The Sugared Game

by KJ Charles

  “Oh dear,” Phoebe said. “I’d forgotten quite how bad it was. Goodness, Kim, must you?”

  “I regret I have but one hideous garment to wear for my country.” Kim stripped off his own coat and slipped it on. “A bit large, but better that than tight. Peacock should be able to adjust it. Right, shall we get on? As per Beaumont, the High-Low Club remains open until the small hours on an entirely irregular schedule. Fuller, the floor manager, lives above the shop, as it were, in a room at the front of the building on what remains of the top floor, and closes the place up exceedingly securely, with bolts, locks, and metal shutters. Mrs. Skyrme lets herself in at any point between eleven and two; the cleaners come at three. All together that makes for an extremely unpromising target; I imagine that’s no accident. So—”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Will said. All their collaboration in shady activities so far had taken place in private. Speaking in front of Phoebe felt exceedingly exposed. “Are we going through the plan now?”

  “Of course we are,” Kim said. “As I was saying, the High-Low is well protected against burglary, so I don’t want to burgle it.”

  Phoebe pouted. “Oh, darling, what? You promised.”

  “I’m not going to burgle it because I’m going in through an open door,” Kim said patiently. “The aim, ideally, is to get in and out unobserved.”

  “Pretending to be a waiter. Why not a guest?” Phoebe asked.

  “Because Skyrme and Fuller observe their guests. A uniform is a good way not to have one’s face looked at.”

  “Except by other men in the same uniform,” Will pointed out.

  “A risk, I grant you, but I’m hoping you and Phoebe will mitigate it for me.”

  “Oh, am I still doing it?” Phoebe perked up. “Marvellous. I have such a good plan.”

  “For what?” Will asked with foreboding.

  “My grand entrance, darling. I shall come in like what’s-his-name, that delightful shiny person, though probably not in purple or gold. Purple is Kim’s colour and I really think that in gold, with my hair, I’d look like a candlestick, don’t you?”

  “The Assyrian,” Kim murmured.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Assyrian. Came down like the wolf on the fold. It was his cohorts who were gleaming in purple and gold, though.”

  “I dare say you’re right,” Phoebe told him with motherly patience. “The point is that I shall make the most enormous spectacle of myself and attract everyone’s attention from you, which I consider a good deed. You look like a hurdy-gurdy man.”

  “You wound me,” Kim said. “Then while all eyes, particularly those of Fuller and Skyrme, are drawn her way, I shall sidle upstairs unnoticed and, I trust, let myself into the office.”

  “What if it’s locked?” Will asked.

  “I hope that shouldn’t be an obstacle. I’ve been taking lessons, since I realised last year it was a skill I needed to master.” Kim’s eyes flicked to Will’s, just for a fraction of a second but it was enough. Will knew he was thinking of the endless minutes when he’d been chained up in a Zodiac hideaway, and Kim had probed the lock of the manacle with a wire in an effort to free him. He hadn’t believed it would work; he’d almost wept when the lock clicked.

  Kim had come to get him when he’d thought he was a goner. He’d cared, and the memory was a punch to Will’s chest.

  “So you’ll let yourself in while Skyrme is busy downstairs,” he said, trying to keep his voice businesslike. “Sounds a bit tight. And how do you get out?”

  “Carefully,” Kim said. “That’s where you may or may not come in. I don’t know how long I’ll need, or what the situation will be on the floor, so I will require a look-out to intervene if another distraction is required. If it isn’t you can simply have an enjoyable evening’s dancing.”

  “What sort of intervention?”

  “Whatever seems appropriate. Use your ingenuity.”

  “Right. Phoebe, are you sure about getting involved in this?”

  “Well, of course, darling, why not?”

  “Because it’s not safe,” Will said with all the patience of which he was possessed. “Skyrme is mixed up in very bad business, she knows Kim, and you’re his fiancée. I don’t think you should bring yourself to her attention.”

  Phoebe’s eyelids drooped. “How Victorian of you. I don’t intend to sit at home doing needlework, darling. It is 1924, after all.”

  “Kim,” Will appealed.

  “Phoebe will be quite safe,” Kim said, with extraordinary certainty. “It is hardly out of the ordinary for her to attend a night-club. You’re more likely to attract adverse attention than she is. You needn’t come if you feel it’s a risk.”

  That was gratuitously provocative. “I said I’d back you up,” Will said. “I don’t see you need to put Phoebe in danger.”

  “He isn’t, darling. I am.”

  “You don’t know what you’re getting into. I don’t like it.”

  “Then don’t,” Phoebe said, and her cut-glass voice was sharp enough to hurt. “Because it is neither your business nor your right to tell me what to do. Is it?”

  Will felt himself redden. Kim cut in while he failed to find a response. “If all goes well, Skyrme won’t even know I’ve been there. If it doesn’t, Phoebe won’t be the one in trouble.”

  “There’s no need to fuss,” Phoebe added, sounding more like herself, less like the upper-class alien who’d just put him in his place. “I’ve got out of any amount of night-club raids, you know.”

  “And been arrested three times,” Kim pointed out.

  She widened her eyes at him. “But only three, darling, and I’ve been in positively dozens of raids.”

  “That would put anyone’s mind at rest. With a bit of luck I’ll be in and out unnoticed while you dance; with slightly less luck, Will might end up having to buttonhole Fuller with a complaint about overcharging for the champagne. It really ought to be an entirely uneventful evening.”

  “No trouble at all,” Phoebe agreed. “Talking of trouble, dearest, have you booked that table? I thought the Criterion but I’ll leave it to you of course. Saturday at the High-Low, then. Quarter past ten, you said? Goodbye, darlings.”

  Kim went to escort her out, and they exchanged murmured words, leaving Will standing in the sitting room alone and wretched. He would have rather liked to disappear down the back stairs the way Kim did. Running away from problems was a lot easier than facing up to them.

  Kim shut the front door, and returned alone. “May I say something?”

  “I don’t know if anything’s ever stopped you.” Will knew it was ungracious and didn’t care. He felt stupid, and snubbed, and very obviously not part of Kim and Phoebe’s rarefied circle.

  Kim ignored that. “Phoebe wasn’t really talking to you then. She’s in a rather unpleasant situation thanks to her father, and it’s wearing on her nerves.”

  “This Johnnie Cheveley character?”

  “Oh, she told you? Yes. He thinks she’ll come to heel if he tugs at the leash hard enough, and her father has handed him the power to do it. She isn’t happy.”

  “So do something about him.”

  “She doesn’t want me to.” Kim gave a mirthless smile. “The sooner she goes to Paris the better. She’s fizzing with enthusiasm about Maisie’s talent, and the prospect of this joint venture. I haven’t seen her this excited in a long time.”

  “Then why let this arsehole spoil it?”

  Kim shrugged. “So far, he’s just a nuisance. If he’s fool enough to apply too much pressure, he can take the consequences. Do you know about this dinner? I am to host a group of the extremely fashionable Saturday week, all for Maisie to meet. Couturiers, designers, professional clothes-wearers, and so on: Phoebe knows everybody. You’re welcome to join us—the Criterion does a very decent table—though I will quite understand if you’d rather find something rusty with which to poke yourself in the eye.”

  Will had no intention of being lured a
way from the topic at hand by this very clear bait. “Have fun. Let’s talk about you sending your fiancée into Zodiac territory.”

  “Believe me, she’ll be fine.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “For God’s sake. This is Phoebe, do you think I don’t care about her?”

  “How the hell should I know what you care about?”

  Kim’s nostrils flared. He started to reply, and stopped himself. “I suppose you have good reason to say so.”

  Will opened his hands in lieu of response. Kim winced. “No, wait. You’ve found yourself in the middle of a mess again, and I’m sorry. I really do understand your concerns about Phoebe, but you must appreciate her situation. She’s had a bellyful of people telling her not to do things because they’re stupid or risky, and some of those people were right, which is unforgivable. Her parents treat her as a child to be rebuked or indulged. I don’t do that.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’d say trust me, but you’d make a rude remark. Trust Phoebe, because she has a genius for people. And, to be honest, my options are limited. We’re on a tight deadline here, with Mrs. Appleby due to return from her travels on Sunday week. I need to know what’s going on before she’s back in the country.”

  That was what he was here for, Will reminded himself. “Is there anything going on beyond a bit of customs evasion?”

  “That remains to be seen. But she’s a Foreign Office wife: she should know a great deal better than to play the fool like this. You probably shouldn’t have promised Beaumont we’d get her off scot free.”

  “That was his condition for talking. I wasn’t going to watch you leave him twisting in the wind. And that reminds me. How did you know he was being blackmailed?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You bloody did. You knew there was something up: you all but told him you knew what was going on. How?”

  “More fool him for believing a stranger’s meaningful statements,” Kim said. “It’s a well-known technique: tell someone you know what they did and watch the blush of their guilty conscience. You know that old story? Someone sends a telegram as a prank to White’s with no name, saying Fly, all is discovered, and six of the members leave the country?”

  “So if I say to you that I know you’re lying to me right now, you’ll admit it?” Will countered.

  “Sadly, one must have a conscience at all in order to have a guilty one. Which I suppose is a point in Beaumont’s favour.”

  “You didn’t like him. You didn’t like him from the moment he walked in. Why not?”

  “Good God, you’re like a dog with a bone,” Kim said. “All right. I didn’t know what was up with Beaumont, but I knew there was something because when my colleague Leinster fell under that train, he had a High-Low matchbook in his pocket. And across the matchbook he had written Beaumont’s name.”

  “What? Why the blazes didn’t you say so before?”

  “Because when I went to look into the man, I discovered you dining with him. And once you told me your connection to him, I wanted you to continue approaching him as a friend.”

  “Which I did! I persuaded him to trust you; I gave him my word. Jesus, Kim! What the bloody hell are you playing at?”

  “Let me spell something out,” Kim said. “Leinster had Beaumont’s name. He asked questions of Beaumont’s mistress. She took his card to Mrs. Skyrme and said, This man is investigating our smuggling, and Mrs. Skyrme said she would look after it. And now Leinster is dead.”

  That stopped Will’s building anger in its tracks. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, shit.”

  “Quite.”

  “It’s not just customs evasion, then.”

  “No. I have some idea what it might be, but it’s only an idea thus far. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, but subterfuge isn’t your strong suit. Could you have lied to his face, knowing this? Or even looked him in the eye as you did before?”

  That was a fair point as far as it went. He wasn’t much of a liar, and people rarely had trouble telling when he disliked them. He wouldn’t have spoken to Beaumont the same way. “No. And I see why you wanted to reel him in. But I still don’t like being used.”

  “I know,” Kim said.

  That was all. He didn’t apologise, because they both know there wasn’t much value to an apology for a thing you’d done entirely on purpose.

  “I don’t like it,” Will said again. “You can trust me, or you can leave me out of it, but don’t use me again, Kim. I’m not your tool.”

  “No.” Was that shame on Kim’s face? Hard to say; it wasn’t an expression Will had seen often. “You aren’t. I do know that.”

  “Try to keep it in mind,” Will recommended. “But, look, Beaumont can’t be involved, surely? He told you all that stuff easily enough.”

  “Agreed; it does seem unlikely. Leinster was something of a misogynist and it’s quite possible he assumed Mrs. Appleby’s lover must be directing her actions. I’ll try to find out. But Will, promise or not, if Mrs. Appleby knew what she was doing when she handed Leinster over to Skyrme, I will see her hang.”

  He sounded like he meant it, and Will couldn’t blame him. “If she knew,” was the best he could say. “Damnation. I’m sorry.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “Well, you. This looks like a rotten job.”

  Kim’s face twisted, a sudden, shockingly open movement that made him look dreadfully like a child. It lasted a fraction of a second before his face smoothed over, but Will could see the tension in his jaw and neck still. “Kim?”

  “You startled me with sympathy. Ah, Christ, Will.”

  “What?”

  Kim hesitated. “Only that I’m grateful to have you with me thus far. And.” He exhaled. “And I don’t flatter myself that you’ll care, but I ought to say that I disappeared on you in January for purely professional reasons. You deserve to know that.”

  “What reasons?”

  “I had—call it omens of trouble with Zodiac at the end of last year. I thought I would do well to keep my distance rather than draw attention to you, and subsequent events proved me right. I’m rather afraid things are coming to a head.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me?”

  “What, and expect you to sit tamely at home, keeping out of danger, because I said so? You aren’t famous for your obliging nature.”

  That phrase struck at Will’s gut. Kim had used it about himself, here in this flat. He had an exceedingly obliging nature, at least in some areas. And Kim had noticed that resonance too, because his eyes were on Will’s deep and dark.

  “I’ll decide what to do for myself,” he said, hearing roughness in his voice. “Stop playing silly buggers.”

  “Silly buggers is what I do. There’s no point waiting for me to do otherwise. There’s no point waiting for me at all.”

  “I haven’t been waiting for you,” Will said indignantly. “I haven’t happened to meet anyone else I wanted to fuck, but that’s not the same thing.”

  “No. Nor have I, since you. I wish you would. I wish you’d meet a nice girl and settle down and grow roses around the door. A decent, respectable life. Why don’t you go and get that instead of being here?” There was a strained note to Kim’s voice. “Why aren’t you doing that now?”

  Will opened his mouth, and realised he had no answer.

  He did want to live decently, in theory. He had always expected a respectable life with the trappings of church, children, brass doorstep, vegetable plot, just as his mother had dreamed of for him. Those were things any man, or most, would want to have.

  The blood-red uncivilised streak of his nature that had blossomed in the war didn’t want them. That streak wanted someone who would ask him to infiltrate night-clubs and kick people’s heads in. That streak wanted Kim, who offered none of the things that appealed to Will’s respectable ambitions and everything that fed the wolf.

  Infinitely unreliable, oddly vulnerable, painfully desirable Kim, who he could n
either understand nor forget. His abrupt disappearance had been a constant, daily prickle of disappointment and hurt that Will hadn’t wanted to address because it was easier to bundle those thoughts up and shove them into the back cupboard of his mind, even if they kept spilling out again, even if they got still more tangled that way.

  It was absurd that the pulsebeat of desire was as strong as ever. It was absurd that Kim was looking at him now with something raw and painful in his eyes after buggering off for two bloody months. It was absurd that Will couldn’t look away.

  “Will?” Kim said softly.

  “I used to have an idea what I wanted,” he said. “If you’d asked me ten years ago, I’d have said I’d be a joiner by now—I was apprenticed to the local man—and married to Mary Alice Goodman. Instead I’ve got a bookshop, and I’ve killed eighteen men.”

  “Eighteen,” Kim repeated.

  “Confirmed. It’s not that I’m keeping score,” Will felt compelled to add. “That would be—”

  “Worrying?”

  “I had the choice between remembering how many or forgetting. I didn’t feel right forgetting.”

  “No,” Kim said, the flicker of humour gone. “No, I see you wouldn’t. Sorry.”

  “It doesn’t keep me awake at night. I had a job and I did it. But it changed me, I know it did. I’m not the man I might have been, not any more. That’s all.” It had been on his mind since meeting Beaumont. Speaking the words aloud felt like a confession.

  “I’m sure you’re right about that,” Kim said. “But I really can’t bring myself to regret the man you might have been, given the one you are.”

  The breath caught in Will’s throat. He was sure Kim heard it.

  “You could have the respectable life,” Kim said again. “You truly could, Will, if you wanted. Sell the bookshop, throw away the knife. Go home. Marry Mary Alice.”

  “She’s already married.”

  “Use your ingenuity. Go and find the life you were supposed to have.”

  “What if I don’t want it any more?” Will asked. “What if there’s something else I want instead?”

  “Is there?”

  Their eyes were locked. The silence rang like crystal.