Daring Dooz (The Implosion Trilogy (Book 2)) (13 page)

Chapter 27

Charlie Sumkins had problems. Of course,
there was the underarching problem that Mrs Hathaway was going to embark on a
stack of suicidal missions for that stupid magazine, with any terminal outcome
resulting in the exposure of his zero sperm count.

But everything else was going
pear-shaped, too. He’d threatened Vlad and Vic because they’d failed to find
Mick and Jim, the Implosion Productions runaways. And now, the V-Twins had
scarpered. What was up with people? One little threat of an extended, painful
death, and they were off like rabbits.

Then there was the cost of repairing the
holes in the wood panels where he’d thrown the flick knives when failing to
hear that whispered bit of the conversation at
Daring
Dooz
. Extortionate! Nearly as much as
cleaning blood off the carpet.

Plus, that devious, over-testosteroned
Hathaway tart had phoned and made him promise to tell her as soon as he found
out where Mick and Jim were. Given the sperm count business, he’d had to agree.
But what the fuck was all
that
about!

He was also having international
business difficulties; like the protection racket down under. His expensively
trained protection racket specialist, Freddie ‘Figjam’ Foster, had decided to
pack it in as he'd been recruited as a shop assistant at
Estrange & York in Melbourne. And to add
insult to injury, Estrange & York was one of the top payers. And to add
more injury to that insult, Charlie’s lawyer in Melbourne was getting all
piss-arsey about doing anything about it. That included a refusal to arrange
for Freddie to get his just desserts - that’s as a shark pudding rather than a
peach fucking melba.

There was trouble
everywhere - the Nigerian suntan retail chain he used for laundering money from
his Hong Kong greyhound burger scam. The Balinese dancing schools in Puerto
Rico, where he stashed the undeclared income for his Sicilian Space Programme
investment swindle. Everything was under fire - and when he wanted anything
done, like in the old days, the bloody lawyers were quoting ‘new legislation’
and ‘tightening of anti-corruption laws’ and ‘international
multi-agency responses’.

Sod them all! What he
needed was the legal equivalent of a psychotic SAS brigade leader who'd taken
one-too-many stun grenades. Someone who could just about remember where the
accepted boundaries were, but would happily drive a kevlar-coated bulldozer,
guns blazing through the whole fucking lot of them.

And by way of adding
rancid Dream Topping on top of this whole, mouldy, cockroach-infested cake,
some bastard had shoved the local freesheet paper under the door.

Freesheets were
Charlie’s pet hate, especially the
Soho
Post-Intelligencer.
It was full of photographs of media and
arts-type ponces going in and out of the Groucho Club, with little captions
saying things like ‘Tristram de Ville, artistic director of hit reality TV show
How fast could you top your granny?
flaunts
his daring reinterpretation of the cravat.’

Charlie walked over to
the door and picked up the fetid rag. He looked at the front page with disgust
and, in a rare attempt to put current events into an historical perspective,
muttered ‘Fuckin’ Caxton would do his conkers.’

He was just about to
lob it into the wastepaper bin, when another rare event occurred - Charlie had
a pleasant idea. He’d heard that, in the old days, people, even film stars,
even Ealing comedy film stars, had used newspapers to shine their black shoes.
As he was dressed in a jaunty check cap and matching check sports jacket, as
worn by the dapper Basil Radford in
Alexander Mackendrick's 1949 directorial debut,
Whisky Galore
, he decided to give it
a go.
He sat down, tore off
the first page and immediately changed tack. There, on page three, dominating
the drivel, was an advertisement with the headline:

NO CASE TOO TRIVIAL

NO COMPLAINT TOO PUERILE

Charlie read
the advertisement. It was weird.
Very
weird. It might just be some deranged bastard. But, it was sort of talking
Charlie’s language. And anyway, a solicitor advertising in the
Soho
Post-Intelligencer
had to
be at the end of some sort of tether. And that was a plus. People at the end of
their tether, people who were desperate, people who would do anything to get
what they wanted, even if they didn't know
what
they wanted, always made first-class recruits for his international criminal
network.

But what if this bloke was no good? What if he had no bottle? What if
he wouldn't do exactly what he was told? Well, if he’d sunk to advertising in
that poxy rag, he was hardly a high flyer. Probably five years behind with his
Law Society subs. If he was
that
insignificant, he could be quietly disposed of without throwing the legal world
into turmoil.

Charlie picked up the phone, and dialled. What had he got to lose? And
when had society-at-large not been improved by a member of the legal profession
suddenly disappearing without trace?

The call woke Digby from a rather pleasant, alcohol-induced afternoon
doze. Forgetting it might be a Neanderthal answering his advertisement, he
attempted to respond in his most positive, corporately welcoming voice.
Although, in truth, his speech was extremely slurred and featured dramatic
variations in pitch and volume, similar to those made famous by 1950’s Radio
Luxemburg.

‘Hello, thank you for taking the time out from your busy schedule to
call me, Digby Elton-John, Solicitor-at-Law. How may my limitless legal
expertise help solve your problems? And do please remember - I may be a little
old-fashioned, I may be a teeny-weeny bit behind the times, but I am always -
and I mean
always
- here for you.’

Charlie sighed deeply and began thinking about where best to dump the
body.

Chapter 28

‘Saw your ad in that fuckin’ scandal
sheet.’

Digby wasn’t the brightest solicitor
never to have graced the hallowed halls the Old Bailey, but he realised,
instantly, that his up-market, corporate-friendly approach was going to get him
nowhere with a Neanderthal.

He changed tack, in a way that truly
surprised him.

‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you?’
he snarled, sniffing nastily at the end of the sentence.

Charlie was impressed; no one had dared
speak to him like that since he was running shopping errands for the Krays.

‘Fink you’re ‘ard enough?’ Charlie
snarled back.

‘Guess you want a legal hobnail smackin’
into some bastard’s groin?’

‘That, and a
lot
more,’ said Charlie.

‘Say what gives, and I’ll deliver more
sweet smellin’ shit than you can ‘andle.’

Charlie was warming to this person. He
moved up from making plans for this poncey, time-wasting idiot’s death, to
perhaps giving him a try-out, while watching over him like a king cobra with a
particularly bad migraine.

‘International?’

‘Inter-fuckin’-national!’ exclaimed
Digby. ‘I don't care where the shitheads are trying to slip one up your passage
- La Rinconada, Motuo
,
the
Mamanucas, Shag Rock,
Tiahuanaco,
Chickaloon,
Exmoor - if you’re getting grief, I’m ready to wrench
some ball bags.’

Charlie was impressed. Digby had just
reeled off a whole load of places where his criminal tentacles hadn't reached -
although X-More sounded familiar.

Digby was shaking and sweating profusely
and, for the first time ever, was grateful for his life-long interest in
philately and rare regional over-stamps.

‘What about cash?’ said Charlie through
gritted teeth.

‘Cash?’ said Digby, aware that, for
years, he hadn't had a client mention paying him, with the exception of the mystery
thousand-pound cheque, a few weeks back.

‘Yeah, how much you chargin’ - like per
day?’

Digby was ecstatic! A whole days’ work!
Who said advertising didn't pay! He stayed in character.

‘I’m fuckin’ expensive.’

‘How expensive?’

‘Probably too expensive for you,
arsehole,’ said Digby, aware he might be, as Neanderthals might put it,
'eyeballin’ a gift-horse in the gob'.

Charlie was getting a bit fed up with
this, besides he was planning to watch the 1953, appropriately named Ealing comedy,
Meet Mister Lucifer
, before making
plans to have that shit-faced Melbourne solicitor permanently knocked off his
antipo-fucking-dean perch.

‘Look,’ said Charlie, ‘it’s £500 a day,
plus expenses. Yes or no?’

Digby’s throat tightened, horribly. He
stuck two fingers in his mouth to try and clear the airways. It worked.

‘Yes,’ he gasped.

‘I’ll phone when I want some bastard
shafted.’

‘Yeah!’ said Digby, ‘and the £500 had
better be in cash, in advance, or you can go fuck yourself.’

‘Fuck you too,’ said Charlie with what
he regarded as a measured degree of charm. ‘Pleasure doin’ business with you.’

Charlie put the receiver down. The deal
was done.

Digby took the phone off the hook, made
a nice cup of cocoa followed by a bowl of tomato soup with toastie fingers, and
spent the rest of the afternoon listening to Mozart on his gramophone in a vain
attempt to rediscover his former self.

Chapter 29

Aubrey was on the make. The minute he
returned from his Harley Street operation, and his eye-wateringly expensive
recuperation period, his need to be pampered, looked after and generally
over-indulged had assumed outrageous proportions. He’d also stopped smoking,
mainly because his battered lips were incapable of gripping a cigarette. The
upshot was, he felt he was entitled to stay in bed all day, and be waited on
hand and foot.

The results of his punch bag beating
were receding, and his face had now, more or less, re-arranged itself. But, as
Aubrey’s normal, un-beaten up look was that of a man leaning heavily on death’s
door, it was difficult to gauge how poorly he really was.

Each day, for three days, he’d had
breakfast, lunch, dinner and light evening snack - including two take-away
curries and ten jumbo cans of premium lager. This was the Shinkansen
Tokyo-Osaka bullet version of the gravy train - first class, non-stop, all the
way.

After three days intensive, Mrs Hathaway
had had enough, and decided to stick a big spoke in its wheels.

She walked in on the morning of the
fourth day and said firmly, ‘Aubrey, we need to talk’.

The tray with three soft-boiled eggs,
lightly done toast in a rack and two cans of lager was nowhere to be seen.
Through his half-closed eyes, Aubrey twigged the game was up, and slipped under
the duvet where he had a three-minute coughing fit. His throat became so sore
through forcing the coughs, he had to come up for air.

‘On the treadmill now!’ ordered Mrs
Hathaway.

She grabbed Aubrey by the scruff of his
pyjamas, dragged him out of bed and frog-marched him to the machine.

‘Aubrey Brown, there is absolutely
nothing wrong with you. Do two miles, and then we’ll see about getting you a
bit of breakfast.’

‘Press the red button to start.’

She left him with a threatening look,
which Aubrey knew meant very serious business. She was half way through making
some scrambled eggs, when a triumphant Aubrey returned to the kitchen covered
in sweat.

‘I done it!’ he cried, holding up both
arms in triumph.

‘No you haven’t,’ she said, without
looking up from the pan.

‘I have.’

‘You haven’t.’

‘I
have
.’

‘You have only been running for a
minute.’

‘I
have
done it,’ whined Aubrey. ‘I’m knackered!’

He flopped down on a kitchen chair.

Mrs Hathaway put the scrambled eggs to
one side.

‘Let’s have a look, then.’

Ignoring the fact that Aubrey’s pyjamas
presented a significant health hazard in a food preparation area, she turned
and walked over to the treadmill.

‘See here,’ she said sternly. ‘It says
you’ve run 200 yards.’

‘It’s all them flashin’ lights. I got
confused. Got any grub?’

Mrs Hathaway returned and decided, come
what may, to let him have both barrels.

‘Aubrey Brown!’

Aubrey sank back on the kitchen chair,
drew up his knees and stared up at her with just a pathetic remnant of his ‘got
any grub’ face.

‘Since we met, I’ve saved you from a
grisly fate at the hands of Vlad and Vic, I’ve negotiated your continuing
safety by confronting and manipulating one of the world’s top international
crime bosses, I’ve bought you clothes, meals and alcohol, I’ve cooked, I’ve
ironed and made sure you had a bath once a day
and
I’ve signed a contract with
Daring
Dooz
worth £2 million, which has enabled me to pay for surgery to make you
look a little more like a member of the human race. And what have you done for
me?’

‘Er,’ said Aubrey, quietly.

‘Yes, that’s right -
er!
’

Aubrey’s ‘got any grub’ face had completely
disappeared and had been replaced by something you might see on a six-year-old,
half-way through an episode of
Lassie
,
when it hears its kind old grandpa has got stuck down the mine shaft.

‘Sorry,’ he said, staring down at the
Formica top. ‘I suppose I was just getting’ used to relaxing. You know, getting’
Charlie and all that out of my system.’ Aubrey looked up at Tallulah. ‘You’ve
no idea what it was like turnin’ up there every day to get a good kickin’.’

He looked down again and continued his
mumble.

‘I
am
grateful for everythin’ you’ve done. And if I seem
un
grateful, it’s because I’m just a useless little shit.’

He started to snivel. Mrs Hathaway
scurried round the table. Despite the fact that his pyjamas were soaked in
sweat, and the smell was bordering on putrid, she crouched down and put her arm
around his tiny shoulders.

‘Aubrey, listen to me. I know you’re
useless. I know you’re little. And I know you’re a shit. But you’re
my
useless, little shit. I can see you
have potential. I can already see a change in you.’

She felt particularly bad saying this,
because, at that moment, she really couldn’t see any change, or any potential,
in Aubrey, at all.

But he seemed comforted, so she carried
on.

‘And do you know what I think? I think
that with a little work, and a little understanding, we could possibly, maybe,
perhaps, one day, have a future together, in some way, sort of.’

Aubrey looked up into her beautiful,
pale blue eyes, and something happened that even Mrs Hathaway could never have
anticipated, not even in her wildest dreams - a penny dropped. Aubrey wiped his
eyes and nose on a paper napkin, and said quietly, ‘I’ll go and have a quick
bath before breakfast - is that alright?’

‘Yes it is,’ she said, and, after a
shocked pause, and a moment’s serious thought, added, ‘one egg or two?’