Next of Kin (9 page)

‘Well if there's nothing else…' said Delfy eventually, looking across at Henderson with a strained smile on his face and indicating the mass of paperwork before him.

Henderson stood up. ‘Benson will be bringing him in shortly,' he said, before turning away.

‘Him?' asked Delfy, frowning. ‘Him who?'

‘Montignac,' said Henderson. ‘You told us you wanted to speak to him, remember?'

Delfy sighed. ‘Is that tonight?' he asked, frustrated.

‘You said it was urgent.'

‘I did, I know,' he said. ‘All right. When? Within the hour?'

‘Give or take.'

‘Well show him in once he gets here, and you better wait outside then. Make sure he's clean too; I've never trusted that boy.'

‘You don't need to worry about that,' said Henderson. ‘What do you want us to do with him? Afterwards, I mean,' he added.

Delfy opened his mouth to reply but hesitated for a moment. ‘I'm not sure yet,' he said. ‘I'll see what he has to say for himself first. I'm very disappointed in our young Mr Montignac. After all the promises he made me. I don't like to be let down by people. I think it's time we showed him the error of his ways.'

Henderson nodded and took that as his cue to leave, closing the door quietly behind him.

Delfy remained seated behind his desk. He craved a drink and he missed Alice. But one would be ruinous to his health and the other … the other was beyond his reach now.

2

GARETH BENTLEY ARRIVED AT
the Unicorn Ballrooms shortly before ten p.m. with two friends, Jasper Conway and Alexander Keys. They had enjoyed a large meal, supplemented by many bottles of wine, at a new restaurant in Covent Garden and were in high spirits but not drunk enough to be turned away by the doorman. Two of them had been there before. Conway was a regular visitor who was slowly working his way through his trust fund at the roulette tables while Keys preferred blackjack, although he never brought more money than he could afford to lose and was exactly the type of customer that Nicholas Delfy could have done without: the type who pocketed their winnings when they were ahead and left without throwing it away again.

Gareth, on the other hand, was a novice at the Unicorn, although he wasn't a stranger to similar types of establishment and he knew enough to pull his jacket down and appear as non-threatening as possible as they stood on the filthy London street being scrutinized by the doorman.

‘Mr Conway,' he said, trained to remember names as he nodded his head politely at them. ‘And Mr Keys. How are you gentlemen tonight?'

‘Very well, Dempsey,' said Alexander, slipping a couple of shillings from his wallet and preparing to hand them over.

‘You've brought a guest, I see,' said Dempsey, looking Gareth up and down for any signs of potential trouble.

‘This is Mr Gareth Bentley,' said Conway with a swagger, draping his arm around his friend's shoulders. ‘A particular friend of mine. Needs a bit of a treat, you see. It's his birthday. Twenty-four today. Very depressed about it.'

‘Right you are,' said Dempsey, not caring about such things but stepping aside to allow them to enter. ‘Have a pleasant evening, gentlemen,' he said as the coins slipped from Alexander's hand into his own and from there into his pocket. It was well known that the doormen at clubs such as this were among their highest earners; the power of entry and exit was a highly marketable one.

The three young men stepped through the doors and into the dark and narrow corridor beyond, surrendering their overcoats at the cloakroom. They wore tuxedos, for their birthday celebrations had been a formal affair, and had gone from the restaurant to bottles of champagne at a more legitimate club where standards of dress were encouraged. While there, they had made the decision to end their evening at the Unicorn and had loosened their bow ties only a little as they sat in the taxicab, assuming an air of louche disarray, the type that young gentlemen of their position and wealth liked to affect.

‘I can't believe you've never been here before,' said Conway as they continued down the corridor towards the place where two more silent doormen stood on either side of a set of silver doors and opened them dramatically to reveal the club within. ‘It's really one of the best of its sort.'

They stepped inside and Gareth blinked his eyes to adjust them to the surprising darkness on the other side. There was nothing particularly unexpected to be seen. A series of enclosed booths, all filled with well-dressed men of his own age and older, laughing and talking in small sets, and before them a wide bar where a group of attractive young women in a paucity of clothes were filling out orders and bringing trays to the tables. At the far side of the room there were a couple of billiard tables and beyond them, through another corridor, he could see and hear the sounds of the gaming rooms.

‘Let's get a seat,' said Alexander, moving in the direction of an empty booth and glancing around a little nervously as he did so to see whether there was anyone he knew at any of the booths that surrounded them. He wasn't embarrassed about being seen in such a place—after all most of his acquaintances and friends attended them regularly—but he had a particular image of his own persona in his head and felt less than proud of the secret vices which threatened its unstable foundations. Alexander had taken a first in English and French literature at Cambridge and was employed as a book reviewer and literary correspondent for
The Times
, a position which he felt gave him a certain superiority in society. In his private time he was working on a novel in the tradition of Henry Fielding which he was so far afraid to show anyone in case they judged it crass and old-fashioned, a judgement which could only compromise his position and carefully nurtured view of himself.

‘Champagne, I think,' said Jasper Conway when the girl arrived and he looked her up and down appreciatively while she smiled in return, attempting to appear pleasant but not encouraging. ‘Your best champagne and four glasses, my dear.'

‘Four glasses?' asked the waitress, looking around the table. ‘Will you be having a friend joining you then?'

‘I thought you might like to sit with us for a while,' he replied jovially. ‘It's my friend here's birthday today. Wouldn't you like to wish him well?'

‘Happy birthday, sir,' said the waitress, smiling across at him. ‘But unfortunately I can't join you. I'm on duty until closing time.'

‘Not even for a quick snifter?' asked Jasper in disappointment. ‘No one will mind, surely?'

The waitress shook her head but smiled and Jasper accepted defeat gracefully. He knew the rules of a place like this. The girls who worked in the bar section were attractive and pleasant but untouchable; they weren't tarts. The girls who worked in the gaming room beyond were less attractive and all business and you wouldn't want to touch them anyway; they kept track of everyone's hands at cards and their focus was unbreakable.

Of course it was entirely acceptable to try to lure one of the waitresses into your group but bad form to push them when they declined.

‘Three glasses then,' said Jasper, a little disappointed but not overly concerned. ‘We'll drink alone.'

The waitress vanished, leaving the three men together in their booth.

‘Actually, I don't think I should drink any more,' said Gareth. ‘I should probably just get some water.'

‘Not drink any more?' asked Jasper in an appalled tone, as if he had just made some lascivious comment about his mother. ‘What on earth are you talking about?'

‘I've already had a couple of glasses of wine. You know that it's bad for me.'

‘Oh don't be ridiculous,' he replied. ‘It's your birthday after all.'

Gareth threw a look across the table at Alexander, hoping that he'd back him up. It was difficult to maintain his sobriety without some support.

‘If he doesn't want to, don't make him,' said Alexander. ‘You still worry about it then? I wondered when I saw you drinking at dinner,' he added, looking across at Gareth.

‘I had a glass of champagne because, as Jasper says, it's my birthday. But other than that, I never do any more. It's too risky.'

‘Don't worry, we'll keep an eye on you,' said Jasper, who was damned if he was going to allow him to stop drinking now. ‘Have you cheered up yet anyway?' he asked, looking across at Gareth who gave a small laugh and nodded.

‘I'm all right,' he said. ‘I was being ridiculous.'

‘Of course you were. Twenty-four's nothing. I'm twenty-nine for heaven's sake. Nearly thirty. I'll be an old man come next September.'

‘It's not the fact of turning twenty-four that's bothering me,' said Gareth, who had spent much of the early evening bemoaning the fact that another birthday had come along to attack him. ‘It's the fact that I don't seem to have much of a life going on for a chap of my age.'

‘Not much of a life?' asked Jasper in surprise. ‘For heaven's sake, man, you lead a charmed life.'

‘As you see it.'

‘As any sensible person would see it,' he said. ‘Do you know I have to get up every weekday morning at eight o'clock, I have to present myself for work to the bank by nine—nine in the morning, mind you, regardless of where I've been or what I've been doing the night before—I have to work flat out until lunchtime when I'm lucky if I get more than an hour or two for myself, and then it's back to the slog until four. That's my life, Gareth. You should try working in a bank if you want to know the meaning of hard work.'

‘Jasper, your father owns the bank,' remarked Alexander with a smile. ‘You're a board member. Your working days consist of long lunches with clients and making sure that all your assistants do your work for you. It's not as if you're sitting behind a counter all day, filling out lodgement and withdrawal slips.'

‘Well I don't see how that's relevant,' sniffed Jasper, a little offended. ‘It's still work. I mean granted it's not as demanding as sitting around reading novels all day long and typing a few hundred words of praise or damnation but all the same.'

Alexander laughed and shook his head. ‘I'm not having this debate again,' he said, for the subject of working in a bank versus the literary lifestyle was one they had contested many times. He glanced around as the waitress brought their drinks and noticed an enormous burly man—the type that was always present in places such as this to undertake the less than savoury aspects of their employers' businesses—disappearing down a corridor with another man being led before him like a prisoner on his way to the firing squad. He narrowed his eyes to try to see the fellow's face, as the sudden shock of white hair was more than familiar to him, but the two men had disappeared out of sight now and he dismissed it as a trick of the light and turned back to his friends.

‘I think I need a job,' Gareth announced as they clinked glasses.

‘Steady on,' said Jasper. ‘That's just the drink talking.'

‘And that's exactly why this has to be my last one. Anything that will get me out of the house would do,' he continued. ‘Something to keep me busy. Father won't stop harassing me about it until I start something.'

‘You don't want to come to work at the bank, do you?' asked Jasper, secretly hoping that his friend might say yes.

‘No,' said Gareth firmly. ‘Not that.'

‘What does your father want you to do?'

‘He wants me to join him in chambers,' he said. ‘He says it's absolutely insane for a young man to have studied law and passed all his exams and then not want to practise at the Bar.'

‘It does seem a little pointless,' admitted Alexander.

‘I suppose so. But I'm not like him,' said Gareth, who had enjoyed his studies at Cambridge but was frustrated by the fact that he had a great desire to rebel against his father, the eminent judge Mr Justice Roderick Bentley KC, but could not find a subject of sufficient disagreement between them. ‘He loved being a barrister, he absolutely adored getting people off on some technicality that he'd thought up or getting them sent down when he knew they were guilty, and being a judge is what his whole life has led to. But he's always been uncommonly kind to those guilty bastards that have come before him, that's what bothers me. I'm not sure I have that generosity of spirit within me.'

‘He's not always kind,' pointed out Jasper. ‘He let that fellow swing a couple of months ago, didn't he? What was his name … the chap who was the king's nephew or some such thing.'

‘His third cousin,' Gareth corrected him. ‘Yes, he did, I'll give you that. But that's because he said that justice was blind or some such rot and that if anyone else had been standing before him convicted of the same offence then he would have sentenced him the exact same way.'

‘Still, it seemed a bit strong,' said Jasper. ‘All things considered.'

‘Rubbish,' said Alexander whose literary pretensions had turned him into something of an anti-establishmentarian, although he still couldn't quite decide whether he wanted to tear down the palaces or become the poet laureate. ‘Your father did the right thing. He didn't allow himself to be swayed by powerful and mysterious forces.'

‘Well anyway,' said Gareth. ‘That's what he wants. For me to take my pupillage in his chambers and then practise alongside him.'

‘And are you going to do it?' asked Jasper, who sensed in his friend a desire to be told that to do such a thing, to work for a living, was not really so awful.

‘It doesn't look as if I'm going to have much choice,' said Gareth. ‘It's either that or he says he's going to cut off my allowance. I'm afraid that the days of Gareth Bentley playing the carefree bachelor are behind me. Good God, he'll want me to get married next,' he added with a shudder.