Streetwise (13 page)

Chris stared hard at the gyrfalcon and the falcon stared back at him. It was a competition that he could never win, but he persisted in trying out of sheer perversity. He’d been drinking on and off all day, and although he wasn’t slaughtered he had reached that point where his thoughts were getting frayed around the edges.

‘So,’ he said to the bird. ‘Is this how it’s going to be from now on? Me doing all the talking and you just sitting there? I mean, you could at least try and make an effort.’

The glass dome had been delivered to Belles and then sent on by taxi to Walpole Close. Chris could have picked it up from the office in the morning, but for some reason – perhaps because of the whisky he’d been pouring down his throat – he’d decided he had to have it straight away.

‘You’re a bloody expensive bird, considering you do fuck all,’ he said.

The bird’s glassy eyes gazed back at him.

‘You’d better be worth it.’ The deal with Borovski was still hanging in the balance. The Russian’s new casino, slap on the border of Shoreditch and Kellston, was due to open in a couple of months. It was a matter of opinion as to whether this was actually in Street territory or not. Borovski, however, was reluctant to pay out protection money. A compromise deal was being negotiated, whereby the Streets would provide the security, and possibly some girls. It would be a nice little earner if it came off. But you couldn’t trust the Russians. Say one thing and do another. Jesus, you couldn’t trust anyone these days, not even your bloody ex-wife.

‘Okay,’ he said to the falcon. ‘You win.’ He dropped his gaze to the mobile phone, still sitting silently on the arm of the chair. Despite Ava’s advice, he had been trying to ring Jenna all evening. The cow wasn’t picking up. Straight to voicemail every time. So she was avoiding him. That didn’t come as any great surprise. But she’d have to talk to him eventually.

His hands curled into two tight fists. He’d been fighting the urge to storm down to Wilder’s for the last couple of hours. But it would be a waste of time. He knew it would. Noah would have tipped his partner off about the earlier visit, and Wilder would be keeping his head down.

He jumped up, poured himself another glass of whisky and went over to the French windows. He opened them out and stepped on to the patio. He felt the air hit his face, a blast of icy cold that partly sobered him up. The garden was covered in a thick blanket of snow. He pictured what he’d like to do to Guy Wilder and the thought was crystal clear. It would almost be worth the time he’d serve for the satisfaction of putting a bullet through the bastard’s heart.

He heard a car pull up on the drive and then the sound of the engine cutting out. Two doors slamming. And then voices, laughter. Danny and Silver. A minute later, they breezed into the living room.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Danny said. ‘Shut the bleedin’ doors. It’s freezing in here.’

Chris turned to look at them. ‘Where’s the old man? Isn’t he with you?’

‘Why would he be with us?’

Chris went back inside, closing the French windows behind him. ‘I thought you might have been at Belles.’

‘Nah, we’ve not been to the club.’

Silver took off her white fur coat and draped it over the back of the sofa. ‘We’ve been somewhere else, babe.’ She gave that little-girl giggle that Chris found so irritating. ‘We’ve been keeping well busy.’

Chris watched as she sat down and flipped off her bright red shoes. Her toenails were painted the same shade of scarlet. ‘I’m sure you have.’

She ran her tongue along her lips. ‘Don’t you want to know what we’ve been doing, hun?’

‘No, he don’t,’ Danny said, throwing her a warning glance. ‘He don’t want to know fuck all.’

Chris reckoned they were both high. When weren’t they? They were always shoving something up their noses, or smoking dope, or popping pills. The two of them were a walking, talking chemical factory. ‘You’re right. I couldn’t give a toss. So you don’t have a clue where Dad is?’

Danny gave a shrug. ‘Out and about.’

But out and about was what Chris was worried about, especially if his father was back at the Fox going on about Joe Quinn again. How long before people began to talk? He’d been kidding himself for ages now that it was just the booze, that there was nothing wrong with the old man, but it was getting worse by the day. And it was more than mere forgetfulness; some of the things he was doing were completely off the wall. Take that episode at Belles, for instance, when he was shouting out for Lizzie. That wasn’t right. That wasn’t normal.

‘No hot date tonight?’ Silver asked.

Chris sat down on one of the black leather recliners. He swirled the whisky around in the glass and checked his phone again. Still nothing. Not even a text. ‘Does it look like it?’

Danny poured a couple of drinks, gave one to Silver and sat down beside her on the sofa. ‘Not going so well with Mercedes Girl, then?’

‘Ava,’ Silver said. ‘Her name’s Ava.’ She looked over at Chris. ‘Isn’t it, hun?’

Chris gave a grunt, wishing that he’d never lied about Ava being his girlfriend. If the truth came out, he’d be a bloody laughing stock.

‘Are you waiting for her to call? Ah, ain’t that sweet.’ She gave Danny’s leg a nudge with her foot. ‘Ain’t that sweet, babe?’

‘If you say so.’

‘It is. It is sweet. And how is the lovely Ava, Chris? What’s she doing tonight?’

She and Danny exchanged a look and they both sniggered.

Chris stared back at the two of them. What were they up to? There was something going on. Did they know the truth about Ava? Were they laughing at
him
? No, they couldn’t know. How could they? He was being paranoid. It was just the booze messing with his head.

Danny leaned back and smirked. ‘You need to keep an eye on your bird, bro. She could be up to all sorts.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah, you got to keep ’em on a tight leash or they’ll screw you over. It’s in their nature, see. They just can’t help themselves.’

Chris shook his head. ‘Tell me you’re not trying to give me relationship advice.’ Ironically, Ava appeared to be the one person he
could
actually trust. If he’d been caught with that shooter, he’d be down the cells right now. He wondered why she’d done it. She’d taken one hell of a risk. But then what motivated women to do anything? Take Jenna, for example. Of all the men in London, she had to choose Wilder to shag. He felt the familiar fury growing in his chest again. Why? Why had she gone there? If he’d dumped
her
, he’d have understood. Revenge is sweet and all the rest of it. But she was the one who’d done the walking.

‘Now you’ve made him angry,’ Silver said. ‘Look, his face has gone all red.’

Chris glared at her. ‘I’m not angry.’

‘Well, you look mad. You look all hot and bothered. Don’t you reckon, Danny? Don’t you think he looks angry?’

‘Nah, he always looks like that.’

Silver inclined her head and gazed at Chris. ‘No, not always. I think Ava might be breaking his heart.’

‘Can we stop talking about her, please.’

‘See?’ Silver said. ‘He doesn’t want to talk about her. That’s not a good sign.’

Chris buried his face in his glass. She was like Trojan; once she got her teeth into something, she wouldn’t let go. He was reminded of the dead rat, of the stench of death. There was something wrong about Silver. She pretended to care, but she didn’t really. She just liked to mess with other people’s heads.

Danny finally noticed the falcon and screwed up his eyes as if he might be seeing things. ‘What the fuck’s that thing doing here?’

Chris, glad of the change of subject, tapped the top of the dome. ‘It’s for Borovski. What do you reckon?’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Beast.’

Silver gave another of her giggles. ‘Did you buy it off Morton Carlisle?’

Chris frowned. ‘How do you know Carlisle?’

She leaned into Danny’s shoulder and gave one of her sly smiles. ‘I know everybody, hun.’

‘How much you pay for it?’ Danny asked.

‘Too much.’

Silver got off the sofa, knelt down by the coffee table and stared into the dome. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘How the fuck would he know?’ Danny said. ‘When it comes to birds, he hasn’t got a clue.’

Silver giggled again and pressed her nose against the glass. ‘Look at its claws.’

‘Talons,’ Danny said. ‘Didn’t they teach you nothin’ at that posh school of yours?’

‘Schools,’ Silver said. ‘I got expelled from most of them.’

Chris was tempted to ask what she’d been expelled for, but then decided that he’d rather not know. He wondered how much money Delaney had squandered in trying to turn his daughter into something other than she was.

‘We should open a casino,’ Danny said. ‘It’s easy money. The house always wins in the end.’

Chris finished his drink and put the glass down on the coffee table. ‘Yeah, next time we’ve got a few million in the bank, we should do that.’

‘The Russian’s got cash, loads of it.’

‘And he didn’t get rich by giving it away.’ Chris picked up his phone and rose to his feet. ‘Right, I’m off to bed.’

Silver gazed up at him, her eyes flicking quickly from the phone to his face. ‘You going to call her? You going to call Ava?’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘Maybe she’s missing you, hun. Maybe she
wants
you to call.’

Chris thought he heard a kind of mockery in her voice, but he couldn’t be sure. You could never be sure of anything with Silver.

The text from Chris Street was waiting on Ava’s phone when she woke up in the morning.
Meet me in Connolly’s at ten.
No please or thank you. No indication of what it was about. Well, she could guess what it was about. But what did the actual summoning mean? Maybe he was going to fire her. Or maybe he just wanted to make sure that she was going to keep her mouth shut about the gun. As she still hadn’t come to a firm decision about what
she
wanted to do, she decided that the best thing was to hear him out and take it from there.

She brushed her teeth, took a shower, and dressed in jeans and a warm jumper. In the kitchen, she made toast and a cup of coffee and sat down at the table to eat. Tash and Hannah, thankfully, were still in bed. She’d had enough of Hannah’s sniping last night and didn’t want a re-run over breakfast.

The evening at the Fox had been interesting if not entirely comfortable. Hannah, suspicious of Lydia’s intentions, had subjected the girl to an interrogation of which the Gestapo would have been proud. If Lydia had been at all fazed, however, she hadn’t shown it. She had answered Hannah’s questions with smiling equanimity.

Ava buttered her toast, added a thin layer of marmalade and took a bite. While she chewed she thought some more about Lydia. Although she seemed on the surface a pleasant enough sort of person, there was something a little odd about her. She couldn’t exactly put her finger on it. Was she aware of Tash’s attraction to her or had she accepted the invitation to come round to Market Square purely on face value? Ava still had no idea if she was straight or gay, or if Tash’s interest in her was in any way reciprocated. Hannah clearly suspected the worst, but then that was Hannah’s nature.

At ten to ten, Ava put on her coat and made her way out to the square. The snow had stopped falling, but there was still a thick layer on the ground. It scrunched under her boots, the cold seeping up through her soles. The market was in full swing, the traders doing brisk business despite the weather, and she breathed in the mingling smells of frying onions, curry and soup.

She stopped to browse through a display of hand-knitted scarves, almost tempted to buy one until she remembered that she might not actually have a job any more. Reluctantly, she laid the scarf back on the stall. Maybe she would come back later.

By the time she had forged a path through the crowds, it was almost ten o’clock. Dodging the cars, she crossed over the high street and pushed open the door to Connolly’s. She was met by a welcome rush of warm air and a babble of voices. The café was packed and there were no empty tables. She looked around, wondering if he was there yet, but then suddenly spotted him.

Chris Street was sitting by the window. He raised his head and gave her a nod. It was impossible to tell from his expression whether this was a friendly greeting or not.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d come,’ he said as she pulled out the chair and sat down opposite him.

‘Well, here I am.’

There was a brief awkward silence. Ava filled it by shrugging off her coat and hanging it over the back of the chair. Then she turned to face him again. He looked tired, as if he hadn’t slept. He clearly hadn’t shaved either. There was a bluish tinge to his cheeks and jaw that might have passed for designer stubble if his eyes hadn’t been rimmed with red.

‘You want a brew?’ he asked.

‘Coffee, please. White, no sugar.’

Chris caught the attention of a passing waitress and placed the order. He picked up his mug of tea, raised it to his lips and then put it down again without taking a drink. ‘I think we need to talk.’

‘Fire away,’ she said.

‘About yesterday.’

Ava waited, but he didn’t carry on. A few seconds passed. ‘About yesterday?’ she prompted.

‘Yeah. It was stupid, what I did.’ He leaned in closer to her, lowering his voice. ‘I shouldn’t have… I put you in a bad position. I just got wound up, you know, about everything. It all got out of hand.’

‘Right,’ Ava said.

‘So I was thinking maybe we could draw a line under it, start again.’

Just like that, she thought. All swept under the carpet and forgotten about. He hadn’t even apologised, not properly. It was his lack of contrition that provoked her reply. ‘Maybe I don’t want the job any more.’

‘Don’t you?’

The waitress arrived with the coffee and put the white mug down on the table.

‘Thanks,’ Ava said. She waited until the woman had left before answering. ‘I’m not sure. I haven’t decided. Not if… well, not if you make a habit of…’ She couldn’t say the words out loud, not when they were surrounded by people. ‘You know.’

‘It was a one-off,’ he said. ‘It won’t happen again.’

She shrugged. ‘Easy to say.’

Chris Street smiled for the first time. ‘Come on, you don’t really want to go back on the cabs. Especially with Christmas coming up – all those drunken parties, all the abuse, all those fares throwing up in the back seat of your taxi. It’ll be hell and you know it.’

‘Good tips, though,’ she said.

‘It’ll cost you more in detergent.’

‘That’s emotional blackmail.’

Chris lifted his hands, palms up. ‘So what do you want me to say?’

‘Sorry would be a start.’

‘Okay, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I behaved like an arse.’ He paused and smiled again. ‘Now will you come back or do you want me to beg?’

‘You can easily get another driver.’

‘Not one I can trust,’ he said.

Ava thought about that moment when she’d recklessly slipped the gun into her bag. ‘I didn’t do what I did to protect you. Don’t flatter yourself. Don’t even think that because it isn’t true. I did it because I needed the job. I wouldn’t have had the job if you were caught with… if you were nicked and thrown into the slammer.’

‘Job’s still here,’ he said. ‘Be a shame to waste it.’

She drank some coffee and looked at him over the rim of the mug. ‘So we just start again?’

‘Why not? A clean slate. What do you reckon?’

‘And what happens next time you want to pay Mr Wilder a visit?’

He flinched a little at the mention of the name. ‘Then I’ll walk,’ he said. ‘Or I’ll take a taxi.’

‘And you won’t get me involved?’

‘No, I won’t get you involved.’

She gave a nod. ‘Fair enough.’

‘So shall we say Monday, ten o’clock. Pick me up as usual?’

She hesitated. ‘Erm…’

‘What now?’

‘Well, if we’re talking clean slates, there’s something I need to tell you. I would have mentioned it yesterday only…’

‘What is it?’

Ava drank some more coffee while she tried to formulate the words in her head. Was she doing the right thing in telling him? He might go off at the deep end again. But she didn’t want to go back to work with it still hanging over her. Finally, she put the mug down and began to explain. ‘There was an exhibition at Beast Thursday afternoon. I wouldn’t have gone only my flatmate dragged me along. Anyway, Wilder was there doling out the cocktails.’ She paused, waiting to see how he’d react. A muscle twitched at the corner of his left eye, but nothing more drastic. She carried on. ‘And there was someone else there too: the Russian bloke, the guy you bought the falcon for.’

‘Borovski?’

‘Yes, that’s the one.’ She worried on her lower lip for a moment. ‘I mean, there was no reason why he
shouldn’t
be there. It was a taxidermy exhibition and he’s obviously into that kind of stuff, but…’

‘But?’

‘But he spent quite a while talking to Wilder and I got the impression… well, I got the impression they knew each other pretty well. Pally, you know. No, more than that. Comfortable, easy. Like they’d been friends for a long time.’ She stopped again and gave a shrug. ‘It probably doesn’t mean anything, but if you’re doing business with him…’

Chris frowned and thought about it. ‘Wilder and Borovski?’

‘I could have got it wrong,’ she said. ‘It was only an impression. I didn’t hear anything they said.’

He frowned some more and then scratched his chin. ‘Okay. That’s interesting. Thanks for telling me.’

Ava gave a nod. Well, he’d taken that more calmly than she’d expected – or was he just too hungover to be able to think it through properly? ‘So that’s it,’ she said. ‘Everything out in the open.’

Chris gave a nod, but his eyes wouldn’t meet hers. He quickly lowered his gaze to the table.

‘Isn’t it?’ asked Ava, feeling a flicker of apprehension.

He glanced up at her again. ‘If we’re clearing the decks, there is
one
other thing.’

Ava sighed. What now? She braced herself for bad news, for some disturbing revelation that she might not be able to deal with. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s to do with Danny.’ He pulled a face, looking embarrassed. ‘He’s kind of got the idea that we’re an item. You see, being the male chauvinist pig that he is, he doesn’t think I’d actually hire a woman to be my driver and so he reckons something else must be going on.’

She smiled, relieved that it was nothing more serious. ‘So why don’t you just put him straight?’

‘Ah, well, I would, only his crazy girlfriend keeps trying to fix me up with one of her mates, and so…’

‘And so you’d prefer to have an imaginary girlfriend.’

‘Something like that.’

Ava laughed. ‘God, how old are you?’

Chris looked taken aback. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘You’re a grown man,’ she said. ‘Can’t you just tell him to push off and mind his own business?’

‘I could, but it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference. And I’m telling you, this girl he’s seeing is completely nuts. Believe me, it’s easier this way.’ He picked up a teaspoon and twisted it around in his fingers. ‘Unless you’re uncomfortable with the idea. I mean, I’d understand if you were. It’s a bit weird, I guess.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I sort of get it. After I split up with Alec, people were always trying to fix me up with someone else. They just don’t get that you might be happier on your own. God, the amount of dinner parties I was invited to where there was always a spare male who would be “just right” for me.’

‘And are you?’

‘Am I what?’

‘Happier on your own?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so. For the most part. It can be lonelier being with someone who doesn’t love you than it is being single.’ She felt his eyes on her and coloured a little, realising that she’d said more than she meant to. ‘But anyway, isn’t there a flaw in this great plan of yours? I mean, aren’t they going to wonder why I’m never round at your place, why I never stay over?’

‘Oh, I’ll think of something.’

‘A dog, maybe,’ she suggested. ‘I could have a dog that I don’t like to leave on its own overnight.’

‘What kind of dog?’

‘How should I know? You decide. Something not too big, though – and not too small either. I don’t want one of those handbag dogs. And we’ll have to come up with a name. You can’t have a dog with no name.’

He drank some of his tea and grinned. ‘This could get complicated.’

‘You started it. Maybe next time you’ll think twice about getting involved with an employee.’

‘So does that mean you’ll be coming back to work, then?’

‘I suppose so. I’ve not had any better offers.’

‘Monday, then. I’ll see you at ten.’

Ava took a couple of pound coins out of her purse and put them on the table for the coffee.

Chris waved the money away. ‘It’s on me.’

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But you still owe me sixty quid.’

‘You’ll get it.’

‘I know I will.’ She got up, put on her coat and said goodbye. As she left the café, she wondered if she’d made the right decision. Oh well, there was no going back now. She gave a small shake of her head as she trudged towards the flat. Last night, courtesy of Tash, she’d had to pretend that Lydia was her new best friend. Now she had to pretend – to his brother and his crazy girlfriend – that Chris Street was her lover. Her imaginary life had taken on a whole new dimension. Still, at least her job was real. That was something to be grateful for.