“Shit, look at this!” she says, passing up the five-star welcome. “What the hell do you want?”
“I’m in a mess and I need your help. Can I come in, please?”
She’s more astonished than ever but she’s impressed by the “please.” This really must be serious, she’s thinking. He’s being well-behaved enough to stifle himself and he’s spoken two sentences without calling me some slaggish nickname.
Opening the door wider she says severely: “Don’t step on the cat and don’t be snotty about the décor.”
I follow her through the hall to the eat-in kitchen at the back of the house. The basement flat’s at ground level here, just like Tommy’s, and the windows look out on Norah’s garden where a tiny lawn is framed by shrubs. A tree screens the garden from the house behind on the parallel street, and a white wrought-iron spiral staircase, much more arty than the wooden steps at Elizabeth’s house, curls from the patio to the balcony outside Norah’s kitchen above us.
In Susanne’s kitchen I see herby-looking things in pots, dirty dishes in the sink and Alexis the cat sitting unhygienically on the table. I offer my index finger to see if the mog’s mean enough to try a bite, but my flesh only rates a disdainful sniff.
“You watch it,” says Susanne to the cat. “You don’t know where he’s been.” To me she adds: “Suppose you want coffee.”
I spot some over-boiled dregs in a glass jug. “No, thanks. Just your help.”
“I don’t like you being so nice,” she says, slitty-eyed with suspicion. “What’s the story?”
Psyching myself up I sit down with her at the kitchen table. The cat gets removed to Susanne’s lap where it purrs and tries to head-butt her breasts. It’s a wonder it doesn’t knock itself out.
“So?” says Susanne impatiently.
“Had a disaster last night. Colin arrives and goes mental. The jealous perv suspected me of hetero-bonking and hired some PIs who uncovered my dates with Serena.”
“And?”
“I made a balls-up of the self-defence and got knocked out. Didn’t tell Elizabeth—it was bad enough having to tell her that Colin had ditched me. Then late last night my beaten-up brain remembers the whole scene’s on tape.” I pause for air.
“And?” says Susanne again without expression.
“I shoot off to Austin Friars but Tommy’s already retrieved the tapes. He’s now gone to Amsterdam for the weekend and I’ve got to get into his flat to substitute blanks—but of course I need the hall door keys from the safe, and I was hoping we could do a deal about the combination.”
Susanne sighs before crooning to the cat: “What do you think, loveliness? What do you think of that funny little story Mr. Blake’s been spinning us? Isn’t it just the cutest little story you ever heard?” Then she dumps the cat on the floor, leans forward with her elbows on the table and snarls: “Wise up, Junk-Hunk! Tell me the truth or get lost! What’s on that tape which makes you shit bricks at the thought of Elizabeth seeing it?”
Dry-mouthed with fright I realise I have to come a little cleaner.
“The whole disaster dates back to last weekend,” I say, prepared to edge closer to the truth but still editing carefully as I go along. “I was so bored that I flirted with Elizabeth’s bête noire.”
“Bate what?”
“Elizabeth’s enemy, the girl who’s currently running the St. Benet’s fundraising campaign.”
“Oh, her. Cartwheel-something.” Naturally Elizabeth’s been moaning to her right-hand woman about Colin’s house party.
“Carta Graham. I was just so pissed off with everything that I couldn’t resist a little flutter to cheer myself up. I mean, it was nothing serious, just a few hot looks—”
“Pass me the sickbag! Okay, you were nutso enough to give the Cartwheel a whirl. Then what?”
“Colin intercepts one of my hot looks and later dumps the PIs on my trail. When he finds out I’ve conned him sex-wise he figures I’ve got the con-power to be part of a wider scam involving Asherton and GOLD.”
“Bad news. Okay, I can see why he wants to beat you up, but—”
“Colin was my last appointment yesterday, right? Well, Carta was dead keen to know if he was planning to donate to her Appeal so I told her to come to Austin Friars at six-forty—”
“Oh yeah, I get it. The Cartwheel gets on tape when you take her up to the bedroom for a—”
“Wrong. I mean, right—she gets on tape, but shagging isn’t on the menu, I feel like shit and have to be horizontal. Carta brings me a cup of tea and summons the St. Benet’s doctor who also gets taped—”
“Okay, this is beginning to hang together, but it’s still not right. Come on, pinhead! Do you really expect me to believe that Moneybags decked you?”
“Well, he . . . well, I . . . Okay, this is the way it was. He charges at me to beat me up. I want to avoid a fight because I don’t want to be videoed winning it—much better if he’s just shown as the aggressor. So I get off camera and try to bolt but then I lose my footing and fall down the stairs, knocking myself out—here, you can feel the bump on my head if you don’t believe me!”
“Okay, I’m convinced—I still don’t believe you’ve told me the whole truth, mind, but I believe enough to accept you have a big problem with those tapes. Now tell me why I should help you and risk getting into deep shit.”
I slide my tongue around my dry lips. “I’ll pay.”
“What kind of price are we talking about?”
“Name it.”
There’s a silence which lasts seven seconds. I’m counting. Then she says: “I don’t want cash. I want drinks at the Ritz and dinner at the Savoy. Tonight.”
“Done. What’s the combination of the safe?”
“Hold it! If you seriously think I’m going to hand over the safe combination and sit back while you go merrily on your way, you’ve made a very big mistake!”
I nerve myself for the next round of negotiations.
Susanne gnaws her thumbnail before saying: “Elizabeth keeps a record of the safe combination in her en-suite bathroom, behind the porno-pic over the toilet. If she ever finds out about all this, you’re to tell her you found the number by accident when you took down the pic for a closer look. She’s never to know I’ve grassed.”
“Fair enough.”
There’s a pause, probably because we’re both thinking of Elizabeth’s bathroom pictures, but finally I ask: “What exactly’s in that safe?”
“No need to get excited—all the top-secret stuff’s in a locked steel box, and no, I don’t have the key to it. If Elizabeth’s ever arrested my instructions are to chuck the box in the river and take my final bonus. There’s five hundred quid in an envelope which is also kept in the safe along with various papers, some jewellery and the keys to the basement stairs.”
“I can’t understand why she keeps those keys in the safe! What’s wrong with the kitchen hookboard?”
“She keeps them in the safe for the same reason that she has two fancy locks on the basement stairs door even though Tommy’s a locksmith and could pick them. She wants to make sure that if any burglar gets into the main part of the house it’ll be more trouble than it’s worth for him to get into the basement. Why do you think Tommy’s flat’s like a fortress? It’s because of the hard-core porn he produces for Asherton when the S&M group’s filmed.”
I suspected Tommy did this. When he was training me in his flat I was never left on my own to explore, but I knew one room was set aside for his film-work even before he started dealing with the tapes from Austin Friars.
“Tommy’s put in a new alarm system since you were trained,” Susanne’s saying, “but Elizabeth made him put the control panel on the wall just by the stairs. That way she just punches in the switch-off code when she makes an unscheduled visit to the flat and punches in the switch-on code when she leaves.”
“You know the codes?”
“There’s a note of them in the safe along with the keys, and Tommy’s forbidden
to change any number without telling her. Weird, isn’t it? Like some nutty version of the dominatrix game . . . Hey, are you going to change your mind about coffee? Because I’m going to throw out those dregs and make myself something drinkable.”
I decide this offer’s worth accepting, and when she produces some expensive individual filters I feel we’re approaching a state which could be described as an entente cordiale.
“So you see the problems, don’t you?” she says after we’ve finished mulling over the pervy relationship between Tommy and Elizabeth. “Retrieving those tapes is so tricky that I’ve got to be on hand to stop you making a balls-up. Have you ever opened a safe?”
I have to admit this is still on my list of things to do.
“You might make a muddle opening it. Or you might open it and make a mess inside so that Elizabeth would know she’d been raided. Or you might make a mess of the alarm system—oh, there’s no end to the messes a pinhead like you could make, specially if you’re in a dozy state after banging your head! You need supervision.”
I don’t argue. In fact deep down I’m pleased to have help after so much time spent battling away on my own. I say: “I’d appreciate the back-up. Thanks,” and at that point she orders me to book the table at the Savoy.
We move into the living-room, which has a long sofa sprinkled with cushions and cat hairs. On the self-assembly shelving beyond the jumbo TV stand a herd of china pigs, a couple of candles which stink and a load of Mills and Boon paperbacks.
“If you make some snotty comment about anything in this room I’ll hit you,” she says as I check out the titles.
“I think it’s great you read books,” I say seriously. “Most people don’t.” The entente shudders but survives.
I’m handed a phone directory, and when I make the call I’m told that the Savoy’s currently holding dinner-dances in the main restaurant on Saturday nights. “You want dancing?” I ask Susanne, my hand over the mouthpiece. “It’ll only be wrinkly stuff. Not like going clubbing.”
“What do you think I am—some poor cow of a teenager who only wants to get pissed, stoned and shagged out of her skull? I’m twenty-bloody-six, for God’s sake! I’ve got aspirations !”
I remove my hand from the mouthpiece and book a table for two in the River Room.
Once we’ve got the evening sorted, we plan our assault on Tommy’s flat.
As the result of breakfasting with Elizabeth I know her plans for the day: she’s shopping in Oxford Street before meeting Norah for a matinée. Nigel’s plans I also know, since they’re the same every week: after buffing up the Austin Friars flat, he shunts off to the pub for lunch with the weekend regulars. So the house is going to be empty when we begin our raid at one.
Eventually we prepare to leave her flat. She pulls on a black leather coat over her lime-green spangled blouse and black stretch-pants, and exchanges her fluffy pink slippers for a pair of high-heeled boots. By this time she’s caked herself in make-up, flounced up her hair and shovelled on the cheapo jewellery. Suddenly I realise that the make-up and the tacky trimmings are her equivalent of my Armani suits: something to hide behind, something to generate courage, something to boost a morale which always seems to need pumping up. But I notice that unlike me Susanne never glances at her reflection when we pass the mirror in the hall. She’s confident now the armour’s in place. In her world, the world where she has the freedom to be herself, she’s more secure than I am.
When we get to Lambeth I park in the nearest side street and go ahead to make sure everyone really is out. Once Susanne joins me the raid begins.
We retrieve the number from the back of the porno-pic in Elizabeth’s bathroom and return downstairs to the living-room where the safe lives behind an oil painting of a virginal girl who’s clasping a bunch of lilies.
Susanne says idly as I remove the picture from the wall: “I had a pervy punter once who could only get it up if I drenched myself in lilies-of-the-valley perfume. Turned out he was a convicted rapist.”
“Nasty.” I watch as she opens the safe. As soon as the door swings open I see the locked steel box, but the next moment Susanne’s grabbed the little Jiffy bag containing the keys, and the door swings shut.
Having unlocked and unbolted the door to the basement, I allow Susanne to go ahead of me to fix the alarms. She punches in the codes. The infra-red eye fades. We’ve penetrated the fortress.
As I move forward I shudder at the memory of my training sessions. Suddenly I say: “I hate Tommy.”
“Yeah, he’s filth.” Her voice is as matter-of-fact as it was when she was talking of the disgusting punter, and her face is as expressionless as it was when we were surrounded by the bathroom porno-pics. This is the way things are, she’s thinking. You don’t throw a fit and waste vital energy. You grit your teeth and accept what you can’t change, but this isn’t condoning the filth. It’s surviving it.
The three tapes, one for each camera, are easy to spot as soon as we enter Tommy’s workroom. They’re bound together with a rubber band on one of the counters, and beneath the band is a card bearing yesterday’s date. Elizabeth rents space in a warehouse for the tape archives, so only the current videos get stored in the basement flat.
Setting the used tapes aside I slip the rubber band around the three blanks and tuck in the card. I’ve just put them back on the counter when I notice another stack of tapes at the far end and I move over to take a closer look. These tapes are also bound together with a rubber band, but this time the card reads TUCKER.
“What’s the matter?” demands Susanne as I freeze.
“These are the spliced versions of my sessions with Gil Tucker. Look—Tommy’s written ‘edited’ and dated each one—”
“Careful! Don’t mess them around or Tommy’ll know they’ve been handled!”
I straighten the rubber band but find it hard to tear myself away. “Wish I could nick them. This bloke just shouldn’t be mixed up in this kind of crap.”
“Yeah? Personally I think punters deserve all the crap that’s going— and if you nick those tapes you risk winding up as dog-food for Bonzo’s Great Dane.”
I’m diverted. “You’ve heard about that dog?”
“Elizabeth was talking about it the other day and saying it would be unreliable now Bonzo’s dead. She said Alsatians are better at sex tricks than Great Danes anyway.”
Leaving Susanne to reset the alarm I return to Elizabeth’s living-room and check my tapes out on the video. The scene with Colin comes up from three different angles. We’re in business.
I take Susanne home, thank her profusely for her help and promise to pick her up at six-thirty. Out of Pimlico I drive and over the river, but on the far side I park the car by the entrance to Lambeth Palace and walk to the middle of the bridge. Here I chuck into the river the three tapes recording my Friday night activities with Colin, Carta and Val.
I’m safe.
Awash with relief I head home to recharge my batteries for the megaglam evening ahead.
We’re both worried in case Norah or one of the girls sees us together, so we’ve worked out a plan: I’ll drive down the quiet Pimlico backwater and toot twice on the horn as I pass Norah’s house. Susanne will count to fifty, leave the flat and teeter round the corner into the next street where I’ll be waiting.
The plan unfolds without a hitch. Susanne’s wrapped in a big black cloak and I daren’t guess what’s underneath it. Her thick black hair is swept up and skewered with diamanté clasps and her long legs are encased in shiny tights and her large feet are stuffed into high-heeled silver shoes which have a strap across the instep to ensure they stay on while she’s dancing. She’s also wearing false eyelashes and false fingernails in addition to the shovelled-on make-up. I sympathise with her desire to wear morale-boosting armour, but how can I walk into the Ritz with such a trashy piece? God, I sound like my mother, constantly worrying about what people will think. Hey Mum, look at my new girlfriend! Instant stroke.
Opposi
te the Ritz’s Palm Court, there’s a place where we leave our coats, and as soon as Susanne removes her cloak my jaw sags. She’s wearing a hot-pink dress with a short skirt, and her deep, deep cleavage is guaranteed to stop dead any heterosexual male from nine to ninety within a radius of fifty yards. The bowling-ball breasts are like marble sculpted by Michelangelo or some other gay artist with enormous talent but only an approximate idea of what women look like. It’s pseud but it’s great pseud. Extraordinary.
We close in on the Palm Court. Two waiters converge to offer us a choice table by the gold statue. All the male punters at the other tables are ogling Susanne and all their female friends are ogling me. We’re a maximum-impact couple. Everyone thinks we’re sensational.
“What do you want to drink?” I drawl in a suitably languid voice as if we do this kind of stuff every night. Automatically I use an upmarket accent.
“Champagne!” rasps Ms. Essex-Girl, heavy on the estuarine twang. “And loads of it!”
I want to say to the waiter: “Bring us a bottle of Krug,” but that’s the kind of conspicuous consumption that’s crude and would mean a discussion of vintages plus a wait while the bottle’s being chilled. So I just say with restraint: “Could we please have a bottle of your house champagne?” and before Susanne can demand something with a poncey label I murmur to her: “The Ritz champagne’s very famous.” That shuts her up.
As we swill the fizzy stuff, I think of the times I was brought here by sad rich elderly women during my career as an escort. Meanwhile Susanne’s gazing and gazing and gazing, beady black eyes taking everything in. There’s something touching about this wide-eyed childish absorption. She loves this place, loves it. She’s like a priestess worshipping at a shrine.
Finally she says: “It’s like Hello! magazine come to life.”
I somehow doubt that the Ritz’s PR team would welcome this comment. But on the other hand, perhaps they might. We all have to move with the times.
The Heartbreaker Page 39