Special Relationship (16 page)

Nick asked him about his kids, "How many have you got now?" he asked.

"Seven up, now, man," he laughed. "Aged five to thirty."

"The youngest is only five? Jesus, Tyler you ever going to stop?"

"Have to now my friend, unless with someone other than Jackie who,
err, you know, is now going through what they call 'women problems'."

"Well, I think seven is a great score and and if they have anything like the same you'll have a few grand kids to look forward to as well."

"Six already," Tyler laughed. "And what about you?"

"Oh, you know – well, actually, you don't, since you have been with the same good wife for so long – but there are a lot of what would you call them, 'players' out there who would happily settle for a rich banker if they couldn't at first snare a rich footballer."

"Does it matter?" Tyler asked. "A good-looking girl, probably a lot younger than you, who would go shopping a lot, look after your house and kids, and provide good sex regularly. What's not to like?"

Nick thought that maybe Tyler was talking sense. "A bit 'do as I say and not do as I do', though..." he suggested. "You marry your first love when you didn't have a pot to piss in and you have been happily married ever since. Jackie didn't
marry you for your lifestyle, unless her dream was to live in a run-down trailer park in Connecticut."

Tyler laughed. "I got lucky, he said."

"Have you ever been unfaithful to her?" Nick asked.

"Never."

He wondered what it was like just to sleep with only one person ever, as he suspected was the case with Tyler and Jackie.

Then, in a lighter mood, they reminisced about the two days Tyler had taken Nick on a fishing trip to Lake Ontario, during which the city boy from London had tried his best not to catch anything for the fear of having to kill it.

When a rainbow trout did bite, Tyler had to take over to reel it in and whack it on the head. Nick remembered Tyler had promised him that fishing was relaxing. He found it anything but, having to kill things.

"The fish and meat you buy in t
he supermarket are already dead," Tyler said. "You are happy to eat meat and fish but you want others to do the dirty work."

"Yes, I know, I am a hypocrite, Tyler. But in England we've given up our guns and are not nearly as rugged and formidable a we used to be. But that doesn't mean you can't buy me a burger and a beer before you go and ride the rapids and shoot some deer."

"Damn Limeys," he remarked.

After Tyler had left, several more beers later than they had planned, Nick sent a text to Katherine. "Are you OK?" It was not late enough for her to be asleep and he expected a reply within a couple of minutes. None came.

The next morning he called her. "Hi you OK?”

“Sure,” she replied.

“I sent you a text last night but you didn't get back to me and I was a bit worried that you had some sort of problem... "

"No, nothing, I'm fine," she said. The tone of her voice would, after audio analysis, have shown as a flat-line on a graph, He'd seen the same on financial charts when - however temporarily - the buyers and sellers had given up caring.

"I'll see you in the office in an hour. There's nothing big today. And then we can get to the airport."

What the fuck had happened to her? Nick thought after hanging up. After the morning business had finished, he didn't even bother to tell her that he was going to pick up the cheesecake.

He said goodbye to the staff and asked Elroy to pick up all his luggage from the apartment and anything Katherine had left. Wait for me there.

"Where are you going, boss?"

"East Houston Street."

"I'll take you in the car, man."

"No, Elroy, I'm going on the train, buddy.  See you at the apartment."

With Harry Beck's genius London Underground map and the naming and colouring of the lines, a kid could easily find his way round the network at home. But it seemed to him that in New York, like Paris, they liked to test the mind, preferring to designate their subway lines by numbers and letters.

To make things even more difficult, as he understood it looking at the map, they didn't use the directions of the compass but a system where you first had to find the end station of the line in the direction you wished to travel. So he took some time to figure out that he needed 23
rd
Street F-M and to travel in the direction that he had travelled with Katherine at the weekend, towards Coney Island.

He didn't realise how famous Katz's was. US and foreign presidents had eaten there, film stars, music stars, sports stars. They had signed pictures on the walls. And there was even a sign to show where they filmed the Harry Met Sally "I'll have what she's having" orgasm scene.

"Your cheesecake, Mr Hensen, made just one hour ago," said the man delivering boxes that looked more likely to contain small televisions or laptops than cheesecakes. "Everything is in cool boxes with ice packs in the separate compartments and this box contains further ice packs to replenish used ones during travel. It will be at its very best for the next twelve hours but will still be very good for up to three days.”

Nick was gob
smacked. "Has everything been paid for?" he asked.

"Yes, sir, everything has been paid for and Miss Price sent us a full specification of what was required. We have a car ready to deliver them all to the airport as Miss Price doubted you'd be able to manage them on the subway.”

"Yes, I think Miss Price was right," he said, handing him a tip. "Thank you very much."

Once outside he hailed a cab to take him back to his apartment and then called Katherine.

"Nice job with the cheesecake," he said.

"No worries, it was clear you were going to struggle, and I promise whoever it's for that I won't reveal I had any hand in
its delivery to England. That's if it gets through customs of course."

Her voice was still flat.

"Can we talk on the plane, please Katherine. Let's get everything sorted between us before we land tomorrow?"

"Everything is sorted."

"No, it's not," he replied.

They boarded the Challenger 601 at
Teterboro, New Jersey, just after 5 pm. There were four Hensen people, Nick, Katherine, and a couple of guys from their New York Office who had meetings in London on Friday. Nick shook their hands and invited them to pop in to the office if they got the chance.

The other four passengers Nick didn't know but it was not unusual to see strangers on the jets, helping to cover his company's $60,000 one-way trip and also promoting the company's green credentials to those who wanted bankers hung, drawn and quartered.

Nick and Katherine sat opposite each other with a table in between them. He looked at her but didn't say anything until the engine sound drowned out the possibility of him being overheard by the other passengers. "Can't do anything, if you don't tell me, Katherine."

She reached inside her bag without saying anything and pulled out her phone, She pressed some buttons and slid it across the table. When he picked it up he read the text message: "Fucking Nick in New York? Not very wise."

"What the hell is this and who's it from?"

"Who knows, it was sent by someone usin
g an internet messaging service," she replied.

"No one knows we slept together apart from you and me - so you told someone."

"I didn't tell a fucking soul." she retorted with some anger in her voice.

"You must have done
because I haven't.

"And even if I did – which I didn't – what's the point of the message? It's absurd."

He
looked out of the window. Land was behind them and he thought the Atlantic was going to seem twice as big as usual sat opposite his hateful-looking PA for seven hours.

"If you didn't tell anyone, and I didn't - and we were the only two there - then what is the explanation?" he asked her rhetorically. "The only reason anyone would bug the apartment would be in the hope of finding out what the company was doing in in the markets. Spying on us to find out the boss was in bed with his PA makes no sense."

Katherine looked up at him, "blackmail?"

"Blackmail for what? I'm not married or even in a serious relationship. I had sex with my
assistant who I have always liked as a person, even if I didn't see her... in an intimate way before," he said, lowering his voice.

"It's not, as far as I know, a criminal offence to go to bed with your PA. Mind you when the UK or European fucking Union won't even let you bring a cheesecake in from the States then maybe it is, and no one had told me."

He left his seat abruptly, annoyed with Katherine for the way she had changed so suddenly. One day lovable, laughing and full of fun and now a sulky employee who seemed to suspect he was responsible for the text message sent to her phone.

"Very large scotch please, one lump of ice, and a cigarette if you have one."

At the bar, the flight attendant, Robert Johnson according to the name tag pinned to his shirt, made the drink and then offered him a selection of cigarettes and cigars, while informing him in the politest terms that the charter company would impose an extra charge for having to purify the air after landing.

"Expensive business, smoking these days," said Nick.

He sat at the back of the plane, as far away from the others as possible, hoping they wouldn't notice the smoke, nor his perplexed expression as he tried to work out what was going on.

He lit his first cigarette since the
Manarola party and felt quite light-headed after a few puffs. He had first smoked as a a teenager but had quit for years until he had to face a government inquiry into the part that hedge funds might have played in the financial crisis and the near collapse of the western economy.

The plane had a communications system that gave him a mobile phone signal stronger than in many American or European cities. But who to call? It was like a card game in which he not only had little idea about his own hand nor his opponent's, but he didn't even know the identity of his opponent.

Maybe whoever sent the message to Katherine was not about him at all, but about her. Perhaps it had something to do with Jonathan who had made a rather unexpected call when she was at the apartment.

But if she hadn't told anyone, as she claimed, how would anyone know? Her husband was an
advertising executive, not the obvious type to arrange the bugging of an apartment in order to check on his wife's fidelity. And, besides, Katherine had given him the impression that far from being the jealous type, he was not even the caring type.

In between working on the theories, he once again thought of Alex. It would be past midnight in London and he didn't want to spook her with a text message. He did, though, make up his mind that he would try to see her as soon as possible when he got home.

Katherine, who had become his lover for a night and very nearly more nights, seemed suspicious of him and and that they had climaxed together now seemed far less special as a bond between them than it did at the time, certainly for him and presumably for her as well.

He still went back to join her at their original seats. "Katherine, I just don't know – it doesn't make any sense. First, if neither of us have told anyone and we were alone in the flat, then either the place is bugged or the cleaner has done some DNA analysis of the sheets."

"Don't we check everywhere for eavesdropping stuff?" she asked.

"Not the flat, I don't do business there, either in person or on the phone. As you know, it's just a place to sleep on our trips over there, up until this time in separate rooms."

"Elroy?"

"No Kath, I piss him off not because I make him follow me for hours on end, but because I tell him to take the day off. He likes a laugh and is actually a very smart guy. Too smart to try to make a bit of money out of the boss bedding...sorry, wrong expression...making love...or, let's say, enjoying sex with his PA."

He paused. "I think we both agree that 'enjoying sex' is the most accurate account of what went on between us."

"I guess," she replied quietly,
caressing the top of her wine glass with her fingers.

"Have you been in touch with Alex?" she asked tentatively without glancing up.

"Just the once since we've been here, by text, to thank her for lunch and everything. She, or rather her company seems to be doing a good job."

"They do," agreed Katherine, finally looking at him.

"Are you OK? " he asked.

"I think so. Just that I feel a bit betrayed."

"Not by me I hope," he said.

She leant her chin on the top of her fingers and looked at him in the eyes. "But who else, Nick?"

He took it that she was wondering rather than accusing, and for the rest of the flight both of them mostly avoided the subject, although he promised he'd get the apartment checked out and talk to Elroy about who might have been there in the days preceding their arrival.