by Mark Morris
Well, yes, I probably would, if that turned out to be the only way. But what would it take to convince me that that was the case? In all honesty I couldn’t believe that a chat with this friend of Benny’s would be enough at this early stage to knock me off the straight and narrow, certainly not when there were other potential avenues to explore, other possible solutions (even though I couldn’t see what they might be yet) to ponder.
Which rather begged the question: why was I here at all?
Up close I realised that Incognito’s dented, chipped door was only grey because it was plated with steel. And it wasn’t just dented; it looked as though a mob had gone at it with pickaxes, hammers and baseball bats. I gave a deep sigh, raised my hand, and after hesitating for a few seconds longer, finally knocked. It was dark and cold by this time, and the alleyway smelled of garbage. An oily streak that must have been a cat slipped through the shadows beside an overturned bin. Rusty light bleeding in from the street lamps beyond the alley’s entrance glinted on broken glass outside an abandoned barber’s shop whose windows were patched with sagging sheets of brown paper.
There was a grind and a clank that reminded me of my old cell door opening at slopping-out time, and then a black line appeared between door and frame.
‘Help you?’ The voice was female but smoke-roughened. It came from a face that was hardly more than a pale glimmer cratered with shadows.
‘I’m here to see Monroe,’ I said.
‘We’re not open till eight.’
‘I’m not a punter. I’ve got an appointment. I’m a friend of Benny Magee’s.’
The face hovered a moment, the eyes black pits. ‘Hang on.’ Then the door slammed in my face.
I waited so long I thought I’d been rejected on sight. I was contemplating thumbing the ‘Menu’ button on my mobile to call Benny and tell him it was a no go when the door opened again.
‘Come in,’ said the same voice as before, the woman who had spoken shuffling backwards as she hauled the door open.
I stepped into a widening wedge of light. As soon as I was inside, the door banged shut behind me. The woman peering at me suspiciously was around fifty. She was fat and red-cheeked, her black hair scraped into a tight bun. Her heavy eye make-up and dark lipstick made her face look like it had been painted on a balloon by a little kid. Her evening gown was a glittery black tent, and rings and bracelets clinked and jangled on her pudgy hands and wrists.
‘Follow me,’ she said, and swept off down the corridor, massive buttocks swaying under her black dress. The effect should have been comical, but she gave off the vibe of someone you really didn’t want to mess with. I followed her along a corridor covered floor to ceiling in red leather panels, like a padded cell or a kinky sex dungeon. At the end of the corridor was another door, this one black. The woman opened it and bustled through, making no attempt to hold it for me. I caught it as it began to swing shut and followed her out on to a balconied walkway.
We were overlooking a high-ceilinged room with a bar running the full length of the left-hand wall. A square stage in the middle of the room was surrounded on three sides by rows of empty seats. From up here the stage looked to be made of semi-transparent Perspex, and was lit from below, so that it glowed like ice. Three poles extended from the ceiling, as if pinning the stage into place. A red-haired girl in a leotard was entwined around one of the poles, going through what were presumably some of her moves for later with a bored look on her face. Apart from the glowing stage, the lighting in the room was subdued – which no doubt hid a multitude of sins.
Without a word the woman led me down a set of steps to the floor below. At the bottom she half-turned and pointed at the bar.
‘Wait there. Order yourself a drink if you like. On the house.’
‘Thanks.’
She clumped away, heading for the shadows on the opposite side of the stage.
Behind the bar a handsome man with blond highlights was polishing glasses.
‘What’s your poison?’ he asked.
I looked at the rows of optics behind him. They were illuminated by orange down-lighters, which made the bottled spirits glow like elixirs. I was tempted, but decided not to add fuel to the red-wine headache now starting to throb behind my eyes. ‘Just some still water, thanks,’ I said.
He looked at me like I’d leaped on to his bar and taken a dump on its polished surface.
‘Ice and lemon?’
I bared my teeth in a grin. ‘Please.’
While he poured water from a bright blue bottle, I climbed on to a bar stool shaped like a giant golf tee and watched the girl on the stage. She was skinny, long-limbed, with a pale, doll-like face. I was hoping to catch her eye and exchange a smile, not because I fancied her, but because I felt the need for some friendly human interaction. But she was in her own world, plugged into her iPod, eyes half-closed. After a while her sinuous movements began to have a mesmeric effect.
‘You like her? Her name’s Lotus.’
The voice came from behind me. It was soft and huskily warm, but its unexpectedness made me jump. As I turned, glass in hand, water slopped on to the floor. The woman who had spoken raised her eyebrows in amusement.
‘Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.’
I could tell by her face she was being playful rather than mean. ‘You sure about that?’ I asked with a smile.
She laughed, showing straight white teeth.
‘Well… maybe a bit. It’s just you looked so absorbed.’
I couldn’t think of a response that wouldn’t make me sound like I was trying to deny being a dirty old man. In the end I asked, ‘Is Lotus her real name?’
‘Yes and no,’ the woman said. ‘Her name’s Zuzanka. But Zuzanka means Lotus in Latvian.’
I didn’t know whether she was pulling my leg. ‘Is that so? And what’s your name?’
‘Clover,’ she replied, offering me a hand so stiff she looked like she was about to karate chop wood.
I shook the hand. It was cool and dainty, but her grip was surprisingly strong.
‘I’m guessing you work here too?’ I said.
‘You could say that.’
I glanced towards Lotus, who was still coiling around her pole. ‘You don’t regard it as work?’
She gave that same amused smile, dimples appearing in her cheeks. She was around twenty-seven, twenty-eight, with a large, upturned mouth and widely spaced eyes either side of a snub nose. Her hair was thick and glossy and might have been dyed a deep maroon colour – it was hard to tell in the dim light. She was strikingly beautiful, though not in a conventional way.
Leaning closer she murmured, ‘Before you dig yourself a hole you can’t climb out of, perhaps I ought to come clean. I’m Clover Monroe. I own this place. I’m the person you’ve come to see.’
I felt surprised and a bit irritated, but tried to cover it by lifting my head and barking a laugh.
‘Admit it,’ she said. ‘You were expecting a man.’
The look on her face, half-teasing, half-apologetic, made my anger evaporate. Raising my hands, I admitted, ‘Guilty as charged.’
‘Shall we start again?’
‘I think we’d better.’
‘Hi, I’m Clover Monroe. I’m the owner and manager of this establishment.’
Once again she offered her hand, but this time in an ironic way. I shook it with exaggerated formality. ‘Alex Locke,’ I replied. ‘Lovely place you’ve got here.’
‘It’s a dump,’ she said. ‘But it’s mine and it’s a living.’
‘So you’re a friend of Benny’s?’
She smiled. ‘You sound surprised.’
‘Well I am, a bit.’
‘Because I’m not some suited thug with the demeanour of a great white shark?’
I laughed, but I was wary. I wondered how much of our conversation might get reported back to Benny.
‘You said that, not me.’
She grinned as if she was pleased with my answer, and nodded at my glass.
‘Let’s talk in my office. Sure you don’t want anything stronger?’
‘Cup of tea would go down a treat.’
She gave that hearty laugh of hers again. ‘I like your style, Mr Locke.’ She turned and called to the barman, ‘Robin, ask Mary to bring us some tea, would you?’
‘Sure thing,’ Robin said.
‘Shall we?’ Clover gestured towards a door marked ‘Private’, which was set into the back wall behind the staircase.
I nodded and we walked across. Clover unlocked the door and led the way into a corridor narrower and shabbier than the one upstairs. ‘So how do you know Benny?’ I asked as we walked.
‘Family ties,’ she said, in a way that suggested she was unwilling to elaborate.
We reached a wooden door, which, with its brass doorknob and eye-level panel of opaque, bevelled glass, looked like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. I half-expected to step into a gas-lit office with wood-panelled walls, but the room beyond the door was more mundane. A grey filing cabinet was tucked into an alcove next to a desk on which stood a computer, a printer, a mug of pens and a pile of paperwork. Clover turned on the light and I glanced around, looking for personal stuff – anything that might give me an insight into her background and personality. But there were no family pictures, no framed certificates, no trophies or knick-knacks. In fact, apart from a cork board pinned with flyers for takeaways and cab firms, everything in here was work-related. Either Clover was unsentimental or she protected her privacy carefully.
‘Pull up a pew,’ she said, nodding towards one of two wooden chairs against the wall. As I grabbed a chair, she moved around the desk and sat down. When we were settled she laced the fingers of her hands together and leaned forward, exposing a bit of cleavage. I tried to keep my eyes on hers as she said, ‘How much did Benny tell you?’
‘Not a lot. He told me you had a job you wanted doing, and that you were looking for someone reliable.’
‘Did he say anything about the nature of the job?’
‘No, but knowing Benny…’
She arched an eyebrow. ‘Knowing Benny?’
I forced myself to take my time, consider my words. ‘Look, I don’t want to offend anyone…’
‘…but given Benny’s history you assume that what I need doing is illegal?’
‘Well… yeah. It did occur to me that it might be a bit dodgy.’
Before she could reply there was a knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ she called.
The smoke-roughened answer was a growl of irritation. ‘I would, but my hands are full.’
Clover gave me a gleeful look, as if this was some practical joke we were colluding in. ‘Alex, would you mind?’
‘Sure.’ I crossed the room and pulled the door open. The woman who’d let me in entered with a tea tray, looking flustered and grumpy.
‘As if I haven’t got enough to do,’ she muttered. ‘We open in forty minutes, you know.’
‘Yes, but Mary, you’re so magnificent I just know you’ll have everything running like clockwork by then,’ Clover said.
It sounded like she was taking the piss, but I’m sure I saw Mary flush with pleasure as she dumped the tray on the desk. All the same she said, ‘Don’t think you can wind me round your little finger with your bloody sweet talk, madam.’
‘I wouldn’t dare,’ Clover said, trying not to smile.
When Mary had gone Clover’s half-smile turned into a grin. ‘What a darling. I love her to bits.’
‘Does she pole-dance too?’
Clover treated me to another of her full-throated laughs. ‘Only on special occasions. Biscuit?’
I took a chocolate digestive from the plate, and waited as she poured the tea. ‘So about this job…?’
Clover took a sip of tea, the steam wreathing her face, then settled back in her chair. ‘There’s a story involved.’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘Just over a year ago, I was bequeathed some money, which I used to set myself up in business here. But before that I was working as a girl Friday for a… well, I suppose you’d call him an eccentric millionaire. His name was – is – Barnaby McCallum, and he’s… ancient. In his nineties at least. He’s a virtual recluse. He lives in a big Victorian house in Kensington, and he does nothing all day but sit in a wheelchair and stare out of the window. He’s still got his marbles, but he hardly says anything, hardly moves. He employs a housekeeper who cleans and cooks for him, an odd-job man who maintains the property as best he can, and a girl Friday, who deals with all his correspondence – finances, ongoing business concerns, the charities he patronises, that kind of thing.
‘Despite his age and lack of mobility, McCallum still has his fingers in a lot of pies – at least nominally. Apparently in his younger days he had an almost supernatural ability to identify fledgling companies which would later go on to become mega-bucks corporations. He made a stack of money buying shares in around thirty of these companies. But the weird thing is he didn’t show this aptitude for business until well into middle age. Before that he… well, to be honest, he’s got a bit of a dubious past.’
‘Dubious how?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘Maybe “dubious” is the wrong word. Maybe “secretive” is more accurate. Like I say, he’s at least in his nineties, which means he must have been born around the end of the First World War. But there’s no documentation for his early life – and I should know; I had access to pretty much all his existing records, apart from his will, when I was there. The earliest document that refers to him… well, it isn’t really a document at all. It’s a poster.’
‘A poster?’
‘It’s on the wall of his… I suppose you’d call it the drawing room. It’s a framed poster from the late forties – 1948, I think. It’s for a performance at the Hippodrome Theatre by the world-famous magician, The Great Barnaby. I asked Mr McCallum about it once, and he confirmed that it was him. He wouldn’t tell me any more though. He’s a nice enough old man, but he clams up whenever you try to probe into his personal life. Ask him a question he doesn’t like and he feigns deafness – just stares right through you. So, having failed to get it from the horse’s mouth, I tried to find out more from other sources, but I didn’t get very far. He’s got no family – none I could find anyway – and even googling “The Great Barnaby” drew a virtual blank. There’s a one-line Wikipedia entry, which says that he was one of the world’s leading magicians for ten years or so after the war, but that he faded into obscurity and his true identity remains a mystery. Plus there are a few mentions of him on other magic sites, but nothing that gives any clues to his past.’
‘Maybe he’s foreign,’ I said. ‘Could be he was originally from Germany, or from one of Germany’s wartime allies. You’d understand him wanting to keep that quiet.’
‘Yeah, I thought that too,’ Clover said. ‘But… I dunno. I could understand him wanting to keep it quiet at the time. But now?’ She shrugged.
Trying to steer her back to the point, I said, ‘This is all very interesting, but you still haven’t told me what the job is.’
Clover gave me a calculating look. ‘McCallum has… an artefact in his possession. It’s a human heart about the size of a goose egg, carved out of obsidian. He keeps it in a glass case in his drawing room, the same room where the poster is. I was recently approached by a consortium of Japanese businessmen, who claim that McCallum acquired the artefact illegally from their country years ago, and that they’ve been trying to track it down ever since, in order to restore it to its rightful owner.’
I could see where this was leading. ‘Don’t tell me – and this consortium approached you because they found out you’d worked for McCallum and thought you might be able to get the artefact back for them? Or at least give them information which would help them get it back?’
She nodded. ‘Apparently a representative of the consortium had already approached McCallum directly and made him an offer for the artefact.’
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��Which he’d refused?’
She gave a secretive smile, as if she’d won a bet with herself. ‘Benny said you were perceptive.’
I shrugged off the compliment. ‘Well, let’s see just how perceptive I can be. I’m guessing either this consortium thought you had the influence to lean on McCallum and persuade him to come round to their way of thinking, for which they’d pay you a commission, or that you had information about – what? – the house’s security system? Something that would make the artefact easier to nick.’
‘Right on the second count,’ she said. ‘The consortium’s representative told me they had offered McCallum a quarter of a million for the artefact, but that he’d told them where to go. They then tried threatening him with legal action, but he just laughed at them. So what they wanted from me were details of the artefact’s location within the house, and the security measures in place to protect it.’
‘But you strung them along, didn’t you?’
She looked surprised. ‘How did you know?’
‘That’s why you got Benny in on this. You wanted him to find someone who could nick the artefact for you, so that you could sell it to the consortium and make a load more money than you would if you were just acting as advisor.’