Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin Page 6

  Or so it seemed. I should have known better. I asked what time she got off for lunch.

  “Um, about half an hour.”

  “Wanna go grab a sandwich somewhere?”

  Can you imagine me asking this at the start of the week, without getting to know her, without all the jokes and flirting? No chance. But now it was a doddle. Got to lay that groundwork or you get nowhere.

  “Er… actually I can’t. I’ve got someone’s leaving drinks to go to.”

  Shit. I got nowhere.

  “Okay, well what about after work? Just down the pub for a quick one?”

  Becky pulled a kind of sad face. “I can’t tonight. We’ve got… I’ve got friends coming round for dinner. Got to cook and everything. Sorry.”

  Game over.

  I said it was no big deal. But my mind was racing. I had to isolate Becky if I was going to make any progress with her. I had to get her out of the office, out of the work environment and away from the safety of her friends. I had to get her and me together. That was the next step. But I’d hit a brick wall.

  To be fair, they sounded like genuine excuses. I can always tell when someone has come up with a lie on the spur of the moment, but I reckoned she was being honest. And I knew she liked me. Of course she did. But it wasn’t enough. That ‘we’ had reminded me that I was chatting up a woman who was engaged to be married.

  “No problem, maybe another time.” I picked up my helmet and smiled. “Have a good weekend.”

  “Bye,” she said softly.

  And I walked out of Asquith and Bream Consolidated for the last time.

  A smarter, more sensitive man than me would have realised at that point he was wasting his time. He would have accepted defeat gracefully, and let the girl get on with her life without pestering her. A less perceptive bloke might have just kept going, bullishly demanding to take her out, not accepting no for an answer. He would have ended up angry and rejected. A more romantic, sweet-talking smoothie would no doubt have resorted to flowers and chocolates, to sending little cards and teddy bears, plucking on her heartstrings. He would have got nowhere with Becky. It would take more than a few cheap trinkets to make her forget her fiancé.

  But I wasn’t any of those men.

  I was a professional. And there was seven grand at stake. So I wasn’t giving up now.

  Phase 8: The element of surprise.

  Friday 11 June 5.31pm.

  Hometime.

  People had been coming out of the building in dribs and drabs for a while now. Then a group of girls burst through the doors and down the steps, eager to be away. Half a dozen of them, including Becky. They hit the pavement and headed up towards the main road, chatting animatedly.

  I roared round the corner on my motorbike. Screeched to a halt beside them.

  See those faces! For a second they didn’t know whether to scatter like sheep, or keep walking and ignore me, or stop and stare, or what – it was pretty funny. I pulled my helmet off. I would have been grinning anyway even if that wasn’t part of the plan.

  “John!” Becky smiled, surprised.

  “How’s it going?” I said, directly to her. “Fancy a ride home?”

  The others – including Laura, Nicola and Teri – all came out with that weird half-squeal half-scream noise that doesn’t occur anywhere in nature except in packs of office girls, and possibly hyenas mating.

  “C’mon, I’ll give you a lift.” I reached into the storage box at the rear of the bike and pulled out a spare crash helmet.

  The girls all started pushing Becky towards me. “Go on Becks!” “Go for it, girl!” “Let him give you a ride!” You can imagine the rest. But she resisted, not sure which way to turn.

  I held the bright red helmet out towards her, smiling. She still wasn’t sure. But her eyes flickered over me, over the bike, over the helmet. As if judging distances. Judging how to play it.

  See, I knew Becky now. Sure, it felt good to have the handsome young courier show an interest in her. That was fun. But hardly worth risking her relationship for. And like all women, she would never want to come across as easy. She didn’t want anyone, especially friends, thinking she was the cheating kind.

  But there had been something else. I’d seen it in her face. A part of her that just wanted to say OK then, leap over the desk and walk out with me, and to hell with what anybody else thinks. There was a little devil in Becky, a little monster that wanted to get out and enjoy herself. She was a lively girl, a fun girl. Not an oh-I’m-engaged-must-be-home-to-make-my-man’s-dinner type. Bollocks to that. This was a girl who used to stick her hand in guys’ trouser pockets to look for her keys.

  And my mistake was being too civilised. If I was going to tap into that, I had to sweep her off her feet.

  “Let’s do it!” I called, dangling the helmet. “Now or never!”

  Becky hesitated – too long. Laura came out of the group and said “Well if she ain’t gonna do it, I sure will!” She strode towards me, reaching for the helmet.

  And Becky snatched it out of my hand, pushing past Laura to jump on the bike.

  The girls went crazy, whooping and egging her on (all except Laura, who looked like a little girl finding the sweetshop closed). Becky swept her long hair up behind her head, slid the helmet on then swung onto the pillion.

  It was a good bike. A medium-sized Honda, all black and red, a few years old but in good condition. Jake did tell me all the details, what CC engine it had and all that, but I’m sure you’re about as interested in that as I was. The pillion was just long enough to get two people on it, sandwiching Becky between me and the storage box at the back. After a week of practice, I could handle it pretty well, for a complete amateur. Jake’s lessons had been useful.

  Funny bloke, Jake. Bit scary, actually. Tattoos up his arms, shaved head, piercings. He was one of Darren’s mates, and I vaguely remembered Darren telling me Jake had done some prison time years ago, but no idea what for. If he’d said GBH, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

  So it was Jake’s bike, and Jake’s leathers, and Jake’s riding lessons that had got me to that point. Jake the genuine courier with Ontime Direct. He’d been really helpful. It didn’t hurt that I was slipping him a few hundred quid to borrow his bike and gear for a couple of hours every day. But I’d expected him to be a bit more precious about what was, after all, his livelihood. I could well imagine Jake saying “One scratch on my bike and I’ll kneecap you.” But he just seemed to trust me, despite not knowing me very well. Darren had told him I was a top bloke, you could trust me till the end of the earth, and that seemed to be enough. Good old Darren.

  Anyway, all that mattered was Becky sliding her cute arse onto my bike and pressing herself up against my own cute arse. I twisted the throttle, gunning the engine, called out “Hold on!” She wound both arms round my middle, squeezing me tight. Felt great.

  The girls screamed with joy as we roared away – and although I was expecting Becky to scream as well, she just gripped me tighter. Inside my helmet, I was laughing.

  All I had to do now was not crash and kill us both.

  It wasn’t easy. I’d put in the practice, and Jake had given me loads of tips, but at the end of the day you’re rocketing along at sixty miles an hour with a loaded gun between your legs (story of my life) and it feels like you’re not the one in charge. The Honda’s engine vibrated up through every bone in my body. But I had to look like I’d been riding the thing for years, that I did this every day.

  So I opened the throttle and we went blasting through rush hour traffic, weaving in and out of cars and trucks and double-decker buses. And I don’t think I’d ever been so shit-scared in my entire life. Or on such a high.

  We slowed at the lights just before Old Street roundabout, engine idling, and I felt Becky lean forward to shout something. “You got this for me, didn’t you?”

  “What?” I yelled back.

  “This helmet. You bought it for me, just now.”

  “No! Of course not!
It’s my spare.”

  “So how come it’s still got the price tag on it?”

  I looked in my wing-mirror and saw Becky behind me, grinning inside the crash helmet with the tag dangling down across her face.

  Then the lights went green, I twisted the throttle, the bike swerved violently round Old Street with me screaming “Shiiiiiitttttt!” and Becky laughing wildly, clinging onto me.

  And she was mine.

  Chapter 5

  Family Affairs

  Monday morning, and again I was on my way to see Barry at the office. This wasn’t a tradition, but I thought I might turn it into one. Quite liked the idea of delivering a regular report back at base. Agent Rowley, reporting for duty!

  As I walked up to Assassin Towers, I tried calling Darren. Where’d he got to? He seemed to have vanished that whole weekend, didn’t return any of my calls or texts. It kind of unsettled me a bit, not being able to contact Darren. He was always there when I needed to let off steam or go have some fun. Hanging out with him reminded me of when we were kids on the estate, a couple of chancers trying to be streetwise… he still talked the same way we used to. “Stay lucky, mate!” Oh well. Probably busy shagging some new girl or two. Don’t know where that lad gets his energy.

  I opened the door to the office, hearing voices that suddenly stopped. Barry and Larry stared at me like I’d walked in wearing nothing but women’s underwear.

  “Morning, chaps,” I said brightly. Barry grunted as if to say S’pose it is morning, since you mention it.

  Larry said nothing. Just a dead look.

  As I mentioned before, Larry Jones was Barry’s old boss. A thin, greying man in his fifties with thick-rimmed spectacles. The sort of person who’s as good as invisible in a crowd – you’d walk right past and barely register him.

  He was also one of the directors of the most successful detective and security firms in the country. Thanks to him, Global Investigations UK Ltd had gone from looking for missing cats and spying on husbands to investigating government fraud and God knows what else, always using the latest technology. I love all that spy gadget stuff. Some of it was eye-popping. Not that they had special Eyeball Poppers, I mean that it was amazing. The sort of thing you wouldn’t believe if you saw it in a movie. You’d say “Cameras inside cufflinks? You’re yanking my chain.” But I’ve used them myself. And the rest. Larry’s lot were cutting edge.

  They were also responsible for giving me half of my work. Without Larry, I reckon Infidelity Ltd would have folded ages ago. So I added “Nice to see you again, Larry. Things going well?”

  “Yes.” Voice like dry leaves.

  We all looked at each other for a bit.

  “Right, well then.” Barry got up from his chair. “Talk about the rest another time?”

  “Yes,” said Larry.

  I stood aside, grinning in what I hoped was a friendly manner, as Barry escorted Larry out of the office. Larry didn’t say goodbye, or even look at me as he walked out, softly closing the door behind him.

  “Barry, these parties of yours are getting wilder all the time! You wanna slow down a bit at your age – ”

  “What do you want, Scott?”

  I blinked. “I don’t want anything. Just thought you might like to know how things are going.”

  “With what?”

  “The Hargreaves case?”

  Barry relaxed his frown. “Oh. Oh yeah. You done the business?”

  My plan had been to give Barry a detailed account of my work last week, paying particular attention to the motorbike pick-up. I wanted to show off, I suppose. We all like to blow our own trumpet a bit, right? And there were only two people I could talk to about my job, which was another reason why Darren being incommunicado kind of niggled me. But I stopped myself. Barry clearly wasn’t in the mood.

  “It’s going well. So what’s happening with you?”

  “Oh, usual, usual.”

  “We don’t see Larry very often. Is this something to do with that big case you mentioned?”

  Barry nodded. “He wanted to discuss it in person. Didn’t want to send me the info the usual way, by encrypted email.”

  “So have we got the case?”

  “Not yet. Still in the works, Larry still hasn’t finalised it from his end. And no,” he stopped me with a hand, “I can’t tell you anything more about it. Not until it’s a done deal. Be another week or so at least.”

  The hand became a pointing finger. “I want you to have a clear caseload by then, Scott. Get Hargreaves done and dusted by Friday. Don’t waste too much time on these small fry, all right? I want us to have cleared the decks so we can focus on this big one if Larry manages to send it our way.”

  “Gotcha. Just one quick question about Hargreaves, though.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I can’t really see why the client would want to use us, to be honest. I mean, there’s no big money at stake or anything. The target’s pretty ordinary… works as a receptionist, you know, just your average girl really. I was wondering why he wanted to set her up like this, rather than just dumping her. They’re not even married yet, so nothing’s stopping him calling it off.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “The client. Sajjan Lakhani. Her fiancé.”

  Barry spun in his chair, almost falling off, and pulled up the mission brief on his computer. “Well, there’s nothing in the case notes that says he’s the client. So it could be for any reason, really.”

  My stomach dropped, like I was in a lift. “So who is the client?”

  “Um… well, it doesn’t say.”

  The lift plummeted to the basement. “What do you mean it doesn’t say! Jesus, Barry, we don’t know who the client is? We don’t know who I’m working for?”

  Rule Two: Never work for a third party.

  Barry shrugged. “Probably this Sajjan bloke, but the case notes don’t specify. Look, does it matter? As long – ”

  “It does bloody matter!” I yelled. “You know how it works, I don’t interfere with couples unless it’s one of them who wants me to!”

  “For crying out loud, Scott, get a hold of yourself! Christ, does it really matter two shits who’s paying for it? I know you like to keep it in the family and all that, but as long as we get the job done and get paid, so what? Not my fault Londonwide Associates never passed those details on, is it?”

  Londonwide Associates was one of the more modest detective agencies that Barry knew. A lot of agencies have names like that – something generic, that doesn’t raise eyebrows if the other half spots it on a bank statement. Normally they were fine, not as good to us as Global Investigations, but they sent work our way from time to time. Now I wondered: had they ever bothered to specify the client on their cases, or had I always assumed it was the boyfriend, fiancé, husband? Was I getting that sloppy?

  Had Barry stitched me up like this before?

  “Look, call Londonwide Associates and ask for – ”

  “I’m not doing that,” he snapped. “I don’t have a direct contact there and I don’t have time to waste on a pissy little case like Hargreaves.”

  “I don’t like this, Barry.”

  “Don’t worry about it, not the end of the frigging world, is it? Just do the business and get out. Now bugger off. I got work to do. Oh, and I’m gonna be out of touch for a bit.”

  “Where you off to?”

  “Got my niece coming over. My sister’s kid. She’s in London for a few days. I thought I’d let her earn a bit of cash, tidy the office up a bit, record us some answerphone messages, stuff like that.”

  I tried to lighten the mood a little. “Nice idea. Infidelity Ltd is expanding, then!”

  “Yeah,” he said to the window.

  “Right, well… I’ll get going.”

  “Mmm.”

  Bad taste in my mouth as I left the office. One of my Rules, broken. There were good reasons for them being there, that one particularly.

  I could still remember the Old Days. B
eing used like a sniper rifle by a complete stranger, to take out a happy couple. They never had any idea, never saw me coming. It was someone else’s idea to break them up, someone who didn’t have the right to make that decision for them. I swore I’d never do that again, and now here I was. Doing it.

  Chill out, I told myself, it’ll be all right. I’m sure Becky’s other half is paying for this. He just doesn’t want to do the dirty job himself. Wants to be on the moral high ground when she’s caught cheating. Suppose it would look bad if he dumped her after buying the engagement ring and all that. Don’t you worry, Mr Lakhani, I’ll set up your bride-to-be for you. You’ll get your money’s worth.

  Becky’ll be okay, I thought. She’ll bounce back. Girl like her could have anyone. Barry’s right. Just do the business.

  Barry was stressed, which I could sort of understand. Dealing with Larry must always remind him of his old job, and of the pig’s ear he made of his career in the detective industry. Being my agent was clearly the consolation prize for Barry. I had to remind myself sometimes that I was lucky to have him.

  I didn’t go bounding downstairs the same way I had only a week before. I trudged down like I was unbalanced, not sure of my footing. Everything felt out of kilter.

  Then I saw the girl coming up towards me.

  She was bright and beautiful – those were the first impressions. Shiny blonde hair, very simple and classic, down to her shoulders. A white blouse, unbuttoned halfway down with the ends tied off above her navel, exposing a gym-flat stomach. Denim jacket. Light blue stonewashed jeans. White trainers. The girl gave off her own light.

  She looked up the stairs, smiled.

  She was gorgeous.

  I tilted aside to let her go by. She kept looking at me as she walked past, with surprisingly dark eyes. She was a few years younger than me, early twenties, and… I could actually feel my own heartbeat, all of a sudden. An instant reaction. (And although it didn’t cross my mind till later, I knew that most girls would despise someone like her on sight, just as instantly.)