Death Of A Diva (7 page)

Chapter Fifteen

              Except she didn’t.

              I stood in the dressing room, awaiting the inevitable and Lyra, instead of screaming, turned on Morgan.

              “Where the hell have you been? And why are you so red? Have you taken your pills? Where’s bloody Dominic? Have you seen this?”

              Morgan, sweating profusely and gasping slightly, read the card and put a hand on his chest, at which Lyra leapt from her seat and lurched at him.

              “Did you take your pills?” She demanded again.

              “I took them.”

              “Well where were you? I could have been attacked right here.”

              Morgan raised a hand, nodded and looked at me. “Do we need the police here?” he asked.

             
“
The police
?” Lyra, Liz and I chorused.

              “This is a threat.”

              “This is a
confirmation
,” Lyra said triumphantly.

              Liz, Morgan and I stared at each other, as Lyra lifted a half-manicured hand and began to do her own eye makeup.

              “
Confirmation?”

              “That I can still attract reaction,” she smiled, widening her eyes.

              I wondered whether
I’ve written a letter to Daddy
would be her opening number, looked at Morgan Foster, who still clutched his chest; at Liz, who still clutched her emery board; and at Lyra Day, who still clutched the fantasy that she was ever likely to be a major star again; and left the room.

              Downstairs, Ali cornered me.

              “Look, Danny, you’re a nice bloke–”

              “Ooh, is this a private party?” Caroline trilled, wafting in from the bar and throwing a slightly protective arm around my shoulder.

              Ali paused and I saw her jaw clench. “No offense, but I have no other way to say this: do you two know what the hell you’re doing? I mean, we haven’t even got a float.”

              “A float?” Caz dived into her ever present and voluminous handbag, shot a slightly antagonistic glance at Ali and waved a fistful of notes at the barmaid. “Coins in bags on the bar – unless Mouret or Jenny’s had ‘em.”

              The notes were banded into bunches and Caz handed each over with a tinge of regret.

              “Oh, and,” she said, producing from her back pocket a pristine fifty pound note, “in case anyone feels generous,” and she planted a long, lingering kiss on the note. “Now fly, my pretty and fill your till, or whatever needs doing.”

              Ali accepted the cash, shot Caz a filthy look and headed on in to the bar.

              “You know,” my friend mused, “I don’t think she likes me too much.”

Morgan Foster descended the stairs. “Oh,” he looked surprised and glanced towards the door to the bar, from where we could hear the sounds of Jenny and Dominic chatting, “is there a back door?”

              “That way,” Caz advised nodding to the end of the hallway, beyond where the sound of the twins hurling bottles into baskets whilst singing along to some dreadful pop tune emanated.

              “Thanks,” he said and, as he headed out the back door, I heard the front door slam shut. Caz and I headed into the empty bar, Jenny and Dominic having just left.

              Ali stood behind the bar, counting coins into the till and nodded at the door. “The princess just left. Said to tell you she’s taken the boyfriend to the caff, if you wanted to join them for breakfast.”

              “Thanks,” Caz said, griping my arm, pulling me across to a table at the far end of the bar and plonking me on a stool far enough away from Ali to be out of her hearing.

Caz sat opposite me, paused, pulled her stool closer to mine, leaned forward and, in a conspiratorial whisper, said “No offence, dear heart and sorry to sound like the bar
Frau
over there, but
do
you know what the hell you’re doing?”

              I gave her the look. The one that said
I’m disappointed in your lack of faith in me, your lack of vision
, then dropped my head in my hands and moaned.

              “I have no fucking
idea
what I’m doing, Caz. But I have to do something and, really, what am I suited for? I’m a mailroom boy in an email age. I’m a gay housewife with neither a house nor a husband to clean or cook for. I’m thirty-five – which is,
like
,
a hundred
, in gay years – and the few measly pennies I had to my name are invested in the stock for this place. Even if tonight works, I’ve got no guarantee that I’ll be able to pay the electricity bill in six weeks. So here I am...”

              Caz reached out, took my hands in hers and looked into my eyes. When she spoke, I knew that everything would be alright. “There’s always prostitution,” she said.

              “It’s an option,” I conceded, “what with my boyish good looks.”

“And killer baby blues,” she added.

“And the blues,” I agreed. “Do many men hire escorts because of the size of their eyes?”

“Takes all sorts,” Caz answered, at which point two things happened: Ali let out a very brief, very loud and very high pitched fart, and heaved a loud and contented sigh, and Liz Britton rushed into the bar, causing a startled Ali to drop a glass she’d been about to put onto the shelf.

The glass hit the floor, did not break and rolled harmlessly to one side. Ali tutted at Liz, who shoved her fist into her mouth, emitted the sort of sob I imagine was Theda Barra’s bread and butter, pushed past a now bemused Ali and rushed from the bar.

I looked at Caz, who looked at me and we both, in turn, looked at Ali, who gazed back at us with puzzlement in her eyes; and just when the whole thing was getting a bit too French Art House movie, we realised that, standing in the door from which Liz had erupted was a fully made up Lyra Day, a huge Afro wig extending about three feet above and around her head.

Three pairs of eyes turned to the singer who raised an immaculately drawn eyebrow, said – in a voice dripping with little girl innocence – “Was it something I said,” turned smartly on her kitten-heeled mules and vanished from sight.

Chapter Sixteen

Caz heaved a sigh, rolled her eyes and went off to check on La Diva Day, returning a moment later to inform Ali and I (who were, by then, stocking the shelves with the bottled beers and filling the finger bowls with wasabi cashews) that “Ms Day requests she be left alone to rest for half an hour or so.”

Eventually, Morgan, Dominic and Jenny returned en masse. Caz asked if Liz was with them. Morgan received the news of the weird and slightly dramatic scene we’d witnessed, seemed to cave slightly in on himself, muttered, “Oh dear sweet shitting
Jesus
,” turned on his heels and, like a latter day Rochester, went in search of his mad wife’s makeup and hair person.

“We should check if she’s OK,” said Dominic.

“Don’t worry,” Jenny answered, hugging him closer and snuggling into him. “Dad’ll find her.”

“Not Liz; your mum.”

“
Stepmum
,” Jenny replied, in a tone that might have frozen ice. “Lyra will be fine.”

“Jenny, this is a huge thing for her. It’s the first time she’s sung live since – well, since the breakdown. She’s gonna be terrified.”

Jenny snorted. “Dom: anthrax doesn’t scare that bitch.”

Dominic shrugged her away. “Jesus, Jen. She’s not a monster.”

Jenny’s jaw dropped. She shut her mouth. Her jaw dropped again. “
Oh no
,” she said. “
Not you too
.”

“Not me what?”

“Not another one who’s buying the
poor little Lyra
schtick. Listen, Dom: I’ve spent years with that woman – and I can tell you…”

“Champagne!” Cried Caz, clapping her hands and looking at Ali, who let rip with another high pitched honker, muttered something about needing to check on the paper in the ladies and lumbered off.

“Champagne!” Caz announced again and, realising that mere repetition of the word was likely to have diminishing returns, she brandished from one of the fridges a magnum of bubbly. “What?” She replied to my raised eyebrow, “I’ve prepaid.”

And I sort of had to agree that she had. “Glasses,” I said and began scouting the champagne flutes, as Dominic excused himself, headed off to the gents and, after a brief moment of tension, Jenny relaxed and went to find a bucket big enough to hold the bottle and enough ice to keep it cold.

At which point the pub door swung open and a short man with a shaven head and the heaviest unibrow I’d ever seen stepped into the pub, shrugged his shoulders, bobbed his head like an irritated pigeon, shoved his fat little mitts into the nasty leather-look blouson that was straining against his pot belly, sniffed and cast a pair of dark and beady eyes around the room.

“Sorry,” I said putting my
mein host
smile on, “we’re not open yet.”

“You are for me,” he said, slamming the door and pulling a chair over to wedge it shut. “Chopper sent me round. Said to send his best regards for your little launch night and make sure I keep an eye on the place so he gets his cash first thing Monday.”

From behind me, I heard a cork pop and my heart sank.

Chapter Seventeen

              “Christie,” said the squat lump of threat, as he swaggered over to the bar and helped himself to the glass of fizz that had just been poured for me. “
Jimmy
Christie,” he expounded, as though the name should mean something to me.  He fixed a squinty little stare on me and took a slug of the booze.

              “Christ,” he twitched his head like an angry pigeon and cast a glance round the bar. “You’ve not exactly gone to town on this, have you? Looks like it hasn’t been redone since before I ran it.”

Perhaps, when he ran it, the place was a bare knuckle cage fighting den or something.

              Christie continued to let his beady little eyes roam around the room, finally settling lasciviously on Caroline. He grinned at Caz, who returned a brief yet flirtatious smile and slid a bowl of nuts closer to his fat little mitt.

              “Found one,” cried Jenny, brandishing an ice bucket. She stopped dead when she caught sight of the lecherous dwarf.

              “’Ello darlin’,” Christie switched his attention from Caz to Jenny, reached his left hand out, shoved it into a bowl of crisps and shovelled a whole fistful of cheese and onion into his fat face. I caught Caroline giving a surreptitious glance at the bowl of nuts and casually moving the half emptied bowl of crisps out of Christie’s reach.

              “Come an’ talk to me,” Christie leered, nodding his head towards an empty barstool beside him and sliding a champagne glass across the bar to sit in front of the empty stool.

              “Um,” Jenny dumped the ice bucket on the bar and hesitated.

              “This is Mr Christie,” Caz said.

              “Jimmy,” Christie leered, showing more teeth than a chorus line of big bad wolves.

              “Mr Christie is the – um –
owner’s
agent. He was just telling us how he used to run this venue some time ago.”

              “Yeah,” Christie gestured around the room, splashing champagne up the sleeve of his pleather jacket. “Kept the place ship shape for Mr F. You wouldn’t have got no
riff-raff
here in my day.” The way he looked at me when he said
riff-raff
left me in little doubt as to his views on the type of clientele I was hoping to attract.

“So what happened?” I asked. “Why don’t you run it for him now?”

Christie shrugged, bobbed his head and swallowed noisily all at the same time, “I went up in the world, didn’t I?”

At that point, Ali re-entered the bar and, seeing Christie, stopped dead, the blood draining from her face.

“Morning, Jimmy,” she said, quickly covering her surprise and obvious discomfort by filling a shelf with bottles of mixers.

“Jesus,” Christie growled, his lip curling, “you still ‘ere, then. Thought you’d have been carted off by now.”

Ali blushed, muttered something about needing a quiet word with me and fled to the end of the bar.

“You wanna watch ‘er,” Christie growled at me, as Caz refilled his champagne glass. “She’ll ‘ave the place filled with darkies and poofs,” he caught himself and sniggered. “Well, she’ll up the darkie contingent anyway. An’ rob you blind...”

I’d had enough and opened my mouth to protest, but was silenced by a pointed glare from Caroline as, in seeming slow motion, we watched the little thug fill a mitt with green-tinged cashews, lift them to his face and shovel a whole handful into his mouth in one go.

He chewed once. Twice. And then stopped, a sheen of sweat breaking out on his Neanderthal brow.

His head bob-twitched again, more violently than before as he swallowed noisily and choke-coughed, tears springing to his eyes.

Caz and Jenny, almost in synch, each reached a hand into the bowl and withdrew a nut, popping them into their mouths and crunching on them, a slight twinkle in their eyes, as Christie continued to twitch, sweat, cry and cough.

“I do like these wasabi nuts,” Jenny said to Caz, as she reached for another. “They are rather moreish.”

“Mmm,” agreed Caz, as she selected another and popped it into her mouth, “and they don’t half clear the sinuses too. Now, Mr Christie, what were you saying?”

I slid to the end of the bar. “Sorry about that,” I addressed Ali, nodding my head at the still choking Jimmy Christie.

“Him?” Ali shot a poisonous look at his back and shrugged. “He’s never going to change. Always was a nasty little shit. But he’s lying, you know.”

“What about?”

“I’ve never taken so much as a packet of crisps out of this place without paying.”

“Ali,” I reached out a hand and placed it over hers, “I know that. I trust you entirely.”

“You don’t know me,” she answered, her gaze dropping to the bar as she pulled her hand away. “And a nasty little shit-stirrer like Jimmy Christie could change how you think about me.”

“Between you and him,” I said, “I know which one I’d be likely to believe.”

“Good,” she said, “cos I’ve got some bad news.”

“Uh-oh.” She leaned forward conspiratorially, cast a glance towards the other end of the bar and, lowering her voice, dropped the bombshell.

“We’re missing a couple of bottles. One of gin and one of vodka.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Clear spirit. Eighty proof. Two litres thereof,” she clarified. “Missing. Gone. No longer there.” She raised her eyes and locked her gaze with mine. “Pinched.”

“Pinched?” I had a mental picture of Dash and Ray downing shots and banished it; they were more alcopop drinkers.

“Thing is,” Ali was whispering, flicking an unhappy glance at Christie’s back, “I don’t want no accusations getting thrown around. I know what it’s like to have someone making snide little remarks about you.”

“I still don’t understand,” I said, my frown growing.

“It was in a box in the hallway back there,” she jerked her head behind her. “And it was all sealed up a half hour ago.”

I nodded, some realisation beginning to surface. “Go on.”

“The last one through was Lyra and after she’d gone back upstairs, the box was opened and the bottles were gone. Truth is, I think that she’s had ‘em away.”