by Tanith Lee
Crang had expressed confidence in Laurence. On a light medication, and no longer at immediate risk of further heart episodes, Laurence did his exercises, worked out, and limited his drinking to half a bottle of red wine per day. He said he had lost his taste for vodka. It reminded him, he said, of being driven up a fucking hill like a ram to the slaughter. And he wanted, he said, to live to see that cunt brought to justice. Crang had agreed, with a suitable grim smile. He did not enlighten Laurence on the nature of the justice in question. Instead he rewarded Laurence by the firm promise of a new life and identity - how fitting for one returned from death - a luxuriant life-long income, and the imminent visit of Laurence’s Number One Lover, Kitra Andrezou, aka about five other names.
They had already checked her out, of course. She seemed to be a minor psychopath, and with the looks and allure that often attended such creatures. Crang she gave the creeps, but then he would not be the one bedding down with her. Laurence and she, meanwhile, had already been intending to fly the coup. Now they could do it in even better style. In any case, Kitra was rich. That she was already priming the old man, Laurence’s father, on the private island, did not interest them. That was her business. The Man was theirs.
Crang did wonder what Kitra would think when she met Laurence again.
He was by now fairly strong and fit, as Crang emphasised to her during the calls to Greece. But Laurence had been changed rather more than a little. His hair was going grey, and he was letting it grow very long, in the mode of some of the ancient warriors and kings he had assisted in digging up from the ground… or of some old hippies, of course. Perhaps oddly, the look suited him, though it aged him. As did the slight droop remaining at the outer corner of his right eye, and the slight limp he had now, sometimes, in the right leg. He dressed more eccentrically. Black jeans and long loose black shirts, boots. He disdained wrist watches and rings. As well, since the original clothing and accessories he had worn to the park had, necessarily, to go elsewhere. In the 21st Century, the state of London’s poverty-stricken underclasses provided a corpse soon enough. Approximately of matched height, weight and colouring. Decay, and damage due to the feral animals which populated any greenish space, quickly rendered the corpse sufficiently unrecognisable. Ready-clad in the transposed garments, (also damaged and emptied of money) plus the platinum ring, this carcass was easy to pass off - even to the hysterically homicidal Mrs Lewis - as the dead Laurence.
Additionally, a secret if not quite unheard-of deal was struck with the attending coroner’s office. The replacement cadaver had died of malnourishment and general neglect. Hardly fitting a celebrity lifestyle. Laurence’s mother, however, the once famous Claudia Martin, had died of an aneurysm. It was an inspired take therefore to link Laurence’s purported end through heredity to hers.
There was one other matter. Secops obtained a non-publicised injunction that kept most of the press corps off Pond, despite his association with Laurence’s wife. And later, aside from the drama of the mystery stabbing, off Nick Lewis, for by then Secops themselves were watching him. No journalist had a clue what went on there, nor did even newspaper nobility. They were given false but more appealing targets, or other worries, that took them out of the picture. As for Kitra, she was well protected. Laurence wanted her.
Laurence was looking forward to seeing Kitra. When Crang told him he would not have long to wait, Laurence’s speech still, and perhaps forever now, not fully recovered from the physical trauma, broke down. He cried. Generally he had become over-emotional. And there was too a slight but recurrent patchiness to his memory, which would undoubtedly become worse with time. He went now and then into fits of rage, also without warning. These would leave him dazed, and forgetful of the objects he had smashed or the punch he had tried to throw. The medics reckoned his heart had been stopped for approximately two minutes.. After that there must be inevitable mental problems, regardless of any physical flaws. When Laurence cried, Crang had patted him on the shoulder.
Though younger than Laurence, Crang acted towards him in a kind and fatherly way. Secretly, at least a secret from Laurence, Crang despised him. But Laurence was needed. Already Laurence’s testimony was in the electronic files, his voice and appearance there disguised further to protect him. And in less than another week, it was now nearly inevitable that The Man would be apprehended. After which the concrete identification could begin. In the bag, as they said. “Then you’ll be free, Laurence. Free to start over, any way you want.”
As Nick travels back across the island, a thick late afternoon gold soaks and pickles the landscape, making it like a painting, a total unreality.
The light, its effect, absorbs him for a minute. He gazes at the mountains, and the clutches of trees, the ramshackle road, the pleated faces of the old women on the bus, and a young man in American clothes, who for some reason holds a ruined black umbrella.
Then Nick loses the absorption. It flows from him, leaving him again like a stone, or a man whose mind has been harmed. He seems to be floating between the bus seat and the low roof. The rutted bumps and crunches of the vehicle are miles away. Or he is. His watch has stopped completely.
When Laurence’s brother, Nick, had begun himself to have a contact with Pond, Secops naturally took an added interest.
After the business with the homing device (the pin) they were already keeping an eye on the flat in the cul-de-sac. And almost instantly Grey had met a man who came out of the building. Grey had a story of some woman he knew who lived there, but she had been beaten up by some bugger who now lived in her apartment. She, it seemed, had run away. The bugger? “Oh, that top pad, one with the big window. Him.” They knew the pin was still in there, the one meant to let Laurence lead them to where The Man would move in for his kill. The one Laurence, (the fool) had hidden with Nick. By now the pin was dead. But that hardly cleared up the matter.
Why had Laurence left the pin with Nick? To Secops, anything not correspondingly explicable required at least a light investigation. And often the simplest way to uncover truths was merely to sow a little discord. Pull the rug - which way did the cat jump?
The guy who had come out of the flats was grumpy, his grouse genuine. Luck struck. Someone had stolen a drawer the flat-dweller had left out then forgotten in the foyer. “Lots of books that belong to my girl, and notepads for work - I was bringing it all up in this drawer from our other place, but it was heavy and I put it down. No elevator, right? And then, well, we forgot, you know… other stuff on our minds…” Grey had sniggered sympathetically. “When I look again, it’s gone.”
At this point Grey had no notion Nick had appropriated the drawer, but Grey still said he would not be surprised if that thieving violent bugger (the invented Nick) was the one who took it. Grey and the Drawer-man, united in complaint, went for a big drink. In a while it was agreed that the Drawer-man should start to bother the bugger (Nick) about the drawer. “Don’t accuse him or nothing. Just niggle. Maybe knock him up late at night. I’ve got a score to settle with that bloody Nicky.”
Drawer-man, a rather raddled opportunist, went along with the plan, and was a bit alarmed when Nick at once confessed to the theft. But primed by Grey, the Drawer-man kept up the charade, indeed knocking on Nick’s door quite late. Grey was by then slipping the Drawer-man a couple of twenties here and there. Secops’ hackles were high - for by then too Pond had paid Nick his first visit. Accordingly, the Secops team broke into Nick’s flat soon after, one night when he was out meeting a woman they would afterwards find was the psycho, Kitra.
They left the flat in deliberate mild disarray and the bed in great disarray. They also took care with the contents of the lifted drawer. All this to demonstrate to Nick that something threatening was going on. During that foray they located the homing device - the fake Roman pin. They put it back under the carpet. It was long dead. They had though, during their brief occupancy, installed a bug. In this instance, now they had their witness, it would be worth using a bug. They could be
guided by, but never need reveal, what it told them. (Nick would be right when, a little later, he surmised no recognisable DNA was left behind. Secops was a unit whose internal files were its own, unless voluntarily shared. Nick, unsurprisingly, never spotted the bug either. That would have taken an expert.)
But, my God, it was dull listening in to Nick’s flat.
Of the occasional calls few were useful. They logged the ranting Angela, (this one incorporated the moment when Nick learned of his brother’s death, and after which Nick requested Pond’s number - which might later prove vital). Also the hysterical Serena, who indirectly offered them a nice opportunity… Otherwise… Nick, unlike many solitary people, old or young, seldom if ever talked to himself. His steps on the polished floor even made small sound. The flushing of a lavatory, the shower, the rattle of kettle or bottle’s chink, the TV, a CD played, were events.
However. Once the Nick-Pond connection seemed extant, whether on-going or not, the main event the team wished to trigger was enough unease or panic in Nick that it would force him to request from Pond the services of The Man.
Secops judged the whole family unstable. It augured well.
In the end, (and without a recorded reply from Pond), they heard Nick laugh, and a while after this Pond arrived.
Almost affronted, the listeners, (yes, as in the poem by de la Mare, the unseen listeners Nick had visualised, if elsewhere, were made party to his life), they heard Stewart Pond’s invented take on the - by then invented - death of Laurence Adrian Lewis. And, too, Pond’s comments on Claudia Martin - mother of Laurence and Nick, and Serena, and even more insanely, Kitra. They heard of Nick’s tracking of Kitra to the flat in Marylebone.
But the outcome of this scramble? Pond might work for Nick in his minor capacity as a detective. It was not enough. When Nick arranged by phone to spend an evening with his dotty sibling, Serena, the Secops team tried their most coercive gambit to date. For them, it was not the worst they could do, but it afforded them a chance to breach the bastions of Nick’s cloistered existence and hopefully smash on through.
They broke once more into the rich flat with the big window, this time in the form of a three-man gang of dubious habits and intention, (two look-outs left below in the cul-de-sac). They had kept in tow the by now muddled and frankly anxious (but completely bought up) guy with the lost drawer.
For the grand theatrical performance, Grey had equipped himself with the best actor’s wig and fake false teeth known on stage and screen. They made his healthy and fully-toothed gums ache. But it was all in the line of duty.
Crang came too, shaven-headed.
They poured Nick’s vodka down the drain as well. It was meant to seem they had drunk it, but they had no intention of getting pissed on the job. Crang and Mr Drawer ate the apples and cheese. “Cut out the cores,” Grey had said. “These teeth -a man with falsies’d never be able to eat fruit otherwise. And it better look like I joined in.”
When they were done with Nick Lewis that night, Crang certainly had strong hopes of Pond’s being enlisted by Nick to find someone to kill every member of the gang they had portrayed.
There had been only one rogue moment. When it seemed Nick thought they were after the tracker - the ‘Roman pin’. Which would have implicated Secops in the sting. But it turned out Nick was on about some other ivory object, unknown to the rest of them, including the Drawer-man. Fatal complications did not accrue: Crang invented some fairytale that fitted the bill - something about a broken doorknob - and the Drawer-man, told to agree with everything the ‘gang’ said, backed Crang up. Nick gave over on the ivory. Nobody knew what he had been talking about. And it had no bearing on the case.
So. They were back on course for victory. From nowhere attempted murder intervened.
The following morning the hapless Nick was stabbed by Person Unknown.
The Secops bug relayed tiny fragments of dialogue, and sounds, no more - enough. Very decidedly fortunately for Nick Lewis, a member of the team reached him in a few minutes. The operative stemmed the haemorrhage and, posing as a useful bystander, made suitable arrangements, albeit via the NHS. Without the bug, and the listeners, Nick might not have lived.
It had appeared, from Nick’s remarks (aloud and uncharacteristically addressed to himself, or the empty flat, before opening the door “…bloody locksmith…don’t need him now… pay him to go away… How old I look. I look about ninety… A fucking stupid kid of ninety…”) that Nick was expecting somebody to put a new lock on the door. Perhaps this was later borne out by a glimpse of a guy arriving at the flats, balking at the ambulance, going.
None of this though, after all Secops’ hard labour, led to the desired result.
Yet luck did not desert them. It seemed, just as they were trained to do, luck too was fond of fostering logical improvisations.
One afternoon the flaming mad Angela Lewis, now technically widow of the (still living) Laurence, came right off her trolley.
She attacked her lover, Stewart Pond, she flung glassware and screamed, blaming Pond for Laurence’s death, threatening to tell All to the police. It was sometimes fascinating to see the fiery lengths to which guilt and sheer moronicity - as Grey termed it - could lead the weak and needy. Angela went bananas and Pond, evading her implosion, went himself straight to call The Man to clear her up.
The last scene of the drama was now therefore about to be enacted. Angela was cast in the part of the woman who would die. Secops would, leopard-like, slide forward from the wings when it was done. (“We’re doing the crazy bat a favour.” Grey again. “She’d have never stood prison.”) They would take The Man. And Laurence, the great undead, would irretrievably identify him. The Man would be - theirs.
In fact they wanted him far less for the purposes of retributive justice - than for a programme of forthcoming work carried out under their private aegis. A lot of the jobs would be overseas. The Man was a class act. He had unusual skills, and the computerised hagiography of the born assassin. They had stalked him, devoted fans, for years. There had been so many missed chances
Laurence, and Angela - dying ostensibly of booze and pills - would give Secops and all its affiliated friends, a very shiny human blade. No, they would not imprison, let alone execute The Man. They would simply grapple him close. They would own him.
What everyone wanted. Result.
Alone in her spacious apartment on the west side of the house, Qirri takes another shower. She loves to shower. In her childhood and earliest youth she had been restricted to washing, and that was cursory.
Tonight at 9 p.m. there will be the next meal, dinner. The ClydeShelley pair will not be coming, but those grisly French chicks undoubtedly will. Monique and Tuse. So sure of themselves, so rude. If Qirri had been running the show she would have slipped something in their food. See how haughty and cliquey they would be with a touch of poisoning. She would not have minded doing the same for the bloody Czechoslovak prat, not to mention the Heineborgs, who were also coming up tonight. She visualised all five of them writhing and puking, and smiled. Forbidden pleasures, of course. Qirri would not indulge such a whim, here. She would not want to jeopardise her happy little arrangement with Joss. He was definitely going loopy. When she returned from the ‘view’, he had just been sitting in the big room they called the library, staring out of the window at the trees. He said nothing about his son’s having appeared. Had he even known who Nick was? Qirri felt no urge to remind him.
She had had to have sex quickly with Stephanos, too, when she came back this afternoon. He had demanded it, as if jealous of her going off with Nick. It was not a great session, no time. He could also be clumsy, Stepho, and sometimes she was afraid he might mark her face, for there was no space here to hide visible injuries till they healed. She had rarely ever been permanently marked anywhere. Just a scatter of small scars, over the years. She liked her scars. When Stephanos prodded into her she imagined Laurence, that time with the old lighter, and came in seconds, appeasing or flatt
ering her Greek lover. She always thought of the things she really liked, when she had to go with a man who did not play her game, or played it inadequately, but whom she must, for one reason or another, gratify and convince. She had thought of Laurence too, in London, when Nick made love to her. But there had been the other danger as well, remote as it might be, which proved quite a powerful trigger. Very successful. All that with Nick was quite a laugh. And the previous time, with Amir. Although on that occasion she had already been really turned on, fantasising what would almost definitely happen to Nick - whom, then, she had still not met - because of the stuff she had told Amir down in the bar, just before they came upstairs to finish the evening.
Despite using actual facts to incite Laurence often, (as when she revealed her mother to be also his), Qirri had decided she almost certainly would never risk telling him all that she had set in motion for Nick. Laurence claimed to detest Nick, and had not minded in the least anything else Qirri had done or would do. But brothers… you could not be sure. She would be a fool to chance it. Which, in the very end, might prove to be the ace card, the climax to her ploys, her game - irresistible. Not yet, however. Maybe not ever, if she had any sense.
It was Laurence who, in describing Nick’s gigolo/escort role, had mentioned some of the names he had read in Nick’s appointments diary.
Sonia Daforian, located in this way, was later put so well to use, if mostly off-stage, as an ‘intro’ to Nick. But one name from the book had fascinated Laurence. “She must be an Arab - from the Middle East, or India, perhaps, Pakistan.”
“Or Britain,” Qirri had said.
The first name of the woman was Jasmina, with the abbreviation or pet-name Jazz in brackets. The woman’s second name, which Qirri took great care to memorise - even though Laurence could not quite recall its spelling - presently assisted Qirri when she searched the web to see what, if anything, existed on this female.
Something did. Jasmina was one of those platinum card standards who also have websites and write blogs. Qirri found the blog, which concerned only business fashion and self-promo, both for Jazz and her company. To Qirri, deadly. But a link on the site took her to the firm, which itself traded under the name of Eastern: West.