by David Carter
That was odd. Either he was still hard at it, or asleep, or he was somewhere else, something he did occasionally, though not often, and even if he had, he would have taken his mobile, unless he was ill. Aris couldn’t think of any other explanation for the door not being opened. He turned away and hurried back down the hill to collect the spare house key hanging beside the till. He cursed himself for not bringing it before. The walk down to the bar was easy, downhill all the way, little effort, but the trip back was hellish. The sun was rising in the sky and he had to stop three times to catch his breath. Each time he paused, he saw visions of impending doom.
He felt dreadful when he arrived at the house, breathless, sweating, tight, anxious and angry. He placed the key in the lock and turned. It was stiff, and it squeaked as if rarely used, but it opened the lock. He flung the door open and hurried into the living room where all his visions proved correct. Nicoliades lay before him in a pool of dried blood, and he looked so uncomfortable in the way he lay. The blood had formed a tiny rivulet and had meandered across the floor towards the kitchen, where the tiles were uneven. He ran to Nicoliades and felt for a pulse. The body was cold and stiff and lifeless. There hadn’t been a pulse within for some time.
‘Oh, my God, Nicoliades, who has done this?’
Outside in the heat, a family walked past the front door chattering, reminding Aris the door was wide open. He raced back to the entrance and pushed it closed, and took out his phone and rang the police.
Christos Sharistes answered straight away. He was still at home; he had calls re-routed when he was off duty. He hadn’t shaved; he hadn’t properly woken up, and was still eating his breakfast, while studying the sports pages of the Athens’ newspapers that had arrived on the early ferry.
‘Christos, it’s Aris,’ came the voice into his hairy ear. ‘I’m at Nicoliades’ house. You must come straight away! Something terrible has happened!’
‘Can’t it wait?’ moped Christos. ‘What’s the matter this time, one of his women taken an overdose?’
It was a typically stupid Christos comment that Aris ignored.
‘It can’t bloody wait!’ screamed Aris. ‘Nicoliades is dead! He’s been murdered!’
Christos choked on his fruit.
‘Stay there! Don’t let anyone in, don’t panic, don’t speak to anyone, I’m on my way, don’t do anything!’
A murder! A real life murder on Carsos, saints preserve us! It would be a day that would live long in the memory, in many memories. Christos stood up, blew out hard, shrugged his shoulders, and tried to get moving.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
VIMY SAUNTERED TO AND fro across the approach to the Shell Building. It was becoming colder as he slapped his gloved hands together. He was trying and failing not to look as if he’d been stood up. A group of kids in bell-bottomed jeans ran past him shouting Cockney Rebel’s latest hit record, before they headed down toward the river.
He glanced at the main entrance, as staff spewed from the grey stone doorway, before hurrying away with all the expectancy of a Friday night. He’d ignore the men but look into the women’s faces. Laura didn’t appear. After twenty minutes he began to wonder if she’d show at all. The number of staff leaving the building had dwindled from a flood to a trickle.
He was not to know she had been watching him for ten minutes from her window high in the sky. She would make him wait a little longer for he had kept her waiting long enough. She turned away from the shaded glass and spoke on the phone to her male counterpart in New York, before bidding him a good weekend. She ambled to the Ladies, refreshed her sparse make-up, splashed a little Givenchy, a Christmas present from father, said a quick goodnight to the skeleton staff who’d work through the night, and headed for the lift.
Vimy noticed the pretty young woman as soon as she came through the revolving door. His first reaction was to think, nice looking but not Laura. But on second take he realised it was her; better dressed than before, and she’d changed her hair into a big fashionable perm.
He wasn’t certain he liked it, but she was there, and that was all that mattered. Thoughts of being stood up in a strange city, alone to mope the night away, were too fresh in his mind. She was wearing a black suit; the skirt maxi, tight fitting, the hem sitting neatly above her ankles. He watched her walk confidently down the steps towards him, smiling through those amazing eyes, big blonde hair bouncing on her shoulders.
‘Sorry I’m late.’
‘Flap still on?’
She smiled but didn’t answer, and he didn’t press it.
‘Where would you like to go?’ he asked, ‘I’ve kind of half booked a table at the hotel.’
‘Good God no,’ she said, ‘I hate expensive hotel restaurants selling dull food. I’m not wasting money on that.’
‘I thought I might pay.’
She took his arm and glanced into his face.
‘Well of course you’re paying; Mr Ridge, but I so dislike hotel food. I know a little place that sells a good dinner for a reasonable tag.’
My kind of girl, he thought, no shortage of money but still watching the pennies. Secretly he hoped she might suggest somewhere different because his knowledge of London eateries wasn’t terrific. They cut back to the bridge and walked across the Thames, before making their way past Charing Cross station, and minutes later they turned down a narrow side street. Halfway along on the right side she tugged him down ten stone steps towards a basement restaurant. If he hadn’t been with her, he’d have missed it.
It was called Game On, a small cosy restaurant specialising in game meats. Laura was known there judging by the Latino waiter who greeted her by her Christian name and a wide smile. His bright teeth flashed in the half-light, as they were shown to a small circular table in the far corner of the room. Vimy guessed it was a premium table, a corporate table, and she’d booked it all along.
The place was half full but rapidly filling, the hubbub of reserved conversation regularly interrupted by screamed introductions of late arrivals. Vimy and Laura settled in, and she smiled across at him and checked him out. He was exactly as she’d remembered, broad and handsome in a Romany kind of way, unlike any man she’d met before, and unlike any man she’d ever remotely been attracted to. So why was she? Something of a mystery, not that she’d let her interest show, or at least she hoped not. Yet there was something there, that indefinable thing she hadn’t yet fathomed, and that was the sole reason she was sitting in front of him. He excited her.
‘Do you come here often?’ he asked.
She laughed at his corny opening line.
‘Not often, sometimes.’
‘Aperitif?’
‘Yes. Campari.’
Vimy ordered two Campari and the best bottle of French red he could find on the confusing wine-list. It was Friday yet oddly no fish to be seen. He took the venison, and she the jugged hare. Twenty minutes later the meals arrived, casseroled with carrots and onions and old-fashioned creamed mashed potatoes. It was simple fare yet tasty, peasant style, but somewhere deep within his genes, she imagined that suited him to a tee.
He was itching to tell her of the unbelievable offer Merignac had made him, and was keen to discover if she had heard of the Merignac Corporation. Maybe he was seeking her approval, but he would tell her at the right moment and not before. They made small talk as new daters invariably do, about people they worked with, their parents and families and close friends, cars and holidays and houses, their likes and dislikes, the kind of tripe that people talk about in the first hour of a first date, as if silence is a failure, as if it’s the right protocol to get all that stuff out of the way, before moving on to more intimate things. Playing one’s cards in the correct order, and yet they seemed to her to be forever playing the low numbers. It was pleasant, but it wasn’t exciting, and it was time, she imagined, to inject some devil into the night. What else were dinner dates for?
Vimy thought things were going well. She smiled at the right moments and laughed at
his silly jokes, and he reminded himself of the need not to rush her. He probably wouldn’t kiss her later. Treat them mean; keep them keen. Old thinking maybe, but was it still relevant in the modern and liberated seventies?
She finished her meal, the Camparis were long gone, and the wine bottle was more empty than full. He was still eating when she asked through a straight face, ‘Are you going to propose to me?’
The chewing came to a clattering standstill, just as she imagined it might, and that amused her. She studied his eyes without staring; for it was the one visible place he couldn’t control his reactions. She was pleased to see they flickered as if they’d received a minor electric shock. Neither could he control the beginnings of a smile, before muttering, ‘Good God no!’
He’d blurted it out, the ‘Good God no,’ and afterwards he wished he hadn’t replied in quite that way. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ wondering where she could have picked up such a vibe. Had he unwittingly dropped a hint? And as he spoke he remembered the engagement ring, boxed and gift wrapped and stupidly nestling in his jacket pocket. Why on earth had he bought the wretched thing, and more to the point, why had he brought it with him? Could she have known what was on his mind, and in his head?
He reassured himself she couldn’t possibly. He wasn’t going to propose to her. Not there, not that night. Such an idea was ludicrous, preposterous, even. He’d only met her the once. He’d spoken to her twice briefly on the telephone, but underneath all the denials, he had to admit, sitting opposite her at that circular table, she was the woman he desired.
‘Why do you ask?’ he said, struggling with his composure.
She pulled a face as if amused. Time to play the next card, and it would be a big one. Attack when the opposition’s on the run. Follow up with a charge!
‘Since we met on the plane, I’ve had another offer,’ and she smirked and emptied her glass.
Vimy fell silent.
Things were becoming odder by the moment, and yet that didn’t surprise him, that she’d received another offer. And what did she mean when she said another offer, as if there was already one on the table. Was that the case?
After what seemed an eternity, he said, ‘From an oil man?’
‘Kind of,’ she pouted, ‘from the Mid East, anyway.’
There was another pause, and he said, ‘An oil sheik?’
She laughed aloud.
‘Not quite.’
They both imagined an identical picture of her astride a camel before her Bedouin chieftain, cream and scarlet cotton robes flowing behind them in the hot desert wind, as he held her tight, as they raced back to his tent. Neither of them knew it then, but it was the first of many occasions when their minds would curiously be in sync.
‘And you’re minded to accept?’
‘Maybe, he’s handsome and wealthy, and fit and keen. What more could any woman want?’
What indeed? Vimy mused. Love perhaps? What did any woman seek in a man; seek in their lives, especially a stunning girl like Laura Lancelyn-Biggs.
She changed tack as if she enjoyed throwing his thinking, and asked, ‘Where do you see yourself in twenty years?’
He emptied the last of the wine into her glass as he composed an answer.
A dire thought occurred to him. It felt as though he was being interviewed for a position, and he wasn’t sure he liked the idea. Worse still, perhaps she was conducting a series of interviews for the post of becoming Laura Lancelyn-Biggs’ husband-to-be, and if that was the case, he wondered whether she’d recently started her interviews, or was she nearly through? Perhaps her body clock had jabbed her into action. Maybe she had decided it was time to embark on the breeding process. Who knows what thoughts flow through the brain of a beautiful woman in her prime? Who knows what hidden triggers lie waiting, semi-dormant, brooding, in all of us?
Come to think of it, perhaps he was embarking on the same process. He just hadn’t recognised the fact, and he pondered the idea he might be the last to take the stand. The last to be interviewed, so to speak, and how many others had been before him? An unsettling thought, indeed. His mind returned to her question: Where do you see yourself in twenty years?
‘Where do I see myself?’ he mumbled.
That was an easy one. He knew the answer to the finest detail, but he couldn’t tell her that. How do you confide in an almost complete stranger that he’d imagined her as his wife, that he’d seen them together in his dreams, making love? How he had woken during the night covered in sweat in a state of high excitement, thinking of her, and of her bearing his children. How could he possibly tell her that? Of founding a dynasty to rival the great trading families, how he’d make a massive fortune, the one part of his grand plan he had already accomplished, and of how they would live happily ever after. He had it planned, but how could he tell anyone such a story? Especially a person he was meeting for the second time on their first real date, without losing every shred of dignity.
Did couples really fall in love at first sight, as his parents insisted they had? Wasn’t the truth of it that usually one person falls deeply in love with another, while the other person couldn’t give a fig? And wasn’t it also true that the one who cared the least always held the upper hand? If he loved her, and he knew he did, what applied to them? Did she love him too, or was it possible she didn’t give a flying fig? Was she toying with him? A passing amusement? A minor fancy, and nothing more?
He recalled advice his father imparted when he was a boy of ten.
‘Always think big, lad. Set your goals high and never be afraid of them.’
‘I’m going to be hugely successful,’ he began, ‘I’m going to found the greatest commodity company the world has ever seen.’
She smiled across at him. He spoke confidently, everything about him reeked confidence. It was one of the things she had first noticed, despite that stupid condescending hostess on the plane. Laura admired ambitious and confident men. She couldn’t imagine herself with anyone who lacked those attributes.
‘And a wife? Is there room for a wife in these grand plans, Mr Ridge; always assuming there isn’t a little lady tucked away somewhere already, and children too? Is there room for that?’
‘Of course!’ he growled, and as he spoke his hand came across the table and gently cupped hers. It seemed the natural thing, and he was pleased to see she didn’t react.
‘I intend to start a dynasty,’ he repeated, ‘I told you, and you can’t do that alone.’
‘And you have someone in mind, I mean for the children’s mother?’
They were playing the heavy cards, the powerful cards, and the Queen of Hearts was the most dangerous card in the pack. He noticed a slight smile flickering around the corners of her mouth. He liked that too, such a silly thing, yet terribly cute. For a moment he thought of half standing and leaning across the table and kissing her in public, in the restaurant before the Latino waiter and sophisticated diners who filled every chair in the place. That would have taken her by surprise, he imagined, that would have made her think. But he didn’t, and he didn’t regret it afterwards, for he would keep her waiting a little longer for a first kiss.
‘I have an idea,’ he said.
‘I suspect you know precisely who you have in mind.’
How did she know? He guessed she knew exactly how he felt, because she felt the same. It was true she already knew she liked being with him, but it was more than that. He was a man to whom she could tell anything without a second thought, her innermost thoughts, her darkest secrets and fears, and they were mighty hard to find, both the thoughts, and the man. Truth was, she had never felt that way about anyone before. He was a good listener and a great talker, and if the conversation had been dull and soulless earlier, it wasn’t any longer, for he excited her in a physical way no one else had ever achieved.
As for him, Laura had confirmed what he knew to be true. She was special, the special one, and if buying that engagement ring before was a whim, egged on by his accountant�
�s advice to spend, spend, spend, now it was a necessity, a non-negotiable fact. Perhaps it was the wine talking, but no. From that moment they were engaged, though no proposal had been issued, nor accepted, nor had they spoken of it in such terms, but it was fact, even if neither of them realised it. They would, in future, be married.
It was a quarter to eleven and as so often on exciting dates, the evening had passed in a blink. The waiters were becoming restless, as Vimy paid the bill and they left. She linked his arm as if they had been married for years, and it felt so natural.
On the streets, Friday night drunks were everywhere, in full flow, shouting, intimidating, kicking store doors and windows, eyeballing oncomers, gazing into expensive cars, intent on trouble. Vimy didn’t care for it, for those people leaked the feeling of wild animals careering about out of control.
‘I thought we might go somewhere else?’ he said, with little enthusiasm.
‘I don’t want to go anywhere else,’ she replied with an air of finality that brooked no argument.
‘You’re not going back to Winchester tonight?’
‘No, course not. I have a flat, the use of a company flat. Would you like to come back for coffee?’
Come back for coffee? That electric phrase of many meanings. A passport into the personal fiefdom of Laura Lancelyn-Biggs, the inner sanctum, how could anyone refuse? He smiled and nodded, relieved at the prospect of leaving the vomit-ridden streets, excited at what might lie ahead.
‘Come on,’ she said, ‘it’s not far.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
THEY RE-CROSSED THE river and retraced their steps back towards the Shell Building. Further along the riverbank was a block of recently constructed executive apartments. ‘We own six of these,’ she said, as if they belonged to her family. ‘We use them to put up overseas visitors and Shell staff.’