by AD Davies
I dropped Caroline at her house out in the sticks, and headed for home, a newish building on the south edge of the city center. My parking space was still reserved in the underground lot and I ascended to the twentieth floor in my board-shorts and fleece, jittery from the caffeine and ready to go, go, GO! I entered my apartment, a split-level affair, the open plan kitchen-diner leading to a carpeted lounge, with a staircase to my bathroom and two bedrooms. On a clear day I could see all the way to the industrial landscape of Bradford. The apartment was cleaned once a month by an agency, so it smelled fresh and left no nasty surprises.
Once I’d unpacked my rucksack, I shaved my face smooth, showered, and changed into a designer suit and a shirt that felt a bit tight. No tie. My hair was clean but scraggly, yet it went well with the suit, like I was trying to emulate a GQ model. I didn’t really need this getup for my planned meetings, but I wanted to avoid the attention of entering such an environment in a t-shirt and flip-flops.
I took my three-year-old BlackBerry out of a drawer, plugged it in and booted it up. Still worked. I needed two things before commencing my investigation in earnest: the Deep Detect System, and a chat with Harry. I sent Harry a text asking him to meet me here at three p.m., then fired off an email to Roger Gorman to say I’d be in his office at two. It was currently shortly after midday.
Sitting on a beach, up a hill, on top of a mountain, I could watch nature shift and sway for hours; I’d happily read a novel cover-to-cover, lying in a sunbeam, purring like a cat; I could listen to music as rain pounded outside all evening; all simple, do-nothing activities. But there was work to do here. Even lacking the data I needed from Harry, even without DDS, there were leads to chase, people to contact, a trail to pick up.
No, sitting on my arse was not an option.
Chapter Three
Blazing Seas was well-known as Curtis Benson’s favorite table-dancing bar, or rather “gentlemen’s club” as the sign proclaimed. Its nickname, Blazing Sleaze, was well-earned: gaudy orange neon, three stages hosting floor-to-ceiling poles, and an array of faux-leather chairs and sofas. Approaching lunchtime on a Friday and already a full complement of dancers sashayed about the place, gliding from one group of men to another.
I ordered a beer and sat on a barstool and pretended to be a punter. I referred three beautiful young women to the drink I was nursing so very slowly, and once the third girl wandered away, her colleagues seemed to figure I was only there for the stage-show.
About three-quarters through my pint, a woman of around twenty strode down one of two wrought-iron spiral staircases and through a cloud of dry ice that swept from the stage. She wore a see-through baby-doll nightie over white lacy bra and panties, and had long red hair and a petite body. She might have tempted me to fork out for a legitimate dance if I didn’t find the whole pantomime so boring.
As she approached, her smile showed she hadn’t heard I wasn’t paying for dances today. She placed her hands on my thighs and leaned into my ear and in a soft but discernible Yorkshire accent said, “It’s ten pounds for a dance, love. Fifty for half an hour in the VIP room,” then stood back to allow me to perv over her a little longer. She added, “Limited touching in the VIP room. Limited.”
I said, “I’m looking for someone called Lily.”
“I can be your Lily if you want.”
“I’ll pay more than a VIP fondle,” I said. “Finder’s fee for you too. She came highly recommended.”
Her eyes rolled up and to the left. “Lily…?”
“Youngster, quite small. Short blond hair.”
“Oh, that Lily.” Eyes back to me. “Yeah, I heard she moved to Manchester.” The girl looked toward the large, shaven-headed barman. “Why don’t you take me to the VIP room?”
I played along and handed her fifty pounds, which the barman exchanged for some sort of voucher. The young woman led me up the spiral staircase down which she had come minutes earlier, then to a compact room with its own stereo and a stiff leather couch, all surrounded by mirrors. She selected a Katy Perry track and went to work.
“How limited is the touching?” I asked.
“Hips and legs. An extra fifty to me gets you my ass too.”
“Hair?”
“Stay off the hair. And my tits.”
As she straddled my lap, I reached out for her hair and gently gripped it. As I suspected, it came partly away.
“Hey!” she said.
A wig. Attached to her real hair with metal grips. The grainy photo in Harry’s file revealed her build and the shape of her nose. I’d taken a gamble here.
I said, “Lily, right?”
“Prick.” She climbed off and removed the wig entirely to reveal she was blond underneath. The boyish style gave her the pixie quality that Harry had described, although her Yorkshire accent had now developed a booming ey-oop timbre that really didn’t suit her stature. “All I have to do is pull that chord and you’ll be picking your teeth out of the alley.”
The alarm was one of several strings made to look like sparkly decor.
I said, “I’ll give you a hundred pounds if you tell me everything you were about to tell Harry before he got booted out.”
“That hairy bastard? You know what they’ll do to me?”
“Sarah’s in trouble, you know?”
“I don’t care. I can’t care.”
“You know she’s not normal, don’t you? Vulnerable. If she was put up to the theft, I need to know.” I made my best I’m desperate face. “Please.”
She stared at me.
I said, “No one will ever know. I won’t note your name anywhere, or indicate where I got the intel. Not even that you were a friend.” I saw that hit a nerve. “You are her friend, aren’t you?”
“Two hundred,” she said.
“One-sixty. That’s all I have on me.”
I took out my wallet and showed her eight twenty-pound notes. She snatched them, stashed them in her shoe, then took off her nightie and threw it in my face.
I said, “There’s no need for that.”
“Last time someone saw me chatting to a detective, I got proper threatened. If anyone comes in now, it needs to look like business.”
In her underwear, she leaned forward, rolling her shoulders, her cleavage at my eye level. I couldn’t pry myself away as I listened.
“Sarah, she was, like, this ‘Rain Man’ type. Rain Girl, or something. Memorizing the order of a deck of cards, or she could look out over the bar for five seconds, and tell us how many people were in there. Crazy.”
“Did you get on?”
“As well as any of them. Listen, love, I know you don’t want this, but we’ve been here a while.”
She unhooked her bra, slid it off, and I looked to the side as she straddled me again. I hadn’t been with a woman in over a year, so a pretty dancer in nothing but panties meant the reason I crossed my legs was painfully obvious. She leaned in so close that my breath radiated back off her soft, tanned flesh.
I said, “What wasn’t my colleague told?”
She writhed, taking pleasure in my discomfort. “One of them tricks. Sarah would hear the clicks of the safe and memorize them. She showed some of us girls one day as a joke, and the head security guy, this midget prick called Mikey, he made ’em change the combination and banned Sarah from going near it. When Gareth started banging Sarah, he must have convinced her to show him again.”
I held her hips to stop her gyrating. “Wait. Who’s Gareth?”
“Get off me. Now.” I let go and she resumed her dance. She said, “Gareth Delingpole. Doorman here at the Sleaze. Started seeing her after she moved into his spare room.”
“He was her landlord too?”
“Yeah, she rented a room in his house up in Birstall. Big terraced place, you know, four bedrooms, a cellar.”
The house Harry found. Now empty, the utilities disconnected.
I said, “You think Gareth put Sarah up to it?”
“Of course. Sarah didn�
�t do nothing bad, ever. That’s why we thought it was odd, y’know, her ending up with him.”
“Why odd?”
“Well, she’s so nice and Gareth … he’s got a reputation, okay? Jealous type. Heard he used to slap his wife around. Someone said he went to jail for it.”
She performed a pirouette and paused in a commanding, hands-on-hips pose for a bridge in the music.
“Gareth brought a camera to work one morning, some new hobby, and, I dunno, we heard shouting. Guessed Gareth’d been takin’ pictures of the girls or something. When we came out from getting changed, Curtis had Gareth’s camera and took out that card thing that stores the photos.”
“The SD card,” I said.
When the singing resumed, so did she. “Right, that. Curtis threatened to fire him if he did it again. Gareth knew we saw what happened. And you could tell … you could tell he wanted to hurt Curtis.”
Embarrassed in front of a roomful of women. Could have been a trigger for revenge. I thought about the SD card Benson confiscated. If there was anything incriminating on there, it would have been destroyed, surely.
I said, “Money was stolen, but no one really knows how much.”
“Reckon they got about two hundred grand, maybe two-fifty.” With her back to me, she hooked her thumbs into her panties. “But we all know Curtis likes his shady deals, so it coulda been a million for all the tax man knows.”
“I assume that Gareth isn’t around anymore?”
“Nah.” Her panties came down, then off entirely, twirling them round her finger before flinging them into a corner. “He disappeared the same night as Sarah.”
The file specifically mentioned that no one else but Sarah was reportedly missing from the city, no one who could be connected to her, anyway. Her landlord, boyfriend, work colleague; Gareth was connected alright. And yet still the police hadn’t made a move. I couldn’t keep it all straight, partly thanks to Lily.
Still dancing, she said, “When they found out, Mikey summoned Curtis on the phone. Curtis came in, we all saw him. Shitting his pants, he was.” The song ended. She stopped moving and sat on my lap. “So that’s it. Some cash went missing, and the insurance is dealing with it. That’s what the girls were told to say if anyone came asking questions. We shouldn’t mention that Sarah and Gareth were in it together, or else.”
A second high-tempo track boomed out and she shifted her weight side-to-side. I moved my thigh to hide my physical reaction.
She said, “You really don’t like this, do you?”
“I really do like it,” I said. “That’s the problem.”
“Wife?”
“Morals.”
“Nature trumps morals, Mister… what’s your name?”
The music died and a man’s voice said, “Adam Park.”
The door was open, revealing a short bald man, flanked by two bouncers with black goatees and leather jackets. Goons, as Harry would call them. The pair looked almost like twins, but one was in his forties, the other his twenties.
Lily said, “I’m busy, Mikey.”
“We know,” said the little man—Mikey, I assumed. He was about fifty, his face as craggy as granite and his t-shirt gave away not an ounce of flab. He was so short, I could easily have rested my chin on his smooth, dull pate.
Without a signal, the two men advanced and Lily scurried to one side, and my penis shrank to the size of a vole.
“Hi.” I rose to my feet as four hands gripped my arms. “Is there a problem?”
“Might be,” Mikey said. “Lily, what have you and Mr. Park been discussing?”
“Nothing?” she said.
Mikey took another step toward me. “Care to raise her on that, Mr. Park? Nothing?”
I said, “The booths are bugged, aren’t they?”
Mikey smiled. “It’ll be easier if you just tell us.”
I nodded to myself. “But you can’t hear much above the music. Otherwise you’d be in here a lot quicker.”
“Bob and Daz are gonna take you to see Mr. Benson.”
I glanced at Bob and Daz. Cock-sure grins. Hands clasped, chests puffed. I wondered if I really was on my way to see Curtis Benson or if I was simply being removed to a place where they would brutally incentivize me to stay away.
Like most people, I watched the Jason Bourne films a while ago, and as much as I’d love to be able to take down my opponents with a quick flurry and leave them with nothing but a headache, the Bob/Daz twins were bigger than me, steroid-enhanced if I wasn’t mistaken, and—trust me—punching a guy in the head often hurts the puncher more than a solid punchee.
Still, I had to do something. I was not prey. I would never be prey again.
I launched my foot toward one of their knees—Bob, the older one. The crack was hard but didn’t dislocate the joint, just hurting him enough to loosen his grip. I levered him around and shoved him into Mikey.
Lily pressed herself into the corner, screaming at the top of her lungs.
I spun to Daz and grasped his elbow, and shoved it toward his eye. His fingers opened. I threw my palm into his windpipe and crashed an elbow through his jaw. He went down; classic glass jaw, as so many of these pumped-up meat-heads proved.
They’d both be fine. In about five days.
Mikey threw Bob off him and prepared to fight me, but I raised my hands and said, “I give in.”
Lily’s screams deflated to a whimper, nightie held against her body.
I winked at Lily, and to Mikey I said, “Take me to your leader.”
Chapter Four
It was always a shock, this violence. An evolutionary reaction that, in some people, comes naturally; in others it’s a struggle to summon that willpower. Having once been beaten to a pulp in a foreign land, I learned that lesson more thoroughly than most ever will, an experience that would give the most ardent pacifist the impetus to really learn how to fight, to build up the strength required. I was a prime example of that.
The year I returned home from Thailand, I joined an athletics meet for the cardio, a meat-head gym for strength, and a Krav Maga club to learn the bastard-tough martial art used by Mossad. To my mother’s dismay, I even sculpted my appearance to that of how I thought a “hard-man” should look: I allowed my over-active beard to grow out and clipped it into a goatee, shaved off my hair, and snapped a stud into one ear, and between the martial arts, athletics, and the meat-head gym, I was ready to face anything this evil world could throw at me. At the peak of my training, I prepared to hit the road again, launch myself back out into the world, and track down the Bangkok thugs who had hurt me so badly. My rebirth would have been complete. Then, a few days before I was due to fly out, the owner of the meat-head gym learned his fourteen-year-old daughter had run away to London with a detailed and well-thought-out plan:
To, like, become a singer?
And marry a footballer?
Because I was unfamiliar with the process in the UK, I called private detective Harry Riley, my late father’s old mate. We located Darla physically unharmed, and although extracting her was something of a chore, it was a chore that enabled me to beat the living snot out of some would-be pimp’s enforcer, a bruiser who would have destroyed me a year earlier. It confirmed that my efforts had borne fruit, but the act of breaking another human being had an unexpected effect on me: I felt truly sick. The blood, the twisted limbs, the pleading with me to stop …
The only outcome that left me remotely happy was freeing that girl from the mini-harem into which she’d been inducted, and so—with all thoughts of revenge shelved—Harry allowed me to come work with him. On one condition: I forget all about violent fantasies and use my brain instead. I agreed, and he made me shave my goatee and grow out my hair and remove the stud from my ear, ostensibly to make me less conspicuous when tailing someone, but also—he said—because I looked like a dick head.
Still, today, Daz and Bob had no doubt broken a few bones in their time, so I tried not to feel too guilty about using them as psycholog
ical leverage.
My pondering ended at a steel door as Mikey knocked and opened it. He held out his arm as an invitation and I adopted a manner that suggested I didn’t give a crap what happened next, like this was routine. I kept the word “glib” in mind. I liked glib. Glib helped establish authority, even though it usually made the glib person unlikable. It could, however, rile up the wrong adversary, so I also kept in mind to not push my luck.
Inside, from the middle of a glorified storeroom, a desk and a leather chair greeted me, plus a couple of seats slightly less inviting than those in a trucker’s cafe. I noted the exits—only the one I came through—potential weapons—boxes of beer bottles, those two chairs—and human threats—only one: Curtis Benson.
In a purple suit, black shirt and close-cropped dyed-blond hair (yep, on a black guy), he could have been an attention-seeking Premier League footballer on a night out.
Mikey stepped outside and closed the door.
With heavy eyelids, an expression that hovered somewhere between anger and boredom, Benson said, “Fucked up two of my men.” He had no discernible accent, just a low voice that sounded similar to how rappers talk during interviews. How things turned next would depend on how much of his “gangsta” act was for show.
“Your ‘men’?” I said, repeating the keep it glib mantra to myself. “What are you, a James Bond baddie?”
He scowled.
I said, “I mean a Roger Moore James Bond baddie, not Daniel Craig. Who has ‘men’ these days? Apart from royalty?”
“You think this is some sorta open mic comedy night?”
I sat on a plastic chair. Smiled. “And that’s your best comeback is it?”
“You’re overconfident,” Benson said. “You got any idea how much trouble you in right now?”