Murder Most Fab (37 page)

‘Which
was?’

‘That
his father was one of my most regular clients all the years I was a rent-boy.’

‘No he
wasn’t!’

I
nodded sadly. ‘Yes, he was. Mr Brown.’

‘Well,
fuck me. Mr Brown was Tim’s dad? And you carried on seeing him all that time?
No wonder Tim was upset. He took it badly, then?’

‘Just
about as badly as he could.’ I gulped. The memory of his face when I’d told him
made me shudder. ‘In fact, he’s vowed to destroy me.’

‘What?’
Catherine’s voice was sharp as a knife.

I
nodded. ‘He says that someone like me shouldn’t be allowed to go on fooling
everybody. He’s going to let the world know about my rent-boy past.‘

‘This
is serious,’ said Catherine, getting up to pace about the room.’ Why would he
do that? You’d just tell all about him and his dad in return, wouldn’t you?
It’s like a nuclear war. One strike each and then it’s over for everyone.’

‘He
says he doesn’t care. He told me to do my worst.’

‘Oh
dear. Oh, dearie dear. Hell’s bells, Cowboy. We’re in the shit.’ Catherine
turned to me. ‘I can’t manage us out of this one. The press will love it. It’ll
be front-page splash for days. They’ll dig up clients who’ll tell them all
about what you did — and once it starts, how many more will be climbing out of
the woodwork, selling ever more lurid stories for cash? Mild cocaine abuse
will only be the start of it.’

‘But
the producers love it when I’m naughty,’ I ventured hopefully. ‘At least, they
always have before.’

Catherine
shook her head. ‘There are standards, Cowboy. Public decency. Regulatory
authorities. As long as there was no proof of your darker side — no photos, no
witnesses, no stories — it was fine. Once it’s out in the open, they’ll drop
you like a hot potato. You won’t even get work demonstrating electric vegetable
peelers in Selfridges.’

I
buried my head in my hands. ‘How could he do this to me?’

Catherine
came to stand in front of me. ‘He hasn’t yet.’

‘But he
will. I don’t think I’ll be able to persuade him not to. He won’t take my
calls.’

‘Course
he won’t. But I’m not thinking of ringing him. No doubt he intends to get hold
of the papers first thing in the morning. We need to act fast.’ She went to
the cupboard in the corner. ‘Cowboy, we need a lift.’ She took out a bulging
mini cellophane bag of cocaine and started to prepare some lines.

‘Not
for me,’ I said piously.

‘Oh,
Jesus Christ! You have tea with some old bag of bones and suddenly you’re
moving into an oxygen tent.’

‘I’m
just not sure that’s the best thing for us at this particular moment.’

‘Of
course it is. It makes us invincible.’ She passed the little mirror to me. I
looked at it. ‘Go on.’

I shook
my head determinedly.

Catherine
wagged a manicured nail at me. ‘Do as you’re told.’

Suddenly
I craved that feeling of power and self-possession. ‘Just one more won’t hurt.’
I hoovered it up obediently.

‘Good
lad. Now. There’s only one way out of this.’

‘Yes?’
I looked up at her, hope in my eyes. Was there really an escape from this
ghastly mess?

‘You
have to stop that maniac before he destroys everything. You have to kill Tim.’

It took
a moment for her words to sink in. Then I gasped with horror. ‘You can’t be
serious, Catherine! Kill Tim? I couldn’t!’

‘Yes,
you could. You must. Don’t you see? He’s going to ruin us. We’ll lose
everything. I’m not prepared to let that happen. We did Juan in for less. Why
would we stop at Tim?’

No. Not
that. Never. She was asking too much this time. I’d rather lose everything than
kill the man I loved. I’d rather kill myself.

‘You
don’t have a choice,’ she said bluntly. ‘You have to.’

‘No!’ I
shouted. ‘Stop it, Catherine. I’m not going to listen to any more of this.’

‘Yes,
you are.’

‘No.’ I
stood up. The cocaine was rushing through my bloodstream now, energizing me.
‘If you’re so keen to see Tim dead, you do it.’

‘Don’t
be stupid. How would I be able to kill him? He’d overpower me easily. We don’t
have time to lull him into a false sense of security and drug him. It has to be
quick and decisive. Let’s see … She frowned. ‘We could shoot him — but we
don’t have a gun. My dealer might. I’ll think about that. We could stab him,
but it would have to be fairly frenzied, or he might still have the strength to
fight back. I think it’ll have to be the unexpected blow from behind. It’s
quick and relatively easy. I’ve got an old hockey-stick in the cupboard. I once
broke seven girls’ legs with it in one afternoon.’

‘I bet
you won that game,’ I said, happy for the digression.

‘We
didn’t, actually. I broke their kegs in the dressing room afterwards. Anyway,
listen. Thwack. Hard as you can. He goes down, you finish the job off. Plop the
hockey-stick in the Thames after, and it’s thank you, good luck to you and your
family.’

‘This
is madness!’ I cried. ‘What about witnesses, forensic evidence, DNA?’

‘Cowboy,
don’t you see? We’re immune to all that stuff.’ She was busy cutting up more
lines as she spoke. ‘We have this thing called divine guidance. It’s never let
us down so far. High time we had faith in our infallibility. Tim won’t have
told a soul he’s fucking you. Why would he? And who on earth is going to
connect Johnny D with the mugging and murder of a City lawyer? No one.’

‘But …
where would I do it?’ I couldn’t help myself. I was being pulled into
Catherine’s world, just as I always had been. She made everything sound so
easy, so convincing. Without her I’d be lost, I thought. Without Catherine, I’d
no longer have the superpowers I’d enjoyed for all these years. Maybe the
secret of my success lay with her. But she would only stay with me if I did as
she said. It had always been an unspoken part of our pact that I obeyed her
orders — I could see that now. I had been her instrument all these years, first
as a rent-boy when she’d wanted a partner who would help her get away from her
nursing and the bedsit; then as a killer when she’d wanted the money on offer,
or the freedom from an irritant; and finally as a hugely successful star who
could give her the wealth and power she craved. How could I stop? I couldn’t
get off the train, even if I wanted to.

Now
Catherine had set me the most momentous, unthinkable task she could ever have
devised. To kill my beloved Tim. But I thought of the look on his face when I’d
told him the truth and knew he was lost to me for ever. And why should Sophie
have him? Why should his life go on in the way he had always planned, with his
inheritance intact? Why shouldn’t he lose everything, just as I would if he had
his way? After all, I was Johnny D, a man who had carelessly swept obstacles
out of my way when they threatened me. I could do anything I wanted. I thought
of
The Importance of Being Earnest
and Miss Prism’s line when she hears
of Ernest’s death: ‘What a lesson for him. I trust he will profit by it.’

Killing
Tim would teach him a lesson he’d never forget.

Catherine
consulted her watch. ‘It’s late. Almost midnight. Where does Tim live?’

‘In a
mansion block in Cadogan Square.’

‘Portered?’

‘No.’

‘Good.
Then you must go and wait for him inside the block. There are always places to
loiter and hide in those old buildings. When he gets back, whack him on his way
into the flat — as long as there’s no one about. Take his wallet. Off you go.
We’ll burn your clothes, just like before with Georgie.’

The
plan seemed full of holes. ‘What if there
is
someone about?’

‘Then
you’ll have to wait till they’ve gone, knock on Tim’s door and get him when he
answers it. And if he’s already inside, you’ll have to do that anyway.’

‘And
what if Sophie’s there?’

‘I
don’t frigging know, do I? Kill her as well, if you like. What if the Queen of
Sheba’s popped in for tea and muffins? Use your fucking loaf! Now, have another
line and stop putting obstacles in the way.’

We
stopped talking to snort.

Catherine’s
eyes kit up. ‘I’ve just had an idea! Forget the hockey-stick — it’s too big and
noticeable. Besides, it has sentimental value. Use a brick in a sock. Next
door are doing a loft conversion and there’s a pile of bricks in the garden. We
can help ourselves to one of those. Now.’ She looked pleased with herself as
she chopped out another line. ‘Let’s give you a little more magic dust for the
road and off you go. That’s another fine mess I’ve got us out of.’

I
stared at her. Had I really agreed to this crazy idea?

She
gave me her strictest, sternest kook, the one that sent icy chills all over me.
‘Don’t let me down,’ she said, with soft menace in her tone. ‘I mean it. Get
this right and we can live happily ever after. Fuck it up, and everything is
finished.
Capito?’

‘Capito
,’
I whispered.

That was how I found
myself standing outside a mansion block in Cadogan Square wearing a pair of
dark glasses and a long black overcoat, carrying a brick in a sock and
intending to batter my one true love to death. Who’d have thought it? It just
goes to show you never know what life’s about to throw at you.

A light
was burning in Tim’s flat. So, he was at home. That was annoying. I had
envisaged him arriving after me. Then I would creep up behind him and brace
myself for one almighty and, hopefully, fatal blow to the back of his head. I
wouldn’t have to see his face. But he was at home so, unfortunately, I would
have to knock on his door. He would answer, no doubt, and I would be obliged to
look into his eyes before I killed him. This wouldn’t have been easy at the
best of times, but eye-contact with the man I loved made dispatching him even
more of a challenge.

I knew
enough about murdering people by now to understand that the best-laid plans
must be flexible. Most importantly, emotion must be kept out of it. However it
was done, I must take his wallet and pick up a couple of bits and pieces so
that the crime scene looked as though a violent burglary of the kind there sometimes
was in an affluent area had taken place. I blamed the crack addicts from south
of the river.

I just
hoped Sophie wasn’t there. After all, she was blameless. There was no need for
her to be caught up in my drama.

The
door to the block should have been locked but someone had left it propped open
— perhaps so that a late visitor didn’t have to buzz a flat to be let in. It
was sign, surely.

I
avoided the lift and instead climbed the narrow flight of stairs up to the
fourth floor where Tim’s front door was at the end of a spacious, carpeted
hallway. There was a sweet, vanilla smell in the air, and the milky glass wall
lights gave an expensive, filmic glow to the setting. No one had seen me. There
was another front door but it was on the opposite side of the building, at the
end of its own little hallway. Unless I was very unlucky, I wouldn’t be
witnessed at my grisly task.

Now all
I had to do was knock on the door and begin. I took the brick, contained in its
sturdy, speckled-grey boot sock, out of my coat pocket and wound the leg of it
round my left hand. I swung the deadly weight from side to side, like an
altar-boy with a thurible. I took a deep breath to clear my head.

Beyond
this door, Tim was unaware of what I had in store for him. If I went ahead and
did this terrible deed, I would truly be a thing of darkness. But what was the
alternative? If I sloped off home without having followed her instructions
Catherine would have a fit, Tim would ruin my career and marry Sophie, leaving
me scorned, disgraced and penniless. If I could bring myself to kill him,
quickly, painlessly, I’d be saved and Catherine would bow to me as a hero.

A voice
seemed to speak to me. An inner dialogue, if you please.
Don’t worry about
Catherine. Think of yourself Think of your soul. Think of your future. Could
you really live with yourself if you did this? You mustn’t kill the man you
love.