“This is where we get back to Asherton and last weekend’s dinner-party fiasco. Remember I told you that the danger from Darrow wasn’t actually pressing because there was no hard evidence against GOLD?”
“So what’s changed?”
“Well, there’s still no hard evidence. But what now worries me is that this scene at Austin Friars today could get both Darrow and the police involved.”
“But you just said—”
“I said Sir Colin wouldn’t complain to the police about you, and I’m sure I’ve got that right. But I think he could complain to them about Asherton, and Darrow would back him up. All that outrage Sir Colin feels about Asherton and me and you and the conspiracy—it’s all got to be dumped somewhere, and he’ll see Asherton as the only dumping ground.”
“But if there’s no hard evidence—”
“You’re missing the point, dear. The point is that when a wealthy, powerful man like Sir Colin Broune makes an allegation, the police can’t just sit on their derrières and do nothing, and what we don’t need, absolutely don’t need, is the police breathing down Asherton’s neck in the run-up to the romp with Gilbert Tucker. If the romp gets rumbled and GOLD goes up in smoke—”
“—Gil’s evidence of how he came to be there would link us both to the disaster.” I try to think coherently. “Do you think the vice squad already have their eye on Asherton?”
“Must do, but the question is what, if anything, they can see. Ash is just one of a load of porn operators, and the Act is so flabby and useless the police can’t do much about them—unless, of course, the Vice get lucky and turn up stuff that’s totally unacceptable.”
“I’d have thought Asherton was swimming in stuff that’s totally unacceptable.”
“Well, up till now I reckon he’s been all right on GOLD. The secrecy’s been well maintained and the goings-on haven’t been too iffy. But that SM group is in a different league altogether. The Vice must have heard rumours.”
“I thought no one ever talked!”
“No one directly grasses him up, but word gets around on the street and the police snouts are paid to pick up rumours. Asherton’s been safe so far because in practice members of SM groups are allowed to do anything short of killing one another, but the trouble is times seem to be changing.”
I remember a report which recently caught my eye in The Times. Elizabeth heard the news from Asherton who, she said, was “ever so shocked.” “You’re referring to that S&M group which was arrested en masse the other day.”
“Exactly. All adults, all consenting and all nicked! Now put that new persecution policy from the Vice together with a possible complaint from Sir Colin, and you’ll see where I’m going.”
“The police will hit Asherton where he’s vulnerable.”
“Yes, they’ll try to infiltrate the SM group, and once they do that they could pick up information about GOLD, since there’s a crossover between the two groups—”
“—and that puts us in the frame!”
“Wait a mo, pet, it gets worse. If we’re now seeing the result of the police’s decision to get tough on SM groups, that decision must have been taken some time ago. So supposing the police have already infiltrated Asherton’s SM group and crossed over into GOLD? If a cop from the Vice is in the audience when the Tucker romp takes off—”
“—it’s coronary time. But Elizabeth, this is all supposition, isn’t it? Do you really think—”
“I’m thinking that the best way to survive serious trouble is always to prepare for the worst. For instance, supposing we eventually do find ourselves being questioned by the police. We say that as far as you and I knew, Gilbert was just another client. We say that Tommy showed the videos to Asherton and Asherton decided to close in on Gilbert without consulting us. We say that not only were neither of us present at the romp but we knew absolutely nothing about it.”
“Okay, but—”
“That should buy us some time. Then of course we skip to Rio before the police can take GOLD apart and Darrow crashes around trying to identify GOLD as the society Kim Betz belonged to—and as soon as Darrow hears about the mysterious ‘Madame Elizabeth—’ ”
“But could either Darrow or Carta actually identify you now you’ve had the surgery?”
“They might not be able to make a positive identification from a photo, but if they saw me in the flesh . . . Well, I won’t be hanging around for a police line-up, but let me tell you, pet, a forced emigration is the last thing I want, and that’s why I’m so bloody livid with Asherton for putting everything at risk.”
This last speech underlines to me that I have to wipe the fantasy of saving Gil by giving the police an anonymous tip-off about the romp. Of course I’d love to be on a plane to Rio with Elizabeth, but Elizabeth would hate it—she has to be the one who picks the time to retire and the place to retire to, and if she’s on the run, furious and bitter, she might start to suspect I blew the whistle. Or even if she doesn’t, she might decide to dump me out of sheer rage that I wasn’t finally able to keep Colin sweet and harmless, forever showering us with money while finding physical bliss with me and spiritual bliss through her beloved GOLD.
Meanwhile Elizabeth’s still slamming Asherton. “. . . and I just don’t understand why he should be so obsessed with Gilbert Tucker! All right, I know there’s all that idealism begging to be smashed, but the man’s not young, he’s not a stunner and he’s no satyr in the sack. I mean, I ask you! What’s the point?”
Gut-twisting concern for Gil drives me into wanting to know more details of the romp in the hope that there’s a weak spot I could exploit. Reminding myself that Elizabeth has no idea I eavesdropped when Asherton first revealed his revolting plan, I say idly: “I suppose there’s no chance Gil will fail to turn up?”
“None. You’re forgetting the two of them already know each other after meeting at Bonzo’s AIDS hospice. Ash will simply invite Gilbert over for a drink and say you’re going to be there as well.”
My heart sinks. I know she’s right and this is an invitation Gil wouldn’t refuse. “Okay, so what happens after the drink? I suppose he gets shown the video—is Tommy going to offer a composite of the best session?”
“No, no, he’ll do a composite of the composites to make sure the video’s really mouthwatering.”
“And then?”
“That idiot Asherton’s determined to stage a black mass as a warm-up, but that’s not the problem. Gilbert’ll do that once he’s seen the video. But after that he’s not going to be willing to do anything, and once they use him in the SM games we’re talking assault, GBH, the works. Asherton’s mad, absolutely certifiable, to involve a non-consenting adult who isn’t a waif and stray, but no one’s going to stop him, are they? He’ll get his way, just as he always does.”
In despair I say frivolously: “Maybe he’ll fall under a bus.”
“How can he when he rides around all the time in that show-off Rolls-Royce?” Elizabeth heaves a sigh. “I keep hoping someone’ll murder him,” she says, “but no one ever does. Typical, isn’t it? Nice, law-abiding people get murdered every day, but a really awkward gentleman like Asherton bounces along without a scratch.”
I can think of several ways to describe Asherton but “awkward gentleman” isn’t one of them. Elizabeth’s talent for euphemisms has reached a new high.
I want to ask her what they plan to do with Gil after the romp’s over, but I just don’t have the stomach to frame the question.
“You’d better run off and have your dinner, pet,” Elizabeth’s saying, “but I’ll see you first thing tomorrow for our Saturday fun.” And she gives me a steamy kiss to signal that I’m forgiven for the disaster of losing Mr. Moneybags.
I stagger upstairs.
Nigel serves up veal marsala and hovers around as if he’s afraid I’ll bin it, but I clean my plate and although I hesitate outside the bathroom later I move on into my room. I can’t afford to make a habit of passing out in front of clients and I
certainly want to keep myself fit for Elizabeth. I’ll pick up some iron pills to take care of the anaemia—if I have it—and stop acting weird over food. It’s no big deal.
I’ve just hit the sack after taking paracetamol for the dull ache in my head when I have such a shock that I nearly levitate. I’m still agonising about Gil, and suddenly a fragment of my conversation with Elizabeth this evening reruns itself in that beat-up junk heap between my ears. It’s the bit about the Tucker videos—generated, of course, by the hidden cameras—and now I’m finally remembering that although I switched on the cameras when Colin and I entered the bedroom, I never switched them off.
I leap out of bed and stand shuddering in the dark as I think of the cameras recording Carta bringing me tea and Val doing her doctor number.
I try to work out what to do. The big question is whether Tommy’s already picked up the tapes. On any other weekday night he would have done, but Friday is when he often goes out drinking with his mates and the routine checking of the Austin Friars technology gets left until Saturday or Sunday. With any luck those videotapes will still be sitting in their machines, and all I’ll have to do is replace them with blanks. Tommy won’t query them. He knows a non-recording day does sometimes happen.
I’m recovering from the shock. The only difficulty now is that because Val insisted I took a taxi home my car’s still in the City. Inconvenient. But not a problem.
I dress and slip silently out of the house.
Another disaster. My luck’s gone walkabout. I manage to pick up a cab but when I get to the flat I find Tommy’s already collected the tapes. I know this without even having to examine the machines because we have a system to signal that everything’s ready for my next working day: he leaves a playing card face up on top of the cabinet where the blank videos are stored.
As soon as I enter the second bedroom I see the upturned ace of diamonds and spew out some bad language. Then I try to think some problem-solving thoughts.
If Tommy’s made the effort to come here on a Friday night, it probably means he’s got something special lined up for the weekend and he could well be going away. Tommy’s a football fan who treks all over the place to see his team’s beautiful male bodies bounding around. So what I now have to do is take three blank tapes from the stock in the cabinet and swap them sometime over the weekend during his absence for the three tapes he’s collected. If anything goes wrong—if, for instance, he noticed tonight that the tapes had been used but finds them blank when he comes to view them on Monday—I’ll admit to the swap but explain it by saying Colin got the better of me in a fight and I didn’t want Elizabeth to know. But the odds are Tommy wouldn’t have examined the tapes closely when he picked them up. He’d have popped them straight into a bag while daydreaming of his weekend footy-fest.
As I leave the flat I wonder whether to pick up my car, but I decide that would be risky. Elizabeth might have noticed this evening after we parted that my car wasn’t sitting on its slot. If she then sees tomorrow morning that it’s there she’ll want to know when and why I retrieved it. I can explain its absence by saying it had to be workshopped, but I can’t say it drove itself home.
The City’s a graveyard at this hour, no cabs, but on Ludgate Hill I get a night-bus to Westminster, and from there it’s not so far to walk over the river to Lambeth.
Arriving home exhausted I sleep as soon as my head thumps painfully against the pillows.
The next morning I’m up well before my early shag with Elizabeth because I need to find out Tommy’s plans for the weekend and I reckon that if he really is going away he’ll be aiming for an early departure. Jogging down the wooden steps which lead from Elizabeth’s raised ground floor to the back garden at basement level, I take a look into Tommy’s flat and see him ambling around the kitchen like a shaven-headed gorilla.
He sees me and opens his patio door. “What are you up to, Sunshine?”
“Filling in the time before I shag Elizabeth. You’re up early, aren’t you?”
“Off to Amsterdam for the weekend.”
“Football?”
“Among other things.” He leers at me. “Know what I mean?”
“I think I can just about get the gist. Enjoy yourself!” I say politely before wandering away to inspect a flowerbed.
I idle away another couple of minutes in the garden to convince him I’m just marking time and have no interest whatever in where he spends the weekend. Then I return indoors to make tea for Elizabeth.
The next stage of the retrieval operation ought to be simple but it won’t be. In an ideal world I’d wait for Tommy to leave and then slip down to his flat via the basement stairs inside the house, but the door which opens onto those basement stairs in Elizabeth’s hall is always kept locked and I don’t know where the keys are. Yet I’ve got no other way to access Tommy’s flat. Tommy has all the keys for the basement’s front door and for the patio door at the back, while the windows which face the street are not only locked but tarted up with steel shutters which get used when he’s away. Everything’s wired to the hilt, and above the front door’s a smart little burglar alarm box which is supposed to make would-be thieves burst into tears and move on.
Elizabeth approves of this external security glitz, but Locksmith Tommy’s expertise makes her all the more determined to win the internal battle of the basement stairs. After all, Elizabeth’s the house-owner and she needs to call the shots with this slimeball tenant—she doesn’t want him trotting upstairs for a snoop when she’s out. So she keeps her door to the stairs locked and bolted and she keeps the kitchen door which leads to the wooden steps and the garden locked and bolted too. Of course Tommy could pick the locks and she’d be none the wiser, but if he cuts or busts the bolts she’d know and then she’d borrow a couple of Asherton’s Big Boys to sort him out. Knowing this, Tommy leaves both doors well alone.
So my problem’s this: how do I get hold of the keys to the basement stairs? (There are two locks.) The first thing I have to do, obviously, is find out where the hell the keys are. Elizabeth keeps a spare set of her house keys and car keys on a hookboard in her kitchen, and the key to the kitchen door hangs there as well, but there’s no ring holding the keys to that vital hall door. If Elizabeth’s the only one who knows where they are I’m in trouble, but my guess is she’ll have told Nigel. It’s the kind of detail a housekeeper should know in case of an emergency.
When I return to my duplex after the shag with Elizabeth I find Nigel reading the Sun and eating cereal. I plonk myself down opposite him. “Where does Elizabeth keep the keys to the basement stairs?”
“In the safe,” he says, crunching away on his Frosties, and then does a double take. “Why?”
“Crisis. You know I told you last night I’d been ditched by Mr. Moneybags? Well, it was worse than I let on. There was a punch-up and he knocked me out.”
“Gav! Why didn’t you say?”
“Too proud to admit the truth even to you, mate, but listen, it gets worse: I forget about the cameras recording the whole scene, Tommy’s now got the videos and unless I retrieve them this weekend when he’s in Amsterdam I’m flapjacked. What’s the combination of the safe?”
Nigel stares at me in concern. “Dunno. That’s not the kind of information Elizabeth trusts me with.”
I stare back, even more concerned than he is. “Nige, are you saying Elizabeth’s the only one who can get at those keys?”
“No, I’m just saying I don’t know the safe combination. But Susanne does.”
My heart sinks to the soles of my feet as I realise my fate’s now in the false-nailed talons of a Barbie-doll lookalike with bowling-ball breasts. “Shit!” I’m close to panic.
“What are you going to do?” says Nigel, empathising so hard with me that he sounds as agonised as I do.
“Well, there’s no choice, is there, mate?” I say, resigning myself to the inevitable. “I’ve got to talk to Susanne.”
Over to the City I trek again to rescue my car.
Then I drive to Norah’s house in Pimlico where Susanne roosts in the basement flat. On the way I remember that although Serena has a business date for this evening, we’ve agreed to meet in the afternoon, an agreement I now decide to cancel. Can’t face Serena at the moment. Can’t cope with all that pretending.
Parking down the street from Norah’s house I put through the necessary call to Serena and emerge from the car. The next bit’s tricky. I don’t want anyone from Norah’s ménage to see me as I zip down to Susanne’s flat, but I suppose that if anyone pulls up a window and yells: “Hiya!” I can always say I’m delivering something for Elizabeth.
I pad past the black railings, angle through the little gate and trot down the steps. No window gets heaved up. No one yells “Hiya!” or “Yo!” or even “Yoo-hoo!” Luck’s finally starting to run my way and not a moment too soon because I’ll need all the luck I can get once I’m face to face with Susanne.
I press the doorbell.
I’m still not sure what to say, and my indecision’s because I’ve never found the knack of lying successfully to her. She sees straight through me with those feral black eyes of hers. Unlike Norah’s current crop of well-educated girls, Susanne’s worked the streets. Nothing I say or do could ever shock her, because as far as prostitution’s concerned she’s been there, done that and got the T-shirt—or in other words, she’s been beaten up, banged up and buggered up and she’s had the nervous breakdown to prove it. But she’s survived, and now she has this flat all to herself and a regular pay cheque which has nothing to do with renting out her private parts. She’s escaped from the system, but I’m still trapped in it, and suddenly I know why I can’t stand the sight of her. It’s because she’s got a life and I haven’t. She’s got the freedom to be herself, while I—
The door opens. She’s there, staring at me in astonishment. Her long black hair, which she usually wears scrunched up and tartily draped, is loose, curtaining her pointy face and making her look like a wannabe witch. She hasn’t coated herself with make-up yet so she looks pale and spotty. Odd to see her without false eyelashes, but otherwise her eyes are all too familiar: pitch-black, sullen, hostile.
The Heartbreaker Page 38