Wang Lei, meanwhile, was the youngest daughter of General Wang Dejiang, a prominent figure in the Red Army when the Party came to power in 1949. General Wang fell out of favour during the Cultural Revolution and his daughter was forced to work in a butcher’s shop. However, the family was rehabilitated and Wang studied as a lawyer before meeting her husband at the start of his political career. Ren Junior came along a couple of years later; their only child.
When the time came to further the boy’s education, where better to send him than Eton, the home of elites from around the world? And who better to facilitate that than an Old Boy like Nicholson, a smooth fixer who worked in China and could bridge the cultural divide.
Wristwatches had provided Nicholson with his big break into the wider Chinese establishment. He had been selling off a small selection of Breitlings, Rolexes and Omegas for a fellow ex-pat with liquidity problems following a nasty divorce involving a transvestite cabaret singer and a bitter custody battle over the family Shih Tzu. Ren Qi, a connoisseur of such items, had heard of the sale and arranged for a private viewing of the collection at his Beijing home. After inspecting the goods, Ren had handed Nicholson a large tumbler of BenRiach and an envelope filled with cash.
‘Will twenty thousand US be enough?’ the politician asked.
Nicholson knew better than to check the money. ‘I’m sure that is more than sufficient.’ Not least as he had told the seller the best he could hope for was $14k. He lifted the glass to his lips and took a mouthful, letting the single malt linger on his tongue as he watched Ren slip a GMT-Master on to his wrist.
‘I like a man who delivers,’ Ren smiled, still staring at the timepiece.
‘That’s me,’ Nicholson smirked, ‘always at your disposal.’
‘There is one other thing . . .’ Ren reached for his glass.
‘Yes?’ Trying not to seem too eager, Nicholson slowly drained his glass.
‘My wife tells me you went to Eton . . .’
Getting Ren Junior into Eton had been a breeze, on the back of a large donation to the school’s social fund. Keeping him there was more of a struggle. Nicholson had to work tirelessly to ensure that the boy avoided expulsion, despite Junior’s complete lack of interest in his studies and a steady stream of extra-curricular indiscretions.
This babysitting role meant that Nicholson was spending more time in England than he had done in decades. His profile in China duly suffered; to Nicholson’s mind, Ren Senior had not kept his end of the bargain – the anticipated contracts and fees simply never materialized. Increasingly, the family had used him as a glorified servant, little more than an English butler.
Now, under virtual house arrest, Nicholson wondered where it had all gone wrong.
Probably should have kept my hands off the missus.
In the first few years, Wang Lei had never looked at him twice. But then she started spending more and more time in the UK, to be close to the boy, and, well, things had just happened. The lady of the house exercised her droit du seigneur. The husband, busy climbing the greasy pole in China, may or may not have known what was going on. Either way, he didn’t seem to care. Not until the relationship became so open that it was deemed to be a threat to his political career.
Over the last year or so, Nicholson had grown profoundly weary of the whole carry-on. Endless angry phone calls between London and Beijing, Wang refusing to let her son return to China and, now, the paranoid fear that their lives were under threat from some kind of Red Army hit squad. Why didn’t they just get a divorce, like normal people did? Nicholson himself had been divorced twice already; it was no big deal.
All he wanted now was to get back to his current wife and family; get back to his rather modest existence in Shanghai in a gated community of cookie cutter houses that were supposed to mimic Prince Charles’s idea of a typical English village, complete with cobbled streets, mock Tudor houses and a local pub called the Green Giant which, bizarrely, served only Guinness, Foster’s and Coke. The place was deadly dull, home only to a handful of ex-pats who spent most of their time there hiding from the droves of Chinese tourists who came to have their photographs taken in front of the red telephone box (with no phone inside) or the black cab that didn’t go anywhere as it didn’t have an engine.
Despite its shortcomings, as soon as things settled down, Nicholson was going to head back there like a shot. He would put the whole Ren episode behind him and return to the safer business of selling watches and other luxury items to less well-connected locals.
From somewhere overhead came the whine of a Jumbo’s engines as it made its final descent towards Heathrow.
‘Michael, come inside.’
It was an order, rather than a request.
Gripping his glass tightly, Nicholson resisted the temptation to smash it down on the kid’s head. The need for more nicotine came over him in a rush. Where was his bloody lighter? He must have left it inside. ‘I’m just coming.’
‘Hurry up.’ Ren turned and disappeared through the sliding doors into the living room.
‘Fuck off, you little shit,’ Nicholson hissed, once he was sure that the boy was safely out of earshot. Tossing the empty cigarette packet over the railings, he watched it float down towards the street. For the briefest moment, he toyed with the idea of throwing himself off the terrace, ending it all here. But the thought quickly passed. There was no way he felt suicidal, he was simply not the type. Anyway, it was time for another G amp;T; a bloody large one. Yawning, he ran a hand through his greased-back hair and reluctantly wandered inside.
TWO
Sitting in the cab of his Nissan van, Marvin Taylor watched Michael Nicholson disappear back inside the penthouse apartment four floors above. Finishing off his can of Coke, Taylor stuffed the last mouthful of Coronation Chicken wrap into his mouth. Chewing contentedly, he thought back to a conversation with his daughter in the supermarket earlier in the day.
‘Why’s it called Coronation chicken?’ Laurie, nine, had asked in that inquisitive way that all kids had.
For several moments, Marvin stared vacantly at the packet. ‘Dunno,’ he said finally.
‘There must be a reason,’ Laurie persisted.
‘Dunno,’ Marvin repeated. ‘It’s just chicken.’
‘But-’
‘Hey, what do you call a crazy chicken?’
Laurie made a face. ‘Dad . . .’
‘A cuckoo cluck,’ Taylor chuckled. ‘Get it?’
Recalling the conversation made him smile all over again. By now, Laurie would be wrapped up in bed, fast asleep hopefully, while her mum had her feet up watching Grand Designs, or something similar, on the telly, a glass of chilled white wine in her hand. He, on the other hand, was sitting here staring at an empty street in one of the richest neighbourhoods in the world. Marvin was cool with working nights but he didn’t like Chelsea much. Not because he was a Spurs fan, although that didn’t help, more because hanging out with wealthy people always left him feeling uncomfortable and discontented, just like most of his clients seemed to be.
In Marvin’s experience, both as a cop and as a private sector businessman, very wealthy people were uniquely unable to distinguish between perception and reality. Invariably, this meant that they made shit clients. Even so, the most important part of his business by a long way involved babysitting the paranoid rich of SW3, SW7, W8 and neighbouring postcodes.