‘No. I used always to leave gloves, scarves, bags, umbrellas and so on in taxis. Strangely, it was always easier to remember the taxi’s number than to-’
‘All right, all right,’ I breathed.
‘Kenneth, don’t you want to take your clothes off?’
‘Aah…’
‘Or mine?’
‘Well, ah…’
‘I think we need drugs,’ Ceel said decisively. ‘Luckily I have contacts.’
She was right.
‘Do you know what John does when he is not with me, or away on one of his trips overseas?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to know?’
‘Not particularly.’
‘He goes caving.’
‘He does what?’
‘He goes caving. He spelunks. He descends into caverns under the ground. Mostly in England and Wales, but also abroad.’
‘That,’ I breathed, ‘is so not a gangster thing to do.’
We were lying on a giant circular table in one of the rooms in the Dome suite. The Dome itself, in fact, at the very top of the whole hotel. We had made it comfortable with sheets and pillows from the bedroom, two rooms away through the sitting area. The Dome room had numerous small, high windows that looked straight down Waterloo Bridge, part-way up the Aldwych and down most of Drury Lane. If we’d stood up we’d also have had a view to part of the Strand. There were twelve severe, formal-looking seats spaced round the giant table. Even all the soft accoutrements hadn’t made the solid surface all that comfortable. The bed would have been more forgiving, but this was how, and where, Ceel had wanted it.
‘Mobile phones do not work in caves,’ she said after a long time.
I thought. I thought twice, in fact. ‘Don’t suppose he goes scuba-diving, too, does he?’
‘Yes.’
I thought some more. ‘Why would he need that excuse?’
‘I don’t know. That is why I think perhaps it is not an excuse.’
There was silence for a while. Ceel cuddled up to me. She hadn’t quite managed to get the suite up to what she considered to be full operating temperature yet, so perhaps she was cold. I lay there, perspiring gently, and thought about what Craig had said, about love.
Some time passed, then she murmured into my shoulder, ‘You have my mobile number, don’t you?’
I closed my eyes. Holding her had never felt more precious. ‘Yes,’ I admitted.
She said nothing for a while, but I felt her give what might have been a small nod. ‘You have been careful,’ she said. ‘I appreciate that. I understand now why you were concerned. I’m touched. But please; be even more careful. You have the number committed to memory?’
‘I know it by heart.’
‘Remove it from your phone.’
‘All right.’
‘Thank you.’
‘This girl. Was she very beautiful?’
‘Very attractive, in a sort of obvious, blond way.’
Ceel was silent for a while. Then she said, ‘I feel jealous. I know I should not, but I do.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Me too.’
‘Well, I feel jealous of your husband.’
‘And yet there are times you and I meet up when the last person to make love to me was you.’
I thought. ‘I don’t know what’s the more pathetic,’ I said quietly. ‘The fact that that does actually make me feel a little better, or the fact that we are clutching at this straw in the first place. It’s not just about sex, Ceel. I mean that I’m jealous he gets to be with you more than I do, that you two can have something like a normal life together.’
‘It is not very normal. He is away so much.’
‘No, but you can walk across a street together, holding hands.’
Another pause. ‘He never holds my hand.’
‘You’re admitting you assaulted this woman, Mr McNutt?’
‘It was self-defence, but yes.’
‘I see.’
‘Oh, shit,’ I breathed.
There was no comeback. Nobody was going to press charges, after all, and, of course, as I’d expected, the cops did nothing. At least nothing they ever told me about. They couldn’t even test Phil’s jacket for traces of rohypnol; a visiting friend had assumed the jacket in the bag was to be taken to a dry cleaners, and done just that.
Never mind. I’d fulfilled my part of the bargain and reported the incident to the police like a good little citizen.
‘Well, maybe, like, we should leak it to the press. Yuh?’
The speaker was Nina Boysert, Mouth Corp Group PR chief and Special Adviser to Sir Jamie, whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean. She didn’t say ‘Ya’, like Raine – sorry, ‘Raine’; hers was more of a ‘Yuh’.
Meant the same thing.
We all looked at her. This was her office, an even more spacious one than Station Manager Debbie’s. Not high up, but wide and deep and airy and with a pleasant view over Soho Square. Also present were Debbie, Phil and the Group’s chief in-house legal mind, Guy Boulen.
‘Ah, the police did say not to,’ Boulen pointed out. We’d covered this point about a minute ago. Boulen was an oddly rugged man to be a lawyer; about my age, tall and fit-looking and with a face that appeared wind-burnt. Strapping, would be the word; looked like he belonged halfway up a fell in the rain and cloud, manfully scrutinising a compass and leading a bunch of deprived kids on a character-building hike. Softly spoken, though; Home Counties accent.
‘Yuh, but, like, they’ve got their job to do and we’ve got ours, right? We have to think what’s best for the Group.’ Nina was business-suit posh; long, not inelegant face, perfect teeth and silky skin; black hair, bobbed. Deep voice. She’d been head-hunted for the Mouth Corp from an internationally renowned management consultancy firm. Still under thirty.
‘May I call you Nina?’ I asked her with a smile.
‘Ah, yuh. Yuh, sure.’
‘Ms Boysert,’ I said, not smiling. ‘My life might be in danger. I’m not entirely sure from what you’ve been saying whether you’ve fully grasped that fact. I’m asking for help from my professional colleagues, and from the firm that employs me. Now-’
It was the ‘Now’ that did it. Phil jumped in after that.
Of course what I’d wanted to say was, Listen, bitch, fuck the Group, fuck the shareholders and fuck Sir Jamie, too; I was the one being bundled off into the depths of the East End in the middle of the night to have fuck knows what done to me, let’s focus on what’s best for me… but I’d reined myself in and come out with a little speech that I thought was far more polite, even with the sarky and probably unnecessary bit at the start about not using the woman’s first name.
‘I think Phil’s right,’ Boulen said, to whatever Phil had said (I’d kind of missed it, still glaring at Ms Corporate Good). ‘This is a legal matter and we have to take our lead from the police.’
‘Yuh, but I’m thinking, like, what about the publicity? I mean, this would be quite big news, yuh? I’m seeing the front page of the Standard; Top DJ’s Death Threat Hell. And a photograph, of course. Something like that, yuh? I mean, that’s big. We can’t ignore that; you almost can’t buy that.’
There was an awkward silence.
I said, ‘Are you for fucking real?’
‘Look, Ken!’ Phil said quickly, rising and clapping me on the shoulder. ‘You’ve had a tough couple of days; you don’t really need to be here. I can look after things. Why don’t I meet you in the Bough, half an hour, say? Yeah?’ He waggled his eyebrows at me. Guy Boulen was nodding fractionally, his expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace. Debbie was looking at the floor.
‘What a splendid idea.’ I got up, looked round them. ‘Excuse me.’
As I got to the door I heard a deep female voice say, ‘Was it something one of us said, yuh?’
‘Well done,’ Phil said, clinking glasses in the Groucho that evening. We were in the wee nook with the blue plaque, up in the snooker level. ‘You told the police what happened and, to my utter astonishment, you didn’t tell Nina Boysert exactly what you think of her. Proud of you.’