Fascinated

by Fascinated (retail) (epub)

  ‘It was a tough time,’ says Conrad.

  ‘But we took the protection business and most of the entertainments. We took control of the streets.’

  ‘That’s because we had talent,’ says Conrad proudly. ‘We had discipline.’ He shuffles to a rosewood wardrobe and peers at his hoard of ballgowns and frocks.

  ‘We also had to spill a lot of blood,’ says Webster, turning from the mirrors to watch the wardrobe.

  ‘An occupational hazard,’ says Conrad, scowling at him. ‘I never heard you complain. You made a good living.’

  ‘That wasn’t the reason I risked my neck,’ says Webster. ‘We used to be a family.’

  ‘We’re still a family,’ says Conrad, ‘and no one is going to pull us apart.’

  ‘No,’ says Webster sadly. ‘It’s finished. The times have changed.’

  ‘Talbot is still out there somewhere,’ Conrad reminds him. He removes a cotton dress from the rail and hangs it in the crook of his arm while he scowls at its pattern of yellow lilies. He knows it won’t stretch to his bulging gut but he might squeeze into it again if he wears a panty girdle.

  ‘Talbot is a clown,’ says Webster. ‘Don’t waste your time on him.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ Conrad demands impatiently. A gold bracelet for the yellow dress. A coral necklace if he wears the black skirt and cardigan.

  ‘I’m trying to tell you that perhaps it’s time we left London and found ourselves a place in the sun. You’ve made enough money to buy Bolivia. It’s time you made peace with yourself.’

  For a moment Conrad looks flummoxed and then such an expression of incredulity spreads across his face that even Webster feels shocked by the suggestion. ‘I can’t leave here! I can’t desert Dawn’s memory!’ gasps Conrad, clutching the dress against his throat.

  ‘And you can’t waste the few years you’ve got left to you trying to keep Valentine out of mischief. She’s a grown woman. She can pick and choose her own men. She can make her own mistakes.’ This is very dangerous talk but Webster knows the risk.

  ‘So that’s it!’ shouts Conrad. ‘Valentine sent you to beg for mercy.’ He throws the dress at the bed but it falls against the railings and flutters to the floor in a heap.

  ‘I came here to speak for Frank,’ says Webster grimly. ‘He saved my life. I owe him something.’ He stands up, banging against the dressing table as Conrad storms towards him.

  ‘No!’ growls Conrad. ‘You owe me everything!’ His eyes are mad. His breath is sour. Through the miasma of stale perfumes his skin has the smell of horse meat. ‘I want you to go out there and find the bastard. I gave them my word. It’s a matter of honour. No one is free to play hide-the-sausage with the daughter of Conrad Staggers. I want you to bring me his head on a plate – I’m going to stick it on a pole.’

  At that moment the maid appears at the door with a glass of chilled tomato juice set on a black lacquer tray.

  ‘What is it?’ roars Conrad.

  ‘A glass of tomato juice, sir, with two raw eggs and lots of pepper,’ the maid whimpers, trying to raise her skin while she keeps control of the tray.

  ‘Drink it and get out!’ bellows Conrad.

  The maid plucks at the glass and drains it in several, sobbing gulps, turns and scampers back to the kitchen.

  ‘If you go after Frank,’ says Webster, ‘you’ll make Valentine hate you for the rest of your life. She’ll never forgive you.’

  ‘She needs a damn good spanking,’ grumbles Conrad, stamping towards the bed. ‘You didn’t see them together. He was touching her private parts. Touching my little girl!’ He kicks at the yellow dress on the floor, hooks it with his toes and sends it flying across the room. ‘God dammit! I want that bastard brought down!’

  ‘I can’t do that for you,’ says Webster.

  ‘What?’ The old man turns on him again, his face bloated with indignation.

  ‘I can’t do it.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I’m tired,’ shrugs Webster. ‘I’m tired of the beatings and killings. I’m tired of the tantrums and squabbles. I’m tired of watching you swagger around in dead women’s underwear. I want to go fishing.’

  Conrad turns in a circle, spinning with fury, and slaps at the rails of the bed. ‘What’s happening to the world?’ he shouts. ‘What’s happening when my own bodyguard turns against me?’

  ‘I’m not your bodyguard,’ says Webster, retrieving the yellow dress from the floor. ‘I’m your nurse.’

  ‘Get out!’ rages Conrad, snatching the precious garment and pressing it to his chest. ‘I’ll find another man for the work. Someone who doesn’t have your sort of scruples. I’ll send for Kadinsky.’

  Webster looks startled. His eyes betray a glimmer of fear. He stares at Conrad for a moment, trying to make sense of this announcement. ‘Kadinsky died eighteen months ago. He was shot by the Syrians after his argument with the Phalangists.’

  ‘Hah! He flew into Paris last week. He’s been working in Tripoli, raising money for good causes.’ Conrad looks triumphant, snorting and nodding his head as he tramples about the room.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve been in touch with him.’

  ‘He’s a terrorist, for God’s sake!’ protests Webster. He builds bombs into airline luggage. Rapes and tortures hostages.

  ‘A freedom fighter,’ Conrad corrects him.

  ‘He’s a mercenary,’ insists Webster. An international bounty hunter. He tracks and kills for money. Men, women and children.

  ‘A professional.’

  ‘He’s a psychopath!’ He works with an assault rifle, usually a Kalashnikov, but when he wants to make an impression he switches to an Uzi with a folding stock.

  ‘An idealist.’

  ‘You can’t let him loose in London to butcher your daughter’s boyfriends!’ shouts Webster.

  Conrad grins. A fat Mikado in a dressing gown. ‘I can do anything!’

  ‘You’re crazy!’

  ‘Get out,’ snaps Conrad. He lunges at Webster again, stamping his foot and shaking the dress in his fists.

  ‘You’re making a big mistake,’ says Webster as he turns to leave the room.

  ‘Tell it to Kadinsky!’ Conrad shouts after him. ‘Tell it to Kadinsky!’

  Valentine brings Webster to the North West London and Metropolitan All Saints Garden of Rest early in the afternoon.

  ‘There’s nowhere else to hide him,’ she says anxiously, as Frank appears to help unload the Bentley.

  ‘I’ve been fired,’ says Webster cheerfully.

  ‘We’ll try to find somewhere else in a couple of days,’ says Valentine, darting a kiss at Frank that misses his mouth and catches him on the side of the nose.

  ‘I can sleep on the floor,’ says Webster. ‘I don’t need to share the bed.’ He looks up at the flint cottage and flicks a peppermint into his mouth.

  ‘I’ll be glad to have the company,’ says Frank, smiling, grasping the hand of the man he thought was coming to kill him.

  But Valentine looks sulky and nervous. She stands sentry in the front porch watching the tombstones for signs of malevolent resurrections. The monuments shine against the darkness of yew trees. This love nest in a graveyard no longer appeals to her sense of humour.

  ‘Why the hell did you bring so much luggage?’ she complains to Webster as he drags a heavy wooden chest over the threshold.

  ‘I brought everything,’ he says, grunting beneath the weight. ‘If we don’t need it – we’ll throw it overboard.’

  Frank helps him to push the chest against the wall where several large suitcases have already been assembled beneath the portrait of Floating Jesus. He recognises the broken lock and the mouldering leather straps on the chest. Webster has stolen Conrad’s collection of love letters.

  ‘What went wrong?’ he demands, when they’ve emptied the car and have finally closed the cottage door. It feels like a doll’s house with the three of them squeezed in this tiny ro
om.

  Webster sits down on the chest and sets out to explain what’s happened to him in the last few hours but it’s clear from Frank’s face that he’s making very little impression. Frank hasn’t grasped the full implications of Webster’s sudden appearance. His visitors have brought him the spoils of a raid on the Turk’s kitchen and he’s more concerned with picking at the bones of a cold roast chicken than ruminating on Conrad’s plan for revenge.

  ‘Who’s Kadinsky?’ he asks from the sofa when Webster has finished his story.

  Webster shakes his head and looks to Valentine.

  ‘Remember the Barcelona bombings three or four years ago?’ she begins patiently. She is sitting on the staircase, still wrapped in her big fur overcoat. Her hands inside the pockets are holding the coat against her knees.

  Frank shrugs. Every night he used to sit and watch the TV news and wonder at the violence in the world. Skinny kids with hunting knives killing housewives in supermarkets. Mass graves found under turnip fields in the frozen twilight of Eastern Europe. The heads of fat dictators rolling in the African dust while government troops loot towns and rebels raze villages. Terrorists seizing aircraft in the sweltering heat of distant airports. Earthquakes, famines and rumours of war between the quiz shows and panel games.

  ‘A lot of policemen were killed when their bus exploded on the way to a football stadium,’ explains Valentine. ‘That was Kadinsky’s work. But everyone blamed the Basques.’

  ‘And then a young Basque leader died in an ambush walking his wife to church. And that was Kadinsky,’ says Webster. ‘But everyone blamed the police.’

  ‘I don’t get it,’ says Frank.

  ‘Kadinsky works for Kadinsky,’ says Valentine. ‘As far as he’s concerned, when you finish a job the perfect way to cover your tracks is to murder your employer. You have to be crazy to hire him.’

  ‘And Conrad is crazy,’ says Webster.

  A silence settles between them. The chest creaks under Webster’s weight. Beneath the window, the radiator belches through its fat iron pipes.

  ‘How long before he gets here?’ says Frank. The chicken is greasy. He’s lost his appetite.

  ‘A few days,’ says Webster. ‘He’s in Paris.’ He hangs his head, stares at his new canvas boots and wipes the back of his neck with his hand.

  ‘We’ve got to be ready for him,’ says Valentine. She stands up and clatters downstairs, brushing past Webster to reach the window. ‘If we can take him by surprise. There’s a chance.’ She glances nervously at the sky.

  ‘I’m an old man!’ protests Webster, trying to lever himself from the chest. ‘I should be collecting my pension and going on a sunshine cruise. I should be sitting on the promenade deck, wrapped in a tartan blanket, watching the girls in the exercise class trying to touch their toes.’ He bangs his knees with his fists and scowls. ‘I shouldn’t be standing in the rain in some dirty London backstreet waiting for a man like Kadinsky to cut my throat with a razor.’ He stops trying to raise himself and sinks slowly back again, settling his weight on the creaking timbers. ‘There’s one way to beat him,’ he says after a moment’s meditation. ‘We can make a run for it.’ He brightens and smiles. ‘We’ll buy ourselves passports and papers and catch the first flight to the sun. If we’re lucky we’ll have disappeared before he gets into town.’

  ‘You’re a fool!’ snaps Valentine. ‘Kadinsky will follow you everywhere. You know that. He’ll hunt you down. He’s patient. He may have to wait years but he’ll strike you off his hit list.’

  ‘Let him wait!’ says Webster stubbornly, waving her doubts away with his hand. ‘If I’m lucky I’ll have died from sunstroke in Florida or been knocked on the head by a jealous husband.’

  ‘No!’ insists Valentine. ‘You can’t run away from him!’ She looks at Webster with a flare of panic in her eyes, her mouth stretched tight, her hands pulled from her pockets to drag the hair from her face.

  Webster shakes his head and looks across at Frank for support. ‘What do you say about it?’

  Frank stares at the palms of his hands as if he could read the lines and creases. He admires Valentine’s spirit but he trusts Webster’s fighting instincts. There’s a time to stand your ground and a time to cut and run. Give death a moving target. ‘We can’t sit here like the three little pigs waiting for him to blow the house down,’ he says at last. ‘I vote we take a chance and make a run for it.’ All aboard the Trans Siberian Express. Bombay Night Mail. Blue Train to Cape Town. The world is waiting for them.

  Valentine sags against the window. Her face hardens with disappointment and she lets a dark strand of hair fall back against her eyes. ‘I’m not coming with you, Frank,’ she says slowly. ‘I’m warning you. If you follow Webster you’ll be leaving me here.’ And before Frank finds his voice again she has turned to fling back the cottage door and escape.

  ‘Valentine!’ Frank shouts and springs from the sofa.

  ‘She’s just like her father,’ says Webster smugly.

  ‘Give me a few minutes,’ says Frank, to leave Webster sitting, sulking, on his pirate’s chest. He runs from the cottage and follows Valentine along a broad drive that leads to a capsized mausoleum clenched by monstrous claws of ivy. The air is cold and smells of earth and wet gravel. The sky is the colour of smoke as the afternoon sinks towards darkness.

  ‘What happened to the caravaneers in the deserts of Afghanistan?’ says Frank, walking carefully in her footprints as they pick a path through the long grass. ‘What happened to feasting by starlight in the mountains of Turkistan?’

  ‘They were dreams,’ says Valentine. ‘Nothing but dreams.’ She looks exhausted. She hasn’t slept since the night before last and her eyes seem bruised by the light. She huddles into the fur coat and presses the collar against her mouth.

  ‘Come with me,’ says Frank. ‘We’ll go anywhere you choose.’ Pineapples on the Ivory Coast. Bananas on the hills of the Windward Isles.

  ‘You still don’t understand,’ she says desperately. She turns to face him in the shade of a granite column supporting an angel with broken wings. ‘Listen. Kadinsky isn’t some overweight bruiser you can hit with the back of a shovel. He’s a terrorist. You can’t play cat and mouse with him. If you turn your back on this man he’ll kill you.’

  Frank looks up at the angel and remembers how Conrad had tried to threaten him with the Cocker brothers, transforming them into bogeymen who would chase him through all eternity unless he stopped to confront them. They didn’t look so formidable when he finally caught them trying to cover their bollocks in a cheap room at the Golden Goose. And Hamilton Talbot. The mad dog of the underworld. A sad old man in yellow gloves with a rented schoolgirl on his arm.

  ‘Come with me,’ he says again. He’s hardly had time to make his declaration of love. He can’t believe that he’s losing her. How can she go back home when they’ve risked their necks to set her free from its dungeons and empty corridors?

  He reaches out to claim her again by pulling her roughly into his arms but she jumps back from him, twisting her ankle and crying out in surprise.

  ‘I can’t do it, Frank! I can’t travel half way around the world just to watch you get killed. We’d always live under a death sentence. We’d always be looking over our shoulders. Webster knows that.’

  ‘Damn Webster! I’m asking you to come away with me. We can go anywhere you choose…’

  ‘And I’m telling you that it’s too late!’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ declares Frank, trying to act like the warrior. ‘We’ll help Webster out of the country and I’ll stay here and take my chances with you.’

  But this offer to be a sacrifice in the interests of keeping her affections fails to have the desired effect.

  ‘You’re dead without Webster,’ she tells him bluntly. ‘You’re a civilian, Frank. You wouldn’t stand a chance without his skill and experience. He’s cunning. He’s a survivor. Whatever happens, you must stay with him.’ This is no time for flattery. Frank is an eas
y target. He’s an innocent. That’s what makes him so attractive. That’s why he’ll get himself killed. She turns, wanting to get away from him, seeking the sky beyond the reproachful eyes of the mutilated angel above them.

  ‘Are you telling me to leave?’ says Frank. ‘Is that what you want? Are you telling me to leave you alone?’ He’s frightened by her determination. He isn’t ready for this confrontation. He needs time to think. He wants time to puzzle it out.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference, dammit!’

  He snatches her arm to stop her escape but she pulls away, losing her balance and sprawling over the hump of a grave. She hits the ground with a yelp, supported on hands and knees, embracing the burial mound with her coat.

  Frank follows her down, straddles the grave, wanting to pull her up again. But she shakes herself like a dog and scrambles through his legs.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she warns him, restored to her feet. Her face is flushed. The heavy coat is streaked with mud.

  ‘Do you want me to stay or go with Webster?’ he demands stubbornly and knows that he’s already lost the battle to prise her apart from her father.

  Valentine takes a breath and throws back her head defiantly. ‘I don’t care what happens! You can both go to hell!’ she shouts, smacking at the ruined coat.

  ‘If you don’t come with me. If Webster gets me out of the country. We’ll never see each other again.’

  ‘So what?’ she spits at him. ‘I’ll go back home where I belong. Don’t worry. I won’t be crying myself to sleep over a stupid dumb bastard like you!’ She turns blindly and struggles among the graves, searching for the safety of the path.

  Frank remains standing, turned to stone. He watches her run to the Bentley and drive away in a spray of loose gravel. And then he walks back along the path and slowly closes the great iron gates.

  Kadinsky arrives on a late-morning Air France flight into London. He’s travelling on a German passport and comes disguised as a tourist. He’s tall and lean and walks through the crowded terminal with the slow, deliberate stride of a prosperous funeral director. His blond hair, retreating from the temples and high forehead, hangs from the back of his head in a short ponytail that has lately been dyed to an unremarkable shade of brown. The mouth is large yet pale and touched with the smile of a man who has just found himself delivered, without delay or misfortune, to the desired destination. The sun-bleached eyes stare out unblinking from a face that is nothing but polished bone.