by Zack
Nathan’s cry had done nothing to abate his mother’s vibrating anger. Over her head, Heathcliff motioned toward the window where four upright chairs were arranged around a medium-height casual table at one end. “Go, sit over there. Now, Miriam, I would prefer you got to the study and finish sorting out next year’s tour schedules. I’ll deal with this.”
She seemed to recover her composure with what seemed to Mike to be extraordinary rapidity. She straightened up with a curled-lip sneer at Mike. “I’ll go, Jonathan, but I want that abomination”—pointing at Mike—“out of my home before midday.”
As he sat, Mike automatically glanced at his watch and saw she had allowed him a princely three minutes, and he had set the watch by the BBC radio pips this morning, so it was accurate. As Miriam stalked off, Heathcliff walked over and sat down heavily, still avoiding the way Nathan from the next chair clung to Mike.
“I want you to know I don’t approve at all of this … what do you call it? Gay thing. When I was growing up, gay meant bright or happy, now it’s just queer. You, Mr. Smith, might have made up your mind to be unnatural, but my son is just a teenager and easily led astray—yes you are, Nathan. You have always been eager to follow the next faddy thing. This is simply a phase you’re going through and it will pass.”
Mike couldn’t hold back a snort of laughter.
Nathan held up his hands in protest. “You don’t know! You don’t fucking know anything—”
In a flash, his father fetched his son a ringing slap across the cheek. “Don’t you speak to me like that.”
Nathan rocked back, hand to cheek, and fell against Mike, who reflexively gathered the boy in his arms. “That’s enough, Mr. Heathcliff. It’s bad enough, surely, to have some thug trying to push drugs on your son without you beating him up because he happens to like dick.” Mike stopped abruptly, fearing his phrasing might have only made things worse. But it seemed he had stopped Heathcliff senior in his verbal steps.
“You just don’t know,” Nathan added in a miserably quiet voice.
Mike tried for reasonableness. “What I said earlier … it doesn’t make sense. The people behind this aren’t that bothered about the drugs, I don’t think. No, this is straightforward, old fashioned blackmail. You’ll pay for their silence on Nate’s sexuality.”
Jonathan Heathcliff leaned forward and screwed his heavyset brows together. “I will pay to buy the pictures he threatens me with. After that, there won’t be a problem. Nathan is experimenting. It’s common enough. But he will very soon be associated with a certain catwalk model, and this … this snake won’t have a thing to hold over me.”
Mike felt Nathan’s whole body stiffen, and he recalled the boy saying, You know my future wife is already marked out and being groomed to take her place at my side. We’ll be singing lurve duets in no time, and he hadn’t really believed him. For the first time it occurred to him that these people didn’t deserve their son. They weren’t so very different from Gerald Mundy, just seeing him as a source of income. It made Mike mad.
“Nathan’s worth so much more than your … cheap view of him. He’s your son, but actually he’s really just your golden goose. You don’t see him properly at all. It’s like the movie. You see Terry Blood as another vehicle to create ever more money, not as a potential career move. I’ve seen him on set, acting his heart out against a load of experienced thespians who turned up their noses at appearing in a movie starring a teenage pop star, but are happy to fill their bank accounts. And then, only days in, Nathan’s acting rings around them. I’ve seen him strutting his stuff on stage, so I also know what he projects to the fans.”
Heathcliff snorted angrily. “He is my son, and I know what’s best … Just keep out of this, Nathan.”
Nathan closed his mouth and scowled.
“What is the demand. What do they want?”
Heathcliff paused for a moment before answering Mike. “It is none of your business—”
“Ten thousand pounds and—”
“I told you to stay out of it, Nathan!”
“—and he’s to insist you’re removed from the crew list.”
Mike stood abruptly, which dragged Nathan to his feet. “I don’t have the slightest idea what you want to do about those compromising photographs, Mr. Heathcliff and … actually, I don’t really care. But I do care about my career and Nathan’s, which I really wonder whether you and your wife do. I’ll be at Pinewood tomorrow morning as usual and waiting for your man to deliver Nathan.”
To his father’s goggle-eyed horror, Nathan leaned into Mike—“I’ll be there …”—and kissed him.
Mike responded, with a grim smile. “Of course you will.” He turned his parting gaze on the fuming man still seated by the window with its glorious parkland view. “And by the way, Mr. Heathcliff, call me ‘abnormal’ by all means. That’s just a statistical phrase, and gay people are not in the norm. But don’t ever call me or my kind ‘unnatural,’ for whatever occurs in nature is, by definition, natural.”
Being a private device, Mike didn’t have to wait around for the elevator. The doors hissed open at his touch on the button. As he turned to face the narrowing gap of brushed steel, he saw Nathan standing only feet away, beaming at him. And then the vision vanished as the doors closed and the after-image of the face turned into glorious Gil, quietly smiling.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Endgame
Mike returned the phone to its cradle. Gil could tell from his expression and the few curt words he’d overheard that something serious was up. “Spill, buddy.”
“It was Nathan.”
“I must be clairvoyant. I already guessed that. What he have to say?”
“The blackmailers contacted his father this afternoon while we were filming the scene where Terry Blood and Jason Argonauticus try to save Fumbledim from immolation at the hands of Wormghast—”
“Mikey, I read the first two books.”
“They repeated the demand for ten thousand pounds for the photos, but …”
Gil stepped up to Mike and gripped his arms. “But?”
“The whole thing is conditional on Nathan himself delivering the money tomorrow night at a location they’ll phone through an hour before the meet. The call sheet for tomorrow’s shooting shows Nathan finished for the day by four, so he’ll be home well in time for this to go down. And who else do you think would know he’s got an early day tomorrow?”
“Mundy.”
Mike nodded.
“Does Nathan drive?”
“No. They insist his dad drive.”
“Gee, they’re really rubbing it in. Why’d he ring you now?”
“To give me time.”
Gil let go Mike’s arms. “For what, exactly?” He fell back a pace with a suspicious expression creasing his brow.
“No one on either side wants the police involved, for obvious reasons, so Nate thinks I … we can follow and somehow … do something.”
“Oh boy, that sounds really sensible.” Gil chuckled easily at the silly idea.
“He’ll call me the minute he knows the time and location.”
Gil choked on his laughter and the color drained from his face. “Oh my God, you’re serious. But you can’t be. We’re not your SAS, you know. Do you even have a fragmentation grenade, let alone an M16 assault rifle?”
“Don’t forget part of the deal is to completely fuck up my career using the Heathcliffs’ influence—”
“Yeah, but what you’re suggesting is fucking stupid. Dangerous! Someone could get hurt, badly. You don’t even know how many perps are in on this.”
“That’s why we need help,” Mike said. “We need Steve.”
* * *
Mike sat behind Horny’s steering wheel. In the passenger seat, even in the dark, Gil could see how his lover’s colorless knuckles betrayed the tension they all felt. Well, perhaps not so much Steve in the back, whose jollity at the exciting adventure had Gil on the verge of irritation. “So, where first?” he ch
irped up, as if weighing up the relative joys of fairground rides.
Mike came back tight-lipped. “Nate said the phone box on the corner of Warwick Avenue. But I’m first headed for the flats on Prince Albert Road. We’ll park up on Avenue Road and wait for Heathcliff and Nathan to exit the underground parking. Just in case the venue gets changed at the last minute and he can’t let us know about it. At least the blackmailer’s keeping it in the district … for now.”
“Phone box?” Steve sounded puzzled. “What they want to go to one of those for? Or is that where the hand-over is going to take place?”
“I doubt it. Nathan will have to wait for a phone call, which will send them on to another destination.” Mike slowed to a stop just short of Allitsen Road, where they had a good view of the car park exit from under Prince Regent Court. “May happen a few times before they get to where the blackmailer wants them.”
“You done this before?” Steve said, the smirk clear in his tone.
Deadpan, Mike replied, “I’ve seen the movie.”
“What are we looking for?” Gil asked.
“Nathan said his dad’s everyday car is a silvery-green Audi 200 ST.”
“What, the 2.2 liter turbo?”
“I’ve no idea, Steve.”
Gil marveled at Mike’s patience under the circumstances.
“Nice car, that. Wouldn’t mind one meself, but the missus would never … what am I saying. I couldn’t afford four grand anyway, but—”
“Isn’t that them?” Gil hissed.
Mike raised his eyebrows as he eased Horny into gear. “I didn’t know you were a car lover?”
“I’m not. Under the white light over the doorway it looked silvery-green, like you said.”
“And it is the Audi.”
Mike waited a few seconds to let the Audi pull down toward the traffic lights with Prince Albert Road before following. Gil looked back behind along Avenue Road, which was devoid of traffic at this time of evening, so it didn’t look as though the victims had a tail. “Seems all clear,” he murmured to Mike.
The Audi turned right and headed toward Lord’s Cricket Ground. Gil tried to relax his hands from clamping on his kneecaps, and the big traffic island where Park Road crossed didn’t do his state of mind any good. As the Audi pulled away, traffic coming from the north with priority on the roundabout forced Mike to wait for several vehicles to pass by before he could continue on along St. John’s Wood Road. As they passed Lord’s, with the Audi out of sight beyond five cars and a tall van, Mike said, “It’s okay, Gil. They’re still on a logical heading for Warwick Avenue, so we know where they’re going.”
A few minutes later they reached Edgware Road, with the Audi three cars ahead. As the lights changed it did a right-left jink into another side road, but Mike held on north after turning onto Edgware Road.
“Hey, Mike, they—”
“I know. Hang on.”
Horny squealed happily as Mike roared into a sharp left. Sutherland Ave., informed the plate on the corner building. Gil barely had time to read it before Mike heeled around a car signaling a right turn at a small traffic island, only to make a sharp left down a long, curving road between tall gray-brick Victorian terraced houses.
“We come in this way, well behind where Heathcliff has to stop for the phone box. We’ll be able to see without—I hope—being seen. If there is anyone here.” Warwick Road tube station came up on their right, and Mike slid into the kerb. “There,” he said with satisfaction.
Gil felt Steve’s hot breath on his neck, and a soothing hand stroke. From the vantage point Gil could see the slight form of Nathan in the quaint British-style phone booth, its brash red color almost black under the orange sodium street lights. Nathan exited and paused a long moment on the edge of the sidewalk. The boy didn’t look around and risk giving them away to anyone shadowing the watchers. Then he crossed the quiet road and got back in the Audi, which immediately moved off.
“Now the chase is afoot, Watson,” Mike said.
The Audi went on down Warwick Avenue and turned left at the canal on Blomfield Road, Gil saw. They recrossed Edgware Road and then zigzagged through several small streets lined with close-packed Edwardian-period town houses. Gil was lost, but Mike managed to keep on the tail without drawing too close. And then he gave a gasp. The Audi had stopped again. They watched as Nathan got out and went to another phone booth on the corner of the street they were stopped on and …
“Lisson Grove,” Mike said softly.
“I wish we could just get on with it,” Steve grumbled. “Look, he can’t even get in. There’s someone using the phone.”
“Shit.” Gil fidgeted in his seat.
“Bound to have allowed some leeway for that kind of thing,” Mike said. “Or maybe they’ve given him an alternative before a certain time in case.”
At that moment the person inside pushed the door open and Nathan almost jumped in. He seemed to wait an age before snatching up the receiver. He held it to his head for a minute, then slammed it down and dashed back to his father’s car.
“Now where, I wonder?” Mike breathed as he eased away from the curb. The Audi’s brake lights flared momentarily, and then the car turned left onto Lisson Grove. There was more northbound traffic here and Mike had to let two cars and a truck go past before making the turn. He leaned against his door in an attempt to see around the vehicles ahead and almost immediately exclaimed. “I think we might be there. He’s turning off right along the canal.”
“What’s there?”
“Not a lot, Gil. I think that’s the point. Just rows of warehouses along the canal basin. Not even busy in daylight, abandoned at night.”
Mike guided Horny through the dilapidated wooden gates and down a weedy concrete ramp. Gil could see the Audi’s tail lights in the distance ahead, and then they vanished as the car made a left turn between two corrugated iron sheds. Mike halted Horny, threw off his seat belt, and jumped out.
“What …?” Gil bent down to see Mike up the ramp, pushing the old gates closed. Rotted with age and disuse, they wouldn’t go all the way.
Mike slipped back in. “Won’t stop anyone, but it might hold them up for a bit.”
“Right. I don’t see anyone else around,” Gil said cautiously.
“No, me neither,” Steve added.
“Gotta have a getaway car somewhere.” Mike drove slowly along the edge of the canal toward where the Audi had disappeared.
“Wouldn’t you expect there to be loads of … enemy troops about?”
Mike glanced at Gil. “Not really. Think about it. Blackmail’s a pretty solitary occupation. One, maybe two.” He pulled up about ten yards from the corner where they had seen the Audi turn.
Steve snorted in a breath through flared nostrils. “What, and now we go and beat the shit out of the fuckers?”
“No, Steve, no.” Mike waved him down. “The plan is to follow the fuckers once the switch has been made. Right now, we observe and see if we can recognize anyone. Come on!”
Gil slipped from the car and pushed his door to without shutting it. Mike had already disabled the courtesy light. Gil and Steve quickly followed Mike’s lead to the corner. He peered round and then waved them on. The small access road, more a track of cracked and patched asphalt really, ran between the two warehouse shacks, which looked like they hadn’t been used in years. It fetched up in an open area shrouded in darkness at the edges. The three sleuths pulled up in a huddle and peered around the edge of the warehouse. In the middle of the open space enough light leaked in from gaps between the structures from Lisson Grove and the street at the rear of the canal basin to reveal the Audi. Gil could see around Mike’s shoulder (warm under his chin) a darker shadow inside, which he presumed was Mr. Heathcliff, staying put as commanded. Nathan stood with one hand leaning on the car’s hood. And then a disembodied hand beckoned from over by the far wall and Nathan walked forward with an unsteady gait. He carried a heavy attaché case.
“The loot,”
Steve whispered helpfully.
As Nathan hesitated some feet short, the hand’s owner stepped out from the darker shadow.
“Fuck, it’s Greg,” Mike breathed. “I was right. Mundy all along. Obviously.”
“Where’s the getaway vehicle?” Gil said under his breath.
“Over to the left.”
Gil and Mike switched their eyes in the direction Steve indicated and Gil just made out the shape of a car, almost lost in the dark.
Across the space Greg the Minder faced Nathan. They heard the boy say, “You!”
“Put it down.”
Nathan lowered the case to the ground.
“Step away.”
“Not until you give me the photographs.”
The big man waited. He reached inside his jacket. “Here.”
Nathan took two paces and held out a hand in expectation. Greg smiled nastily, reached forward, grabbed the boy, and pulled him into a vicious neck lock with one hand, while he pulled the other from his jacket and smothered Nathan’s mouth and nose.
A loud cry burst from the Audi. The driver’s door flew open and Jonathan Heathcliff staggered out, shouting incoherently. Nathan struggled weakly, and then Greg threw him bodily aside. A trail of dust streaked from his palm. As Heathcliff ran to his son, Nathan collapsed on the lumpy ground, snorting and gagging.
Greg laughed hoarsely. “You dumbfuck! Photos need negatives and we got those. Here, have the prints by all means.” He threw down a bulky manila envelope just as Nathan hauled himself drunkenly up and into his father’s arms.
This all happened in the space of seconds and Gil only realized that Mike had jumped from their hiding place when he was already half way across the intervening space. He ran wildly around Nathan and his father and launched himself at Greg. But the minder was already on the move, attaché case in hand. He saw Mike’s threat and whirled the case around in an arc. Gil shouted a warning, but too late. A corner of the case caught the side of Mike’s head. For a big lunk, Greg moved pretty fast, and followed up with a straight right to Mike’s exposed chin.