Death & the City Book Two (2 page)

"Take Lara," she says, bringing me back into the conversation with a jolt. "She doesn't chase men, does she? To her it's all about free will making the world go around. Leaving life to chance and surprises. Meaning every relationship is like Christmas when it comes. You never know what might happen."

"Not always a good thing," Elaine points out, which is pretty much what I was thinking, although I like the sound of a relationship being like Christmas. It's quite a good analogy, thinking about it. There might be surprises, there might be disasters, there might be regrets, there might even be happy memories and things worth celebrating…

"So who have you been on a date with recently, anyone interesting?" Martha asks me. Obviously wanting to shift the focus away from Elaine having only one idea of how relationships work, which is when she's in charge of them - by any means and methods.

"Oh, just a police officer I know from work," I say. I feel a blush creeping up on me, and hide it behind my cocktail glass, and my unruly but straightened blonde hair. "His name's Connor. Seems to be going all right so far."

Martha grabs my left hand, and has a good look at my palm before I pull it away indignantly.

"Ooh, intriguing," is all she says though, with a grin. "You'll have to keep me posted."

"Can I go shopping for a hat yet?" Elaine asks her, jokingly, and Martha leans over and whispers something to her. Elaine's attitude changes, and she looks at me with a new expression that seems almost inspired. "Will you find out if he's got a brother for me?"

Martha laughs, as I give her a push.

"I want to know what you said," I say, and turn to Elaine, who's still looking, for want of a better word, star-struck. "You're going to tell me what she said later."

"I can't hear you," she jokes. "I'm just hearing the sound of bells ringing in my ears."

"Warning bells?" I ask, warily. "Or wedding bells?"

"Jingle Bells," Martha laughs.

"Probably fire bells, she's chasing White Watch at the moment," I say. "No, I know what it is. It's your occupational tinnitus, from standing next to the speakers by the end of the main bar in Crypto."

"I can't help that, the foam earplugs make me itch," she shrugs.

While we still tease each other, a familiar figure appears at the entrance to the Green Room, and glides in. Wearing a white v-neck t-shirt, and matching loose lounge pants with spa slippers, carrying an oversized white leather sports bag, it's the blonde from upstairs in Casanegra the other night. She strolls straight past the bar, and heads directly to the adjoining door into the glass gangway leading to the spa, past Green's Restaurant.

I disconnect my gaze from her receding back as she enters the spa reception at the far end, my eyes involuntarily meeting those of Yakuza Man as I turn back to the others. He's just in receipt of his pot of tea from the waitress. He looks at me pointedly for a second, to the door leading to the spa, and back again at me again over his tray, before thanking the waitress and unfolding his newspaper. Before I look away, I see the front headline as he opens it.

LONDON FEARS RABIES OUTBREAK
.

"Are we nearly ready for the spa?" I ask the girls. "We should head in before it gets busy later."

"Bottle of water, please," Martha and Elaine chorus in unison to the barman, and laugh, knowing that walking into the spa carrying a bottle of mineral water looks a lot better than rolling in, laughing like hyenas, reeking of Martinis. "Make that three."

"So now you're living it up in the material world, who's looking after the dark dimensions?" Elaine asks Martha, in the saltwater steam-room. I notice the blonde on the opposite bench open her eyes with an involuntary flicker of interest. She gives a very faint, slightly arrogant smirk, and closes her eyes again.

"God, you have NO idea how complicated it all is now," Martha sighs. "So many people are interested in Craft now, it has to be really strictly regulated. There's the open market, the Halloween crowd. Then there's the fans, who watch the shows, buy the merchandise, go to TV and film conventions, read the books and do the crosswords. Then the researchers, everyone from the curious layman to serious students, professional and religious sceptics. And critics - they have lots of separate divisions - who look up stuff to prove or disprove it. Then the dabblers, who try out stuff in the published material. Then the naturals and instinctives, who work for themselves but don't think of it as Craft, or follow any affiliation. Then you have the affiliates - and depending on how it branches out from there, the divisions begin again - from curious to dabblers to serious prospects. Eventually you get to the top, and the guys who really know what's going on - or their interpretation of what's going on, depending on the affiliation. Hereditaries, like us, we're like any old titles that get handed down by birthright. We get called up for casting votes or approval on things, like the moral content of new stuff that's proposed, or land use rights, or ancient calendar information. The rest of the time we're allowed to live how we please nowadays. We're more of a courtesy call from the industry now than anything else."

"Industry?" I repeat. "What happened to religion, or belief system, or call of nature - or whatever you're meant to stand for?"

"Yeah, it does take the piss," Martha chuckles. "What you said - that's what WE stand for still. But the rest - it's the material world that subsidises it nowadays, and it's wrong to call it a charity, so it's an industry. Selfless acts are few and far between."

"So who is looking after the bad stuff?" Elaine says. "Accountants? Lawyers? Tax collectors?"

"It's taken care of, as required," Martha chuckles. "Never you mind."

"I think one of our door staff might be into it – Ben Trovato," Elaine muses. "I'll ask him later."

Through the steam, I'm trying to interpret how the blonde is currently feeling. So far all I'm getting is which of us she's privately musing she would rather hit on. I'm guessing Martha is her kind of type - bold, confident, with a striking appearance - but only in a physical sense. From her flicker of interest when Elaine asked the original question, until now after Martha's speech, I sense that she's trying to distance herself from us in the room. Shield herself with a psychological defence, as if she'd suddenly been caught in there without a towel for modesty.

It's strange. Her initial glance had looked amused, as if she was expecting to be entertained by something she was comfortable in her knowledge of, maybe considered she has more knowledge of than most. But now she looks uncomfortable, as if being in the same room as The Knowledge personified was more than she felt equipped to handle. Felt more as if she was potentially the entertainment, if she gave away anything telling of her own on the subject.

"You know what this steam could really use?" Martha says to me. "A bit of rosemary. That would get into your muscles all right."

"Jasmine and ylang ylang," says Elaine, and we both snigger, knowing she's been warned about using that in the oil burners at work.

"Would have to be eucalyptus and grapefruit for me," I remark. "Knock out this sinus headache."

"You want peppermint with that," Martha puts in. "Smells like Murray Mints."

"Mmmm," Elaine approves. "I know what I'm going to ask for in my aromatherapy massage now."

"So, what are you doing these days to conserve energy use and the environment?" Martha asks me, while we're having our pedicures, and Elaine is having her massage. I'm planning on asking for mandarin oil only in mine, knowing it's the safest option when combined with other medication. Or combined with unstable mental states.

"Not wasting my life spending hours online throwing virtual chickens on Facebuddy," I reply. "Not shopping more than I need to. Keeping enough houseplants and the garden alive, to offset having one motorbike and two petrol monsters as cars. Employing a cat instead of calling Pest Control. I even put tea tree oil on the ticks I find on hedgehogs. I'm very environmentally friendly. Plus I save the National Health tons in my job, by stopping idiots damaging themselves drunk. And by recycling, obviously."

"Very good," Martha approves. "Glad to hear you've still got good instinct. You always were a natural, though."

"How about you?" I ask.

"I make a LOT of donations," she grins. "Plus the house has in-built offsets. Solar panels etc. It works out neutral in the end. I just don't have the guilt any more."

Hmm, I think. Wicca without guilt. Wonder how long that can be maintained responsibly?

The blonde emerges from the Alaska Ice Scrub room, and approaches the spa's main desk, which we can see through the tinted glass screen of Le Salon - I'm sure it's wrongly named, being a beauty salon and not a Frenchman's living-room. She leans over and speaks briefly to the booking receptionist. Years of door supervisor lip-reading in deafening music environments pays off, as I see her say:
Electrolysis as usual, please - not laser.

"How old do you reckon she is?" I ask Martha, humouring my Mum's style of conversation, as it serves me.

"Can't tell in this damn ambient therapy lighting," Martha replies. "Forty? Fifty? Tell you what, get her outside in daylight, I bet she'll start looking longer in the tooth."

"How did Moody Artist handle the new financial dynamics?" I continue, returning to our original subject, as if the blonde was only a passing distraction. "Must have given his Freegan lazybones attitude a bit of a headache."

"I convinced him it was in his karma to make the contribution now, instead of feeding off the contribution of others. For his end of the bargain in the whole sharing free world ethic to continue to function. Without him otherwise being sucked into a vortex of imbalance in the Universe, creating an insatiable, energy-draining hole, the exact shape for him to fit through. He was fine with it, after that," Martha says with a smirk, and winks at me, as her pedicurist goes a little pale and drops her cotton wool.

"I wish I'd got the chance to see that," I remark. "It sounds cool."

"Funny you should say that," she nods. "It was the deafening chorus of a lot of people wanting to see that happen to him because it sounded cool, that convinced him material wealth could be a good thing, treated in the right way."

"How did it go?" head office ask me later, as I'm driving to my Mum's to pick up Junior.

"About twenty minutes' face-to-face contact in the sauna," I report. "Nothing inappropriate. Keeps herself to herself. A bit privacy-paranoid, maybe. Was there anything specific you wanted confirmed?"

"Just give us your interpretation, about why she'd issue those contracts."

Great, I think. First I'm a doorman, now I'm a psychological profiler.

"I don't see her as the jealous type," I remark. "Seems uncommitted and fickle. Was eyeing up my mate Martha, in fact. You know she spends time using hookers already. I don't see her as having many deep emotional connections, to make her want to wreak revenge on a rival. Unless you've got evidence she was ever engaged, or married, or investing in them particularly."

"No, you've got her bang on the money so far," they reply. "What's your
professional
opinion?"

It's like a finger-snap out of a hypnotic sleep. Suddenly I know what they're asking me. And it's nothing to do with being either a hit-man interrupter, or a security professional.

"Pillow-talk," I tell them. I get a strange combination of adrenaline and dread running through my body, allowing my former personality access to view the situation. "Fear of kiss-and-tell-alls. If she's replaced in anyone's affections, she's at risk of being shown up in public."

"That's it. That's the missing agenda." Head office sound as equally pleased, as I feel ambivalent. "Looks like she was trying to second-guess where she might be blackmailed before it could happen. There's nothing on record that anyone ever got to her, possibly she was quite good with threats to keep her privacy."

"Like the heavy-handed security wherever she's based," I remark.

"That adds up too," they confirm. "We wondered why she was employing old school, and individuals unsuitable for public service work - criminal record types. Explains that side of it."

"Maybe that's why Lucinda Wiley claimed to be engaged to Jason Green," I ponder aloud. "The only thing she thought would protect her from a bunch of dodgy old doormen was a dodgy new doorman."

"Good point," they agree. "What else do you think she's got to hide that turns up in pillow talk? Aside from her appetite for very short-lived, business-expense funded, same-sex relationships? Something that would have her issuing contracts as a privacy measure - not just paying off the Press, and marrying some rich lavender boy to keep it all quiet and the public happy."