You Can't Make Old Friends

by Tom Trott

  ‘I had with me my dad’s bat and ball, so we decided on a game of cricket. There was five or six of us on each side so it took a while to play. Especially during those summers, when an hour was a day, and a day was a year. A crowd of other children started to gather and watch from the railings of the seafront above us.’

  He leant forward, remembering the excitement of the game like it was the Ashes, ‘Batting second, they needed ten to beat us, just down to Bobby and the other biggest boy. Any wicket would win it for us, but we only had ten balls left. I was bowler. I was always bowler. It probably wasn’t really the last ball, but that’s the way it was always told, and that’s the way I remember it now. Bobby was in when I bowled a brilliant leg-spin and caught our makeshift stumps. We had won.’

  He finished his glass. I bought him another.

  ‘Now I’m not saying that my dad was a saint. But he ran a mostly honest business. He did have a trick of loading two boxes full of identical tomatoes and labelling one as “special tomatoes”. Which were obviously twice the price. Halfway through the day, when the special tomatoes had all but gone, it was my job to refill the box with the rest of the “normal” ones.

  ‘I think it must have been the humiliation of being defeated in front of all those other children. But that week Bobby started selling from his dad’s barrow, right outside our shop. He lived in Hanover, but wheeled it all that way, as a child, just for revenge. Whatever my dad was selling, he sold cheaper. With no rent to pay, no overheads, he could keep it up as long as he needed to. He was there every day. School started and he stayed. I was evacuated down to Cornwall. Still he stayed. When I came back my dad was out of business. He had kept that from me too.

  ‘I never saw Bobby again, but I heard plenty through the grapevine. First the black market, then housebreaking, racketeering. And when the drugs trade appeared in proper I wasn’t surprised to hear he was the first in Brighton to get involved.

  ‘I was lucky, working at Chrome Productions until my lung collapsed. Then into the Jewellery trade. I’d be happy if Andy would just hurry up and give me some grandchildren to spoil.

  ‘My dad ended up at the coal merchants at the end of Riley Road. He never really recovered. Never got to see us have Andy. He was only fifty-eight when he died.’

  I could hear down the phone that Andy was now tucked up in bed. His partner, Darren, was mumbling something. It was time for me to get off the phone but I had to ask one more thing.

  ‘Did you tell her about Max?’

  ‘Your mysterious supervillain? I don’t want her to think I believe you.’

  He laughed, but it wasn’t genuine. There was a pause.

  ‘She asked about you though.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘The truth.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You’re the best.’

  I smiled, ‘Goodnight, Andy’ and hung up.

  He really was the best kind of person. Sometimes I wished I could be like that. But I wasn’t made that way.

  I pried apart the venetian blinds and looked out into the empty Lanes. It had started raining and a sea-mist was creeping into the corridors, creating impenetrable pitch-black, slicked cobbled death-traps. Shutters covered the emptied jewellers’ windows. Storm Joseph was fast approaching. I didn’t want to have to go back out there. I could just sleep in my office.

  I decided that now was a good time to take stock of what I had, if I really was going to do something about this mess. Rory was obviously pushing starz for Coward’s men. Something had happened and they had murdered him. No great mystery there. They tried to disguise his identity. And they would have succeeded if it wasn’t for me. Did that mean there was something linking Rory to Coward? Something we were bound to find if we looked hard enough?

  Where is it!? That was what the big man had screamed at Thalia. Where was what? The package of starz? It was certainly hidden. But there was nothing unusually valuable in that. Unless Rory had done something particularly stupid. Which was a distinct possibility.

  I didn’t know. What I did know was that the court summons was sitting on my desk. It needed doing something about. I couldn’t help Rory, but I could help myself.

  Investigate ABC Construction.

  ABC Construction, Rory’s building. A strange coincidence. Maybe that’s all it was. I needed more information, a proper brief. I punched my desk in frustration, launched up, and threw the summons in the bin. I wouldn’t be needing it.

  7

  Damn Powerful Women

  i took a swig of the brandy that I kept in my desk for chilly nights. Then I headed down my stairs, stepping over Lenny, who was already asleep, and stepped outside into the cold. Buffeted by the weather, I made it round the corner to my lock-up, and had to fight against the wind to open the shutter door. But soon I was inside my helmet, a million miles from the cold and the damp, and my Honda was purring between my legs, ready to go to work.

  When I had done my due diligence on Todman Concrete I had been told that M. Todman, scion of the company’s founder, and now owner of the business, was a member of the Chandler Club. This was a snotty-nosed gentlemen's club in the poshest part of Hove. And I mean gentlemen, women are strictly not allowed.

  It was around midnight, but it was still worth a shot. These rich business types often seemed to go entirely without sleep, working twenty-four-seven. The reason was an insatiable drive to make money, they would say. But there’s a real reason for it. It’s called cocaine.

  I zoomed through the town, listening to my Honda roar through the twenty-miles-an-hour zone. Flicking the finger at the council. And soon I was across the border into Hove.

  How can I describe Hove? Well, imagine a beautiful woman. Gorgeous. Cultured. Everybody loves her. And she’s fun too, a bit too much fun sometimes, if you know what I mean. Well, if you can imagine her, then Hove is her perpetually disapproving younger sister. The sort of woman who when mistaken for her sister, “You’re Nancy, aren’t you?” would reply, “Deborah, actually.” And it’s that “actually” that sums up Hove.

  There’s little history to find in the place either, despite the village dating back into the same recesses of time that Brighthelmstone was founded in. This is because of both the blessing and the curse of being so close to Brighton. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the population was recorded as one-hundred-and-one. One-hundred-and-one people, that’s all. More people work in your office. Fifty years later it was over four-thousand. And now one-hundred-and-one people live in each of the three, four, or five story town houses that dot First, Second, Third, and Fourth Avenues, between the shops and restaurants, that is. And the rich people now live on Tongdean Road, which is so suburban it’ll hurt your eyes to look at it.

  All this is due to Hove’s only notable quality being that it is nearby, populating it with a strange mix of those who can’t afford to live in Brighton, next to those who can afford not to live in Brighton. I don’t understand that either, but go to Hove and you’ll realise it’s true. And let’s not forget that, thanks to the railway line, a lot of these were Londoners buying second homes. A crime that continues to this day.

  So, history be damned, the old “manor house”, such that it was, was demolished, and now a block of flats sits where it was. The whole town became a regency extension, a west wing of Brighton, bodged-up over a few decades.

  These days the marriage is official, it’s Brighton & Hove. But in my heart, in everyone’s hearts, it’s still Brighton and Hove. The houses and the squares I was bombing past looked lovely, no doubt, but they were built just as stables to keep rich people in. And now they’re stables for rich people to keep poor people in.

  All that said, and despite all my cynicism, I’d still trade everything I have for one day in regency Brighton. Even regency Hove. Hell, even regency Shoreham.

  I headed along Church Road until it becomes New Church Road, where Hove slowly transitions into its quieter fringes. Five minutes later, I was parked
up in the shadow of the imposing stone building. It almost looked as if it was carved out of a single piece of heavy granite, protruding up from the very bowels of the earth. This was of course an illusion, everything is chalk down here, so some ancient civilisation must have erected it at some point. Heaven knows what the building was originally, although knowing how old the club was, it could easily have been built for it.

  To the public the outside bore no sign to inform you of what was inside. That was the way they wanted it, of course. If you didn’t know it was there then you had no business finding out.

  There was absolutely no one on the pavement now, the wind was getting too strong, and if people had hatches to batten down, they were doing it. But I was working, lucky me.

  I have never felt scruffier than when I walked inside those doors. The way the guy on the reception desk’s eyes bulged when he saw me I might have been a marauding crackhead about to chow-down on his limbs. He was wearing a tuxedo with tails for Christ’s sake, and he just worked here.

  He had a head that fondly remembered wisps of grey hair, in fact he was grey all over, he could have been manning the desk since the club was founded. Without lunch breaks, from the look of him. At the top of his thin frame was an enormous flat nose, which gave him an unfair advantage when looking down it at people like me. Coupled with an almost imperceptibly long face, he looked like a knackered old horse that had been kicked every day of its life.

  When his surprisingly active blue eyes fixed firmly on me, without blinking, I lied, and told him that I was invited. He looked as though he sincerely doubted that fact. But after I said it again, louder this time, he scurried off to find the Concrete Prince. Either that or he was using it as a pretence to get help. He could be phoning the police right now.

  I used the time to take a look at the lobby. It was at least two stories high, with marble columns. Coats of arms and ancient looking lances and pikes decked the walls. There was plush, blood-red carpet covering the far half, leading into the club, and a brass borderline separating it from the bare stone floor I was standing on. This threshold was not to be crossed by the likes of me. This place was a traditional, historic, cigar-smoking, button-back leather institution for elitism, misogyny, and conservative values. Even the smell of the place was thick with privilege.

  The man reappeared more swiftly than I thought he would, and braver than I expected.

  ‘Who did you say invited you?’ he commanded me to answer.

  Not again. ‘Mr Todman!’ I pretty much shouted.

  ‘There’s no Mr Todman, sir.’

  Was this guy an idiot? ‘Todman Concrete.’

  ‘I see.’

  He frowned at my clothes and gave me a look that suggested he knew something I didn’t, like I was a child with chocolate on my face pretending I hadn’t eaten any cake.

  ‘I will tell Miss Todman that you are here.’ He dropped that bomb and marched off.

  Miss Todman? But the Chandler Club was men-only, I was sure of it. Did they allow female guests? Maybe. But I was told Todman was a member.

  A couple more minutes later, the man reappeared and I was lead not over the threshold, but to a side room. The sign above it said “Non-members”. At the Chandler Club there are no guests, no visitors, just non-members. He left me alone and I sank into a heavy brown leather chair. The room appeared to be built entirely of dark wood, as though we were inside a hollowed out walnut tree. They had clearly made the decision that all the furniture and furnishings could range anywhere between black and brown, but nowhere outside that short spectrum. One entire wall was covered in bookshelves, packed with those military textbooks, encyclopedias, and editions of Hansard that look nice but that no one ever actually wants to read. There appeared to be a small, fold out bar hidden in the middle of them. I felt like helping myself, not because I particularly wanted a drink, but because they wouldn’t want me to. But the thought struck me that whoever this Concrete Countess was, she was suing me. I should probably do at least the minimum possible to get on her good side.

  Opposite my chair was an empty partner. Clearly this room was for sitting down with non-members, getting them pliant, and then telling them to leave quietly.

  You had to stare at something for a few moments before your eyes could really see it. The dulcet light came from an array of lamps and wall fittings, every one behind a shade so that each seemed to throw the dim glow of a single candle in different directions, giving the room the soft, seductive quality of a love nest. Or maybe that was just my imagination.

  Eventually the door opened, being held by the horse-faced man. I heard that sexy clacking of heels, god I love that sound, and my unremarkable eyes, which have never asked for much, experienced the best image they have ever been treated to. Appearing through the half-light, first a pair of oil-black heels, painfully high, then legs that looked like they would reach above my head.

  In strutted a siren, a beautiful older woman. I say older, she must have been about fifty, so well within my range, if you know what I mean. She was stunning, filling out an elegant black dress that didn’t reveal anything, but suggested everything. Too much everything.

  She floated down into the other chair, she was even classier than the surroundings, and without deigning to introduce herself, smile, or even make eye contact, addressed me.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’

  Her voice was like pouring honey down my throat. And there was an accent there, something enchantingly subtle that I couldn’t place.

  ‘A Negroni,’ I said to the man. It was clear that my answer was to be made to the staff, not her.

  He nodded, and turned his head towards her, ready for her order.

  ‘A brandy Old Fashioned with brown sugar,’ she said, and he seemed to glide backwards out of the room.

  A brandy Old Fashioned with brown sugar? That sounded nice. I would have to try one of them sometime.

  Silence returned to the room. I studied the woman opposite. I felt like I had been given a private showing of a Botticelli. Except Botticelli painted blondes. He didn’t know what he was missing. She had olive-coloured skin. Long, straight, oil-black hair. And full, round, blood-red lips.

  We were alone. Me and this woman. I wanted to take a bite out of her, she looked delicious. I guess she could afford to.

  ‘This is cosy,’ I said to break the silence.

  ‘They won’t let you in the club dressed like that.’

  I smirked, but she didn’t return it. She still wasn’t looking at me, clearly I wasn’t interesting enough for her.

  ‘I thought this place was men only.’

  ‘It is,’ was all she offered in the way of an explanation.

  Finally, she looked at me, and I wished she hadn’t. She had enormous, emerald green eyes nestled beneath smoky lids and thick lashes. The effect finished her face off perfectly like a great piece of jewellery. I was going again. Powerful women. Damn powerful women.

  ‘So M. Todman of Todman Concrete is…?

  ‘Monica.’

  I nodded to myself, busy recalibrating everything I had expected and planned for this meeting, whilst trying to fight against the haze she was creating.

  The man returned with our drinks and delivered them to our side tables without a word. He left again, never turning his back on her. She was business royalty after all.

  She took a mouthful. Her glass was dripping with condensation. It wasn’t the only one.

  ‘Tell me, Monica, why does someone spend more money suing someone than they could ever bleed them for?’

  ‘Because a reputation is worth more.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘And…’ she gave a little playful smirk, ‘to give them a kick up the arse.’

  The smirk was like catnip. On top of everything, she was playful. A playful, powerful woman. I needed to hold it together. Another part of my brain was telling me I needed to get laid. I really needed to get laid. Shut up, brain. Not right now. Another time.

  ‘I
hired you, Joseph, for your legendary services. But you did a poor job.’

  ‘No one calls me Joseph,’ I said calmly.

  ‘No one calls me Monica.’

  Could she tell I was attracted to her? Of course she could, I was practically on fire. I took a sip of my drink to try and relax me. It was a good Negroni.

  ‘Another detective once told me, if you don’t like the answers you’re getting, you’re asking the wrong questions. “Investigate ABC Construction” isn’t much of a brief.’

  She leant forward to give a snappy response, but then leant back again, as though she thought better of it. She tapped her heels on the floor for a few beats, and then took a gulp of her drink. A drop of condensation dripped onto her neck and ran all the way down out of sight. Lucky sod.

  I waited for her, taking a sip of my drink to pass the time. Eventually she put the Old Fashioned down and leant forward again, her hands together, ready to talk shop.

  ‘The new flats they’re building down in the Marina are the biggest development in the city for decades. ABC is building the first phase in what will be eight-hundred units. They came to us for the concrete contract. You can’t imagine what that is worth. Then, a few months ago, suddenly ABC makes a big show of ripping up all our work and bringing in French contractors. French concrete.’ She said that last part like it was the worst insult possible.

  I knew all this already. ‘I told you what they told me: they just weren’t happy with your work. They needed a higher grade mix.’

  ‘So they say,’ she retorted.

  ‘So they say, what more do you want?’

  ‘I want you to do some detecting!’ Her playfulness had gone now. She was every inch the ruthless businessperson I had heard about. ‘I started in this business when I was fourteen, Mr Grabarz, mixing the concrete with my father. Back when my father was the business. I know concrete. We don’t meet the requirements, we exceed them.’