There are no allegations of offending since 1987 and police stress there is no evidence to suggest that any children have been recently or are currently at risk.
Harry flips over to Facebook and looks up Mary. She doesn’t post much stuff but she once told him she’s ‘a lurker’ – always watching but never writing stuff. Maybe the world can be divided into posters and lurkers. Harry never touches social media – on Max’s strictest instructions. “You can stop that at once,” he’d told him when Harry said he’d opened a Twitter account. He still had his Facebook account though.
Mary’s last message is a photograph of her with a girl friend taken in Budapest last summer. They’re both posing with sunglasses in a larky way. ‘Can’t decide whether I prefer Buda or Pest’ it says. Someone called Chris has written ‘Is Pest full of pests?’ and she has twelve ‘likes’ for the posting. Harry rests his cursor on the ‘like’ button but doesn’t recognise any of the names that pop up. Suddenly he notices someone is messaging him directly. It’s Mary.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Max traverses the foot of the black run and slides to a halt outside the bar-restaurant at the bottom. Simon, a far stronger skier, has already arrived and Max’s recognises his skis and sticks poking up out of a mound of snow by the door. The slopes aren’t busy this weekday in school term-time.
Releasing his own skis, he stomps inside the welcome fug and notices Simon already seated at a table with two small glasses of lager in front of him. “Got you a beer,” he says without looking up from his phone.
“Thanks, I think I’ll get a coffee too,” says Max. “Fancy one?”
Simon grunts what Max takes to be a ‘no’ and continues to sullenly gaze at the numbers passing on his mobile. Max looks around for a waitress, and wonders once again about Simon’s addiction to his screens. And then he notices that Simon is not alone – at least half the skiers in the restaurant are either thumbing text messages or intently reading one.
It’s only eleven but they have been at it since eight, the bracing Alpine air shaking off a lingering sambucca hangover. They’d been driven up to Simon’s chalet in Verbier yesterday evening, stopping off in the town itself for supper, before heading the last quarter mile up to the chalet, a traditional wooden affair up on the pistes, with access directly on to the slopes. Yours for fourteen million Swiss francs. Simon could have told him to the exact second what fourteen million Swiss francs would buy you in sterling, or euros or dollars or any other currency you fancy.
Max has a text from someone called Mahmoud Hakim Al-Wadhi to say that he has been authorised by the Saudi to inspect the diamond, and that he will be in Geneva tomorrow. Max phones Dieter to make sure the diamond can be at the safety deposit box by the end of today – the inspection will take place at the bank in Geneva where Max has his personal trading account. The Arabs always pay into that account.
“How’s the big pink coming along?” he asks.
“We’re nearly there,” says Dieter. “No problems anticipated.”
“Is that your gay mate?” says Simon still looking at his mobile. “You know, Kimber.”
“Harry, you mean,” says Max, annoyed as always when Simon implied the Harry was gay. “No, it’s my diamond-cutter in Geneva. Harry is holding the fort.”
“Holding his dick, more like. Dad was a war hero or something?”
“Well, he was killed in the Falklands,” says Max, glad to change the subject from Harry’s alleged sexuality. Why did Simon think Harry was gay?
“Bit of a waste of space,” continues Simon, still staring at his phone. The waitress places a café crème in front of Max, who picks up his beer and takes a big gulp. “Why do you hold on to him? Bum buddy?”
“Don’t be objectionable, Simon, we were at school together, as it happens,” says Max, before finishing off the rest of the beer in one. “He’s good at what he does.”
“And what’s that?”
“Lots of things.”
“You know what I think?” says Simon, finally looking at Max as he speaks. “I think you just don’t like being on your own. And this Kimber, he’s like having a dog with you all the time. Don’t knock it; I had a lovely spaniel once, went everywhere with me – even to the pub. Bloody nuisance in the end though. Always driving it to kennels. Got run over on a shoot down in Sussex. Someone’s Range Rover went over him. Bloody awful, had to give him both barrels, but can’t say I was that sorry.”
“Are you suggesting I shoot Harry?,” says Max, wondering whether he ought to have another beer if they still had a few black runs to put in before lunch. “You could be right about me needing company though.”
“Hor… hor… hor…” Simon, his lips pursed, has a look of glee on his red, sunburnt face. “Just made an absolute killing.” He puts his phone down and looks around him, as if registering his surroundings for the first time.
“And I’m selling a pretty diamond,” says Max. “Let’s celebrate. Mine’s a coffee with whipped cream.”
* * *
Harry has arranged to meet Mary in a pub near Leicester Square, after which they are going to go for a meal in Chinatown. He decides to walk as it’s a dry, if chilly, evening. From the office in Mayfair he slips through Dover Yard, past the shop where Max encouraged him to spend five thousand on his watch, and advised him that he carefully keep its original box and UK-stamped perforated certificate for future part exchange, which Harry has since kept locked in his small bedroom safe. He glances at the Rolex now. Just before seven: no need to hurry.
He exchanges nods with the doorman outside The Arts Club in Dover Street, before swinging round on to New Bond Street with its flags of a hundred different luxury brands. He passes Asprey, Bulgari, Boucheron, Tiffany, Cartier and Boodles, stopping behind an Italian couple volubly admiring a white diamond necklace set in platinum. Their clients don’t shop here. The Arabs prefer Max’s discreet concierge service, believing – rightly – that they are getting a better bargain and a better product.
He strides up Cork Street, glimpsing at the latest exhibitions as he goes. The paintings speak of expensive good taste rather than creative innovation. A tall, gaunt young man in a long, fur-trimmed coat is gazing in at one of the windows – his hairline severely shaved while his beard makes him look like a Tsarist monk as designed by Jean-Paul Gautier; in Mayfair even the freaks look a million dollars.
Actually quite a few of the rich people around here look freakish, Harry often thinks. It’s as if too much money – like religious people say it does – has actually warped their souls. Then, he thinks, poverty can have the same effect, as he finds himself on Burlington Street. Burlington Street, Burlington Arcade, Burlington Bertie. For some reason Harry thinks of Max when he thinks of Burlington Bertie – unfairly, he acknowledges, because Max isn’t really like that at all. Max is anything but a foppish idler.
And then he reaches Regent Street, the great river of humanity – shopping bags in hand, eyes determinedly in front of them – that divides Mayfair and Soho; two completely different worlds separated by wealth and this unceasing torrent of shoppers and tourists. Stepping into Beak Street, and therefore into Soho, is for Harry also like stepping back into his past. His early twenties in viewing theatres – De Lane Lea, the Soho Screening Rooms, MPC on Wardour Street – catching previews before interviewing German starlets or visiting American directors – and selling his features to all-comers. Fifty pence a word, if he was lucky.
He met Mary at The Guardian – at the paper’s old office in Farringdon. They’d both been called in to do holiday cover on the arts desk, subbing copy by other freelancers or stuff knocked out by big-name critics who got shirty if you changed a comma.
After a while Harry realised that Mary fancied him, although their regular meetings after they had finished the stint at The Guardian and gone their separate ways didn’t seem like dates. Not to Harry anyway: perhaps Mary hoped for more. Perhaps she thought they were creeping towards a romance.
“Stop leading her
on,” had been Max’s blunt advice when he once spoke about Mary.
He had had other relationships – six months here, a year there – but nothing that stuck. As he got wealthier, he started to attract another type of woman, ones that saw him as a prospect; a nice big home in Fulham or Wandsworth, regular holidays, private school for the children and, of course, the need never again to have to work. Endless lunching and shopping. These relationships had a predictable shelf life of about four to six months, enough for the woman to realise that Harry was not going to be a simple meal ticket, and for Harry to sense a lack of proper compatibility.
In the meantime he met up with Mary less and less; the last time must have been over two years ago now. She had moved into news journalism early on, he recalls. There was a long stint as a London stringer for Agence France-Presse, and she might have been at The Independent for a while. Yes, that’s right. They had met for a drink at Canary Wharf when both The Independent and Harry’s bank had been in Docklands. She had been more amused than impressed by Harry’s newfound affluence.
He heads down Lexington Street, jinks along Brewer Street and on to Old Compton Street, with its Italian delis, French patisseries, Portuguese cafes and sushi bars, gay shops and bars. Men seated outside on this chilly early spring evening eye him appraisingly, and he realises how odd he must seem here in his beautifully cut suit, dodging in between men in skinny jeans and fat headphones.
An overweight man pouring out of a bad suit, shirt half untucked and waving a cigarette around is shouting into his phone outside the entrance to the Groucho Club. What he is really shouting is: ‘Look at me… I belong to the Groucho Club’. He too gives Harry an appraising look, but this one is not carnal. Perhaps, he thinks Harry is famous. Or a commissioning editor.
But Harry pulls a right, away from Groucho’s and down Dean Street and past a louche hangout from an earlier age of the Soho myth, The French House, across Shaftesbury Avenue and into Chinatown, the air thick with the smell of five-spice and with red-orange glazed ducks hanging in every window.
The pub is on the corner, and Mary is already sitting at a small table, reading a copy of the Evening Standard. She smiles at Harry as he navigates through the throng of drinkers, and he feels a warmth, he realises, like he hasn’t felt in a long time. He squeezes his way to the bar and returns to their table with a glass of sauvignon blanc and a pint of lager.
“You look more expensive every time I see you,” says Mary cheerfully.
“As soon as I leave Mayfair I feel like some sort of freak.”
“Freaks of Mayfair,” says Mary, fingering the lapel of his suit jacket. Mary herself is wearing a denim jacket and a scarf wrapped around her neck. “It’s a book. The Freaks of Mayfair by E. F. Benson.”
“Never read it,” says Harry. “But I will now.”
“So what’s new?”
“Apart from selling a house to a rich Arab?”
“Ooh… listen to you,” says Mary, gently mocking, and taking a sip of her wine. “How many rich Arabs are there?”
“I don’t think anyone knows… thousands.”
“What a kleptocracy… their royal family, I mean,” says Mary. “How they let that family just endlessly line their pockets with the oil money is beyond me. The Saudis seriously need to kick out their royal family for a starter – and I think they will now that America has its own oil and doesn’t need those crooks.”
“And what would they replace them with? An ayatollah who does worse things to women than not allowing them to drive? Anyway, you know what… what I’ve come to realise in the last few years? I don’t care… I really don’t care. I wish I could, but I’ve got to be honest.”
“Nonsense.”
“It’s true… I’m just like everybody else… I live in my own little bubble.”
“You’ve changed then,” says Mary.
“Or maybe I was always like this deep down. Or maybe not deep down because I think I’m probably quite shallow…”
“That’s not true,” says Mary, with an indulgent chuckle.
“No, I am… shallow and rather selfish. Very selfish. None of it really matters.”
“Maybe not to you…”
“Exactly. None of it matters to me. I just want to be rich, and you know why?”
Mary doesn’t answer, just looks at him steadily, a little pityingly.
“Because money is power and I don’t want anybody to ever have power over me ever again.”
“Blimey. Where did that come from?”
“Can’t you see?” Harry fears he might be sounding too earnest. His relationship with Mary wasn’t like that. Honest, yes, but not earnest.
“Max has power over you,” she says.
“That’s different.” Harry realises he’s almost been shouting; a couple propped up by the bar are looking at him.
“Is it?” says Mary. “Sorry, but it seems to me that you’re like his butler or something.”
“His concierge,” says Harry with a grin. “Max is always talking about how we are concierges to the super-rich. Well, I guess I am concierge to Max. And I don’t care because Max is making me rich – no one ever did anything like that for me before. They wanted to change my politics, maybe, or make me a better person. But Max, he’s making me stinking rich and that, Mary, is true empowerment. And anyway…”
“Anyway what?”
“Max thinks he has me at his beck and call, but not really.”
She shakes her head and says, “Maybe you’re right, but I’m sad to see you like this all the same. I won’t pretend.”
“Why though?”
“I don’t know, but mainly because you don’t look happy.”
“Who is happy?”
“Well, I think I am,” says Mary, and Harry realises that he’s been talking about himself for too long. “How’s journalism?” he asks, deliberately modulating his voice which, he realises, had become overexcited.
“Okay. Badly paid.”
“It was ever thus.”
“No, it wasn’t,” says Mary, suddenly annoyed. “And just to think I’m marrying another bloody journalist. We’ll be skint forever and a day.”
“Marrying?” says Harry, sobering up quickly and barely able to get the word out of his mouth. He feels like the bottom has just fallen out of their evening together.
“Yes, to Ben. Christ, when did we last meet? Didn’t I tell you about him?” She is looking at Harry curiously.
“No,” says Harry. Words feel dusty and awkwardly shaped, but he feels he must say something. “How long…?”
“Oh, about two years or so. He was on the foreign desk with me. We’re thinking of going abroad somewhere. Either that or buy a house in some shit-hole. Can’t afford anywhere decent in London anymore.”
“I see,” says Harry. Mary is looking at him in silence, right into his eyes.
“Harry,” she asks at length. “Did you invite me here on some sort of date? I thought we were, you know, friends.”
“No… I thought… we…” This is useless, he thinks. “I don’t know. I guess I just don’t know who I am anymore.” How pathetic that sounded. He takes a swig of lager.
She almost laughs at this, but looks at him instead with a good-humoured frown. Now she rubs his upper arm. “I didn’t think you fancied me.” And then: “We’ve known each other so long, it… it seems weird talking like this.”
But not unpleasant, he thinks. “I know… I’m sorry… I just… don’t let’s spoil anything. When is the wedding?”
“In August. Will you come? Registry office, I’m afraid.”
He sinks the rest of his pint in a hurry. “Don’t tell Ben about this, please.”
“No, of course not. No…”
Mary buys a round and they try and speak of normal things, but it seems false and Harry is glad when she announces that she has to go. They kiss cheeks on the street, and he’s about to turn away when she pulls him and lands a soft kiss on his lips.
“Harry… I would hav
e once. In fact I fancied you rotten when we first met. Don’t be a stranger.”
Now he’s walking blindly down Shaftesbury Avenue, past all the theatres with their lights and enlarged newspaper notices claiming they are masterpieces… five stars… brilliantly staged and acted.
“Shit… how stupid can you get?” he asks himself, out loud. Eventually he finds himself on Piccadilly, and the crowds are thinning. The homeless girl and the dog are sitting there – but he doesn’t notice, walking blindly by.
* * *
Mary also heads for Green Park underground, to take her on the Victoria Line to Brixton, and then a bus up Brixton Hill to Streatham. She feels both angry and a bit sad – fuming at Harry for making a pass at her like that. Was he so lonely and fucked up? What had happened to all those pretty gold diggers he used to date when Mary quietly hoped that she might be the one? All those girls at Corney & Barrow who could size up the cut of his suit at twenty paces? So long ago now. So long ago. Desire had eroded and a friendship had grown up in its place – and now he suddenly wants to sleep with her. Too fucking late, mate.
Deeper than her anger is a sadness, a recognition that she doesn’t want to see him again. It’s the money thing. Once they would have talked about films they’d seen, or TV shows or books or politics even – now it was the diamonds he was flogging to Arabs, and the houses in Mayfair he was shifting as if life was a game of Monopoly.
And his hedge fund management business, which Mary doesn’t really start to understand. Ask her anything to do with international affairs, from the precise makeup of the warring factions within Syria or the details of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, and Mary was your woman. European equities? No idea.
The Brixton train pulls in and Mary is relieved to see there are plenty of seats – she doesn’t have to squeeze in next to some fat bastard spreading his legs out to show how entitled he is. She stares up at an advert for an online dating service, an unshaven, good-looking young man with long hair grinning at a grinning blonde. So young and so in love.
The Concierge Page 6