He grabbed onto the bodyguard’s arm and looked up at him with a confidential smile.
‘Tell me,’ he asked, pointing to James and Melody. ‘Is it just me? I’m on a lot of drugs. Can you see Wonder Woman over there, kissing Dr Who?’
Grigor herded everyone but Jon, Aniela and poor bemused Jeremy Bingham-Smythe up to the penthouse to drink champagne and celebrate the New Year, with many cheerful waves and gestures and assurances that he would follow immediately. He was flanked by two bodyguards, who were staying with him; as Dmitri filed in, and Grigor met his son’s worried eyes, Grigor gave him a short sharp nod.
‘Okay,’ he said brusquely, the hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie wiped from his face the second the doors slid shut. He held his hand out, palm up, as he strode off to the other set of lifts: the closer bodyguard instantly removed his Beretta from his shoulder holster and placed it in his boss’s clasp.
They descended to the parking garage in silence. It was eerily bereft of cars, and the shadows cast by the wide supporting concrete pillars lay in thick dark diagonals stripes over the empty parking spaces, white-painted, numbered according to the apartments to which they belonged. Grigor’s bodyguards had Dasha pinned in the far corner; she hung between them, head tipped forward, what was left of the ratty blonde extensions drying now, hanging over her face in elf-locks. A few strands of the tinsel showed against the artificial yellow colour, and her red silk blouse and zebra-print pony-skin skirt stood out vividly against the grey concrete wall and the black uniform of the bodyguards. She was barefoot, and her tights were ripped, red-painted toes poking through, blood on one calf, more blood clotted on the side of her temple; as she heard Grigor’s footsteps approaching, she raised her head, glaring at him furiously.
‘You’re a bastard,’ she spat, taking in his blank expression, the gun in his hand. ‘You deserved to die for the way you treated me.’
Without saying a word, Grigor walked right up to her, raised the Beretta, and ground the barrel of the gun into her right eye as if he were screwing in a monocle.
‘This is how you like to do it,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it?’
And without waiting for an answer, he pulled the trigger. Dasha jerked back against the hands holding her. Her body sagged. Grigor stared at her, waiting.
Until, finally, she raised her head again. Now her eyes were dull, defeated; all the fight had gone out of her.
‘You’re going to do it slowly, aren’t you,’ she said. It wasn’t a question.
‘This was your warning,’ Grigor said.
He took the magazine out of his pocket, which he had removed as the lift sank to the lower floor, and jammed it back into the stock of the semi-automatic. Raising the Beretta again, he worked the barrel against the other eyeball.
‘Our son is upstairs. He just got married. He pleaded with me for your life. What could I say?’ His finger hovered on the trigger. ‘Next time you try anything, Dasha, you are dead. You know that I will do it.’
She couldn’t nod. She could only mutter a ‘Yes’ as he continued:
‘You are the mother of my children. That will not protect you next time. I said I would not get a divorce, and I meant it. But now I have changed my mind. You must be punished for this, Dasha. I will get a divorce. And you will agree to whatever settlement I give you, or be turned over to the police for assaulting that nurse. You will pay her a hundred thousand pounds from your settlement. Oh! And the stuntman! Two hundred thousand for him, for being shot.’ He stared at her grimly. ‘Your allowance will be cut to the bare minimum. You will have to leave Monaco. You’ll have to settle for a much lower class of gigolo.’
Dasha whimpered. She would never be able to afford Marcos now; he demanded a steep weekly allowance, plus a stream of gifts, and he insisted on being put up in five-star-plus luxury. The Uruguayan oil millionairess from whom Dasha had poached him had been circling him again, she knew, and though he definitely preferred Dasha’s full-blooded brand of sexual sadism, as soon as he heard that her income had decreased so dramatically, he wouldn’t stick around for longer than it took to pack his matching Vuitton trunks and shoot off to Punta del Este.
Tears started to form in her eyes as she thought of Marcos’s slender tanned body, his thick penis, his tight hairless buttocks. He was waiting for her right now back in the Dorchester suite, tied up on his knees, well-oiled, Putin’s Surprise lying on the table in front of him so that he could contemplate, trembling deliciously, the dimensions of what Dasha had promised to brutally pound into him at the stroke of midnight.
It was all ruined now. She wouldn’t have the heart even to fuck Marcos one last time. She was a broken woman, utterly defeated.
‘And don’t try complaining to the boys about it,’ Grigor added. ‘Dmitri saw what you did. He will tell Alek. They will both be grateful to me for sparing your life. Believe me, they will not take your side. If you complain, I will hear about it. And it will not be good for you.’
He pulled the Beretta away from her face and handed it back to the bodyguard to holster. Turning away, he nodded at all the guards to follow him. The two men holding Dasha let her go, and she fell to the floor. As they walked back to the lift, Grigor did not once look over his shoulder at his soon-to-be-ex-wife.
He didn’t need to. He could hear her desolate sobbing echoing round the cold concrete walls of the garage, the sobbing of a woman who had played for the highest of stakes, and lost everything.
Up in the penthouse, the party had resumed with zest and gusto; magnums of champagne were being popped open, the footballers shouldering aside the waiters to take on the task themselves, spraying each other with great white foamy cascades of bubbles.
‘That’s so gay,’ Wayne commented, delirious with his own bravery, looking back inside at the showers of champagne foam; he and Andy were on the terrace, watching the firework display up and down the river, arms wrapped round each other. ‘Look at them covering each other in spunk.’
Andy giggled. ‘You’re going to fit right in with my friends,’ he said happily. ‘I can’t wait for your first foam party!’
Wayne cuddled him close. ‘Will you be with me?’ he asked. ‘Take me around to bars and clubs, so I don’t ’ave to do it all on my own?’
‘As long as you want me,’ Andy said very seriously. ‘I don’t want to hold you back if you fancy going out and sowing a lot of wild oats.’
‘I don’t think I will,’ Wayne said, hugging him. ‘I think I’m going to be an old-fashioned gay man. Traditional. Are there any of those?’
Andy smiled. ‘You mean monogamous? Of course! Takes all sorts.’
Wayne nodded. ‘Yeah, monogamous, that’s the word. Like my mum and dad. I’m not one for playing around.’
Andy kissed him. ‘Honestly, Wayne, you don’t know that yet,’ he said. ‘It’s really early days for you. We’ll take it slow, okay?’
‘Can we fuck a lot while we’re taking it slow?’ Wayne said, grinning.
‘Oh yes,’ Andy said devoutly. ‘Don’t you worry about that. Talking of which, did you hear about Hari? The Japanese kid?’
Wayne shook his head. ‘What’s that?’
Andy told him the story: Mr and Mrs Takahashi, who had been invited to the party along with their son, had gone into the screening room, along with Grigor, to watch New Year’s Eve, and had stayed in there when Grigor had been summoned out in a tearing hurry. Only when the film finished had they emerged, to realise that Hari was nowhere to be found. A hue and cry had gone up, as the Takahashis panicked that Hari had been abducted or had fallen off one of the balconies; eventually, Sergei had been drafted into the search and had produced Hari, who had ambled up from the lower-floor apartment with an expression of utter, transcendental bliss on his face.
He had been taken down there by Kesha as soon as she laid eyes on him. The girls who had been banished downstairs to entertain overweight, ungrateful, hairy old oligarchs had fallen on a slim, beautiful, smooth and virginal youth nearly their own age with u
nrestrained enthusiasm; in a couple of hours, Hari had been turned from a boy into a man. He had the look in his eyes of someone who had seen paradise. As his parents fussed over him, and Lori, who had shepherded him upstairs, explained with smooth conviction that he and she had been playing video games, he smiled at his mother and father with such genuine affection that they both burst into tears, hugged him, and swore that they would all spend more time together as a family in future.
‘Nice!’ Wayne said appreciatively. ‘Here, let’s go congratulate him.’
They went back inside, spotting a dazed-looking Hari; Wayne wove through the crowd and clinked glasses with him.
‘Hear you had the time of your life just now, mate,’ he said. ‘Congrats.’
Hari puffed up his chest. ‘I did it five times!’ he said proudly, after checking that his family weren’t within earshot.
‘Jesus, five times!’ Wayne toasted him again.
‘Girls,’ Hari said, in the tones of a very recent religious convert describing his moment of revelation, ‘are amazing.’
‘Oh well,’ Andy said, grinning at Wayne. ‘Each to their own.’
Sergei, slipping past, spotted Andy – now not only a guest, but the blissfully happy consort of Grigor Khalovsky’s star player, his arm wrapped happily around Wayne’s sturdy waist. The bile Sergei usually managed to suppress in public rose up with disastrous results, primed by the glass of champagne he had allowed himself to celebrate the end of the year. Glaring up at Andy and Wayne, he hissed vindictively:
‘Homosexuals!’
Andy tensed, looking nervously at Wayne. Wayne had literally only just come out; this was exactly what he had feared, his sexual preference turned into a spitting insult.Andy opened his mouth to tell Sergei to piss off, but, magnificently, Wayne was there first.
‘That’s right!’ he said, turning to smile at Andy, to clink glasses with him. ‘We are ’omosexuals! And look! ’eterosexuals!’
He pointed at Melody, who, swimming on a happy sea of champagne, her arm wound through James’s, was floating up to Andy and Wayne with a beautiful smile. Sergei, thwarted in his attempt to upset Andy, slithered away in fury.
‘He looks like that snake in the cartoon,’ Andy said. ‘Prince John, in Robin Hood. After someone stepped on his head,’ he added loudly to Sergei’s retreating back.
‘Ah, ignore the little fucker,’ Wayne said, planting a big smacking kiss on his lover’s mouth. ‘’e ain’t worth it, mate.’
‘Congratulations on coming out!’ Melody sang out sweetly, kissing Wayne on each cheek. ‘If the footballers are mean to you, just come and hang out with the actors, won’t you? Half of them are gay anyway, you’ll fit right in!’
‘It’s great that you two’re back together,’ Andy said, looking at her and James’s big smiles. ‘That’s lovely. I was sad when you broke up – you always looked like such a lovely couple in the papers.’
Melody and James beamed at each other.
‘We’re completely back together,’ James said, unable to take his eyes off Melody, ‘and we’re acting in Much Ado About Nothing with the RSC this summer. You two must come. Let us know when you want to see it and we’ll comp you tickets.’
‘Ooh!’ Andy grabbed Wayne’s arm excitedly. ‘I love Much Ado!’
‘You what?’ Wayne said nervously.
‘It’s Shakespeare,’ Andy said. ‘You wanted me to make arrangements for you, didn’t you? Book tickets to things? Well, we’re going to see Melody and James in Shakespeare!’
James laughed as he finally tore his eyes away from Melody’s face and took in Wayne’s terrified expression.
‘Don’t worry, it’s a comedy,’ he said.
‘I s’pose I could give it a try...’ Wayne stammered.
‘There you go!’ Andy said happily.
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ Grigor bustled in, making an entrance, bodyguards trailing after him. Sergei dashed towards him with a glass of champagne, which Grigor took and held high in the air. ‘It is New Year, and we must make a toast! Happy New Year, everyone!’
‘Happy New Year!’ everyone chorused.
And then Wayne, looking around him, and nodding fiercely at all the guests to join in, started to sing:
‘For ’e’s a jolly good fellow, for ’e’s a jolly good fellow...’
The only people not singing were Hari and Lori, who were making out in a dark corner: everyone else, guests and staff, bodyguards and waiters, Mr and Mrs Takahashi, Fyodorov, Sergei
– worship shining in his eyes as he stared at Grigor – Patrice and the rest of the footballers all joined in, carolling out the words:
‘Which nobody can deny – which nobody can deny–’
‘Mate!’ Patrice hissed to Wayne under cover of the noise. ‘D’you think your Chantelle’d like to move in with us? Keep Corinne company?’
‘They’ve been wanting to for years!’ Wayne muttered back.
‘Man,’ Patrice sighed in ecstasy at the thought of having his wife’s girlfriend under his roof.
‘For he’s a jolly good fe-ehlow—’ the singers’ voices rose – ‘which nobody – can – DENY!’
Grigor looked around his assembled guests with an expression of utter contentment on his face. He took a deep pull of champagne and beckoned Dmitri and Zhivana to his side, hugging them both, an arm around each of them.
‘Happy New Year!’ he bellowed, raising his glass in a final toast. ‘To my son and his wife!’ He looked at his son.
‘You are happy?’ he asked fondly. ‘After all this fuss you cause? You are happy, Dima?’
‘Oh,happy,’ Dmitri began dismissively, pulling on one of his sideburns. ‘That’s such a bourgeois concept, isn’t it, Dad? Sartre said that—’
But Zhivana, her cheeks actually flushed with a little colour, raised one thin arm and shot out a finger at her new husband, ramming it sharply into his ribcage.
‘Shut up!’ she said firmly. ‘It is a party! No one wants to hear what Sartre said!’
Grigor gawked at this show of firmness, the first ever from Zhivana.
‘Very good!’ he said approvingly, turning to his ex-fiancée. ‘Very good! It’s true, no one wants to hear about Sartre at parties! Or, in fact, at all.’
Zhivana nodded firmly. ‘Kierkegaard is much more profound,’ she said seriously.
Dmitri raised her hand to his lips and kissed it fondly. ‘My dark little soul,’ he said adoringly. ‘My gloomy little girl.’
Grigor balked, looking from his son to his new daughter-in-law. ‘Well, you are a good match,’ he said, shrugging. Determined to find something positive to say, he finally managed it. ‘You are in love. They are in love, Mikhail!’ he yelled, his voice rising. ‘To love!’ He raised his glass.
‘To love!’ echoed his guests.
Dmitri and Zhivana held hands across Grigor’s bulk, while the other two pairs of lovers turned to their partners and repeated the words once more, softly, to each other.
‘To love,’ Wayne and Andy said, hugging.
‘To love,’ Melody and James whispered before they kissed.
Across the room, Lori surreptitiously pulled Hari Takahashi into one of the back bedrooms, his total score that evening about to rise to six; it might not be love, but it was certainly yet another happy ending. Downstairs, Jon and Aniela, having settled Mr Bingham-Smythe into bed, were curled up on Aniela’s narrow single mattress, arms wrapped round each other, identical happy, incredulous, dizzy smiles on both of their faces. Even Sergei, dashing over to refill Grigor’s glass, was beaming with happiness as Grigor tossed back more champagne while genially patting his adoring secretary’s head in thanks. And outside, on the terrace, Grigor’s remaining bodyguards were letting off fireworks that blazed bright in the snowy sky, opening with fizzing hisses into sapphire and emerald and diamond-white chrysanthemums, the sparks falling with the tumbling snow onto the black waters of the Thames below.
e, Bad Angels
Bad Angels Page 48