Gerard Gilbert is a journalist. From 1992 to 2016 he was a critic and feature writer for The Independent and is currently working for its online version and for the ‘I’ newspaper. This is his first novel.
The Concierge
Gerard Gilbert
The Concierge
Pegasus
PEGASUS
© Copyright 2017
Gerard Gilbert
The right of Gerard Gilbert to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All Rights Reserved
No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication
may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,
copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions
of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal
prosecution and civil claims for damage.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is
available from the British Library
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN-978 1 91090 306 3 (Paperback)
Pegasus is an imprint of
Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers Ltd.
www.pegasuspublishers.com
First Published in 2017
Pegasus
Sheraton House Castle Park
Cambridge CB3 0AX England
To Michael and Roberta, my parents, with love and gratitude
Based on an original idea by Q.
PROLOGUE
The Italian coastguard vessel is top-heavy and clumsy-looking but slices through the choppy waters like a knife, unlike the unseaworthy rust bucket that they had all just been rescued from. Four hours out of Tripoli the engines had failed, and they’d spent most of the morning drifting around in slow circles, rolling and pitching, feeling sicker and sicker. The children had finally stopped crying, too busy vomiting on the rusty decks.
Omar had counted about 150 of them, mostly Africans, pitifully under-dressed for the late winter weather, their teeth chattering beneath woolly hats pulled low over their faces, but also a few Arabs like himself. At least he hadn’t paid 500 dinar for the ‘privilege’ – the people smugglers had a good idea of who he was, and even upgraded the boat in his honour – God knows what they had intended them to sail in. A half-deflated rubber dinghy perhaps. This old fishing boat was on its last legs anyway.
Despite the cramped conditions Omar had been given a lot of space by the others; there was something about this self-possessed young man that said leave well alone. The impenetrable dark eyes betrayed not one milligram of weakness, in fact they betrayed nothing at all, and the scar down the left side of his face spoke of the battlefields some of them were escaping. Except it had been done to him with a knife by a Yazidi woman whose daughter he had taken for his own. He had killed them both on the spot.
Eventually the Guardia Costiera’s ship appeared on the horizon. They had known it was coming because a helicopter had circled above them earlier, those Africans still able to, standing and waving their arms, but it seemed to take ages to actually arrive. Finally alongside, men in white overalls, surgical masks and blue disposable gloves had gestured for them to stay where they were, and thrown gold-coloured foil blankets and life jackets into a sea of outstretched arms. Omar didn’t move. He was warmly dressed and in no hurry. Everything was unfolding exactly as he had been told.
The fishing boat’s course was set for Calabria on the Italian mainland, but if picked up they would most likely be taken to Sicily, the contacts in Tripoli said. This is confirmed when Omar overhears one of the Africans ask in English where they are headed. One of the coastguards, impassive behind mirrored dark glasses, replies brusquely, “Sicilia.” If he has any pity for this human flotsam, he doesn’t show it.
At the port of Trapani they are greeted by a phalanx of officials in every hue – nurses in maroon, doctors in white, police in blue and civil immigration services in grey. Omar watches the nurses tie surgical masks over the mouths of the Africans as they march onto the tarmac. Another nurse rolls up the sleeve of each migrant and attaches a wristband. A man shines a torch into their eyes and ears and waves them forward. The processing has begun.
Omar’s name isn’t really Omar, but it is now. He is not really Syrian, but he now will be. He’s a Syrian fleeing the fighting in his homeland, but beyond that he won’t say a word. He has no ID and when they ask for his fingerprints he will clench his fists, and the immigration people will recognise the signal; he doesn’t want to stay in Italy but head northwards to more generous and better ordered countries like Germany and Sweden, and the officials will look the other way. One less migrant for their overburdened economy to cope with.
Except that Omar does indeed want very much to stay in Italy. He is headed for a rendezvous in Rome, and this is very much not the last time that the Italian state will hear of him.
CHAPTER ONE
At about five o’clock in the afternoon, as the street lamps take over from the fast-fading March sunshine, Nicola gets unsteadily to her feet, shakes the cramp out of her legs and leads Topaz to one of the quieter Mayfair back streets off Piccadilly. Topaz trots by her side at the other end of a length of twine that Nicola has fashioned into a lead, not that the dog really needs a lead because she would never leave her mistress’s side. Till death us do part, thinks Nicola. Did she think that or did she say it out loud? She can no longer tell these days.
On the rare occasions she thought about it, Nicola had always assumed she would outlive Topaz, but now she’s not so sure. She’s hungry and she’s cold. The evening rush hour is gathering pace and if they don’t move they are in danger of being trampled underfoot at her usual pitch between Green Park underground station and the Ritz. And anyway people are too preoccupied in getting home, thinking of missed trains or what to cook for dinner, to drop coins into Nicola’s upturned flat-cap.
This side street opposite Fortnum & Mason still has some well-to-do shoppers and window-gazers who might spare her their loose change. She’ll head back on to Piccadilly at seven, maybe stopping to exchange a few words with H, whose pitch is under the arcade of the Ritz itself, and whose ostentatious positioning means he wages a continuous war with the police and the hotel doormen. He is hilarious, but he’s always getting himself arrested or beaten up, occasionally at the same time.
Topaz is a sheepdog crossed with something else, her long-suffering demeanour earning regular pats on the head, which she graciously acknowledges with her almost comically mournful eyes. The animal lovers then feel obliged to say something to Nicola and perhaps drop a few coins into the hat. It’s the do-gooders, the Christians and the women aghast to find one of their sex living on the street, who are the time-wasters, wanting to know her life story, how she became reduced to begging, and with suggestions as to how she might get herself back on her feet. There is often a church involved, or a feminist sanctuary where, they say crouching beside her, she would be looked after – and which sounded as boring as a month of Sundays back home with her parents. No spare change from this lot, of course.
Nicola is ruminating like this when she spots two men she knows by sight and likes to call ‘Gervaise’ and ‘Cecil’ on account of the way they dress in expensive suits with open shirt collars. Sauntering with their hands in their pockets, they remind her of a black and white photograph that their history teacher had shown the class at school in Bolton.
It was taken in the 1930s; two haughty Eton schoolboys in top hats standing by their trunks, hands in their pockets, surrounded by mocking street urchins. “Who do you think had the last laugh?” asked the teacher, who seriously hated Tories, toffs and southerners.
Except Nicola’s toffs aren’t sauntering today, but striding away from Piccadilly, into the bowels of Mayfair, heads down and talking intently. ‘Cecil’ is sleek and tanned with full thick hair swept back; he has never looked at her. She knows the type; she might as well be invisible.
‘Gervaise’ is the slightly taller, gaunter man, with receding temples and nervous darting eyes, which did seem to take in Nicola, although both men would be surprised to learn that this bedraggled woman in her late thirties – actually the same age as them – notices anything at all, such was her bent-over posture and the practised forlorn stare aimed about a foot in front of her begging cap. Experience had taught Nicola that this passive approach to begging was ultimately more effective than the challenging variety. H, who was always making sarcastic remarks to non-payers, never made much money, despite his high-profile pitch.
One day, out of the blue, this man, the one she called ‘Gervaise’ had given her a folded fifty-pound note. “Here you go,” he’d said, his voice unexpectedly gentle.
“God bless,” Nicola had said, although she didn’t think God had anything to do with it. Perhaps he was the devil. That had been a while ago now, and when he was alone, without ‘Cecil’.
“God bless.” She also used that on the guilty looking ones who maybe went to church on Sunday and were obviously struggling as to whether they should give to this woman. She’ll only spend it on cider and cigarettes, they thought, but then again Jesus commanded us not to pass on the other side.
“God bless.” It sent them scuttling on their way, like a sharp slap on the backs of their legs.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Cecil’ is in fact Maximilian Draycott – Max for short – and ‘Gervaise’ is Harry Kimber. And it isn’t true that Max never notices Nicola. The men have talked about her, speculated on how she had ended up on the streets. Care home, followed by heroin and a spot of light prostitution, was Max’s hypothesis. Harry had argued for a few stints in psychiatric wards. Once she cropped up in one of their games of ‘would you shag her?’ The answer was ‘no’, not even after a good bath.
Actually Nicola comes from a stable home – a tidy 1930s council house with a large well-tended garden that backed on to fields, and both parents had decent jobs; she was even considered to speak quite ‘posh’ in Bolton, mainly because she never used swear words. But her mother and father had been older parents and she was an only child. They were ‘respectable’ but they only ever did things together – ‘a world unto their own’, as her mother had once declared so proudly. They didn’t have friends. There were cousins supposedly but distant, and nobody ever came over. Nicola couldn’t wait to leave home.
Squats and bar work had been her lot for twenty years, before the bar work dried up because the drink was playing havoc with her time keeping and her looks. She hasn’t touched a drop in three years now, not since being given Topaz, a rescue dog from one of the squats near the Elephant and Castle that she noticed recently was being redeveloped into luxury flats ‘for exciting inner-city living’. Nicola knows all about exciting inner-city living.
She notices Max and Harry turn into the lobby of a big hotel where she had tried begging once. A burly East European with thick arms and a bull neck had moved her on in no uncertain terms and she had given it a wide berth ever since. “Russians,” H had said with a knowing look. “Heavy duty; stick to nice old cockneys – they have a bit of humanity.”
Actually H was wrong; the security guard is Lithuanian, one of two identical twins who discreetly works the lobby and keeps an eye out for trouble. Adomas, the one who told Nicola to move on ‘because her dog seems such a nice dog and it would be a pity for anything to happen to it’, now clocks Max and Harry as they enter the hotel for the third consecutive night, and walk over to the same sofa as on previous occasions.
The first evening they had waited an hour and a half – one leg crossed elegantly over the opposite knee, identical posture, and not a trace of impatience for whomever they were waiting. Occasionally one would flick his suit cuff and glance at his watch, but that was all. Adomas was impressed. The hotel’s rich customers were not patient; they didn’t need to be, of course. If Adomas were rich – when he gets rich, he remembers to tell himself – he too will be impatient. There would be so much time – so many evenings like this one – to make up for.
Last night the men had returned and Adomas had made enquiries at the reception desk. They were waiting for the Arab party that had booked out the entire second floor for one week. They are in luck today, then, he thinks, watching one of them turn to look at the other.
Max is inspecting Harry’s blue, off-the-peg suit that he personally helped him select. He has had to teach Harry how to dress, escorting him round Crombie on Conduit Street, down Savile Row, through Burlington Arcade and along Jermyn Street to Turnbull & Asser – Henry Higgins to Harry’s Eliza Doolittle.
Both men wear their shirts open at the neck – the uniform of the hedge fund managers. The Arabs and the hedgies are the same in this respect: smart casual, as they say on the sort of invitation that Harry throws in the bin without a second glance.
The younger Saudis like the preppie look: chinos and Gucci loafers and cashmere sweaters draped over their shoulders, as if they were about to re-join their yachts after a meal ashore, instead of preparing to step out into the chilly London night.
Max’s eyes run down Harry’s suit trousers to the cashmere socks and the shoes, which aren’t as polished as he’d like them to be. Harry himself has been staring across the lobby and into the bar, where a good-looking couple are sitting on stools as the barman mixes them a cocktail. They’re both smiling at the man as he performs with the shaker and the scene looks like a corny advert.
“I could do with one of those,” he says, pointing with his head towards the bar. Max follows his gaze.
“The woman or the drink? How’s it going on that score, by the way? Still picking up girls on dating apps?”
“Not so much”, says Harry, suppressing a yawn. “And actually I was referring to the cocktail.”
Max himself is trying to cut down on alcohol – a thought that has him flicking his cuff to read his activity tracker. He has just over 2,000 units of activity left to meet his daily target of ten thousand. He slept well last night, according to the device, which he syncs daily to its iPhone app, with just one vertiginous spike on the graph highlighting the time he padded off to the loo at about three in the morning. Is he too young to get his prostate checked?
On his other wrist Max wears a rose-gold Rolex Cellini, whose face he now twists towards his incipient jowls – he’s putting on weight, Rachel tells him on an almost nightly basis. Harry in turn flicks his cuff to reveal his own, much cheaper, Rolex – a silver Submariner that Max had helped him purchase, more than £5,000 worth of stainless steel to duplicate the watch on his iPhone. Harry, who hadn’t owned a watch since his schooldays, who had once asked strangers the time with the same ease that he bummed cigarettes off them, is still faintly in awe of the timepiece.
“Another no-show,” he says under his breath. Max doesn’t reply, looking over instead to where two pumped-up hotel security men are staring into the middle distance – not looking but all seeing. He has spoken to them, pumping them to find out if the Arabs are actually inhabiting the entire floor booked in their names two weeks ago. They merely stared at him through unreadable blue eyes, paler than death, implacably silent, except to say that no, they weren’t Russian but Lithuanian.
As usual, the receptionists would neither confirm nor deny the arrival of the Saudis. This is the third evening on the trot that Max and Harry have made their way to this lobby, the previous two times to no avail. No excuses offered or sought; the Arabs had simply
changed their collective mind. Gone to Cairo or New York or – God help them, thinks Max – Paris.
Down at heel, shabby, stuck in-the-1980s Paris – Max’s favourite lament every time he takes the Eurostar from the Gare du Nord. Like most people in their industry, Max has a poor opinion of the French. Their time-serving, unimaginative bureaucrats don’t understand hedge funds, he says, and blame what they see as Anglo-Saxon opportunists for the mess that the French politicians have themselves made of their economy. They’d like to destroy the industry completely and for this reason Max hates them – a hatred fuelled by fear, the fear that they might one day get their self-serving way. Would Brexit be the trigger for this worst-case scenario? Max was quietly confident that it wouldn’t make any difference to the hedge fund industry in general. Their investors had taken a big hit from the referendum vote – Max and Harry had taken a punt on remain.
But Max loves London – it looks so smart; so rich, so clean, not like the old days. Okay, so you never heard English being spoken any more, not in Mayfair at least, but that only confirmed him in his view that he was now where he needed to be – among the global super-rich, the one-per-centers. A real world city.
Harry’s not so sure he likes London anymore; it feels more crowded and at the same time the centre feels like a playground for tourists and a racetrack for playboys in Ferraris. Brexit had helped to slam the brakes on Central London property, but all the same it had been nearly a decade of ever increasing house prices – until recently he’d been making a hundred grand a year doing nothing, by simply being the owner of a terraced house in Hammersmith.
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