Revenge of the Tide (18 page)

I put on my best effort for them, even blew the groom a kiss at the end. His mates liked that.

As I was leaving the stage, I saw Fitz in one of the VIP booths, surrounded by his usual mix of steroid-filled associates: Nicks, Gray and the others. Dylan wasn’t with them. Not then.

In the dressing room, I wiped the perspiration off and fixed my make-up, and then I went back into the club to look for customers to entice. And maybe I was looking for Fitz too.

He was still in the VIP booth, and to my delight when he saw me he smiled and waved me over. ‘Viva! Come over here, gorgeous.’

He waved away the two girls who had positioned themselves either side of him and patted the seat encouragingly. The girls went off in search of other game, leaving me with Fitz. They hadn’t been talking business just now, judging by how relaxed they all appeared to be.

I sat neatly on the red velvet cushions next to Fitz. I’d half expected him to touch me, maybe just a hand on my thigh, an arm around my shoulders, but he didn’t.

‘I wanted to say thank you for the flowers,’ I said, when the next dance started and the attention of the men was drawn to the stage. ‘I haven’t seen you since then or I’d have thanked you sooner.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You liked them?’

‘They were beautiful. I appreciated them.’

‘Well, you know,’ he said with a smile. ‘You did a good job. Especially that last dance.’

I’d got him. I could sense it. ‘Do you think he got his money’s worth?’

‘You know he did.’

‘I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, Fitz. Only you.’

He laughed, ‘And a grand.’

I paused, to hold his eye contact and make my meaning clear. ‘I would have done it for nothing, if it had just been for you.’

That was enough. I smiled at him and stood, and went across the floor of the club. At the door which led to the dressing rooms, I glanced back over my shoulder. He was still looking.

Dylan was waiting for me in the dressing room.

‘Are you allowed in here?’ I said, looking around at the other girls, who were busy either disrobing or getting dressed again, depending where they’d been.

‘Aw, leave him alone!’ shouted Kay from the table next to mine. ‘He’s alright, aren’t you, Dyl?’

‘I’m allowed anywhere,’ he said to me.

He was sitting in the seat by my bags. I waited for him to move, but he didn’t. I wondered if he was still pissed off with me for some reason. I’d not seen him since the night he’d driven me home from the party.

‘Come for a drink,’ he said.

‘What?’ I replied. I didn’t know if he meant now, in the club, or… on a date. That would have been just bizarre.

He stood, and offered me his arm.

‘I’ve – er – got to be back on stage in twenty minutes,’ I said.

‘Liar. You’ve done your share, right? And the club’s nearly closing. So come on.’

Blushing, I took his arm and let myself be steered out of the room, with wolf whistles and cat calls following me out. He took me downstairs to the public bar, of all places. Dances didn’t happen in here, but sometimes the girls came down if it was quiet, to try and tempt the regular members of the public into the more exclusive, and more expensive, areas inside the club. They didn’t let just anyone in here, but there was always a queue outside, and the bar was usually full of people.

‘You’re costing me money, you know,’ I said. I was only half-joking.

‘Get over yourself. You can afford five minutes off.’

There were no free tables or seats anywhere from what I could tell, but Dylan gave a nod to one of the door staff and a few moments later a few lairy-looking lads in suits were being hoofed out of the door and Dylan guided me into their warm seats.

‘What would you like?’ he asked me.

‘Just water, please,’ I said.

‘I’ll have a vodka,’ he said to the waitress who had appeared the moment we’d come in. Dylan wasn’t Fitz, but even so his presence held a lot of weight in this place. I wondered what it would be like to spend the whole evening on Fitz’s arm.

I’d been half-expecting him to squeeze into the booth next to me but instead he sat on the stool opposite. I was used to being stared at here. I had no illusions about it, since I never got this kind of attention in the day job apart from that infernal idiot Dunkerley, and, after all, that was only because he’d seen me here. He’d seen Viva. But Dylan was immune to Viva’s charms.

‘This is a nice surprise,’ I said cheerfully. It was noisy, and I had to speak up so he could hear me.

Our drinks arrived. I squeezed the slice of lemon into my water and licked my fingers, watching his face.

He was completely unimpressed. In fact, he laughed. ‘It doesn’t work with me,’ he said.

‘What?’ I asked, my face a picture of innocence.

Dylan was serious again, quickly. ‘You need to be careful, you know.’

‘What do you mean?’

He leaned across the table so he could speak normally. ‘Fitz.’

‘What about him?’

‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t get involved.’

‘He likes me. You know he does.’

‘Yes, I know he likes you. I’m not blind, or stupid. Just be careful.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

He sighed, took a long swig of vodka, neat, with a grimace to follow it. ‘Because you’re smarter than the rest of them. You’ve got a future, and I don’t mean in here. Don’t get too close to Fitz. Don’t piss him off.’

I sat back. He was warning me off. Whatever his motives, he wasn’t doing it out of jealousy – all the more reason why I should listen to what he was saying.

‘I don’t get you, Dylan,’ I said.

‘You don’t have to get me. Just have a word with yourself. It’s not a good idea.’

I sipped my water. It was icy cold and if I drank it too fast it would make my teeth hurt.

‘Dylan – remember you asked me what the money was for?’

He nodded.

‘You still want to know?’

‘If you want to tell me,’ he said.

‘Just between us, right? Nobody else would… understand.’

He shrugged, as though it made no difference to him either way, but I knew I could trust him. I didn’t know how, but I knew. After all, nobody else had warned me off Fitz. And he had no clear motive for doing so.

‘I’m going to buy a boat,’ I said.

To his credit, he didn’t laugh or make some joke about a ship called
Dignity
, or any of that shit. ‘A boat? What sort of a boat?’

‘A barge, preferably – you know, like a houseboat. I want to buy a boat and spend a year doing it up.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s just something I’ve always wanted. And now everything’s starting to go wrong here, so I want to get the money together as quickly as I can.’

His expression changed then. ‘Hold on. What’s going wrong here? You’re the top earner in this place, you know that. I thought you liked it.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not here, Dylan. It’s my day job. Three or four weeks ago my stupid boss showed up in the club and recognised me. He’s been giving me shit ever since.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. He followed me out of a pub the other weekend; he was making a scene down on the Tube platform. I had to go and get a cab in the end. Now he’s started being all suggestive at work. I have to make sure there’s always someone there when I see him, that I’m never on my own with him.’

‘What’s he want?’

‘What do you think he wants, Dylan? He wants the same thing they all want. Apart from you.’

‘You want me to sort him out?’ he said. He was smiling but that didn’t mean he was joking.

‘No, of course not.’

He finished off his vodka, throwing it down the back of his throat as if it were water and he was dying of thirst. ‘Well, just say the word. I’ve dealt with pricks like that before. Thinking they own you just because you flashed your knickers at them. Piece of shit.’

Dylan waved at the waitress who came straight over, despite the crush of people waiting to be served. ‘Another vodka. Viva?’

‘I’m fine with this one, thank you,’ I said.

‘So,’ he said, when the waitress had gone. ‘A boat, eh? And how much are you short?’

‘Quite a lot,’ I said, thinking it was none of his goddamn business.

‘And this is why you’re dancing? To get the money together?’

I sighed and drank some water. This was getting torturous, and I almost wished I’d never told him. ‘I have a good job – during the day, I mean. It pays well. I thought I would be able to save up enough to buy the boat at some point, take a year’s sabbatical maybe. But it’s hard work, high-pressure, so I started doing this – dancing – for a laugh, for some exercise… and what do you know? I’m good at it. I can earn money doing something that to me is little more than a workout. So now I’ve got two jobs, the money’s coming in faster and faster, and the more money I make, the closer I get to my dream. Now, instead of two years away, I could be on my boat by Christmas. And it’s making me hungry for it, especially now I’ve got all the shit with my boss hanging over my head. So yes, I’m earning money, and I want to make more money. And Fitz has got lots of it. Hasn’t he?’

‘Fitz could buy Parliament,’ he said slowly.

‘Exactly. And he likes me. What’s fifty grand to him? Nothing. He could give me that and he almost wouldn’t even notice.’

The waitress appeared with Dylan’s second vodka, a large one by the look of it. When she had gone, he drank half of it in one gulp, breathed in through his nose and looked me straight in the eye. ‘Have you ever thought where he gets his money from?’

‘Of course I have; I wasn’t born yesterday.’

‘And?’

‘I know it’s dodgy, if that’s what you’re asking. And I don’t care, personally.’

He smiled, a slow smile, one of those that made him look beautiful. I felt as if I’d crossed some kind of line – as though I’d given the right answer, somehow.

‘And,’ I added, ‘if he asks me to do another private party, I will. I know you think I’m a slut for what I did the other weekend; I don’t really care about that. I want my boat. I want to be away from London. I’ve had enough of it.’

‘I don’t think you’re a slut at all.’

‘Why were you so pissed off with me in the car on the way home, then?’ He didn’t answer at first; when he did, he looked away. ‘I have my reasons.’

‘Anyway, why do you care what I spend my money on?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘I think of you and me as mates,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I don’t have many friends, to be honest with you. I like you. I think you’re clever, and witty, and you don’t sell yourself like some of them do here. When you dance, you do it as a job, and yet you look as though you do it because it’s all you want to do in the world. What I’m saying to you is, I respect you as a person who does a good job no matter what the circumstances. You’re committed. And you don’t interfere.’

‘Interfere?’

‘That party,’ he said, leaning over the table again, ‘was a test. Did you know that?’

‘I thought I was just there to dance for his private guests,’ I said.

‘It was a test to see if you could be trusted.’

‘With what?’

‘With Fitz’s business.’

I was confused. ‘I wasn’t there when they were discussing business. What do you mean?’

‘Exactly. You did your job, you did it well, you put your heart and soul into it, and you didn’t piss about being nosy about what was going on upstairs, or what Fitz was talking about with his “private guests”, as you call them.’

Light was starting to dawn in my head, as well as through the windows to the street outside. ‘I don’t give a stuff what he does,’ I said.

‘Good,’ Dylan said quietly. The bar was beginning to empty. We were getting near closing time. ‘Because the minute you do is the minute you start to become a risk. And that’s why I want you to be careful around Fitz.’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘He’s going to ask you to do another private party,’ he said.

I felt a sudden rush of elation. I wasn’t sure if it was the money, or the thought of dancing in front of Fitz and watching his face as I danced, that was making me feel so pleased with myself.

‘You’ll say yes?’

‘Of course. What do you think?’

‘If you do,’ he said, ‘ask for more cash. And now you’ve set a precedent you’ll probably have to do more intimate stuff. You know that, though, don’t you?’

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘So, if you do it, he’ll make it worth your while. But remember what I said about being careful.’

‘Will you be there?’

He smiled at me again. I wished he smiled like that all the time. ‘If I have to.’

The waitress had appeared again. ‘Can I get you anything else, Dylan? We’re just starting to close…’

‘It’s alright, Tina. We’re going back upstairs.’

I followed him up the carpeted stairs to the club, and when we got to the top he left me to go to the dressing room by myself. We’d spent long enough in each other’s company. There was no doubt it would have been noted, and it would get back to Fitz. My head was swimming with it all. How could Dylan be loyal to Fitz and just have told me so much about him?

And yet, his smile.

I made a start on tidying, beginning at the front of the boat and working my way back. I put all the spatulas, spoons and various gadgets back in the box marked
KITCHEN STUFF
and set it back in its position at the very point of the bow.

Some of the other boxes of tools I refilled and placed surrounding the box, a rather half-hearted attempt to disguise its significance. Where was the best place to hide a box but in amongst other boxes, after all?

This wasn’t the ideal place for it, I knew that. In a few weeks’ time it would have to be moved in any case, as Kev and I would be taking the roof off this section of the boat and my vast storage compartment would become a conservatory, plus another room at the end, which I could use as a junk room until I’d moved on to the final part of the project. Even so, it would be more exposed.

What I should do, of course, was get the thing off my boat.

What I didn’t understand in all of this was why the hell Fitz wanted Dylan’s parcel – unless Dylan had stolen it from Fitz in the first place. It seemed so unlikely. Dylan wasn’t a thief. He was a bruiser, an enforcer, but not a thief.