Bad Angels

by Rebecca Chance

  Aniela had cut all ties with her family, and she knew that was the right thing to do. She could never trust any of them again. But she still had one link to them: Lubo, the son of her mother’s best friend, who she’d known since school. He had moved to London at the same time as her. Having very few acquaintances in the city, they’d found a small place together, a tiny one-bed flat in Seven Sisters. Aniela had been supposed to have the bedroom, Lubo the sofa, but one thing had led to another, a mixture of proximity, loneliness, and convenience, and soon enough Lubo had installed himself in the bedroom with Aniela, star-fished over the narrow mattress, farting, burping beer, and grunting out rattling vodka snores.

  Aniela had never loved him; she’d barely even liked him. It was the greatest source of shame to her that she had taken him into her bed. Much worse than the way her parents and brothers had exploited her – being fooled by your family was allowable, but opening your legs for a lazy, workshy lout you had barely any feelings for, just because he spoke the same language as you, came from the same village and knew the same people – well, that’s fooling yourself. Which really is something to be ashamed about.

  She was desperate to kick out Lubo and live on her own. He didn’t even help out with the bills. Aniela, working double shifts and overtime, was perpetually exhausted, while Lubo had to be the only lazy Polish builder in the whole of the UK. All the bastard does is lie around, drink cheap beer and scratch his balls: he expects me to come home from a ten-hour shift, cook him dinner and clean the house. The sooner I throw him out, the better. Staying at the Clinic over the holidays is like a rest cure.

  Aniela hadn’t even turned on the television in the Clinic’s reception area: there was never anything to watch, just stupid made-up shows and even worse reality ones. She’d brought a stack of library books with her and was working her way through a book on the Katyn massacre, when twenty-two thousand Polish prisoners of war had been executed in 1940 by the Russian occupiers. It hadn’t made Aniela any better disposed to the Russian bitch who’d stormed into the Canary Clinic yesterday, treated her like a serf she could wipe her feet on, and done something to Dr Nassri that had caused him to throw up in his office sink.Then, after she’d left – looking like the cat who got the cream – he’d staggered out, headed for the medicine cupboard and swallowed what looked like half a phial of Valium.

  God only know what went on there, Aniela thought, shrugging. Delving deeply into the previous surgical procedures that Jon had undergone was highly unusual for her; she was normally very incurious, something that made her a particular asset to the Canary Clinic, where she did her job with great ability and asked no questions beyond the necessary medical ones. But whatever went on with that Russian woman and Dr Nassri, I feel sorry for him if that bitch has got her claws into him.

  She shrugged again. Whatever his problems are, he has enough money to deal with them. He’s got a lovely house in St John’s Wood, a nice wife, two boys at private school. Not exactly a crappy rented flat over a chip shop on the Seven Sisters Road, with a live-in boyfriend who’s nothing but a waste of space.

  The picture of Lubo, as he’d been when she left for the Clinic, lying full-length on the sofa – now so farted-into and stained that the landlady was bound to withhold a large chunk of Aniela’s deposit – holding up a can of Special Brew in a goodbye to her, too absorbed in the football he was watching to even take his eyes off the TV screen, popped into Aniela’s mind; she shuddered.

  And then, as the lift doors opened and she stepped out, the image of the man she was about to see replaced Lubo’s. It was even more vivid, and it made her shiver even more, but with a completely different sensation rippling through her. She had looked at Jon’s records – pored over them, to be completely honest – and then told herself firmly that she should put them away, that this kind of detailed research crossed over any professional interest and went right into stalker territory. However, by the time she had finally slid Jon’s file back into the cabinet again, she had memorised almost all of the details of not only this operation, but Dr Nassri’s comments on the previous procedure that Jon had undergone almost a decade ago. He had had not just one, but two facial reconstructions. Which, was, in Aniela’s extensive experience, completely unprecedented.

  But he’s just another patient, she recited in her head as she walked down the silent, plush corridor to the door of his apartment. Just another patient. With the best body I’ve ever seen. And something about him that’s making me break the habit of a lifetime, snoop into his background, ask all kinds of questions about him that are none of my business. I’m behaving like a stupid teenager with a crush.

  Enough. She rang the bell and, instinctively, put both her arms behind her back, one hand clasping the other wrist. Aniela wasn’t a fool; she knew perfectly well what that meant. I’m not going to touch him apart from what I absolutely have to do to change his dressings. I’m going to be in and out of there as quickly as possible.

  Ten years of training, Aniela. Get it together. You’re a professional, so behave like one.

  But the unprofessional part of her, the part she had so firmly suppressed for so long, couldn’t help hoping that Jon had been exercising again and would come to the door wearing just his sweatpants...

  Grigor

  A couple of hours earlier, Grigor had been happily ensconced on the main terrace of his penthouse, engaged in one of his favourite activities: supervising the positioning of Christmas decorations. He had sent out Andy to purchase a vast amount of outdoor lights, including an enormous Santa with reindeer and sleigh, six foot high, which Andy and two of Grigor’s bodyguards were wrestling into place and affixing to the balcony that ran around the terrace. Grigor, wrapped in a floor-length sable coat that made him look like a stumpy beaver, was curled up on one of the loungers, a bevy of space heaters positioned around him to keep him warm, calling out suggestions as the young men struggled to hang Santa off the balcony without dropping the whole thing into the Thames below.

  ‘Careful of my boats!’ Grigor yelled cheerfully. ‘I like them on the water, not under it!’

  Directly below, Grigor owned a private pier jutting out from the waterfront, on which was moored a Princess V62 sports yacht, a lovely sleek white motor cruiser on which

  Grigor loved to putter up and down the Thames in good weather, sprawled over the white leather sunbed in the cockpit, as his chef grilled on the built-in barbecue on the deck. Beside the Princess was a Blade Runner 35, an insanely curved and torqued white and red racing speedboat with a maximum speed of ninety miles per hour and special suspension jockey seats, which had cost nearly two hundred thousand pounds. Grigor couldn’t reach anything like ninety miles per hour on the Thames, for fear of the river police, but it was still the envy of every single man and boy who saw Grigor happily nipping up and down the river, the nautical equivalent of the luxury supercars which Qatari princes and Bahraini playboys with apartments in Knightsbridge kept in their private garages. Every summer, they would come to London to escape the heat at home in the weeks before Ramadan, take the covers off their Ferraris, Bentleys, Porsches and BMWs and park them on Basil Street, outside Harrods, to show them off to the world.

  And sometimes they race them too, naughty boys, Grigor thought, smiling. Up and down Sloane Street or Knightsbridge, at two in the morning. Grigor’s son Alek had been caught out last year, partying with some Middle Eastern friends of his, had fallen out of a private casino behind Harvey Nichols and promptly taken a wager to race his Lamborghini Murciélago against a Bugatti Veyron down the Brompton Road: both boys had been stopped by the police, given on-the-spot fines, and officially cautioned.

  Only sixty pounds each, I think it was they had to pay, and some points on their licences. No bribes at all. They didn’t even impound the cars so the police could drive them around for a while. What a wonderful country this is!

  ‘How’s that, Mr K?’ Andy called breathlessly, holding the last reindeer in place, their hooves rearing high abov
e the balcony, as the bodyguards roped the sleigh to the brushed-steel railings. ‘Brilliant, eh? Those kids are going to go mental when they see this on Boxing Day!’

  Andy was already forgetting any deference in his manner with Grigor; after yesterday’s Christmas shopping and planning, and today’s push on getting up the decorations, he was too absorbed in having unlimited funds to spend on giving Limehouse Reach the most spectacular Christmas imaginable. From being a frighteningly rich and powerful oligarch, Grigor had become, to Andy, a sort of Santa Claus in human form. ‘Wonderful!’ Grigor boomed cheerfully back. ‘I want them to see it from all the buildings around! I want all the office workers and people who live here to take photographs and send them to each other and put videos on the YouTube of Santa landing on my building and say that here is the best Christmas decoration in London!’

  A brief expression of sadness crossed his face.

  ‘For a little moment, I think Santa should be landing on the helipad,’ he said, gesturing upwards to the helicopter landing site on the roof above. ‘But Sergei checks with the shop where we buy the big Santa, and they say no, it is not safe, because it is all empty, there is nothing to tie Santa to but the railings, nothing in the middle to hold him down. And you know, it is not good if Santa and his reindeer blow away and kill someone. No one wants to be killed by Santa.’

  Andy frowned thoughtfully, his handsome features creasing in concentration.

  ‘What if we got them to make something specially for next year?’ he suggested. ‘I bet they would if we paid enough. What about a big, light-up helicopter, with Santa getting out of it? That would look amazing!’ He smiled, teeth flashing white against his burnished red-brown skin. ‘They could make it with lots of extra guyropes so we could tie it down to the railings, round the whole perimeter, to make sure it wouldn’t take off in a high wind.That’d be all over YouTube and the newspapers and everything. Santa and his helicopter – got to love it!’ Grigor beamed delightedly.

  ‘That is a great idea!’ he bellowed, throwing his arms wide. ‘You hear, Sergei? A great idea! Why do you not have great ideas like Andy does?’

  The little secretary, huddling inside the apartment in the lee of the sliding glass door, shot a malevolent glare at Andy. ‘It’s just cos I love Christmas so much,’ Andy said hurriedly. ‘Santa coming out of a helicopter! It is very funny! And you know what is even more funny?’ Grigor demanded. ‘We put antlers on the helicopter!’

  ‘I love it!’ Andy said blissfully.

  The bodyguards had finished tying Santa, the sleigh and the reindeer onto the balcony by now; with a last couple of vigorous pulls to check that everything was safely secured, they backed away, and Andy ceremonially presented Grigor with the remote control that would turn the lights on. Standing up, the heavy skirts of his coat falling nearly to the ground, Grigor gleefully pressed the power button, and sighed in delight as the entire fixture lit up in full glory.

  ‘Look at Rudolph!’ he exclaimed blissfully, pointing to the leading reindeer’s nose, which was flashing red on and off. ‘And

  – ha, look at Nestor and Kirill!’ His index finger moved to the faces of the two bodyguards, who were feeling the cold; their cheeks were pink, their noses bright red. ‘They are both Rudolph too! Very funny! Ho ho ho!’ he added for extra comic effect.

  The bodyguards, unable to talk back, tramped back into the building, relieving their feelings by glowering horribly the moment they had passed Grigor.

  ‘You are very lucky with your nice black skin!’ Grigor said to Andy. ‘You have no Rudolph nose!’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Andy said tactfully. ‘Shall I—’

  ‘Where the fuck is he?’ screamed a woman’s voice in Russian. ‘Where the fuck is that so-called fucking husband of mine?’ ‘Oh dear,’ Grigor said sadly. ‘And we were having so much fun...’

  He turned to look inside the gigantic receiving room, to see a blur of movement at the far end, where his estranged wife was struggling between the two bodyguards who were stationed in the foyer. In her lemon shaved-mink coat, belted with a wide swath of black leather, her yellow-dyed hair and her black silk scarf, Dasha looked like a flapping, enraged bee; from their agonised expressions as they tried to restrain her without being stung by her nails, the bodyguards were making a very similar comparison.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Grigor said, sighing deeply and lifting the heavy weight of his coat like a ball dress to enable him to step inside the apartment again. ‘She can come in.’

  He snapped his fingers at Sergei, who was more than happy to close the doors behind him and bustle Andy out of the penthouse. Dasha, released by the bodyguards, shot forward as if she’d been fired out of a gun, fizzing and buzzing like an acid-tipped projectile towards her husband.

  ‘Fuck you!’ she yelled. ‘How dare you divorce me? After all I’ve done for you – helped you with everything, built the business from nothing – and now I hear you want a divorce because you’re going to marry fucking Fyodorov’s daughter? Is this some kind of joke?’

  Sergei nobly ran back and tried to interpose himself between Dasha and Grigor; Dasha shot out one red-tipped hand and slapped him out of the way.

  ‘Hey, Dasha, that’s enough,’ Grigor said mildly. ‘You don’t hit Sergei, okay? Sergei is a nice guy.’

  Undoing his huge sable coat, he stepped out of it, leaving it like a gigantic hairy puddle on the carpet, the shape of his shoulders clearly outlined, the lower part sagging downwards. Sergei scuttled round him, picking up the coat, reeling under its weight as he heaved it towards the foyer to hang it in the built-in climate-controlled fur closet.

  ‘Let’s have some tea,’ Grigor said, walking over to the long U-shaped silk-upholstered sofa and sinking into the centre wing, so that he could watch Santa and the reindeers’ lights flashing on and off. ‘Nestor, tell Daniel I want the samovar.’ Nestor, who had the lowest status of the bodyguards and was therefore tasked with lugging in the gigantic bronze electric samovar with its elaborately moulded handles and matching teapot, stifled a sigh and headed off to the kitchen to inform the chef that it would be required.

  ‘Why don’t you take a seat, Dasha, while we’re waiting for the tea?’ Grigor suggested.

  ‘Fuck you, Grigor!’ Dasha hissed, throwing her own coat at Sergei; nervous of approaching her, he stood as far away from her as he could and dashed forward to catch it at the last moment possible.

  ‘Dasha,’ her husband said gently, ‘I don’t understand you, moya dorogaya, my dear. This cannot be changed. The divorce, the new marriage to Fyodorov’s daughter.’ He sighed. ‘I would rather it wasn’t, to be honest. It’s all costing me a lot of money and time and trouble, and what am I going to do with a new young wife? I’m old and tired, and happy as I am without little Fyodorova running round the place, wanting to make changes to my life. But it’s business. You know that better than anyone. Sometimes, for business, one has to make sacrifices. Unpleasant decisions. You yourself have helped me make many of those unpleasant decisions in the past. Look at how you dealt with poor Arkady Chertkov!’

  He tilted his grizzled head to the side.

  ‘I would have gone a little easier on old Arkady myself,’ he said a little sadly. ‘Left him at least – well, alive.’

  ‘He begged for death at the end,’ Dasha said crossly. ‘And I needed – we needed – to make an example of him. It worked, didn’t it?’

  She narrowed her eyes, the false lashes on the upper lids almost closing on the heavily mascaraed lower ones. ‘I don’t want this divorce, Grigor!’ she continued. ‘It’ll make me a laughing-stock, left for a girl almost half my age!’ Sergei, who had stationed himself discreetly against the back wall of the room, half-concealed behind a Picasso sculpture on a pedestal, gave a muffled snort of sarcastic amusement at this: Dasha was on the wrong side of fifty, and little Zhivana Fyodorova wasn’t yet twenty-one.

  ‘I’ve always boasted about it, Grigor!’ She started pacing back and forth on her
six-inch Louboutin heels, her hair bouncing on her shoulders. ‘I’ve always boasted that you would never divorce me, that I would be one of the wives who wasn’t thrown aside for trophy models and beauty queens...’ ‘Ach, thrown aside,’ Grigor said, flapping his hands dismissively. ‘You are not thrown aside, Dasha, that is ridiculous! You live like a queen in Monaco, in a mansion by the sea, and you have plenty of pretty gigolos to keep you happy. We haven’t shared a bed in years – you can scarcely complain that now we are getting a divorce you will lose your marital rights, eh? But you are the mother of my children! You will always live like a queen for the wonderful boys you have given me! I kiss my hand to you for giving me our boys!’

  He did, with a flourish, as Nestor, very carefully, wheeled in the gigantic brass trolley bearing the huge samovar. Daniel, Grigor’s chef, followed behind him, supervising the placement, and, when it was successfully installed with its wheels locked, he ceremonially decanted enough tea from the spigot to fill the little teapot that perched on top of the samovar. Placing the teapot on a beaten-brass tray, adding two little cups and a plate of almond biscuits, he stepped towards Dasha, proffering the tray; she waved him aside so furiously that the tray wobbled dangerously in his hands.

  ‘You know I will be very generous in the divorce. You won’t want for anything,’ Grigor went on, the aromatic scent of the brewing black tea filling the room. Neither he nor his wife had any scruples about airing their dirty laundry in front of the servants; any employee of the Khalovskys knew very well that they would be literally taking their life in their hands were they to gossip about their employers. ‘This marriage is a political move, that’s all! I’m marrying the Fyodorov girl to consolidate our territory. Come on, Dasha, you know how it is. I’m exiled from Russia – I can’t go back without being clapped into prison. Fyodorov wants access to our natural gas concessions, and he can run things from there – he’s a real politician, that one, better than I ever was. I let my feelings run away with me sometimes, but Fyodorov, he’s a chess player. We’re a good balance. It’s the way of the future, you know? We all used to be enemies, scrabbling for the monopolies. Now we have to team up, be strong together, because if we don’t, the government will pick us off and crush us like bugs, one at a time.’ He raised one hand and squashed his thumb and first two fingers together expressively, then mimed throwing away the insect he had just killed.