‘Fair enough,’ I mumbled.
She dug into a pocket of her leather jacket and produced a switchblade. A chill cut through me as she clicked it open.
A smirk crept across Marine’s face as she crawled across the bed and placed a hand on my crotch. She licked her lips as she rubbed until I was hard.
‘What was it the highwaymen used to say,’ she said in a perfect American accent. ‘Stand and deliver?’
She unzipped me and took out my penis. Held the knife’s cold blade against it. My erection soon dwindled.
‘Only messing with you,’ she said and put the knife on the bedside table. She began to lick my cock until I was hard and then swallowed. Despite, or maybe because of, my panic a moment before, I came quickly.
‘Fast worker, eh?’ she said. She hopped off the bed and dressed.
‘Got any booze here?’ she said, as she opened the cupboard door and looked in.
‘In the bathroom,’ I croaked. ‘In the medicine cabinet.’
Marine grinned. ‘Just what the doctor ordered, eh?’
She went into the bathroom and came back with a bottle of Jim Beam.
‘From my home town,’ she said.
‘So, you’re not French then?’
‘Oh, come on!’
She filled two tumblers with whisky and handed one to me. I gulped it down. Marine did the same.
I nodded towards the handcuffs.
‘Any chance you could …?’
Marine laughed and dropped the key in my soggy lap.
‘Au revoir,’ she said, and opened the door.
‘Oh, and Father Black says hello, Johnny Boy.’
My grandfather used to say that different types of alcohol affected people in different ways. Gin made people melancholy, especially women. Red wine relaxes you. And whisky just makes you angry. Volcanic. No wonder the Apaches called it fire-water.
After I unlocked the handcuffs, I took a hot shower and scrubbed myself as clean as possible, until my skin was red. Sore. Then I sat in my dressing gown and went to work on the Jim Beam. It wasn’t such a shock that Father Black had tracked me down. I’d been expecting it for a while now and maybe it was just a self-fulfilling prophecy. But what was eating away at me was how Pedro had gotten involved, which he most certainly had, since he’d set me up with Marine.
It was too much for my drink-addled brain to take in so I switched on the television. Sipped my booze. CSI Miami was just as crap dubbed into French and I was drifting off as the ginger-haired bloke casually walked away from an exploding car while putting on his sunglasses. There was a heavy knock at the door.
‘Oh, for fucks sake,’ I muttered to myself.
I struggled to pull on a pair of jeans and an Adidas t-shirt as the knock continued. A far from pleasant thought formed as I dressed.
‘Hold on,’ I shouted.
I looked around for a weapon, in case it was Black or one of his cohorts, and decided that the whisky bottle was my best bet. I drained it and unsteadily opened the door.
A scream cut through the darkness and dragged me from the depths of sleep until I awoke in a hotel room that was as unsettlingly unfamiliar as it was crushingly mundane. In the wan light, it was impossible to tell whether it was late morning or early evening. I reached over to the bedside table, grabbed a bottle and finished off the dying gasps of a bottle of wine.
I could smell a woman’s cheap and potent perfume. It threatened to smother me and I gagged. Another scream from the corridor outside my room. This one more of a laugh. And then the sound of a vacuum cleaner. I closed my eyes.
The embers of a torch song flickered in the dark recesses of my mind — maybe a Tom Waits song or something by Julie London. This jumbled up my lurid dreams and dark memories. Still in the gutter but looking at the darkness between the stars.
Time crawled by until I eventually opened my eyes. Shards of sunlight sliced through the slats in the blinds, like a kick in the eye from a stiletto heel. Someone tried to open the door to my room but I’d jammed a door against it the night before. A woman shouted something in French. Hammered on the door. With Sisyphean resignation, I struggled out of bed and faced the day.
Pedro was still asleep in the other bed, snoring like a Kalashnikov. We’d had a long drawn out conversation the night before — punctuated by various bottles of wine that Pedro had ordered from room service — the upshot of which was that he’d managed to convince me that he hadn’t sent Marine to ‘entertain’ me. In fact he’d seemed quite offended by the idea. It was when he told me who had phoned him while we were in the Café des Artistes that I realised who the rat in the kitchen was.
The afternoon’s spring shower looked like it was going to become a full-blown thunder storm. The canopy outside the Café des Artistes shook. My hands shook more. Fear and anger combined.
‘I’m sorry, Luke but there was nothing I could do. They had me by the balls,’ said Sean, he was chain-smoking even faster than usual. Glugging his bottle of Westvleteren 12.
‘It was your balls that got you into this, Sean,’ I said. I wrapped my raincoat around me. I’d wanted to go inside but, of course, Sean had needed his cancer sticks. I could have done with one myself, the way I was feeling.
It had turned out that The Congregation had indeed been a honey trap. A massive one at that. They had oodles of photographs and films of rich businessmen shagging The Congregation’s members, which, of course, they then used to blackmail the suckers.
But they knew that Sean had no money. They had another reason for snaring him. They wanted to use him to catch me. Christine, they had gleefully informed him, wasn’t even sixteen and if the authorities found out he’d be going away for a very long time. In his booze and dope addled state the idiot had believed it and when he’d eventually found out that it was a lie, she was in her early twenties, they already had their hooks into him.
A black limousine turned the corner, splashing us as it pulled up in front of where Sean and I sat. A chauffeur with a black umbrella got out and held the door open for a black-clad fat man with thick glasses. Another tall blonde man and a woman got out after him. Marine, of course.
‘It’s been a long time, Johnny Boy,’ said François Sombre. Or Father Black as I’d known him. He sat next to Sean. His entourage took the next table.
Marine leaned over and passed a large brown envelope to Sean. He seemed even more flushed than usual but he still stuffed the envelope into his blazer inside pocket.
‘Meet Chad and Chet. And you’ve met Christine, of course,’ said Black, waving a hand toward the next table. Christine/Marine blew me a kiss.
‘You took your time,’ I said, draining the last of my beer.
‘Oh, well I was a bit busy, Johnny Boy,’ he said. ‘Recruitment takes time. Especially if you want the best.’ He took out a packet of Marlborough. Lit up. Offered one to me. I took a cigarette. Black lit it with his silver Zippo.
‘Good are they?’ I said.
‘Oh aye. Christine there has many more talents than you’ve encountered so far. And Chad there is the King Dong of hackers. Once I had him on your case it didn’t take him long to sniff you out.’
‘So, where do we go from here, then?’ I said.
‘Well, I suggest the first thing we do is get a drink. Chad, go inside and see if you can drag out a waiter. Lazy buggers this lot.’
One of the men stood up and went into the bar. There was a screech and Chad immediately hurtled backwards out of the bar and onto the rain soaked pavement.
‘Shit!’ he yelled.
He lay flat on his back, holding a bloody nose. Groaning.
Cyprien followed him out, a sadistic grin on his hard face. He immediately slammed a fist into Chet’s stomach and threw him on top of his brother. A heavy-heeled boot landed in the American’s back. The screams made me feel nauseous.
Black got to his feet and rushed toward the car. I jumped to my feet and smashed him on the back of his head with my beer bottle. Punched him in the back. H
e collapsed on his knees, gasping. I kicked him in the side. Stamped on one of his hands. He whimpered as he fell forward.
Christine just grinned, walked over, and took a cigarette from the packet that Black had left on the table. Lit up. Offered one to me. I shook my head.
Pedro stepped out of the bar holding a psychedelic golf umbrella in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He nodded to me and knelt beside Black. Whispered in his ear. Black shook his head. Pedro nodded to Cyprien, who knelt down and grabbed one of Black’s ears. Took out a large hunting knife. Black nodded furiously, sobbing. Pedro put the briefcase next to Black and stood up.
‘My friends and I are going to sit here and drink large quantities of strong Belgian beer. And you, all of you, are going to fuck off,’ said Pedro.
He sat down and Cyprien took a seat beside him.
Sean looked at me, like a beaten dog. A pleading expression on his face.
‘Say nothing Sean,’ I said.
He nodded.
I sat next to Pedro as Black and his crew got themselves together and into the limousine. They drove off, splashing Sean, who waved limply and walked toward the city centre.
‘I really appreciate that, Pedro,’ I said ‘I owe you big time.’
He smiled.
‘Well … Now, you can repay the favour.’
‘Of course,’ I said.
There was a flash of lightning. A thunderclap.
‘I want you to go to England with Cyprien.’
‘And do what, exactly?’
Rain poured and a strong gust of wind ripped the canopy apart. As I stood and rushed toward the bar, Pedro grabbed my arm, whispered to me.
‘I want you to help him kill someone.’
And then the big rain enfolded me.
5
One of those days in England
The bookshop was jam-packed and stuffy. The wine and conversation were overflowing in equal measure. Keith Jarrett’s ‘Standards’ played numbly in the background as a veritable cornucopia of crime fiction writers of various levels of success held court in different parts of the room, shuffling nervously behind tables cluttered with copies of their latest pot-boiler. Their faces frozen into rictus grins.
‘Bullets in the Bookshop’ was an annual event. An international meeting of writers and crime fiction groupies organised by Blackstones’ Bookshop in Cambridge, an archetypically quaint English bookshop on an archetypically quaint cobble-stoned English street, not far from King’s College. The non-writers were in the majority, of course. Most of them were spinsterish types of both sexes enthusing over Nordic Noir — whatever that was. Then there were also a few academics slumming it — one particularly dandruff speckled gent with the complexion of a blackcurrant crumble was talking loudly and authoritatively about crime fiction as a social novel and receiving approving nods. And, of course, a few wannabe crime writers were there, too, trying to look mean and moody — all leather jackets, stubble and gently sneering. I even recognised a couple of the faces from the Quais Du Polar crime fiction festival in Lyon that I’d attended in the Spring.
Not that I was a connoisseur of crime fiction. I rarely read fiction at all, in fact. I’d attended the Quais Du Polar in order to meet up with Lena K, the torch singer turned bestselling crime writer who was also my partner in several unlawful activities. And I also had an ulterior and particularly criminal motive for being in Blackstone’s. A meeting with the man who was holding court at that moment.
Julian Stroud stood behind the largest table in the room and clearly thought a lot of himself. He was tall, handsome man in his mid-fifties and painfully well dressed. A pair of half-moon spectacles hung around his neck and he had the look of someone who had just smelt one of his own farts and found it surprisingly rank.
‘Why kill time when you can kill other people,’ said Stroud, the shadow of a smirk creeping and crawling across his too-tanned face. ‘Although, only on paper, of course, eh?’
He winked at a group of sweet-faced, young men who giggled like a bunch of sozzled schoolgirls who’d played truant in order to get drunk on home-brew.
A chubby Goth raised his hand.
‘So, would you say your redundancy liberated you? Giving you the time and freedom to write?’ he said. He flushed as he spoke.
Stroud nodded, reclined in his chair. He looked as if he was drinking every one of his words as he sipped his glass of Marks and Spencer’s wine.
‘Oh, I certainly wouldn’t recommend waiting until one is pushed,’ he said. ‘I would jump, head first if necessary. Domesticity and drudgery dull the pallet until we no longer have a taste for the finer things in life. You could say that it erodes the soul, day by day, until any spark of creativity or imagination has been dampened. I am one of the lucky ones who survived a life of quiet desperation. Most never get out alive.’
His smirk was even more pronounced now.
A drunken egghead asked a question about a crime fiction writer’s moral responsibility but I quickly zoned out during Stroud’s reply and wandered off to find a table with a full bottle of wine. I filled my glass. Knocked it back in one and poured another.
I stifled a yawn and noticed a bottle blonde, wearing a tweed suit and pearls standing next to me. She smirked.
‘Not a fan of the great Julian Stroud’s banal pearls of wisdom, then?’ she said, with a slight Welsh accent.
‘Oh, he’s fine, I suppose. I’m just a little jet lagged, that’s all,’ I lied.
I’d actually arrived in England the day before. I’d flown from my home in Madrid to London and spent a night in Soho getting wrecked in The French House with a woman called Vivien who claimed she used to live in Stanley Kubrick’s caravan. The morning’s train journey had been mercifully short if not so sweet.
‘Are you a writer? Crime fiction aficionado? Obsessive fan? Stalker?’ She said, and looked me up and down. ‘Journalist?’
‘Got it,’ I said. I noticed that her long tweed skirt hid a shapely pair of legs.
I handed her a business card.
‘Luke Case?’ she said. ‘Your name sounds familiar. But I can’t say I’ve heard of The Madrid Review.’
This was no great surprise.
‘What about you? A writer?’ I said.
‘Sheila Hilton,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid I don’t have a business card. Most authors don’t.’
‘Oh, THE Sheila Hilton,’ I said. Although I’d never heard of her.
‘Ha! You are quite a convincing bull-shitter, Mr Case,’ she said. She arched an eyebrow in a Mr Spock style. ‘I don’t write under my real name.’
She picked up a paperback book with a brightly illustrated cover that showed a saxophone, a pink fedora and bottle of gin.
‘This is me,’ she said.
I expected never to have heard of her but was genuinely impressed.
‘Oh, even I’ve heard of Annie Peters and The Jazz Detective books. I’ve even seen the TV show a few times.’
‘Well, the least said about that the better.’ She grimaced. ‘Though it certainly helped pay off the mortgage.’
‘I quite enjoyed it after a beer or two. It’s very popular in Spain, though the dubbing leaves a lot to be desired. I imagine not too many crime fiction writers really make a living out of their books alone.’
‘Apart from the good ones, no,’ she said. ‘Not that I’m bitter!’
She swigged her wine. Nodded toward Julian Stroud who was now reading a passage from his latest bestseller, Dead Eye a thick pot-boiler about an alcoholic policeman capturing a string of serial killers. In Torquay.
‘But the likes of that arsehole, with his books in Tesco of all places, really seem to go from strength to strength. Especially since the advent of eBooks.’
Julian finished his spiel and was soaking up the applause.
He quickly signed a few books, stood up, bowed and walked out of the shop and into the late evening sun, with and entourage of effeminate young Asian men hot on his heels.
My Samsung
Android bleeped. I took it out of my jacket pocket and checked the text message. It was from Cyprien Armand and simply said: I ON2 HIM.
Cyprien was a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion and a full-blown killing machine, apparently, but his ability with the English language, like his sense of humour, left a lot to be desired. Not that I ever told him that, of course.
I replied with a simple ‘OK’ and looked around for Julian Stroud’s agent.
Martin Michaels was a gangling man with receding blond hair and piercing blue eyes. He was dressed in a white linen suit and shirt and wore a watch the size of Big Ben. He appeared to be listening intently to a keen young man with a bushy beard and a sweat-stained lumberjack shirt. But he was regularly sneaking peeks at his watch. I took this as an opportunity to introduce myself.
‘Mr Michaels, I’m Luke Case from The Madrid Review and I wondered if it would be possible to interview Mr Stroud while he’s here in Cambridge?’
Julian Stroud famously lived in self -imposed exile in Vienna. His German wife, the frighteningly named Natascha Haarstick, ran a world-famous art gallery and publishing company there and it was rare to see him in the UK these days.
Michaels looked relieved to see a way out of the painfully dull conversation he was locked in.
‘But of course,’ he said to me, with a cut-glass accent, and beaming a lighthouse grin. ‘The Madrid Review is one of my favourite periodicals.’
He was clearly as good a bull-shitter as me. We shook hands.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to the beardy-weirdy and turned his back on him. ‘Maybe we could discuss this in more civilised surroundings,’ he said.
‘Of course. Where do you suggest?’
‘What about The Eagle? You know, the pub where DNA is said to have been discovered?’
‘Sound good to me. The beer there is supposed to be really good.’
‘Oh, that’s of no interest to me. I rarely drink beer and have a particular loathing for Real Ale. It smells of IBS.’
A Case of Noir (Atlantis) Page 7