by Peter James
The Bellinis in their favourite café had changed, and were no longer made with fresh peach juice or real champagne. Venice now smelled of drains. The restaurant was still fine, but Johnny barely tasted his food, he was so deep in thought. And his headache seemed to be worsening. Joy had drunk most of the bottle of white wine and, with the Bellini earlier, into which he had slipped a double vodka, seemed quite smashed. They had six more nights here. Once, the days had flown by. Now he struggled to see how they could even fill tomorrow. With luck he would not have to.
He called the waiter over for the bill, pointing to his wife who was half asleep and apologizing that she was drunk. It could be important that the waiter would remember this. Yes, poor lady, so drunk her husband struggled to help her out . . .
They staggered along a narrow street, and crossed a bridge that arced over a narrow canal. Somewhere in the dark distance a gondolier was singing a serenade.
‘You haven’t taken me on a gondola in years,’ she chided, slurring her words. ‘I haven’t felt your oar much in years either,’ she teased. ‘Maybe I could feel it tonight?’
I’d rather have my gall bladder removed without an anaesthetic, he thought.
‘But I suppose you can’t get it up these days,’ she taunted. ‘You don’t really have an oar any more, do you? All you have is a little dead mouse that leaks.’
The splash of an oar became louder. So did the singing.
The gondola was sliding by beneath them. In it, entwined in each other’s arms, were a young man and a young woman, clearly in love, as they had once been. As he was now with Mandy Brent. He stared down at the inky water.
Two ghosts stared back.
Then only one.
It took Joy some moments to realize anything was wrong. Then she turned in drunken panic, screaming for help, for a doctor, for an ambulance. A kindly neurosurgeon told her some hours later, in broken English, that there was nothing anyone could have done. Her husband had been felled by a massive cerebral aneurysm. He would have been dead within seconds.
*
Back in England, after Johnny’s body had been repatriated, Joy’s troubles really started. The solicitor informed her that he had left half of his entire estate, which was basically the house they lived in, to a woman she had never heard of. The next thing she knew, the woman was on the phone wanting to discuss the funeral arrangements.
‘I’m having him cremated,’ Joy said.
‘He told me he wanted to be buried,’ Mandy Brent insisted. ‘I’d like that. I’d like to have somewhere I can go and sit with him.’
All the more reason, thought Joy, to have him cremated. But there was another bigger reason she had been thinking of. Much bigger.
*
The following year, on what would have been their thirty-sixth wedding anniversary, Joy returned to Venice, to the same room in the dilapidated former palazzo. She unpacked from her suitcase the small grey plastic urn and put it on the windowsill. She stared at it, then at the view of the Grand Canal beyond.
‘Remember what we said to each other, Johnny? Do you? That promise we made to each other? About coming back here? Well, I’m helping us to keep that promise.’
The next morning she took a water taxi across to Murano. She spoke to the same courteous assistant in the glass factory, Valerio Barbero, who had helped them every year since they had started coming. Signor Barbero was an old man now, stooped and close to retirement. He told Joy how very deeply sympathetic he was, how sad, what a fine gentleman Signor Jones had been. And – as if this was quite a normal thing for him – he accepted the contents of the package and her design without even the tiniest flicker of his rheumy eyes. It would be ready in three days, he assured her.
*
It was. Joy could barely contain her excitement on the water taxi ride back to the mainland. She stopped in St Mark’s Square to gulp down two Bellinis in rapid succession – to get her in the mood, she decided.
Then she entered the hotel room, hung the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on the door and locked it from the inside. She untied the pretty blue bow around the tall box and carefully opened it, removing the two contents.
The first item was the plaster-of-Paris mould she had taken of Johnny’s rude bits, all those years ago, when he had been particularly drunk and even more aroused than usual. The second was the exquisite glass replica, now filled with the grey powder from the urn.
Slowly, feeling pleasantly tipsy from the Bellinis, she undressed, then lay on her back on the bed. ‘Remember, Johnny?’ she whispered. ‘Remember that promise we made each other that very first time we came here? About coming back and making love here in this room every year forever? You were worried, weren’t you, about not being able to get stiff enough for me after you were dead? Well, you really shouldn’t have concerned yourself, should you?’
She caressed the long, slender glass. Hard as rock.
Stiff as a gondolier’s oar.
Just like she remembered him.
TIME RICH
Wealthy guy, 39, non-smoker, tall, GSOH, good-looking,
WLTM lady for fun, friendship and possibly more . . .
It isn’t actually that I am being unfaithful to my wife at this moment, as I sit in my small den, at 3 a.m., logged on to a dating agency on the Internet, while Alison sleeps in the bedroom on the other side of the wall.
Because, you see, it is not really me at all who is online. Not debt-ridden Clive Talbot, with my credit cards all maxed out, my BMW about to be repossessed, and my mortgage company weeks away from foreclosing. They say if you haven’t made it by forty, you aren’t going to make it, ever. Well, I’m just six months short of that big birthday and I’m determined no one is going to hold that two-fingered ‘Loser’ sign up against my forehead.
No, sir.
Only problem is that, at this moment, my sole possession of real value is the gold Rolex on my wrist, which I bought years ago after a big poker win. In truth, my only ever big poker win. It is a very classy watch, but it’s not much to show for a lifetime of hard work, is it?
So, now let me introduce Sebastian DeVries, cool, suave, man-about-town entrepreneur, who is at this moment talking to one hot, seriously rich dame, whose name is Maria Andropoulos. For the past hour she has been pouring her heart out to me – sorry, to Sebastian – about her terrible marriage to one of those new Russian oil oligarchs. Tired of his constant philandering and bullying, she is in search of an affair – and, who knows, perhaps true love – with someone with whom she can settle down and enjoy the divorce settlement she will undoubtedly get from him. Of course, the latter is just my interpretation of where things could go – if I play my cards right . . .
And so far, so good – she likes everything she has seen and heard about Seb DeVries! And we have a date – lunch at her regular table at one of the coolest restaurants in London, the Wolseley, in three days’ time.
I’ve just met her on ParkLaneIntroductions.com. This is a dating agency with a difference – it is only for the very wealthy. Rich men and women in search of affairs. What better place to pull a rich woman? A client of mine told me about it – he said that because there is a surplus of women registered, eligible men can have six months’ free-trial membership. And I assure you that Sebastian DeVries is eminently eligible!
And, hey, Sebastian and I are not really that dissimilar. People always tell me I look like Daniel Craig. I think they’re right, although, actually, I think I’m better looking – more sophisticated. I have class. I’m really much more the guy Ian Fleming had in mind when he wrote those Bond books than Daniel Craig will ever be. I was educated privately – well, for a couple of years anyway, until my dad went to prison for fraud and my mother had to take me out because she had no money to pay the fees. But that’s another story.
It’s raining outside. The wind of an autumn equinox gale throws the droplets at my windows, clawing at the glass like the letters I get daily from the debt collectors that claw at my soul. The truth is, I’m
just not living the life I was born to live. I have a failed business behind me, and now I’m working as an independent financial advisor, for a crook who never pays me the commission I’m due for the life insurance policies I sell, the dubious tax schemes I hook people into and the useless pensions I dupe my clients into buying.
And all my sour little wife, Alison, does is max out our credit cards a little more every day, buying stupid face creams, ridiculous dresses and paying for lunches we cannot afford. Who was it who said so many of us spend all our lives doing jobs we hate, in order to earn money we don’t need, so that we can buy things we don’t want in order to impress people we don’t like? Well, I do the earning and Alison does the rest.
*
For the next couple of days, I find it hard to concentrate on my work. I use the last of my credit cards which still has some life in it to buy a cool suit, shirt, and a new tie for good measure, from Richard James of Savile Row, and a pair of black suede Crockett & Jones loafers from Burlington Arcade. Alison tells me I seem distant and asks me what’s wrong. I lie, something that comes easy after twenty years of marriage to a woman whose only asset for me today is the meagre income she brings in as a legal secretary. Nothing’s wrong, I tell her, and to prove it, driven by the excitement of what awaits me tomorrow, I make love to her with a passion I did not know I still had in me – and which I’m sure the beautiful Maria Andropoulos is going to appreciate in the weeks and months to come.
*
And now, finally, in the vast, ornate black-and-white galleried room of the Wolseley, filled with the beautiful people of London, a greeter, all in black and perfectly formed, is guiding me through the packed tables alive with the buzz of rich, successful people’s conversation, to an apparition that is way, way, way beyond her photograph on the Internet.
Her blonde hair looks wild, untamed, in the way that only a top salon charging at least £300 for a blow-dry could achieve. She is dressed in a high-collared dress with a leopard-skin pattern that clings to her slender contours, and that quietly states, ‘I am rich and beautiful and I know it.’ Her teeth, the colour of snow, melt me. She is dripping with serious bling. And she has great tits – but let’s not get crude.
I can immediately sense from her body language that I am making an impression on her, too. I sit down, our eyes locked, inane grins on our faces. She holds up in greeting a glass filled with champagne, and moments later, at the hand of an unseen waiter, the rarefied froth of 1990 Cristal is rising over the rim of my own goblet.
‘You look so much better than your photograph, Sebastian,’ she says.
‘You, too,’ I tell her, trying to stop my greedy eyes from looking at those rings on her fingers, the bracelets, the necklace, the earrings, and the Vertu phone on the white table cloth.
And I am so captivated by her charm that, as we get stuck into the second bottle of champagne before the starter (she has ordered oysters, followed by Beluga) even arrives, I need to keep reminding myself I am here not to enjoy myself, but on business.
We glide easily across topics. Trite at first – stuff about what a great place London is for the arts. She has a slightly husky, mid-European accent which I find very attractive. And all the while her ‘fuck-me’ eyes seldom let go of mine.
We both share the massive dish of oysters and somehow, by the time we’ve finished, the second bottle of champagne is empty. And a third is on its way. She keeps looking at her watch. I don’t know what the make is, but it is encrusted with diamonds the size of barnacles. And suddenly there is something I notice about her. It is the way she keeps twisting the biggest bit of bling of all: a diamond engagement – or maybe eternity – ring. She turns it round, and round, and round.
It is hypnotic.
I’ve never seen diamonds so big.
Gradually, subtly, our conversation deepens as she tells me about her brute of a husband. I notice she keeps looking at her watch and I wonder, anxiously, if perhaps I am boring her. She apologizes, suddenly, explaining that her driver is arriving at 3 p.m. to collect her – she has to make an important speech this afternoon at the Savoy hotel for the charity Women Against Poverty, of which she is chair.
‘I like a Rolex on a man,’ she says, with a very sexy smile. ‘A naked man wearing a Rolex is a very big turn-on for me.’
And now I am glad there is a table between us, so she cannot see just how turned on her remark makes me.
‘It could be arranged,’ I say.
‘I’d like that very much,’ she replies, then twists that ring again. ‘I apologize, my finger hurts – I have arthritis in the knuckle. I hurt my hand from fending off my husband’s blows. Sometimes I have to move the ring to ease the pain.’
I try to imagine her husband. I think of the pictures of Russian tycoons I have seen in the papers, and I find myself hating this man with all my heart and soul. I want to take her away with me now, to protect her – and make love to her and . . .
I am forgetting myself. Forgetting why I am here. The champagne and her intoxicating company are making me behave this way.
Her phone rings. She answers it with a curt, ‘Yes. You are outside now? OK.’
And suddenly, before I realize it, she is standing up. ‘I really want to see you again,’ she says.
‘Me too.’
She gives me her elegant card and enters my mobile number into her Vertu. Then she kisses me lightly on the cheek. Her tender touch and her intoxicating perfume send my pulse into orbit. But as she turns away to walk towards the door, she collides with a shaven-headed ape in a grey suit and white polo neck, who has appeared from nowhere, totally not concentrating on where he is going, talking on his mobile phone. She ricochets off him, straight into a waitress carrying a tray of beautifully prepared food. And in the next instant, to my dismay, my beautiful date and the waitress crash into a table, knocking everything on it flying, and fall to the floor, entangled like a pair of mud-wrestling bitches.
I can scarcely believe my eyes as I jump up to rescue my distressed damsel and help her back to her feet. Elegant waiters swarm around. Maria smiles at me; she is fine. Like a James Bond martini, she is shaken but not stirred. Through the mêlée of people assisting her, she blows me a goodbye kiss.
And through the haze of champagne, in the moments after she has gone, I realize that we didn’t get the bill. Not a problem; I assume she has an account here. So I enjoy the remaining half-bottle of champagne and order a large espresso – and, what the hell, a decent Armagnac to go with it. Then my phone rings.
It is Maria. For an instant my heart leaps, then her voice tells me something is wrong. She sounds in a terrible state. ‘Sebastian, please can you help me? I’ve lost my ring!’
‘Ring?’
‘My engagement ring from Aleksei. It’s worth about three hundred thousand pounds, but that’s not the important thing – he will go nuts if he sees me without it!’
‘Where have you lost it?’ I ask dumbly.
‘It must have come off my finger when I fell over with that stupid waitress! It has to be on the floor somewhere. Look, I haven’t got time to deal with this; I have to start speaking in a few minutes. Would you be a darling and look for me?’
‘Of course.’ My eyes are already scanning the floor around me.
‘I have to get it back.’
I was touched by the desperation in her voice.
‘Darling, if you cannot find it, please tell the staff at the Wolseley that I will pay a £10,000 reward to anyone who finds it.’
‘You won’t need to do that.’
‘Dahlink, £10,000 is nothing to me, OK? Aleksei makes that in twenty minutes. Please, just find it for me.’
She was in tears.
‘I’ll find it,’ I said. ‘You won’t need to pay any reward, I promise you.’
I was lying. A plan was forming in my head. A very beautiful plan, because instead of dulling my senses, the champagne and now the Armagnac were actually sharpening my thoughts.
I fell to my
knees and started grovelling around on the floor, looking for the ring. Proffering apologies, I crawled between the legs of diners, moving handbags aside, my nostrils filled with the scent of expensive leather shoes. But no damned ring.
After ten minutes, and numerous apologies, I admitted temporary defeat and sat back down, thinking hard, wondering if she had dropped it out in the street, perhaps?
If so, the chances of it still being there were slim. As I was pondering, a glint of light struck my eyes. To my astonishment, I saw the ape who had first collided with Maria seated at the next table. He was holding a sparkly object in his fingers, examining it.
It was Maria’s ring! I was as certain as I could be of anything.
And while I stared, he and his companion, another ape in a vulgar suit, stood up and walked past me, heading quickly towards the exit.
I jumped up from my chair. ‘Excuse me!’ I called after him.
But I got trapped in the narrow gulley between the tables by a waiter with a massive tray of drinks. By the time I had squeezed past him, both apes had walked through the crowd of people hovering around the entrance, waiting either for their coats or their tables, and were heading out through the front door.
As I reached the door, a tall, smiling man all in black stepped into my path.
‘Your bill, sir?’ he asked.
‘It’s been . . . it’s settled – on Maria Andropoulos’s account.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, with a perfectly formed and delivered smile. ‘People do not have accounts here.’
‘But she . . . she said . . .’ I stared at him bewildered, realizing she must have forgotten in all the chaos surrounding her departure, and stared at the doors swinging closed behind the apes and my fast vanishing £10,000 reward.
I pulled out my one remaining live credit card, thrust it into his hand, told him I would be back in a moment, and threw myself out of the door and past the liveried doorman outside, looking frantically each way down Piccadilly. Then I saw them, walking along the pavement, a short distance away.