Nice Work (If You Can Get It)

by Celia Imrie

  Benjamin followed orders and darted out. He came back in a jiffy.

  ‘Buzzing,’ he said.

  ‘Somebody has to turn up eventually,’ said Theresa. ‘It’s early days. Perhaps people don’t know we’re open yet.’

  ‘You mean they cannot read the huge sign outside the door that says “Now Open”?’ William went to the welcome desk and pulled out a bottle of wine.

  ‘I’m going to have a drink.’

  Benjamin leaped up and wrestled with him for the bottle.

  ‘Come on, William. The licence doesn’t allow us to serve drinks yet, remember?’

  ‘I’m not charging anyone. It’s for my own personal consumption.’

  Behind the screen the front door rattled and opened.

  ‘A customer!’ Theresa jumped to her feet and moved towards the kitchen.

  A long-haired, tanned and tattooed man in scruffy jeans and T-shirt shuffled in.

  ‘Vous avez une table pour une personne?’

  William picked up a menu and led Jean-Philippe to one of the many empty tables.

  30

  ‘How long have you known Stanislav Serafim?’

  ‘About a week,’ said Sally, looking up at the clock and noting she had been here in this room for around four hours.

  The questioning detective was giving nothing away but asked many questions about Stanislav that she had no idea how to answer. When the inspector reached another dead end, he started again from the beginning: How long had she known him? How did they meet?

  Sally realised just before the moment of his arrest that she had never known him. It was Destiny who had made her realise that. She had been caught up in some romantic puff, simply because her days were empty and she had nothing better to do than play along. Destiny and Mickey had lots in common. That was the secret. What did she have in common with Stanislav? Nothing.

  ‘You took him to a celebrity party at Cannes?’ asked the detective. ‘The actress Marina Martel’s party.’

  ‘No,’ said Sally. ‘I bumped into him at Cannes. He happened to be there. I was there because a friend had got me an invitation. I don’t know Marina Martel.’

  ‘The name of that friend who invited you?’

  ‘Jackie Westwood.’

  The detective picked up his pencil and scribbled the name. This was the first thing so far that had interested him.

  ‘But you took a package from Mr Serafim that night and put it in the car of Jean-Philippe Delacourt when you accepted his lift home?’

  ‘No. I had no package.’ Sally realised he was now trying to implicate her in Jean-Philippe’s arrest, though whether or not her sea-school instructor was in league with Stanislav she had no idea. She had met the Russian through Jean-Philippe . . . so perhaps . . . ‘I was badly let down and couldn’t get home. I was expecting to catch the night bus as far as the airport. I didn’t have enough money on me for a taxi and all the cash machines in Cannes seemed to be drained dry. So I was waiting at a bus stop and Mr Delacourt came by and picked me up.’

  ‘A strange coincidence?’ said the detective. ‘A man you know just happens to drive by while you are apparently stranded?’

  ‘It was a lucky coincidence,’ said Sally. ‘But for him not strange at all. The bus route is on the main road through Cannes.’

  ‘He could have taken the autoroute.’

  ‘He had stopped off in town to get a bite to eat. He’d had a long day.’

  ‘You had not arranged to meet up?’

  ‘No. But, as I said, it was good luck. For me, anyway.’

  ‘You introduced Mr Delacourt to Mr Serafim?’

  ‘No. I met Mr Serafim on his boat. Mr Delacourt runs the sea school where I trained. He had been engaged as helmsman.’

  ‘Mr Serafim has no boat. Mr Delacourt says he already told you that. Serafim had hired it for a month.’

  The detective slid forward a photo of Stephane. ‘Do you know this man?’

  ‘That’s Stanislav’s servant. A kind of butler and chauffeur.’

  The inspector looked over to the policeman at the door and grinned.

  ‘And did you ever see this?’

  He plonked down another photograph, this time of the pink and orange stripy beach bag.

  ‘It contained a picnic,’ said Sally. ‘Salads and things, which we ate on the boat during the Cannes fireworks. He got it at a delicatessen in Bellevue-Sur-Mer.’

  The detective chuckled to himself as he scribbled notes.

  ‘You’re sure you had the beach bag with you at Cannes during the fireworks?’

  Sally cast her mind back. She really couldn’t remember seeing it. But surely it must have been there. Perhaps it was stowed away in a locker. ‘I can only truthfully say that he had it when we got off.’

  ‘Was there anyone else on the boat with you that evening?’

  Sally told him no.

  ‘Strange, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said Sally. ‘But I do have the necessary certificate to take the helm.’

  The detective shook his head. ‘The man told you he was a millionaire and you never questioned why the boat was not crawling with staff. That is the usual picture for millionaires on boats.’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve had much experience of millionaires,’ said Sally.

  ‘Who has? Did you pull the boat into any coves or marinas on your way to or from Cannes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you know of this?’

  The detective slammed down an estate-agent’s details of a small mews house in Kensington. Very chic, two storeys, garage downstairs, living accommodation up.

  Sally picked the papers up. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said. ‘Very Swinging Sixties.’ She flipped the pages over. ‘Quite a decent price, too, for somewhere in that area.’

  ‘You have no memory of buying it?’

  Now it was Sally’s turn to laugh.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Last week. True, contracts have not yet been exchanged, but if all goes well, in a few weeks’ time it will be yours.’

  ‘I know nothing about this.’

  The detective opened a folder and showed Sally a legal document. ‘That’s not your signature?’

  Sally looked down at her old signature – her maiden name, her acting name – Sally Doyle. Added to it was a hyphenated second name: Serafim.

  Sally Doyle-Serafim.

  Sally pushed herself back in her chair.

  ‘Please will somebody tell me what’s going on?’

  * * *

  William popped his head into the kitchen. ‘Still only the one diner. He’s enjoying it. A local. He tells me he taught Sally how to drive that boat of hers.’

  ‘That’ll be nice for her,’ said Theresa.

  ‘When she eventually arrives.’ William pursed his lips and put his hands on his hips. ‘Or will it be showdown time with that Russian? This French one is quite a hunk too. I don’t know how she does it.’

  Theresa and Cathy were sitting on stools by the back door. They were ready for orders, but, as there were none, they had decided to take a rest, ready for the fray, should it ever start.

  Behind William the rattle of the restaurant door opening again.

  ‘A second customer. Stand by!’ he cried and twirled back into the dining room.

  ‘It’ll probably be someone asking for the Gare Maritime,’ said Theresa. ‘Let’s not get overexerted before their order comes in.’

  They leaned back against the cool white wall.

  ‘Everything seems very quiet out there,’ said Theresa. ‘You see, Cathy, I was right. They came in, took one look and left. No one wants to eat in an empty restaurant.’

  ‘It’s not entirely empty,’ said Cathy, trying to be helpful.

  ‘Sometimes one solitary diner is worse than having none.’

  They sat back and closed their eyes, waiting. They knew the gen. William would show the guest to their table. Carol or Benjamin would bring them the menu. The guest would take an
age to choose something, then Carol or Benjamin would appear in the kitchen with the order.

  ‘I’m not sure what’s worse,’ said Theresa. ‘Being too busy or too slack. It’s tense work, waiting, don’t you think?’

  Cathy yawned.

  Carol came in holding up the paper order.

  ‘It’s Tom!’ she said, surprised.

  ‘Who’s Tom?’

  ‘Sally’s son. Tom.’

  ‘Oh, Tom!’ said Theresa. ‘I thought he was in Italy.’

  ‘Italy is only a few miles away, Theresa. And there are roads and trains back and forth all day long, you know.’

  ‘Is he with Sally? The table for two?’

  ‘No. He’s got some woman with him. Never seen her before. Huge boobs.’

  Theresa laughed and moved towards the cooker.

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘The boobs?’

  ‘No. Tom and “friend”. Do they want to eat?’

  Carol handed her the order for two sets of starters.

  ‘No mains?’

  ‘Can’t make up their minds. I’m telling you, it’s like a morgue out there, darling,’ Carol said. ‘One man at a single table, eating alone in silence. At least with any luck these two will talk to one another. I told William we needed a music licence. He never listens to a word I say.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Theresa. ‘It’s all so nerve-racking.’

  ‘Let’s go over it once more and talk in detail about your night on the boat at Cannes.’

  Sally told them everything. How they drove the boat to Cannes, took supper, watched the fireworks, Stanislav proposed to her and then they drove back again.

  ‘No one boarded the boat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You two were alone together the whole time?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You enjoyed some cocaine together?’

  ‘Absolutely not. We had a half-bottle of champagne.’

  ‘A half-bottle.’ The detective laughed. ‘Generous!’

  ‘We both knew I had to drive the boat back. I needed to stay sober.’

  ‘Which is why it is usual to bring a crew with you. Then you could have drunk a whole bottle. Stingy bastard for a millionaire.’

  ‘He was always the gentleman to me, and very generous.’

  ‘And yet he expected his date to drive his boat? Some gentleman!’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ said Sally, ‘he is a gentleman. And he can be quite brave too. He helped some people who were stranded at sea. He almost drowned.’

  ‘That same night?’

  Sally nodded.

  ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Coming round Cap d’Antibes.’

  The detective leaned forward.

  ‘Tell me more.’

  Sally wondered if this interrogation about nothing would ever end. If Stanislav was a little eccentric and wanted to be alone with her, why was that a police matter?

  ‘Can you tell me anything?’ she asked. ‘Or is it only me who has to tell you things? I want to know why I am here, what Stanislav has done and how I am implicated.’

  ‘Tell me about the people you and Mr Serafim encountered on your way from Cannes. Can you describe them?’

  Sally thought back to the dark night, the two people floating in a RIB and the view from the boat’s bridge.

  ‘It is like one of those scenes at the start of a Dracula movie,’ said Carol, fetching a bread bowl for Tom’s table, while Theresa wiped down the worktop, preparing for when she next had an order. ‘Dead silence in the tavern. And every time the door opens all eyes turn towards it. What can we do?’

  She pushed the door with her behind, and moved back into the dining room.

  William was standing by the kitchen sink, glugging a glass of water, also escaping from the embarrassing silence next door. He’d even had time to go down and do a few things on the computer in the cellar.

  ‘The money came through,’ he said when he finished his drink. ‘From the Russian hunk. So we’re all but home and dry, even without Zoe’s help.’

  Then Benjamin slipped into the kitchen and whispered earnestly to them all.

  ‘Things get worse,’ he said. ‘While his lady friend was going to the powder room, Tom has just let slip to me that the woman is in fact a critic from some new international glossy mag, here to do a thing about us.’

  William swung round. ‘What!?’ He slumped against the cooker. ‘God give me strength.’ He turned to Theresa. ‘Right. Pull out all the stops.’

  ‘What stops? They’re eating their starters and they haven’t made up their mind about the main course.’

  Both men left the kitchen in a flurry.

  Carol came back in.

  ‘The woman has changed her order about three times,’ she said, passing over another chit of paper. ‘She wants the last one, not the ones I crossed out.’

  ‘She’s testing us,’ said Theresa. ‘To see if we can cope during the high pressure of too many customers.’

  ‘Too many? Any moment I’m expecting balls of tumbleweed to start rolling in. It’s as dead as some old ghost town in the Midwest. No atmosphere whatsoever. Uh-oh! Don’t speak too soon.’ Carol spun around. ‘There goes the door again. With all three of us rushing to open it!’

  Theresa put another pie into the oven and started preparing the vegetables for the plating up, while, at her side, Cathy whipped up a bit of pistou.

  Carol turned.

  ‘Don’t get yourselves into a tizzy. We’ve another two tables for one. Zoe on one and some old man on his own . . . ’

  ‘It’s not Uncle Vito?’

  ‘No, no. English tourist. Short and fat, with one of those old-fashioned moustaches like airmen in the war, you know like Errol Flynn. William’s put him on one of the centre tables back to back with Big Boobs.’

  Theresa laughed. ‘And then there were five. Go fetch the orders, gal.’

  * * *

  ‘You still haven’t told me about the house in London,’ said Sally. ‘What has that got to do with cocaine? Why did he need me? What part was I in all this? I swear I didn’t buy it. Look at my bank account.’

  ‘Madame Connor, we already have. Let’s just say there will be many disappointed people tomorrow. Did he promise you money for anything – a project, some work you were proposing?’

  ‘No. But he did to all my friends. And I really mean all of them.’

  The detective leaned back and said the name Jackie Westwood.

  Sally winced at the thought. She had been working so hard at getting her TV show on.

  ‘Why did you ignore her warning, Madame Connor? She did try to warn you this morning, no? Don’t you listen to your friends?’

  Sally cast her mind back and realised that Jackie had warned her this morning, but at the time she had seemed so disturbed.

  ‘I thought she was mad. But how had she known? She can’t have seen Stanislav for several days.’

  ‘She saw him this morning, Madame Connor. And as a result was not mad but scared,’ said the detective. ‘It seems she had taken a visiting card she found in your house and gone by taxi up to the villa he was occupying in the hills near Vence. She was going to thank him and ask if he could up the budget so that she could work on another, separate project. One which she wished to keep secret from you. She found the door open and wandered inside. She caught him unawares while he was testing his cocaine. The very cocaine he had picked up with you last night from the people in the RIB, which you believed was broken down. The cocaine that he stored in the pink beach bag. He tried to hold her, but she got away. She is trained as a military woman, no?’

  Sally’s mind raced as she tried to put it all together.

  ‘So you have arrested Stanislav for dealing drugs?’ Sally asked.

  ‘From the drugs he earns a cut – what they call in Russia “the vigorish”.’ The detective leaned forward. ‘But Mr Serafim is responsible for much more than that,’ he said. ‘He targeted this week to be here especial
ly. Like those jewel thieves a few years ago. We have officers now going around Cannes and Nice, breaking the news to the many people involved in the innumerable projects he put money into. A few thousand here and another few there. It’s a classic method.’

  ‘You mean all his generosity was actually money laundering?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But the house in London?’

  ‘By marrying you he could settle there as your husband, and start up business. You wouldn’t even have known about it, as you live here full time. But he could claim anywhere he bought in England was a marital home. And he could sell, perhaps make a profit, and suddenly a huge amount of money would have been effectively “legalised”.’

  Sally felt punctured. So all of his romancing had been a filthy game in order that he could take advantage of her nationality to set up in England to launder his drug money.

  ‘I thought he really liked me,’ she said. ‘I’m such a fool.’

  ‘Not the only one. Many people have been taken in this week and let him run money through their work accounts. But any money that was paid by him is now being withdrawn by us, as it was illegally gained.’

  ‘So all my friends, who I introduced to him, have been duped too?’

  The detective nodded.

  ‘They have nothing?’

  ‘You got it.’

  Sally imagined Jackie and Diana finding out that they had been taken for a ride, and felt crushed.

  William came into the kitchen, went over to Cathy and flung himself on to his knees before her.

  ‘Please, Cathy, phone your mother. Please beg her to come,’ he said. ‘We are a laughing stock.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Theresa, as she dropped pieces of battered fish into hot oil and watched them sizzle.

  ‘We now have paparazzi by the door. They are screwing on their lenses waiting to catch this so-called celebrity restaurant opening, starring the famed Diana Sparks. And what do we have? A local sea instructor, a fat little tourist, Zoe and the son of one of our neighbours with some elderly floozie.’

  ‘Elderly?’ asked Theresa. ‘All Carol said was large knockers.’

  ‘She’s in her fifties. Old enough to be Tom’s mother.’ William raised his eyebrows and clambered to his feet. ‘Talking of which, where is Tom’s mother?’