The Last Witness (19 page)

  Gordon’s income was more than halved, but their London house sale had left them with a healthy financial cushion. Most importantly, Gordon felt happier, less stressed, and they both had more quality time to spend with the children.

  Elena shook her head. Each stage in their lives appeared so carefully planned and mapped out – except that half of it had been a lie throughout. And she’d lived that lie now for so long that she could never bring herself to tell Gordon; it would cut him to the quick, summon another heart attack. No, this was a quest she’d have to make alone, in secret.

‘Christos Georgallis…’ She muttered the name almost as an incantation under her breath, quickly swallowed on the steady breeze swirling into Poole harbour. Twenty-nine years? She wondered where he was now. She had so much to tell him: that she’d never stopped thinking about him; that she’d always loved him, and that she was sorry, sorry…
sorry
. She clenched her eyes tight as the tears welled. Oh my God, she was sorry.

But she wondered first and foremost if she’d ever be able to find him. Knowing how intent her father had been on burying him forever out of sight and reach, probably not.

NINE

‘You called earlier?’ Roman hunched his collar up tight. An icy wind outside seemed to still penetrate the glass of the telephone booth. His caller’s usual booth two blocks from RCMP HQ had come up on his call monitor at home.

  ‘Yes, I did.’ The voice at the other end was flat, bland. He didn’t make the point that it had been three times or give any hint now as to why it was so urgent. As arranged at the outset, he was only to be called at home in an emergency, and nothing possibly incriminating should ever pass between them over the line.

  ‘You can call me back on this number…’ Roman read out the number on the phone.

  ‘Yeah… fine.’

  The line went dead, and Roman stamped his feet and blew in his hands as he waited on the call back. It took a moment more than usual.

  ‘I’ve started using the booth a block further away from home – just in case they might have cottoned on to me using the nearest booth,’ his caller explained.

  ‘Okay – where’s the fire? What’s happened?’ Roman’s tone was impatient, the wait in the cold and the cloak and dagger routine adding to his edginess.

  ‘It’s Donatiens. He was at our HQ today, being questioned by Chenouda…’

  Roman felt the cold grip him even deeper as the details came out, what few he was able to extract with a chain of increasingly staccato questions: What time? How long for? What was said?

  Minutes later he was speeding towards their lap-dancing club on Rue Sherbrooke. He’d kept Funicelli’s car, not wanting the hassle of possibly being stopped and quizzed by the RCMP. He swung in wildly as he approached, screeching to a halt and slamming the car door. So far he’d taken out his anger and frustration on only inanimate objects – slamming his palm against the kiosk glass after hanging up, banging one fist repeatedly against the steering wheel as he drove – but he swore that if the club doorman or any of the staff said the wrong thing, he’d lay them flat in one.

  But it was all smiles, nods and cordial greetings as he made his way through: ‘Bonsoir, Monsieur Lacaille. Ca va?’

  Azy, the head barman, fired him a broad Caribbean grin as he perched on a bar stool. 

  ‘What’ll it be, bossman?’ To Azy, everyone was man, my man, or bossman, according to status.

  Roman leant both arms heavily on the counter and let out an exaggerated huffed sigh. Azy’s smile was hard to resist, but all Roman could muster was a weak grimace. ‘Usual fucking poison. A triple.’ Roman looked around. ‘No Yves then tonight?’ As a rotating manager between their three clubs and a restaurant, Yves was there at most two nights a week.

  ‘No. He said he’d come by about nine tomorrow night.’ Azy picked out the bottle without hardly looking and poured a third of a large balloon of Hine. ‘Celebrating something?’ he enquired.

  ‘Celebrating?’ Roman cocked a quizzical eyebrow. He raised the glass, took the first slug. ‘Nah. Just something to break the ice.’ He smirked to himself at the image of Venegas sliding away beneath the ice. The only thing to have gone right all day. ‘It’s ass-freezing weather out there.’

  Azy missed any hidden significance and held the same half smile as he put back the bottle, the lights and mirrors behind picking out his blue eyes. The product of a Jamaican father and Quebecois mother, the joke among the staff was that he’d got his mother’s eyes and his father’s dick, fuelled by dressing-room gossip from when he’d dated one of the girls last year. But Azy had been hired for his good dress and customer sense, and his familiarity with practically every known cocktail from Maine to Shanghai. Just turned thirty with pineapple dreadlocks dangling around his coffee tone, broad cheek-boned face like a dead spider, his dress was always hip and stylish and he was popular with the girls: he was usually their first choice to confide in if there were problems, in or outside of the club.

  Roman swivelled round and surveyed the room: Amy, Chantelle, Janine, Lucy, then a new girl Roman didn’t recognize; though he was looking mainly for Viana… finally picking her out from the subdued lighting in the far corner, dancing for a customer. He’d wait until she was finished, then call her over. Just after nine-thirty, the club was almost half full: not bad for a weekday.

  Celebration? He’d thought originally of coming down here for a quick victory drink after Venegas. The warm glow of a drink in his stomach and some warm pussy in his lap would have reminded him too how good it was to be alive after his own close escape. But after the call just past, it was just somewhere with loud music and writhing bodies to help drown the madness of the day.

  Three hours? Three fucking hours? He’d asked the question twice in disbelief when told how long Donatiens had spent at RCMP HQ. His contact tried to placate him that he didn’t think much dramatic had been said, otherwise he’d have probably heard about it by now – but he’d let him know more tomorrow.

  Three hours? Not much said. Huh! Who was he kidding? In that time, Donatiens could have spilled every last detail about the Lacaille family, including all their shoe sizes – and no doubt that night with Leduc would have been the first topic in the frame.

  Roman eased his collar as he felt a sudden rush of heat to his face and neck. They could be on their way for him in a squad car any time now. Or maybe they were still working on final strategy and backroom legal paperwork? But if it involved checking with Crown prosecution, surely his contact would have heard by now? He took a couple of hasty brandy slugs, then knocked back the rest in one and ordered another triple.

  The first hint of concern tempered Azy’s smile as he poured, realizing that Roman was on overdrive: normally he’d nurse a single brandy for almost an hour.

  Roman hit the re-fill a bit slower, he still had a third of it left to swirl around in the bottom after fifteen minutes, his jaw working ever tighter as he watched Viana continue dancing for the same man one song after the next. The guy was hogging her half the night, when was he going to get a look in? Roman raised an acknowledging hand and fired a brief smile at one point when he thought she’d looked over, but with the darkness of the club it was difficult to tell if she’d seen him or not.

  As the next song started, Prince’s ‘Kiss’, and she went into another routine of writhes and grinds, Roman sharply knocked back the last of his drink. That was it. He was going to tell the guy to move on and try some other pussy. But two steps from the bar stool he noticed her wriggling back into her tanga. Next came her short, tight black satin skirt, pulled up her thighs excruciatingly slowly. It was a reverse strip.

  Azy’s voice came from behind. ‘Guy comes by twice a week. Same routine every time – eight or nine songs, finishing how it started. And always with Viana.’

  ‘Yeah. Whatever does it for you.’ Roman perched back on the bar stool. ‘Hit me with another big one meanwhile, and whatever Viana wants.’

  Azy was getting seriously worried now. He’d never seen Roman drink so hard and fast, but there was something bubbling beneath Roman’s slightly glazed eyes that warned him not to say anything. Just pour. Smile. What he was paid to do: customers often took him for some sort of social counsellor, but as long as
he
never got the roles confused.

  Viana pecked her client on the cheek as she took his money, then made her way over, firing a broad grin as she got closer.

  ‘Sorry, Romy. Some of these guys just seem to want to take monopoly.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Whatever.’ Roman didn’t want to think about sharing her. He held a hand to one side. ‘I’ve had one of those days. I need some serious attention here.’

  They moved about six yards to the side of the bar, the first subdued-lit area. Viana took a quick sip of her coke as they sat. The rule for the girls was soft drinks only, except for the last hour when they could drink either vodka or champagne: neither smelt on the breath. Viana moistened her lips as she set the glass down, and spread her legs suggestively, showing a yard of tan thigh leading to heaven.

  ‘So, Romy – how you been, since… since last week?’

  ‘Don’t ask. Don’t fucking ask.’ Roman shook his head quickly, but he found it hard to rip his eyes from the same spot: her tanga barely covered her neatly trimmed vulva, and he swore he could see a trace of moisture already there. Or maybe it was sweat from all the dancing?

  ‘You look tired… real tired.’ She stood up, started swaying to the beat of ‘Constant Ariba’ playing. ‘Just relax… relax.’

  Roman felt the ice from the lake and the tightness in his chest from this new problem with Donatiens start to melt and ease from his body. Viana’s smile, the tease on her lips and in her eyes, her coffee-cream skin glistening with a faint sheen of sweat, seemed to radiate a heat from a yard away that seared straight through him and touched every nerve end. She was gorgeous, an exquisite cocktail of Haitian, Lebanese, French Quebecois and Italian, with crinkly dark hair half way down her back and soft brown eyes like a bed of autumn leaves; she was by far Roman’s favourite of all the girls, her cocaine habit which had helped forge their relationship aside. He’d have chosen her anyway, she was streets ahead of the rest. A natural.

  Next was the tanga. She bent away from him as she slowly eased it down, then swivelled around and perched herself back on the stool opposite. Leaning back, she scissored her legs high and wide apart and slowly traced her hands from her ankles down. She paused as her hands came within an inch of meeting, as if to make sure Roman’s attention was fully on what her hands were framing, before slowly pulling her lips apart to give Roman a glimpse of her pink moistness. Tantalisingly, she slid a single finger inside.

  Roman shuddered and closed his eyes. A natural.

  But as he opened them again, he noticed Viana’s previous customer looking over from the bar, his steel-rimmed glasses glinting with the mirrored lights; he seemed vaguely perturbed that Viana was giving someone else such a good show, as if her nine dances with him somehow gave him proprietary rights. He looked like a yuppie banker or accountant, and suddenly Roman was reminded of Donatiens: of how he’d gained strong favour with Jean-Paul so quickly, leaving him on the sidelines of the main thrust and flow of business. Practically out in the cold. He glared back at steel-rimmed: I’ll show you who is in control.

  The track changed to ‘I’m Every Woman’, and Viana turned and leant away from him, bending almost double and reaching back to spread her butt cheeks as she wriggled at him.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it, doll… spread that smile for me.’ But Roman was smiling challengingly towards steel-rimmed as he reached out and started stroking Viana’s thighs.

  She didn’t protest at first – the club rule was no touching – only a slight frown crossed her face. But as Roman’s stroking became more insistent, with one hand raising to lazily trace a finger up the cleft of her butt, she flinched and pulled away.

  ‘Not here, Romy… not here.’

  ‘You got that right. At my place you ride my dick like it was going out of style.’ Roman said it loud enough to be heard at the bar. Steel-rimmed looked away uncomfortably towards the bottles ahead. Azy too looked perturbed; he’d long suspected they had something going on, but Viana looked distraught at it being broadcast so openly and gauchely. Though Azy knew better than to intervene. He kept his head down, studiously cleaning and stacking glasses.

  Roman reached out and brusquely grabbed her thigh, pulling her close. ‘Come on, stop being so prissy.’

  She wriggled and tried to break free. ‘No, Roman, no… not here.’ This time her tone was firmer.

  Roman clutched tighter with both hands, keeping his grip. He shook her hard. ‘Look. I own this fucking club, and I own you. Now just be a good girl and do what you’re told… bend for me like you did before.’ Roman glared icily at her, a smile slowly easing as she hesitatingly complied. He could feel her shaking in his grip, which only added to his excitement. The feeling of control.

  Viana’s writhing was now more stilted, staccato, as the first clouds of worry crossed her face. This was a different Roman: a fiery, dangerously bubbling mood she’d seen a couple of times before, but never directed at her.

  Roman smiled contemptuously at steel-rimmed, who was looking over again. See. I’ll show you who is in control. Who’s boss. You, Donatiens… the lot of you. I’ll get back what’s rightfully mine. He felt the effects of the brandy washing through, making his senses float pleasantly. ‘Come on, babe. Spread again,’ he murmured dreamily. ‘… Wide.’

  Viana slowly, reluctantly moved her legs further apart, and he ran one finger lazily along her cleft, feeling the warmth and moistness there. Yeah. He’d be back where he should be soon… with everything at his fingertips. The sudden sensation that everything around moved in time to his touch: Viana’s swaying body, the room and lights around swirling gently, the music pumping almost in rhythm with his own quickening pulse and Viana’s trembling. He slipped one finger slowly inside, her heat so feverish it almost burnt.

  ‘Please, Romy… please!’ Her eyes welled with tears of fear and humiliation.

  But her tensing against his finger, increasing the constriction, only heightened his excitement. He pushed more forcefully, working the finger around. Roman glanced over at his audience: Steel-rimmed had already looked away in disgust, but Azy was looking over more keenly and agitatedly, though quickly averted his gaze.