Heartbreaker (49 page)

“Talking of packing—”

“It’s essentials only for both of us. I’m going to have to leave most of my stuff behind.”

“What about the cat?”

“I’ll pop her in a cattery this evening. Best if she’s out of the way for a couple of days . . . Are you still planning to nick the Tucker tapes?”

I feel shivery but say I am. “I’ll wait till one in the morning to make sure Tommy’s asleep.”

“Okay, I’ll expect you around one-thirty—call me as soon as you’re driving away and I’ll be waiting for you down the street from Norah’s— I’ll be sheltering in the newsagent’s doorway. Then we’ll go to St. Benet’s, and let’s hope they can deal.”

“Should I call Nicholas to warn him?”

“Better not. If he doesn’t know anything, he can’t cause complications.”

The coffee finishes percolating and Susanne pours each of us a mug. No milk. We’re into serious caffeine-toking here.

We go over the plan again, and by the time the coffee’s finished we’re wired.

“One thing more,” I say as she prepares to leave. “Wipe Gil’s name from the client files before you leave tonight.”

“That Gilbert’s going to wind up the luckiest gay in London by the time you’ve finished with him.”

We embrace for a long moment by the front door.

“Think of ‘In the Mood,’ ” she says after I’ve given her a final kiss, “and remember we’ve got a lot of dancing still to do.”

She leaves. In the kitchen I pour away the rest of the wine in the bottle I opened earlier, and switch to orange juice.

I’ve recovered my nerve.

Between shifts I stay in the flat. I haven’t forgotten that I need to get rid of the St. Benet’s brochures, but they don’t seem so dangerous now I know I’ll be leaving that house for good tonight. I’ll collect them this evening when I bring down my suitcase from the junk-room.

The day drags on while I watch daytime TV like a zombie. For lunch I eat some biscuits and drink some milk. Must take in some kind of fuel.

Finally, at six-thirty, I leave. It’s such a relief to escape from that place. It’s such a relief to know I’ll never have to go there again.

When I arrive home I stop at the office and Susanne gives me a lacklustre “hi” as if nothing’s happened between us. Elizabeth’s there too, and when she turns her back on Susanne to look at me, Susanne gives me the thumbs-up sign to let me know the plan’s on track.

“Hullo, pet,” says Elizabeth casually. “Everything all right?”

“Fine. Sorry about yesterday. I feel really bad about that now.”

“So you should!” But she’s smiling at me. “By the way, Nigel won’t be in tonight. There’s a party down at the pub for one of his friends and I said he could take the evening off on condition he left a nice cold supper for you.”

“Okay.” I will myself to linger in order to appear normal. “How was your day?”

“Oh, busy, busy, busy . . . And I’m going out to dinner with Eva tonight—do you remember my friend Eva who had that very high-class business for Arabs near the Edgware Road a couple of years ago?”

“The silver-blonde with the accent?”

“That’s the one. Well, she’s off Arabs now, says the next big trend’s Russians . . . You’re looking a little peaky, pet! Perhaps I should take you on a mini-break before Christmas so that you can have some nice sea air.”

I smile at her. “Bournemouth?”

“No, Bournemouth’s no fun in winter except at Christmas. Perhaps Brighton. Brighton’s always fun.”

“Let’s make it soon,” I say, giving her a kiss before adding: “Remember me to Eva.”

She says she will and we part very fondly, but as I force myself to dawdle up the stairs it’s hard to repress the biggest possible shudder.

Nigel’s already left for the pub. Good news. Tommy’s car’s absent from its parking slot and that probably means he’s gone early to Austin Friars to pick up the tapes and check the equipment. Too bad he couldn’t have gone later, after Elizabeth’s departure. Then I’d have had the perfect opportunity to nick the Tucker tapes—but no, I’m wrong, Tommy might notice they were missing if I nicked them earlier than planned. The retrieval has to wait till he’s asleep.

On an impulse I pad down to the first-floor landing and glance into the hall below. Susanne and Elizabeth are still in the office, but Elizabeth’s telling her not to work late. Shit! If the Cayman bank phones while Elizabeth’s still here . . . Closing my mind against this nightmare I make a mental note to check the fax machine and answerphone later in the evening.

After picking at the cold salmon salad Nigel’s left for me I go to my bedroom to start selecting clothes. I decide to restrict myself to one suit—a conventional number, not some fuck-me designer two-piece— and a few items of casual gear. I thought I’d be upset when the time came to abandon my wardrobe, but when I look at the clothes I’ve used for my hustler’s life I just want to puke. I mind more about leaving my books, and even more than that I mind leaving my CDs. I decide to take three of each with me. But which three? The problem absorbs me while I wait for Elizabeth to leave for her date with vice-queen Eva who got on the wrong side of the law two years ago but is now out of jail and beavering away to start up a call-girl racket that’ll service the new Russian mafia. Elizabeth doesn’t like Russians. She says she can never forget the Cuban Missile Crisis. Must be weird to be able to remember that kind of stuff.

She goes at quarter to eight. I shelter behind a curtain as I watch her drive away, but she doesn’t look up. That’s the last I’ll see of Elizabeth in our present life, although I hope that one day in my new life I’ll see her again—in the dock of a criminal court. But I probably won’t. There’ll be no evidence and she’ll slither away again, doing her disappearing act.

I feel so churned up by these thoughts that I have to lose the few shreds of salmon salad which I’ve allowed into my stomach, but even after that the mental pain’s so excruciating that I still feel out of control. So I go to the kitchen, find a steak-knife and cut myself on the forearm. Now I feel better. I’m conscious of an exquisite relief as I watch the blood trickle over the skin. I’m in control again. The pain of thinking how Elizabeth’s trashed me is still there but I can feel other pain, such as the soreness of my throat after the vomiting and the rawness of my forearm after the cut, and the physical pain eclipses the mental agony.

My mobile rings. I’ve brought it in from the car, just as I do every night to outplay the Lambeth thieves, and it’s lying on a table in the living-room.

“Check the office while she’s out,” says Susanne the moment I take the call. “Check the fax and the answerphone. We need to know if the transfer hasn’t gone through.”

“Right. Shall I call you if everything’s okay?”

“No, only if there’s a hitch, and if I don’t answer keep trying. Remember, I’ve got to take the cat to the cattery.”

She ends the call and I set down the mobile by the regular phone, the one that I’d never use for private calls because I’m sure Tommy’s bugged it for Elizabeth. I discussed this communication hazard with Susanne earlier and made sure she had my mobile number.

Leaving my section of the house I retrieve the vital number sequence from the porno-pic in Elizabeth’s bathroom and head downstairs to raid the safe for the basement keys. On my way I check the office but the machines are clear. So far so good.

Leaving the office I move into the living-room and remove the cheapo pastiche of an oil painting which conceals Elizabeth’s safe.

As soon as the safe door swings open, my brain zips into top gear. I’ve been so wrapped up in my puking and cutting that I’ve failed to anticipate this dazzling window of opportunity, but now I see that this is when I finally uncover Elizabeth’s secrets. Brilliant.

Having slipped the basement keys into my pocket I check the documents in the safe, but they’re only legal and insurance papers relating to the house and contents. I then take a quick look at the jewellery collection, which is tucked up in a pink velvety box, and alongside this treasure trove I find the Jiffy bag containing five hundred pounds: Susanne’s pay-off if the police move in and she has to dump the steel box in the river.

I gaze at the steel box at the back of the safe. Then I unearth a screwdriver from the toolkit which lives beneath the kitchen sink and have a go at jimmying the lock.

Once I open the lid I see a nice new passport, crisp and shiny, in the name of Elizabeth Tremayne and with Elizabeth’s picture in the photo-slot. Attached to the passport are various credit cards issued in the new name plus details of the Cayman account which I’ve already seen on the computer, the account designed to finance the new identity. Delamere, Mayfield, Tremayne . . . Funny how she gives herself names which suggest the spotless heroine of a romantic novel. I wonder what her real name is.

Returning to the box I excavate the next item. It’s a folder labelled G.O.L.D. RITUALS, and inside there are several closely typed sheets of paper with diagrams which are about as interesting to me as a book on Church liturgy. There are also several packets of photos, but they just show the rituals being enacted. There’s nothing particularly porno there except that in the last batch everyone gets to be naked. No, wait a minute, the last one of all shows a bloke wearing a fake phallus and there’s a bunch of silly gits, male and female, kneeling down with their bottoms in the air as they wait to be done. Even so, this is hardly going to give the Vice Squad a coronary (no children, no animals), but I think I understand the point of this folder. It’s a souvenir of Elizabeth’s favourite project, something she can sigh over with nostalgia in her old age.

I turn over the photos, but nothing’s written on the backs, not even a date. I was hoping to see the word BETZ, but no, Elizabeth wouldn’t have wanted to keep a photo of him after he caused her so much trouble. So I haven’t found a smoking gun here, but I still put the folder on my takeaway pile. At least the stuff links her to GOLD.

Then I see there’s another folder in the box. This contains some copies of bank statements for the Guild of Light and Darkness, and I learn that GOLD has two banks, one a normal London high-street bank and the other the Swiss bank I already know about. Both sets of statements are dated 1989 and they’re clipped to a copy of a GOLD tax return. This is when I discover that only the high-street bank income gets reported to the Revenue. This is the bank which receives the membership subscriptions (called “tithes” to make them sound religious). All the extra gifts go to Switzerland, which I now realise is the account used for any number of off-colour dealings, not necessarily confined to GOLD.

This has to be Elizabeth’s insurance. This is the evidence that can sink Asherton for tax evasion if ever the two of them fall out—the evidence that’ll allow the police to turn over Asherton’s affairs. But how did Elizabeth get hold of this lethal weapon? Although she was a VIP in GOLD from the beginning, she wouldn’t have handled the money. I flip through the tax return to the end and finally discover it’s been signed by Asherton, as managing director—and by the treasurer, a certain Joachim Betz.

I think: GOTCHA!

This is the cast-iron proof that Carta wanted—the proof that GOLD was the scam which hooked her husband. It’s also the cast-iron proof that GOLD employed “Elizabeth Mayfield,” referred to in the accounts as a “consultant on religious ritual” who received quarterly payments for her expertise.

Obviously Elizabeth had a hold over Betz and got him to disgorge copies of these papers. Equally obviously she wouldn’t want her connection with Betz to be known now, but as there’s no mention of the Delamere name she could still tip off the Revenue by sending the evidence anonymously—she still has the power to make Asherton back off without putting herself in danger.

I put the folder on the takeaway pile. It’s nice to think of the police having a whole new area to explore.

There’s only one item in the steel box now and that’s a chunky envelope. What’s this? Lifting the unsealed flap I pull out a video, and as soon as I see the label on the spine my eyes go spherical. Elizabeth’s written: (1) JASON (2) TONY.

My predecessors. The boys who got sacked after failing to stay the course. What the hell’s all this about? Is Elizabeth really so sentimental about them that she keeps a video of their best gay moments with the punters? No way!

Crossing the living-room I shove the video into the machine below the television, and the next moment the horrors begin.

At first I don’t take in what’s happening. I just stare dumbly. Then understanding hits me and I nearly drop dead with shock, my heartbeat’s missing for God knows how many seconds before starting up again. Then I think: no, no, I’m not seeing this, I’ve freaked out, I’m hallucinating. But I’m not. I see Asherton drooling on-screen as he starts to cut up living limbs.

I can’t watch for much longer. I fast-forward to the end before backtracking and playing the last few seconds. In an ocean of gore a heap of skinned flesh twitches and lies still. That must be Tony. Jason would have met an identical end in the first half of the spliced tape. Two blokes like me, drop-outs, drifters, with no one to care enough to ask questions if they disappeared. Fingers shaking on the remote control, I press the stop button and rewind. I’m so shattered I can only think of all the times Nigel and I cracked black-humour jokes about Asherton making snuff movies. Of course we never thought he’d actually done it. I mean, that kind of thing always happens somewhere else among people you don’t know. Sure Asherton’s a sadist, sure he’s a creep and a perv, and yes, of course he’s nuts, but—

Struggling to be calm I ask myself if this tape too was kept as evidence against Asherton, but I know it wasn’t. Just possessing the tape converts Elizabeth into an accessory to murder, and that makes it much too dangerous to use in any power struggle. So why has she kept it? Well, for her it must be all about seeing villains get what they deserve. Jason and Tony became villains, not doing what they were told, maybe trying to go their own way, perhaps even being dumb enough to stop calling her darling and start accusing her of being a nasty old bag. Well, they got their comeuppance, didn’t they? The horrific truth is that Elizabeth’s kept this home movie because she finds it emotionally satisfying.