Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (33 page)

I could tell she was on the verge of calling this off. “Yeah, it is, this is all part of the plan. I had to bring you somewhere that Global Investigations wouldn’t think of looking for you, but somewhere I can stay in contact with them. I’ve got a link to their intranet and everything from here, so we can see how long it takes them to track us down.

“Don’t worry,” I added, seeing her frown. “I’m not expecting us to stay off their radar for long. And at least you’ll be comfortable while we wait.”

Megan shrugged. “Okay.”

I led her into my flat. It was the ground floor of a two-storey Edwardian house. I hardly ever saw the upstairs tenant, as he was an out-of-town professional who only stayed there during the week and returned to his family at the weekends. So I wouldn’t be overheard, that Friday night, when I had the Face of Scotland as a guest.

“Make yourself at home,” I said as we walked into my living room. It was tidier than it had ever been. Carpet hoovered, coffee table dusted, widescreen TV and stereo system gleaming, covert video camera in the light fittings. Oh and champagne in an ice bucket. All prepared.

All going wrong.

This wasn’t how it was meant to be! We were meant to come tumbling in while fooling around, crash-bang-shh-giggle, me playing the villainous kidnapper, her playing the helpless victim. I actually had a blindfold in my pocket, on the off-chance I could have got away with that. Or maybe even picking her up and carrying her in, like taking a bride over the threshold. Anything that got me close to her. Anything that made her feel like she was being swept off her feet.

All Megan had to do, all the cameras had to record, was a brief moment where she let her guard down, where she was clearly getting up to something with a man other than her boyfriend. All I had to do was get under her skin. That dangerous, exciting connection between kidnapper and kidnappee. Just a little Stockholm Syndrome between friends.

And if, like with some of my other cases, it suddenly went much further… well, there was a video camera in the bedroom as well.

“Nice little place,” said Megan, sitting down. “Cool pinball machine, very retro. You and the girlfriend, is it?”

“Um… no, just me.”

She threw me a sort of dirty smile, and then started unwrapping the champagne. My pulse jumped. Was that… was there a chance?

Red and amber. Ready to go.

My ringing mobile made me jump, bringing me back into the role of Jason King. “Ah, that’s Jane,” I said to Megan. “We said we’d update each other regularly. Mind if I take this?”

“Go ahead.” Pop of champagne cork. “Tell Dec I said hi.”

Dumping my leather coat on a chair, I walked into the kitchen and closed the door. “Emma. How’s it going?”

“I’ve blown it.”

I checked the mobile display. Yes, this was Emma calling. “What did you say?”

“I’ve blown it. It’s all gone wrong. I can’t believe it. Declan’s gone!”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“He’s just left!” she hissed. “He was supposed to stay with me for the whole operation, I’d told him I’d be monitoring things from his end, here at his house. But he’s just said he had something to do and he’s jumped in the car and… just
gone!”

I was listening more to her voice than the actual words. I’d never heard Emma like this. Tense. Worried. Where was the Terminator-hard professional? It was fascinating and disturbing at the same time. If Emma of all people was losing it, then…

Her words sank in. Declan gone, which meant:
“Shit!”

“It’s up to you now,” said Emma. “I can’t get near Declan, so it’s all down to you and Megan. I’m on my way over to you. You might need some backup at some point. Maybe once you’ve done the business I can turn up and tell her the operation’s over. I’ll text you when I’m outside your place, try and update me on your progress if you can.”

“…Okay.”

I hung up, put the phone inside my mouth and tried to bite it in half. Emma was on her way over and it was all down to me and
I’d already blown it!

I nearly choked on my Nokia when the doorbell buzzed.

As I went into the hallway, Megan called out “Oh, looks like the game’s up! Have they found us already?”

“Uh… might not be them, stay there and I’ll check.” And I gently pulled the living room door shut.

My heart was thumping as I walked to the front door. Couldn’t be Emma, she’d only just called. Maybe it was Global Investigations – maybe they were more on the ball than I thought, and had tracked down their missing client. But Larry should have taken care of that. Nobody else knew where we were, except Barry… could this be him checking up on us? Yeah, that sounded like the kind of ham-fisted stunt he’d pull. Sticking his nose in to make sure we’d done the business. For God’s sake! Didn’t he trust us? But if it was him, I’d have to tell him I’d already blown it…

I stopped halfway down the hall. Staring at the shape through the front door’s frosted glass panel. Distorted, warped, but almost as familiar as my own reflection.

Becky.

Funny what goes through your mind, sometimes. Five seconds standing there staring at the front door. Plenty of time for a confused debate with myself: Ignore the doorbell and pretend nobody was home? Shout at her through the glass to go away? Sneak Megan out my back door to the car and speed off? Stand here and flap my hands in a big girly panic?

But during those five seconds, I stared at her silhouette through the frosted glass… her height, her figure, the outline of her hair, the way she was standing, all so familiar… and my breath caught in my throat.

Becky.

I ripped the fake goatee away from my lip and chin. Too quick. “Ow!” Checked in the hallway mirror – shit, red marks. Scrubbed my face with my hands, stuffed the goatee down my back pocket. Opened the door.

And there she was. Not snapping a cheeky picture of me with her mobile phone, not grinning, not flashing her boobs like she did one time. No trace of a smile. Just standing there, arms folded around her middle, like a tense little girl in the dentist’s waiting room.

“John, I… oh God.” Her eyes flickered across my face.

It came flooding back to me. The Anchorage. The things she’d seen and heard. Me and Darren brawling like thugs. I lowered my head as if I could hide the black eye and bruises from her. I felt… ashamed.

She recovered: “I need to talk to you.”

“Becky, look, I’m sorry about what happened, the last thing I wanted was – ”

“We can’t talk out here,” she said, and walked into my flat with the ease of someone who has always been welcome.

Oh my God no. Think quick!

“Stop!” I said as she made for the living room. “Um, you can’t go in there, I’ve got… an electrician in… adding some power points. He’ll be a while, the whole place is a mess…”

“Okay.” She walked down the hall and into the kitchen at the back.

I glanced at the closed living room door, with the famous TV star behind it. Please don’t let Megan hear anything. Stay in there! Don’t come out!

I watched Becky flick on the kettle and pull a couple of mugs off the shelf. Just watching her do this made my chest ache, like it had been years and not days since this girl had made me a cup of tea in my own flat.

She pulled her mobile out of her jeans pocket and rattled it at me. “Got something amazing to show you.” Ghost of a smile. “You’re not gonna believe it. But I need to… we need to sort some stuff out first.” She put the little silver Ericsson down next to the kettle.

I stood there, not sure what to do. It didn’t feel like I was John at that moment, but he was kind of looking over my shoulder, waiting to step in. Becky looked just as awkward as I felt. Neither of us wanted to meet each other’s eyes.

“Is it true,” she asked the floor, “what Darren said?”

“What… what part?”

“About, you know, him and your… your mother.”

The ache in my chest surged. I didn’t need this now, couldn’t think about this now, couldn’t deal with it. The last thing I wanted to remember was the sound of my own voice screaming at my best friend. So much hate. Years of it. Hate I didn’t even know I’d been carrying around with me. Andy Holloway hate.

“You fucking freak, you fucked my Mum!”

I nodded, also looking at the floor, but feeling Becky’s eyes on me. “Long time ago,” I muttered.

“God. So that really happened, when you were teenagers? Darren and your Mum, they… and you knew? Back then?”

“Yeah. It was no secret, but… I haven’t thought about it for years. It didn’t mean that much to me, when I was a kid. But recently, what with Darren… well, in the pub, it just sort of hit me.”

“Your Mum, though – what was she thinking?”

I shrugged. “She wasn’t herself really, back then. Some bad shit had happened to her and she was kind of… trying to get her life back. Trying to have fun. She realised she’d gone too far, when I was older, I could tell she really regretted some of the things she did… but at the time… she just sort of forgot herself.”

“I can’t believe you guys stayed friends. I mean, didn’t you ever talk about it?”

“No. Not once. It just… happened.”

“These things just happen,” my Mum had said. “It’s not like they’re planned or anything, they just come along and happen all by themselves. You’ll see when you get older, you can’t plan anything, no matter how hard you try.”

I don’t think I said anything back. I can remember sitting at the table, picking at the microwaved dinner she’d knocked up for me. Watching her rush around the house, checking her reflection and snapping her handbag shut and picking up her car keys all at once. My Mum never stayed still. Always on the move.

“So there you go, nothing to worry about, okay? It’s good news really,” she had smiled. “I’ve got to go, I’m picking Darren up at six and the traffic’s going to be murder, everyone goes to the coast on a Friday night, I want to beat the rush. So you’ve got the number of the hotel if you need me, you know where everything is?” Kiss on my forehead. “Be good, I’ll see you Sunday night, okay? Oh, have some friends round if you like, have a party, enjoy yourself! Byeee!”

The slamming door rattled the dining room window, like always. I sat there, listening to the silence. Empty council flat.

I jumped when Becky took my hand. I’d almost forgotten where I was. She was looking up at me sadly, her warm hand in mine, and I felt a sudden need to hold her. To just hold somebody.

But then she frowned. “You look different for some reason…”

Oh hell – Jason King’s contact lenses – I had blue eyes!

I snatched my hand away. “Um, look, better go and check on the electrician, I’ll be right back, make yourself a tea, yeah?”

In the hallway, I stabbed the lenses out of my eyes. “Ow ow ow!” I stood there blinking until my vision was less watery, then pulled the stick-on goatee out of my pocket and used the hallway mirror to position it back in place. Except now it looked all wrong, with my brown eyes instead of Jason King’s blue ones… shit, nothing I could do about that. I strode into the living room, closing the door behind me. “Sorry about that, Megan. I’ve got the, um, plumber in. Got a blocked sink, emergency job, needs sorting out. Best not go in the kitchen for a bit.”

Megan was stretched out on my sofa, shoes off, pouring herself another glass of champagne. “Good,” she smiled. “I thought they’d found us. I don’t want to go yet. Look who’s here!”

The television was on, set to one of the digital music channels. And there was Flag, Declan’s pop band. It was the video to their Christmas number one last year. All tinsel and fireplaces, snowflakes and winter frosting. The boys still managed to have their tops off though. And there was Declan, cute as a button in a Santa hat, grinning and winking like the cheeky Irish lad he was.

“Oh cool!” I said, thinking this was a nightmare. How was I meant to seduce Megan when her superhumanly-beautiful boyfriend was right there on the telly?!

She said she remembered when Declan shot this video, four months before Christmas, not long after they started going out. I sat at the end of the sofa and took the glass of champagne she poured me, smiling and listening. And sinking the booze quick.

I tried to think of what to say to draw her back into my orbit. But she just wanted to watch the telly. The boys of Flag each had a Christmas nymph who they could look at longingly or mime the song to. Gorgeous long-haired flat-stomached girls in lingerie. Pop tarts.

“Doesn’t it annoy you that Declan gets to do this?” I asked. “Surrounded by all these young babes… don’t you get jealous?” Say yes! Say it pisses you right off and you don’t think it’s fair!

“Nah. It’s part of his job.” Bugger. “I’m more annoyed by this guy. I still don’t see why he’s the lead singer.”

I watched as Daryl, the English member of Flag, led the chorus. Mixed-race, dark skin, shaved head, loads of muscles. He crooned away while the others – the clean-cut Welsh lad, the trendy tattooed Scotsman and Belfast-boy Declan – swayed in the background. “Well,” I ventured, “I suppose because of his voice?”

Megan laughed. “Jason, please! You don’t think that’s
his
voice, do you?” She sipped her champagne, shaking her head. “It’s so typical that they’d make the English one the lead singer, even though he can’t carry a note in a supermarket trolley. Which is what he was doing before Flag, by the way.”

“Really?”

“Oh, it’s all got to be about Daryl. Makes me sick. It was him I was meant to be going out with, as well.”

I blinked. “It was
meant
to be him…?”

“Soon put a stop to that idea.” Megan yanked the half-empty champagne bottle out of the ice bucket. “Last thing I want is niggers in my bed, thank you very much.”

“Uh… look, I think I’d better go check on the plumber, you okay for a minute?”

Megan waved assent as she took another long sip. I closed the living room door behind me. Shut my eyes tight.
What am I going to do?!

I jogged to the kitchen. Remembered at the last moment to yank off my goatee.
“Ow!”