But not with other people around. And not on New Year’s Eve. Grigor adored big occasions, excuses to have parties and entertain with his legendary hospitality, but what he really enjoyed was to celebrate those occasions by drinking expensive brandy and watching films appropriate to the moment. He was impressed by the new trend in Hollywood of making films for precisely this kind of situation. Christmas, of course, was an embarras de richesses, with so many films to choose from, but some clever American had seen an opportunity, and made first Valentine’s Day and now New Year’s Eve. Grigor was just about to sneak off to his screening room and have the latter put on; he calculated that he could watch it and have twenty minutes or so at the end before the stroke of midnight.
So many good actors in this film! he thought happily as he snorted a line. Halle Berry, Robert De Niro – Michelle Pfeiffer, so beautiful, so elegant – and Jon Bon Jovi! Very exciting! Grigor was very much looking forward to Jon Bon Jovi’s cameo. He was a great fan of his music.
The Formula One man had grabbed Teresa and was pulling her off to a bedroom, the strap-on waggling in front of her. Patrice was already getting sucked off by Lori as Jaycie rubbed her breasts in his face. From the darker corners of the room, the moans, groans, porn-movie squeals of pleasure and sounds of condom wrappers being torn open were growing louder and louder.
I can slip off now to watch my film, Grigor decided with complete contentment. No one will miss me.
He was just picking up his glass when Sergei, vibrating like an overstimulated tuning fork, shot up to him, panting heavily.
‘We have an emergency!’ he hissed. ‘Mr Khalovksy, it is a disaster!’
‘What?’ This was the positively last word that Grigor wanted to hear tonight. ‘What’s going on?’
Squinting in the darkness, he realised that Sergei had been followed by Andy.
‘Mr K, I’m so sorry – I didn’t know what to do!’ Andy was stammering. ‘You’ve got unexpected visitors!’
Dire imaginings ran through Grigor’s mind: the KGB, MI6, the Spetsnaz? Visitors in the plural, making Sergei and Andy panic like this – which secret services could it be?
‘It’s Dmitri and Zhivana Fyodorova!’ Sergei wrung his hands as if they were sopping towels. ‘Downstairs in the lobby! Come by to say Happy New Year to their fathers!’
‘Ah, fuck! This is worse than the bloody KGB!’ Grigor bellowed in frustration.
He looked around him at the orgy in progress: the girls, the drugs, Zhivana’s father lying back on the sofa, being ridden cowgirl-style by Beth as he squeezed her buttocks appreciatively. My God, he thought in parenthesis. Mikhail is so hairy that poor girl must feel like she’s fucking a carpet. He probably even has hairs on his dick.
‘Fuck,’ he repeated, feeling as if the breath had been knocked out of him, as he saw his successful evening shatter to pieces before his eyes. ‘Andy, go downstairs and stall them. Think of something to say. Sergei will let you know when it’s okay to bring them up.’
‘Say Patrice threw up on the carpet and it’s being cleaned,’ Sergei said maliciously. ‘He’s always throwing up. That man is a pig.’
Grigor nodded. ‘And get me Diane—’
But Diane was already gliding up to their group. Diane was the most successful madam in Europe, a title she had maintained for fifteen years by keeping an eagle eye on every aspect of her business; her entire stable of available girls had been mustered for this party, were being paid triple time in consideration of the fact that they were not only working on a holiday but putting on a show to boot, and she would not have dreamed of letting such an important occasion take place without being there to supervise discreetly but thoroughly.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, and even her heavily made-up mask of a face cracked into a grimace when she heard the news.
‘Well, fuck me with a drainpipe, that’s put the cat among the pigeons!’ she exclaimed. ‘Right. I’ll get a few of the better-spoken girls dressed and back in here to be girlfriends – if it’s all men in here it’ll look like a sausage fest. Rest of ’em can go back downstairs and entertain any of the gents who want to pop down to get their tubes cleaned. Sound like a plan?’
The men nodded gratefully, Andy dashing off to the lift to go back downstairs to explain to Dmitri and Zhivana. Diane marched over to the bank of lights, which she had been operating for the show, and flicked them all on in one brutal flash. Yells of protest burst out, as men in flagrante delicto around the room howled complaints.
‘Sorry, gents!’ Hoicking up her skirt, Diane climbed onto the table and stood there, dominating the room. ‘Bad news! Mr K’s son’s just turned up with Mr F’s daughter – they want to say Happy New Year to their dads. That’s put a spanner in our works and there’s no mistake! Finish up what you’re doing if you can manage that quickly, and you can keep the party going downstairs if you fancy, which I bet you do. Kesha, Valerie, Lyndsey, Lori, Mia, you clean up best. Go get your kit on and come back up here, with your best posh voices on. Rest of you girls, I don’t want to see you up here. Got it?’
‘Oh no! Do we have to take our wings off?’ Kesha wailed, jumping off the footballer she’d been straddling, the beads half out of her bottom now, where they dangled like a comedy tail.
Fyodorov, sprawled, hairy legs wide, under Beth’s long lanky body, jerked up his head at that news.
‘What?’ he shouted. ‘Zhivana is here?’
Beth, a consummate professional, reached down, cupped his balls with one hand, slid a finger of the other hand up his bottom, and pressed hard on his prostate.
‘Ugh! Aah! Ty blyadina – you dirty whore!’ Fyodorov yelled, his head flopping back onto the sofa cushions, his whole body juddering with orgasm.
‘Thought I’d just finish him off, Diane,’ Beth said to her boss. ‘Poor sod, he won’t get to cop off now otherwise, will he? Not with his daughter turning up and all.’
‘Quick thinking.’ Diane nodded approvingly as Fyodorov’s grunts died down. ‘Nice work, Beth. I like a girl who takes a bit of initiative.’
Andy
Oh my God, what a night! Andy thought, as the lift carried him down to the lobby again. Talk about drama! His job was absolutely the opposite: to make everything run smoothly and seamlessly for his clients, to avoid drama wherever possible. But no one could have helped, even fractionally, being entertained by the sight of all those stunning girls in their big wings and haloes, the various sexual permutations which he had glimpsed around the great room – that one with the thing up her bum in particular, he thought, sniggering. Big white wings and a bobbly tail, that was hilarious!
I wish Wayne had been there – it would’ve been fun to have someone to giggle with at how the girls were all tarted up.
Before we sneaked away to have our own fun, of course.
Andy caught sight of himself in the mirror panel in the lift: his expression was ludicrously sad, like a clown miming misery, mouth and eyes pulled down at the corners. He couldn’t stop thinking about Wayne, and all it did was make him want to cry.
Stop it! Pull yourself together! he told himself crossly as the lift doors opened. Get out there and make up some story about Patrice – Sergei’s quite right, he’s always in the tabs for getting pissed and falling out of clubs, they’ll believe that one. Or at least be polite enough to pretend to believe it...
Pasting a professional smile onto his face, he walked briskly from the lift, rounded the enormous Christmas tree, stepped into the lobby, and stopped dead. Zhivana and Dmitri were sitting on the edge of the pond, looking down at the huge golden carp floating over the glittering red and green stones, Zhivana trailing her fingers to try to entice a fish to come close as Dmitri murmured something in her ear that made her laugh. In the short time she’d spent with Dmitri, Zhivana’s style had changed markedly. The furs she had left Grigor’s apartment wearing had vanished, replaced by a fitted, padded silver-grey coat with a fashionably oversized scarf wrapped round her slender throat; above it, her
braided hairstyle now looked like the height of Shoreditch fashion.
She whispered something to Dmitri in response; they were too absorbed in each other even to notice his arrival, and it wasn’t them he was looking at in any case.
It was Wayne. Who was standing awkwardly by Andy’s desk, his hands shoved in his jeans pockets, head thrust forward, his eyes fixed on Andy. He managed a smile, mouthing ‘Hi’. His leather jacket was buttoned up tightly, a stripy scarf looped around his neck dusted lightly with snow: on his hands were red woollen gloves, which matched his cheeks. He was stocky, his legs so solid and wide that his body seemed almost rectangular in shape. His features were small, his eyes piggy, the set of his round ears on his round skull making him look like a child’s toy.
But to Andy, he looked like Prince Charming, love incarnate—
Oh no! Andy thought in horror at the words which were spooling through his head at the sight of Wayne. I just used the ‘love’ word – which is mental. I barely know him – he doesn’t want to be with me, not properly – oh no, he’s going to break my bloody heart, the bastard—
What’s he even doing here?
‘Mr K mentioned his New Year’s Eve party,’ Wayne said, clearly, so that everyone else in the lobby could hear as well. ‘And I thought I’d just drop by.’
‘Nothing else going on?’ Andy said curtly, walking towards him; the shock of seeing Wayne so unexpectedly had loosened his tongue. He found himself caring much less about professional decorum than he ever had in his life. ‘No other fun dos to go to? Or did you find yourself fancying the sight of Mr K’s special guests all dressed up and dancing?’
He had lowered his voice by this time, so that Zhivana and Dmitri wouldn’t hear.
‘Oh!’ Wayne looked a little taken aback. He turned away from the pond, their backs now to the young lovers, for extra discretion. ‘That kind of party, is it?’
‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’
Andy couldn’t stay angry at Wayne, not when there was such juicy gossip to share. And besides, he thought, trying not to let his heart leap too much with anticipation, he’s here for me, isn’t he? He’s turned up to see me on New Year’s Eve, and though it’s shredding my nerves, I couldn’t be happier to see him—
‘The girls put on this whole show,’ Andy said under his breath. ‘It was mental up there. Good angels, bad angels, sex toys, the whole works – hilarious. I thought everyone was here, so I popped up to have a look – and when those two walked in—’ he nodded at Dmitri and Zhivana – ‘one of them was up on the table getting stuff stuck up her bum, another girl was getting spanked, all of ’em with these enormous great wings on – it was all I could do not to crack up, they were really going for it! And then we got the word to clean up, and this poor girl only had a flipping string of black rubber beads sticking out of her arse – she didn’t know what to do, she was running around with it waggling like a tail out of her bum—’
‘Pin the tail on the donkey!’ Wayne said, in full giggle flight. ‘Shit, I wish I’d seen that, it sounds brilliant!’
‘Yeah, it was top entertainment,’ Andy agreed, laughing at the memory. ‘Oh, and her dad—’
He hissed into Wayne’s ear the story of Beth’s finger going up Mr Fyodorov’s bottom. Wayne howled with laughter.
‘Blimey,’ he said, ‘it sounds like it’s bum central up there!’
Andy managed, through a heroic effort, not to throw in any reference to himself and Wayne in the fortieth-floor apartment just a couple of days ago.
‘Your mate Patrice was going at it,’ he said. ‘Two girls and him, just like you said.’
‘’im.’ Wayne sniffed. ‘Any opportunity, ’e gets ’is knob out. And it ain’t even that much to see.’
Andy giggled again. He realised that, as before, he and Wayne had fallen instantly into easy, happy, laughing, companionable conversation, a back and forth with no awkward pauses or stares at the floor; that’s what makes it so hard to say no to him.
‘Andy,’ Wayne said very softly, glancing around them to make sure there was no one to overhear. ‘I came to see you. You know that, right?’
Andy nodded.
‘But what I said before,’ he muttered, ‘I haven’t changed my mind.’
‘Is there anywhere we can be alone?’
Firmly, determinedly, Andy shook his head.
‘No way,’ he said. ‘Cos I know what would happen.’ He wanted so badly to kiss Wayne that he actually had to take a step back to avoid the temptation to reach out and touch him; his brain had made the decision to put more distance between them, but his body was yearning for Wayne, so much so that it was actually beginning to tilt towards his.
‘Do you not want to—’ Wayne started, looking so cast down and miserable that Andy had to interrupt.
‘Of course I do!’ he hissed furiously. ‘I want to snog your face off right here! But I’m not going to, and I’m not going somewhere alone with you, cos we’d just – you know – and that would make me feel even worse after, cos I meant what I said before! It was hard enough to come out without you trying to cram me back into the closet again, even if you do suck my dick when we’re both in there!’
It was a magnificent speech, but the trouble was that saying the words ‘suck my dick’ in this close proximity to Wayne just made Andy’s own cock stiffen, pressing uncomfortably against the heavy wool fabric of his uniform trousers. It was all he could do not to reach down and adjust it to a slightly more comfortable angle. Wayne had unwrapped his scarf, and above the welted-knit collar of his leather jacket, Andy could see his pronounced Adam’s apple bob as Wayne swallowed with nerves. For some reason, the sight sent a wash of tenderness flooding through him. Tears pricked at his eyes, and he turned away to hide them.
‘I’m supposed to be delaying down here till they get all tidied away upstairs,’ he muttered. ‘Make it look all respectable.’
‘They going to let you know when it’s okay to take ’em up?’ Wayne asked gruffly, nodding at the two young lovers, still sitting happily on the rim of the pond, whispering sweet nothings to each other.
Andy shrugged. ‘Yeah, they’ll give me the all-clear.’
‘Cos ’e’s waving at you,’ Wayne said, nodding at the burly bodyguard stationed by the lift, who was beckoning to Andy with a cupping gesture of his fingers. The bodyguard met Andy’s eyes, looked over at Zhivana and Dmitri, and nodded, an unmistakable signal that the coast up in the penthouse was clear.
‘All right, then,’ Andy said. He looked at Wayne. ‘You coming up, then?’
Wayne looked ridiculously hangdog, and very young indeed.
‘D’you want me to stay?’ he said softly.
Andy was suddenly unable to speak. He nodded abruptly. There was a huge lump in his throat.
‘Of course. Yeah. But I can’t be alone with you,’ he finally managed to get out. ‘It’s not fair. Not when you can’t—’ The lump felt the size of the Boulder Dam by now. ‘I can’t, okay?’ he managed.
Swivelling on the heel of his polished dress shoes, he walked over to the carp pond.
‘Miss Fyodorova? Mr Khalovsky?’ he said, in his best professional-concierge voice. ‘Can I show you up to the penthouse? I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. Mr Burns is coming up with us – Mr Khalovsky is so happy you’re all joining his New Year’s Eve party!’
And then the phone on his desk rang; he stepped over to answer it, his head tilted as he listened to Sergei babble a string of instructions.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘No problem.’
He put down the phone.
‘Miss Fyodorova, gentlemen,’ he said to the three assembled guests, ‘could I ask you to go up to the penthouse? I have just a couple of errands to run for Mr Khalovsky before I join you...’
Jon
He was on high alert, had been ever since the new patient had been wheeled into his old apartment, slumped back in his wheelchair, obviously comatose on sedatives and painkillers, with Aniela walking behind the
orderly. Fuck, fuck, fuck! How unlucky is this! Clearly some emergency had taken place, something unforeseeable, because no one would choose to be operated upon by a plastic surgeon between Christmas and the New Year. And because it was an emergency, it’ll be worse than a planned operation. Aniela will need to stay with him more closely, be around that damned apartment much more – which is the last place I want to see her—
He’d taken a lightning-fast decision; as soon as the coast was clear, the orderly gone, and Aniela, presumably, installed for a while with the patient, he had activated the device that scrambled the CCTV video feed once more and cleared out of the corner apartment, moving into the one next door to the Canary Clinic one. It was unoccupied, he knew, from his long hours of observation; there was no wreath on the door, too, which meant that no one had been in when Andy had come by with the wreaths and mistletoe from Khalovsky upstairs. Naturally, there was always the risk that its owners might be planning to stay there for a London-based New Year’s Eve, and this apartment was infinitely less suitable for a trained assassin who would never, normally, have dreamed of taking a position this weak: with only one door, and no possibility of exiting out the windows, the apartment was literally a death-trap.
But I’m right on her doorstep. I’ll be able to jump in to save her, if and when Dasha Khalovsky or any goons she sends shows up to try to take me out.
It was possible, of course, that Dasha had already been informed by Dr Nassri that Jon had upped sticks and disappeared; that was his hope, and why he had insisted that Aniela tell her boss as soon as she officially became aware that he had cleared out of Limehouse Reach. If that was the case, he had nothing to worry about. But Aniela’s presence in the apartment worried him tremendously. Even the slightest possibility that she might be at risk was immensely distressing to him, made his palms sweat as if he were about to go into physical combat.
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