‘Get out!’ I screamed down at her.
She couldn’t hear me above the noise. Truth to tell, she probably wouldn’t have heard me even without it – she was deaf to everything but the all-compelling voice of her own avarice.
The truck had come to a halt on the edge of the hole, and the tipper was beginning to tilt.
‘Stop!’ I shouted, running towards it. ‘Stop!’
More and more, the tipper tilted. One or two old house bricks rolled off the top of the pile and plummeted down the shaft. I reached the lorry and tried to open the door on the passenger side. It was locked. I pulled myself up, and hammered furiously on the window.
The driver turned his head in my direction.
‘Don’t tip!’ I yelled.
‘Can’t hear you,’ he mouthed back at me. ‘Be with you in a minute – just as soon as I’ve finished this job.’
Through a film of tears, I watched as several tons of rubble slid off the back of the lorry – and into the hole.
****
‘Must have squashed her as flat as a pancake,’ Les Fliques said.
‘Yes, it did,’ I agreed, dully.
‘Sorry, Rob, that was thoughtless of me,’ Fliques said. ‘She meant so much more to you than the others, didn’t she?’
‘I loved her. I really did.’
Sensitivity from either side was not part of the game, and it embarrassed both of us. For several minutes we continued walking, passing pavement artists and flower sellers, but not saying a word.
‘Well, at least you achieved what you set out to do,’ Fliques said finally, as if he were offering me some consolation.
I gave him a sharp look, suspecting a trick. ‘Set out to do?’
Fliques chuckled. We were back on track.
‘You stopped the old ’uns being evicted,’ he said. ‘Oh, don’t look so surprised, I know all about the property company. I’m almost as good at working out why you bumped off your aunties as I am at figuring out how you did it. So who’s got your Auntie Sadie’s shares in Shelton Bourne plc?’
‘They’re in trust, but in three weeks’ time, when I turn twenty-one, they’ll be mine.’
‘And you’d never sell them to Cypher, would you?’
‘No.’
‘Not that you’d have the option now. He went bankrupt.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Apparently he was in a hole – a bit like your auntie.’
‘Don’t talk about her like that,’ I said, getting angry again.
‘Sorry, Rob,’ Fliques said apologetically. ‘Old habits die hard. Anyway, Cypher was apparently hoping the Shelton Bourne project would bail him out, and when that fell through—’
‘It broke him.’
‘Exactly.’
The Arc de Triomphe lay ahead of us.
‘Bloody big traffic island, that,’ Fliques said.
‘It’s supposed to serve as both a symbol of the greatness of France and a monument to those who selflessly gave up their lives for their country,’ I told him.
‘Hmm,’ Fliques mused. ‘Bloody big traffic island! And look at the way those cars are going round it. Half those motorists should be summonsed. What do the French police think they’re doing?’
‘Does this mean our little talk’s over?’ I asked.
‘For the moment,’ Fliques said. ‘But I’d tread carefully if I were you, Rob. Now I’m a chief inspector, I’ve got a lot more resources at my disposal than I used to have. And I’m prepared to use them, because although I’ve come to like you – and maybe even admire you – I really can’t allow you to go on killing people.’
6
It was night. Wesley and I stood on one of the bridges over the Seine, looking at a moon-bathed Notre Dame.
‘I saw somebody I know today,’ I told him. ‘It was a police chief inspector from England.’
‘Jolly good. It’s always nice to meet a fellow Englishman abroad – even if he is a member of the constabulary,’ Wesley replied.
But his heart was not really in it, and his bounce was gone. It was almost as if he suspected what was about to come next.
Should I tell him? I wondered.
Could I tell him?
‘Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today,’ said Mother’s voice, the words lapping as gently against my mind as the water below lapped against the river bank.
I took a deep breath. ‘The thing is, seeing this man got me thinking. I’ve decided it’s time to go home.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is,’ Wesley said noncommittally.
‘I mean, I really want a future as an international bridge player, and I’ve already left it a little late,’ I argued.
‘Quite so,’ Wesley agreed. ‘Err … who were you thinking of having as your partner?’
This was the moment I’d dreaded.
‘It can’t be you, Wesley,’ I said. ‘You’re good – but you’re nowhere near good enough.’
Wesley’s jaw quivered, and for a second I thought he was about to burst into tears.
Then he remembered he was an old Donningtonian and pulled himself together.
‘Not good enough?’ he repeated. ‘Well, for heaven’s sake, old boy, I already knew that. No, I was just wondering if you’d anyone in particular in mind as your new partner.’
‘I’ll have to see who’s available.’
‘Exactly,’ Wesley agreed. ‘Good plan.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll be moving on in the morning, then.’
‘Moving on? Why would you want to move on?’
Wesley shrugged. ‘Won’t be needing me anymore, will you? Not once you’ve got a new partner.’
‘Of course I’ll need you. Look, I’m going to be starting at the bottom, but if I’m successful—’
‘No “if” about it. You’re the best player I’ve ever seen.’
‘… if I’m successful, there’ll be all sorts of complications – sponsorship deals, lecture tours, the whole package. I can’t handle all that myself, now can I?’
‘Can’t you?’ Wesley asked.
‘Of course I can’t. So I shall need a business manager.’
‘Expect you will,’ Wesley agreed – then his mouth dropped open in surprise. ‘Are you talking about me?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘A business manager,’ Wesley said, savouring the words. ‘Never been in business before. Should imagine I’ll be quite good at it.’
****
Good at it? Wesley was to business management what Aunt Peggy had been to animal welfare.
At the beginning, when I was a nobody, he could only cause minor inconveniences, but as my fame grew, he started to have the scope to enact real disasters. It took me twice as long to untangle the messes he’d got us into as it would have done to fix the whole thing myself. And still, even with all my efforts to straighten out the arrangements, I’d find that we’d been booked on a flight to Iceland when we were due in Rio. And still we could arrive at a hotel to discover that Wesley had either reserved no rooms at all, or else commandeered an entire floor.
It didn’t really bother me – I’d expected nothing better. And it was worth suffering the odd inconvenience to keep a friend like Wesley.
7
I was just leaving Bush House – flushed from my success on Joyspear – when I heard a silky voice say, ‘Mr Bates?’ and, turning round, saw Rosalyn for the first time.
She was a petite blonde, with an oval face and a nose which stopped just short of being a button. Her mouth – which could be hard when she chose to make it so – was at that moment soft and alluring. She was wearing a mid-length dress which showed off her figure without being too sexually aggressive. She’d chosen it especially for me – I realise that now. If I’d come across differently on television, she might have turned up in a split skirt and fishnet stockings, but she’d assessed, quite correctly, that this particular outfit would please the man she’d watched on Joyspea
r.
Looking back on it, I suppose she reminded me a little of Mother and Aunt Sadie. At the time, my only thought was that she was the most attractive woman I’d seen in months.
‘You are Rob Bates, aren’t you?’ she asked.
‘Do I know you?’ I said.
‘No, you don’t.’ She laughed prettily – she could always laugh prettily when she wanted to. ‘My name’s Rosalyn Russell and I’m a reporter.’
‘A reporter?’ I repeated.
‘That’s right. I saw you on Cadbury’s show and I called a taxi straight away. I’d really like to talk to you if you could spare the time. Do you think we could go somewhere for a drink?’
The night was young and she was beautiful – so why not? We found a mock-Victorian pub not far from the studio.
‘What would you like to drink?’ I asked when – as Mother would have wished – I’d escorted her to a table.
‘A white wine, please.’
Playing to her subject again, you see. If I’d been one of those butch men who go around putting out fires on oil rigs, she’d have ordered a straight bourbon. Had I been of the ecclesiastical inclination, she’d have stuck to fruit juice.
I bought the drinks and took them back to the table.
‘What paper do you work for?’ I asked, as I sat down.
‘The Globe.’
‘The Bonker’s Daily!’ I said before I could stop myself.
Rosalyn laughed, though I could tell she was not really amused.
‘Yes, I suppose we do have something of a reputation,’ she conceded, ‘but we cover some pretty serious stuff, even if it is in a popular format. That’s why I’d like to do a story on you.’
‘On me?’
Rosalyn grinned. ‘You sound surprised.’
‘I am,’ I admitted. ‘I mean, I know I’ve appeared on national television tonight, but I wouldn’t have thought I was all that interesting.’
‘All that interesting! Are you kidding? You’ve got the looks, and, by God, you’ve got the patter. Those stories you told about your friend Wesley, in which you made him out to be the hero—’
‘He was the hero,’ I said.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Rosalyn said dismissively. ‘The important thing is that you come across as incredibly modest. You know what you are, don’t you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘What am I?’
‘You’re a personality. What Bobby Fischer did for chess a few years ago, you’re doing for bridge. People will be interested in the game because they’re interested in you.’
We drank some more, and she told me a little about herself.
Her father, it seemed, worked on a provincial paper.
‘Thirty years of covering weddings and WI meetings,’ Rosalyn said with contempt. ‘And he’s never had the balls to try to climb any higher up the ladder.’
‘Maybe he’s happy where he is?’ I suggested.
‘Happy!’ Rosalyn snorted. ‘How can he be happy? I was out in the sticks for less than two years before The Globe offered me a job. And The Globe’s only the start – because as soon as I’ve got a bit more experience at the national level, I’m intending to move into some really serious heavyweight journalism.’
You might have said it, but you were fooling yourself, weren’t you, my love? Yours was a temperament ideally suited to working for The Globe. We may all be lying in the gutter, as Oscar Wilde once said, but while some of us are looking up at the stars, you were actually peering down the grid.
****
I don’t want to give the impression that all these thoughts were flitting through my mind as Rosalyn and I sat knee-to-knee in the pub near the BBC. No, my thoughts were somewhere else entirely. And – apparently – so were Rosalyn’s!
‘Would you like a guided tour of my flat?’ she asked when the pub landlord called time.
‘I’d love it,’ I said.
It was not so much a flat as a bed-sit – or, as the estate agent had probably said, “a quasi-maisonette” – but the guided tour, as we both knew, had nothing to do with fittings and furnishings. The moment she’d closed the door, Rosalyn was on me – guiding my hands, tearing at my clothing – and it was not until we were after our second orgasms that she suggested we continue on the bed.
Sex with Rosalyn was fantastic. She made Mrs Cynthia Harrap seem like a repressed nun. Next to her, Glynis, the Llawesuohtihs nymphomaniac, seemed as prim as Little Bo Peep. She even …
But enough of comparisons – suffice it to say that just as a mouse will ignore the spine-breaking bar overhead and nibble at the cheese, just as the fly will find itself drawn towards the spider’s web, so I, completely oblivious to the risk, took the bait which Rosalyn offered.
****
Straight after breakfast, Rosalyn produced a recorder and placed it on the table between us.
‘I want to get some of your stories down on tape,’ she said. ‘Start with the story about the two Russians.’
‘But I did that on Joyspear, last night,’ I pointed out.
Rosalyn shrugged. ‘That doesn’t matter. My readers have the attention span of the average goldfish. Go on. Start talking.’
‘No, I’d rather tell you one of the stories I didn’t tell Joyspear,’ I said. ‘Wesley and I were still in the Gulf, and, as chance would have it, Wesley led us into our second revolution in as many months …’
****
We were stranded in a small town on the coast of Qabir. It was a filthy little place, made up mostly of mud-brick houses, but at least there was no one there – for the present – who seemed particularly eager to kill us. We’d been in the town for a couple of days, dividing our time between drinking strong coffee in the town’s only hostel and trying to work out how – given that all the roads were closed, and many of them were mined – we were ever going to get away.
As usual, Wesley came up with what, on the face of it, appeared to be a solution to all our problems.
‘Been talking to this chap down at the harbour,’ he announced. ‘Turns out he’s the captain of a fishing boat. Says he’s more than willing to take us with him the next time he sails.’
‘And how much does he want paying?’ I asked suspiciously.
Wesley beamed. ‘Nothing at all! Says since he’s sailing anyway, we might as well come along for the ride. Frightfully decent chap.’
With ever-growing misgivings, I went to the harbour to meet this “frightfully decent chap”. He turned out to be six feet four-tall, with scars on both cheeks and sly eyes which kept settling on the Rolex watch Wesley had been given to settle a gambling debt in Nice. He was the fourth most sinister man I’d ever met – the first three on my list being the members of his crew.
I took Wesley into a quiet corner. ‘He’s a smuggler,’ I whispered.
‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that,’ Wesley said agreeably.
‘And probably a pirate, too.’
‘I suppose that’s possible.’
‘So once we’re away from the shore, what’s to stop him taking everything we own, slitting our throats and throwing us over the side?’
‘Why do you always take such a pessimistic view of human nature?’ Wesley asked. ‘I’ve always believed that if you’re nice to a chap, there’s a very strong chance that he’ll be nice back to you.’
‘There’s absolutely no way I’m setting foot on that boat,’ I said firmly.
Wesley looked uncomfortable. ‘I wasn’t going to mention this,’ he said, ‘but the rebel army’s on the way here and its commander doesn’t like foreigners at all.’
‘I know,’ I agreed, ‘but if we can get the townsfolk to hide us—’
‘Ah, there’s the rub,’ Wesley interrupted. ‘The townspeople have been talking about how to ingratiate themselves with the rebels and someone suggested that disembowelling us and hanging us over the main gate as a sort of welcoming present, just might do the trick.’
I had had a menta
l picture of us hanging from the arch, and gave a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll go and get the bags,’ I said.
‘Jolly good idea,’ Wesley agreed.
****
We’d been out at sea for about an hour when the crew made their move. Wesley was standing at the prow of the boat at the time, looking out across the water. I was near the stern, wondering if we might not have been better, after all, to have risked the disembowelling.
The pirates worked as a team, the three crew members forming a semi-circle around me, and the captain heading towards the prow – and Wesley.
I tried to see beyond the three who blocked me in, but every time I moved, so did they. Finally, through a gap between their shoulders, I caught just one glimpse of what was happening at the other end of the boat.
Wesley still had his back to us, and the captain, knife in hand, was almost on him.
‘Look out, Wesley!’ I shouted, but my shout was muffled by the noise of the engine.
I flung myself at the men who were penning me in, but they were too strong to resist. And then I saw that resistance wasn’t necessary, because instead of the knife being in Wesley’s back, it was in his hand.
‘What happened?’ I asked him later.
‘What happened when?’
‘When the captain came at you with the knife?’
Wesley chuckled. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ he said. ‘The captain didn’t come at me with his knife. It’s true that when I turned around, I saw it in his hand, but I never thought for a minute he intended to do me any harm with it.’
‘Then why had he got it out?’
Wesley laughed. ‘He’d come to show it to me, of course. They’re like that, these chaps – simple people who take pleasure in their simple belongings.’
‘So what did you do when you saw the knife?’
‘Smiled pleasantly, and asked him if I could take a look at it.’
‘And he just gave it to you?’
‘Well, it was more like I took it, if the truth be told. Fellow seemed in a bit of daze, for some reason.’
‘And what happened next?’
‘I told him what a jolly fine knife it was, and asked him if he’d teach me to tie a few nautical knots.’
A Conspiracy of Aunts Page 19