‘Hiya, Tammy, it’s me from Saturday night.’
‘Oh, hiya, what took you so long to call?’
‘I’ve been busy, sweetheart. You sound sleepy, you just woke up?’
‘Not long ago. I was out with Sid last night.’
‘Your boyfriend, you mean?’
‘He ain’t me boyfriend. We just hang out. When am I goin to see you?’
‘Whenever you like. What are you doin today?’
‘Nuffin. I got a day off as it goes. I was just lying here wonderin what to do when you rang.’
‘What, you’re lyin there naked?’
‘I’ve got a T-shirt on but that’s all.’
I can feel a pullin in my strides.
‘Listen,’ she says, ‘listen to this.’
I can hear a rustling sound.
‘What’s that?’
I can hear her teasing laugh.
‘Listen again,’ she says.
I can hear the same rustling, scratching sound.
‘What the fuck is that?’ I say.
‘I was rubbing the phone against my fanny. Did ya like it?’ she laughs.
Leave it out. That’s how to get and hold a guy’s attention. I’m walking up the road with a tugging hard-on growing in my pants.
‘So you’re lying there, Tammy, with just a T-shirt on rubbin the phone on your fanny?’
‘No.’
‘No you ain’t?’
‘No. I’ve taken the T-shirt off now.’
I hear the rustling sound again and her laughing. ‘Oh my, oh my, it’s fresh this mornin. Look at my nipples.’
I wish I fuckin could. I bet they’re erect as soldiers. I’m going fuckin mad here.
‘I wish I had a horny young man here with me now, who’d really appreciate a nice bitta rumpy-pumpy.’
I can feel my knees buckling so I’m sitting on a wall. I can hear her groaning and moaning down the phone.
‘Tammy, are you, like, touchin yourself.’
‘What’s a young girl to do?’
‘Listen, Tammy, why don’t you come over right now, get in a cab, don’t bother gettin dressed, sling a coat on or something and come straight away.’
‘I like that idea, but is it a long way? A girl could get cold,’ she says.
‘I’ll tell ya what, I’ll meet ya half way. I’ll meet ya in the Churchill Hotel on Portman Square.’
‘A hotel?’
‘Yeah. It’ll be a giggle. I could book in as Mister Smith. I got a nice bitta how’s-your-father. Come over and meet me there.’
‘Sounds good to me, lover-boy.’
‘We could hole-up there for a day or so. It’s easier, get a bitta room service.’
‘I need a bitta bedroom service right now.’
She knows how to tease.
‘Think about it, Tammy, we could be under the duvet, in the feather, in about an hour.’
‘I’m definitely up for it. You know, a girl can tell a geezer who knows what buttons to press, knows what a woman likes, and you look like one of those geezers.’
‘That’s me, Tammy. No complaints, but I’ve never had a lesson in me life.’
‘I’d like to, you know, relieve myself, go solo, just talkin to you now I’m gettin wet . . .’ She’s groaning but laughing at the same time.
‘Tammy, shall I come over to you?’
‘No, lover-boy, but I’m gonna save myself till I see ya.’
‘I’m gonna have to do the same cos I got a huge fuckin hard-on, Tammy.’
She’s laughing. ‘Save it for me, tie a big ribbon on it, you hear? You won’t be disappointed, I promise.’
‘I’m gonna do that.’
‘Listen, Mister Smith.’ Her mood’s changed, her voice is a bit more serious. ‘Yer know, I wouldn’t want you to think I go jumpin into bed with any bloke that rings me up in the mornin. I kinda think you’re nice. It could be good.’
She sounds tender and sincere.
‘I think you’re nice too, Tammy, very nice. I’ll see you in the room at the Churchill Hotel in about an hour.’
‘Give me an hour and ‘alf cos I’ll have to get a cab.’
‘Any problems ring me on the mobile, okay? Missing you already,’ I say.
‘See you there, Mister Smith. Churchill Hotel, Portman Square. I’ll be as quick as I can cos I’m feeling really naughty. Listen, here’s something to be going on with.’
The rustling sound again. Then she’s blowing kisses and laughing down the phone, then she’s gone for the time being. I’m walking back home with a throbbing hard-on. She’s really fuckin horny, Tammy, but really fuckin bright as well, you can tell after a minute. ‘This could be good,’ she said and I agree. Sometimes you get a woman who’s horny but dozy or stuck-up but she’s horny and wide awake at the same time. I could be out of this game earlier than expected if Cody gets me a result. I’d be looking to go on a nice long holiday and maybe Tammy would wanna tag along. Maybe I’m jumping the gun here but it could be a bit special.
I walk back to my gaff. I wonder if that’s my shooter lying on the bed, my property, looking all criminal-lifestyle accessory on the bed linen. I slip it under the mattress. I put the coke and some poppers in my suit inside pocket, check I’ve got plenty of cash, go downstairs and get a cab. When I get to the hotel I get a double room on the third floor as Mister Smith and leave strict instructions that when someone arrives for me they’re to buzz up straight away. I pay in advance for two nights and tip the porter a cockle, in spite of the fact that I don’t have any luggage. As soon as he’s gone I chop out another couple of lines of charlie cos I can feel myself flagging. The flake needs to be ground cos it’s nearly crystal. I snort a line and immediately half my face goes numb. The room’s perfect for this midday rendezvous. The bed’s huge and so is the bathroom, with a massive bath and a shower cubicle. Me and Tammy can maybe have a little tub later. I’m itchy and sweating all the alcohol out of my system but feeling nicely charged. I need another shower to freshen up so I get undressed and jump in, leaving my clothes hung up in the wardrobe.
The pressure on the shower’s strong and as the water’s hitting me I’m remembering Tammy, how she looked so hot on Saturday night in her skimpy little outfit, how I wanted to have her stripped and willing in front of me, how, in a little while, she could be jumping in the shower with me. I’m wondering what she’ll be wearing, how long after shutting the door it’ll be before we’re naked and rolling on that big old bed out there, if she’ll really just throw a coat on, jump in a cab, come through the door and just let it slowly drop to the floor, flick off her shoes and away we go. My old bill’s up and pointing at me again now. It’s almost too tender or sensitive to touch. Maybe sexy Tam will have sexy underwear, black or red or deep, deep purple, and I’ll have to go oh so gentle, patience, lover-boy, peel it off, slowly with care, with me teeth, to get to the prize.
Fuck the fuckin lot of them. This’ll be our Cosa Nostra, me and you, Tammy, and fuck the world. Me and you in our own little world, our little room, for as long as we want, as long as it takes for me to calm down and relax, to get a bitta perspective back. I feel so horny I feel like I’ve had an ecstasy. This is what you dream about when you’re young and wondering what your dick’s for, waiting for a very horny, very game, very beautiful woman in a luxurious, three-hundred-quid-a-night hotel room, a loada coke if you want it and the spending power to whistle up anything – champagne, lobster – anything, in fact, that your imagination can think of. I was dreaming the dream on Saturday night and here we are on Thursday midday, getting acquainted. Sometimes the anticipation is better than the real thing but I somehow don’t think this is gonna be one of those occasions. I don’t think my old bill’s capable of getting any bigger or any more upright. The blood’s pumping, I’m pumping, I feel one hundred per cent alive. I can hear her voice in my ear, ‘Save it for me’, and that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna let her walk through the door and I’ll be naked and proud, side-on so the midday li
ght through the window silhouettes this magnificent hard-on perfectly. Tammy should be here any minute by my calculations.
I turn off the water, step out of the cubicle, reach for the towel. I’ve got water in my eyes. As I wipe it away I realise, for a split second before it gets hectic, I ain’t in the bathroom alone. I jump backwards, shocked. I wanna shout but no sound’ll come out. Two big geezers in identical blue poly-cotton boilersuits, baseball caps and chunky black-rimmed glasses are there as well. One goes low, grabs my hands behind my back and pulls them together with a heavy plastic cable-tie, the other goes high, for my head. He grabs my jaw and sticks heavy tape over my mouth then snatches a black bin-liner outta his belt, wraps it swiftly round my head and tapes it around my neck. These twins, this very efficient double-act, have either rehearsed this very well or they’ve done it a few times before. My heart’s going into overdrive, like I’ve had a big hit of amyl-nitrate. The two guys pick me up and place me on the floor of the bathroom, gently, like they were shifting a precious antique grandfather clock. Someone pinches my nose through the plastic and then tears a hole so I can breathe. He does the same with my ear. Maybe 1 shouldn’t have told those German lads to fuck off.
‘Listen, troop. Can you hear me? Nod your head twice if you can hear me.’
The geezer pronounces every syllable precisely in a slight Geordie accent. I nod twice.
‘Do not resist and you will not be harmed.’
It’s happened too quick to put up a fight but in a strange way I feel reassured by their professional attitude, his English accent, like I’m somehow safe. I’m alert enough to know that if this was the Germans or even the Yahoos, I’d be getting a serious kicking now. My head would be getting bounced off the bathroom walls, floors and maybe even the ceiling. I’m also wide awake enough to know that if these two operators were gonna top me, I’d be deceased, despatched, taken out, slotted, gonski. They could be taking me somewhere to kill me but somehow I doubt it. I can hear the phone in the room next door start to ring. That’s gonna be Tammy downstairs. She’s pulled out all the stops and got here early.
‘Someone wants a word with you across town, troop. Be calm and no harm will come to you.’
They pick me up and put me down a couple of feet away on something softer but itchier than the cool bathroom floor. I can feel it against my body and I guess it’s a carpet of some kind. The phone stops ringing. Suddenly I start getting rolled over and over.
‘Watch yourself on that,’ says ‘Troop’, laughing. ‘That’ll have someone’s eye out.’
Troop’s mate laughs too. I wonder what they’re talking about. The phone in the room starts to ring again, like they’ve told Tammy on reception the room ain’t answering and she’s asked them to try again. I’m being stuffed into a long box. I can feel the sides and bottom. I hear a top being put on. The sounds of them going about their work are muted. I’m moved upright but I’m being manoeuvred backwards in small steps. Now I’m tipped backwards and being wheeled along. If I could talk I’d ask for a bitta Christian charity and beg my kidnappers to stop and explain to Tammy that I was being taken against my will, it wasn’t just slackness on my behalf. I wouldn’t believe it if someone used the old abduction excuse with me. ‘Listen, Tammy, I was kidnapped!!’ ‘By fuckin aliens? Yeah, fuckin right, mate.’
Making New Friends All the Time
I once had a punter who used to take ounces at a time and get truly wasted. One afternoon he got so outta it he plugged up the gear and couldn’t find it again. What did this genius do? Who did he ask for help in his emergency? He rang the old bill to come and help him look. He got eighteen months. Why’s this occurred to me now? Maybe it’s about having someone come and rescue me. I ain’t eaten since six last night, so my body’s weak and I can hear my own stomach rumbling and churning. My mouth’s dry like I’ve been chewing sand. I’ve crash-landed off the bitta whistle I had earlier, hit the side of a mountain. I’m the ventriloquist’s dummy. It’s dark in the box but maybe if they take me outta the box, I won’t like it, think it’s nice and cosy in my dark box.
I’ve been in here an hour when suddenly I hear the top being taken off the box. I feel someone cutting the tape around my neck, removing the black plastic, the cool of the air on my face again. Through my squinting eyes there’s Mister Troop with the tip of his finger placed on the middle of his slightly smiling lips, the boiler suit, cap and heavy-rimmed glasses gone. He’s in a shirt and tie and black-leather jacket. ‘Roll to your left, troop,’ he says.
I do as he says. He cuts the plastic cable-tie.
‘Get out of there and put those on, troop.’ He points at a plastic bag from a sportswear shop, same one as Kinky used to shop at. We’re in a portakabin. I can hear building work, drilling and generators. The floor is covered with a very fine layer of dust. I get out the wooden packing case and walk across, naked, to see what nice Mister Troop’s brought me. Two geezers are standing in the doorway talking into their lapels so they’re either deluded nutcases or bodyguards. I think they may have spent time in the military. And not the TA, either. The bag contains a black and gold Adidas tracksuit and Nike black-on-black old-school trainers in my size.
‘Do you require anything for your immediate physical comfort, troop?’ asks Troop.
It must be murder being this geezer’s wife. Shall we have some sexual intercourse, Misses Troop? What do you think, dear?
‘I could use a piss and some water.’
‘Through there, and I’ll get you some water.’ He points at a door in the corner. I go in and use the chemical toilet. When I come out he’s there to greet me with a two-litre bottle of water like he’s pulled it outta a hat like a bunny rabbit.
‘Can I ask a question?’ I say, brave cos I’m alive.
‘Listen, troop, curiosity killed the cat. Boredom killed the tarantula but curiosity killed the cat.’
This is obviously bodyguards’ humour cos they all laugh. One guy’s distracted by a message on his ear-piece. ‘That’s a roger roger, over and out,’ he says into his lapel. ‘The boss is ready down below,’ he says to Troop.
He gives me a yellow hard-hat. Troop’s on point. We walk out the room fast, along scaffolding boards, through corridors of old brickwork. We pass guys who look like civil engineers. Troop leads us, half trotting, till we come to a hoist-lift. Troop tells the geezer working it to go to the bottom. It creaks and squeaks. I’m wondering if it’s safe to have these big guys and me on board but they ain’t worried. At the bottom of the shaft the hoist inches to a stop and the door goes up and out we get and Troop again leads us but now we’re moving across duckboards laid over broken clay. Suddenly he leads us out into a huge excavation, about the size of a football pitch, open to the sky but floodlit as well. We’re about seven floors down. There’s heavy plant, digging machines, bulldozers with orange lights, but it’s strangely quiet, deserted like everyone’s gone home. Troop leads me up some stairs on the side of two portakabins that are one on top of the other, into an office lined with plans and blueprints.
One man is stood facing guys in yellow hard-hats, steel-capped boots, cords and workshirts, engineering types. He has his arms folded across his chest but is holding a dimple on his chin, pensive like. He’s got piercing blue eyes, a healthy-looking tan, silver-grey hair that’s well groomed. The bespoke lightweight wool suit he’s wearing must cost two-and-a-half gee from Savile Row. He’s listening intently, digesting every word, nodding. He gets a French snout outta a packet and lights it, in spite of the ‘Strictly No Smoking’ signs. This guy’s wearing chocolate-brown, hand-made, tasselled and fringed, suede pigskin loafers from Jermyn Street. He ignores us when we come in. Nobody interrupts.
I know this geezer. Or, more accurately, I know of him. Sometimes the last piece of the jigsaw will slot gently into place but on this occasion the whole jigsaw’s fallen outta the sky and landed on my head. This gent’s name is Edward Ryder. I never realised that he was from round our way but what I have worked out is that
he’s the mover and shaker, blood brother of Jimmy Price, the geezer I’m helping out by finding his daughter Charlie. She has a different surname so I didn’t connect the two and I didn’t recognise him without his dinner jacket and black bow tie. This geezer and his beautiful twenty-years-younger wife haunt the pages of those glossy magazines you buy at supermarket check-outs. Eddy and the wife will be in there, smudged-up at the charity dinner or the polo match, hobnobbing with the royal family and all those aristocrat Mafiosi, ‘Mr and Mrs Edward Ryder, charity benefactor, businessman and multi-national entrepreneur’ under the photo. Up-close and personal he could be the figurehead of his own runaway-success religious cult. He’s gotta be fifty-five but looks good.
‘Two weeks! They want another two weeks?’ He shakes his head. ‘Fucking hell, give some people an inch . . . Now, I need to have a little chat with this chap here,’ he says, nodding in my direction. ‘Come with me,’ Eddy says, walking past me briskly and down the stairs. I follow him down and catch him up. Troop follows about ten feet behind. The clay has been turned over so it’s rugged but dry.
‘If it’s about me finding your daughter, I just–’
He stops abruptly, gives me a glare with the beadies, raises a hand to silence me, then carries on walking until we come to the edge of a small gorge about thirty yards long that’s been dug out along one side, a hole inside the main hole. I look over the edge and see that there’s a small encampment of people, an archaeological dig, brushing away soil with dry paintbrushes and bagging it up. The whole site is criss-crossed with string in a grid system. Trenches have been dug and tarpaulins hung over certain areas. Students work in huddles, digging with tiny trowels and sieving the dirt. They go about it with enthusiasm. We’re standing above the hole on a viewing area they’ve installed, made of scaffolding and duckboards. Eddy stops, looks down and shakes his head gently again.
‘Here.’ He beckons me over. ‘Can you see that?’
He points at the side of the excavation. It’s layered with different shades of clay, earth and mud, like a bottle of sand my aunt brought back from the Isle of Wight.
Layer Cake Page 24