looking at the table, her head down as if in prayer and her hands in her lap. 'I'll have a white wine,' she said, then looked up at the waiter through lowered lashes and moistened her lips and added 'please'. She turned her head to look at me and then looked past me over my left shoulder and smiled and I knew she'd seen Laing and that he'd seen her.

'Not bored already, are you?' I asked and her eyes snapped back to meet mine and she caught her breath.

'No, no, I'm fine.'

'Well, what do you want to eat?'

'I'll have whatever you're having.'

'God, you're such a doormat.' The waiter returned with the drinks and I reached up and took my whisky off his tray while he was placing Sammy's white wine in front of her. I drank it in one swallow and handed it back. 'Get me another.' Sammy was looking at Laing again and nervously fingering her hair so that from where he was sitting he'd see she wasn't wearing a ring.

'How was work today?' she asked.

'Same as it always is, boring but well paid, and the last thing I want to talk about is how boring and well paid it is. I don't take you out to go over my business problemsthat's what I pay an accountant for. I just want you to look pretty and smooth my feathers. Sometimes I wonder how I've managed to put up with you for so long. And where did you get that dress?'

'A boutique in Chelsea, I thought you'd like it.'

'You thought wrong. It doesn't suit you at all, it's not 93 your colour. How many times have I told you not to wear black?'

My second drink arrived as she bit her bottom lip and said in a quiet voice: 'I can't seem to do anything right today.'

I slammed the empty glass down hard enough to shake the candles on the table.

'Perhaps you'd better just keep quiet then,' I said and waved the waiter over, ordering for us both without consulting her and demanding another double whisky.

'And another white wine,' I added.

'I'm fine, thank you,' she whispered and there were tears in her eyes.

'You're not fine, now drink that up,' I said. 'You're more fun when you've had a few drinks. In bed and out of it.' Now she was crying silently, hands playing with her serviette, screwing it up into a tight knot.

'I'm going to the toilet,' I said and stood up unsteadily, pushing the chair back so violently that it fell over with a crash and the waiter scurried over to pick it up. 'Don't fuss, man,' I said and headed for the gents, managing to bump into two tables on the way. As I barged through the door I saw Laing get to his feet and move towards Sammy.

I stayed in the white-tiled room long enough for Sammy to spill her tale of woe to Laing, to tell him of a relationship that had gone sour but which she was too frightened to end, of the verbal and physical batterings I'd given her, of the times I had humiliated her and abused her. Then she would dab her reddening eyes and sniff and he'd put his hand on hers and tell her gently that everything was going to be all right and that if she really wanted to get rid of the bullying bastard he was just the man to do it, and she would flutter those long, curling eyelashes and say that she'd be so grateful, so very grateful, but to take care because she had seen me put two men in hospital because they'd taken too much of an interest in her. She would dry her eyes and smile 94 bravely and tell him her name was Amanda, that she was a model and that she lived in Islington, and she would give him the address of the furnished two-bedroomed first-floor flat that we'd rented in the name of Amanda Pearson a week earlier.

I walked back to Sammy's table and stood looking down at her, hands on hips, glaring and demanding to know just what the hell was going on, spraying her with spittle as I spoke, every inch the drunken bore who deserved everything that was coming to him. Please God don't let him break anything, bones, teeth or nose.

'I think you'd better go,' said Laing as he got to his feet, and it was the voice of a man used to getting his own way. He put a warning hand on my shoulder and two waiters hovered anxiously behind him, unwilling to interfere between a drunk and their favourite customer playing white knight.

'Keep out of this,' I said without turning. To Sammy I said: 'Get up, we're leaving.'

'She's staying. With me. You're the one that's going.' he said and the grip tightened. I took a deep breath and turned and pulled back my fist, and he hit me once about an inch above my solar plexus and my legs collapsed, the contents of my lungs exploded out of my mouth and I tasted bitter bile at the back of my throat, and then I was on my knees, hands clutched to my chest, coughing and choking. At least he hadn't hit me in the face, but even that was no consolation as I fought to breathe. I looked up at him and tried to speak and he stepped forward and thrust his knee into my face. I went backwards and the bile was replaced with the warm, salty taste of blood as my head hit the floor.