‘Gimme your cash,’ the boy repeated, his scrunched-up mockney accent harsh and unforgiving.
Gasparino’s hand reflexively slipped inside his sleeping bag. In his trouser pocket he had twenty-three pounds and seventy-six pence. Twice, earlier in the day, he had counted it, each time coming up with the same number. He had no idea how long he would have to make it last.
The boy took a swing at the end of Gasparino’s sleeping bag with the toe of his Nike trainers. ‘Are you stupid?’
The sound of bovine laughter came from the boy’s mates.
‘I don’t have anything,’ Gasparino protested. He tried to struggle out of his sleeping bag but a kick in the stomach sent him back down.
‘Don’t take the fucking piss,’ the youth shouted. ‘Give us your fucking booze money.’
Gasparino felt a spasm of anger in his chest. Why couldn’t people just leave him alone? ‘Fuck off, you little bastard!’ he hissed. Pulling his arms out of the bag, he grabbed the kid’s ankle and pulled his attacker towards him.
Unable to keep his balance, the boy fell on top of the ex-soldier, arms flailing. Blood pumping, Gasparino tried to get his hands round the kid’s neck before he could escape. The urge to do some serious damage to the little bastard was overwhelming. He got one hand over his Adam’s apple and squeezed. The kid let out a satisfying gurgling noise as his eyes rolled back in his head.
‘You little shits!’ Gasparino shouted, squeezing harder.
‘You cheeky cunt!’ someone shouted. Then they were all upon him, kicking, screaming and biting. He grabbed hold of an ear but couldn’t get a grip. Then a face appeared in front of him and for a moment he thought it was Justine. Confusion spread through his brain as someone ripped his hand from the kid’s throat, snapping a finger in two in the process.
‘Bastard!’ Again, he tried to struggle to his feet but two of them had him pinned down against his rucksack.
‘Fucker!’
The last thing Adrian Gasparino remembered seeing before the lights went out was the dirty sole of a boot heading for his face.
‘What the hell are you doing, representing Clive Martin?’
A dark look passed across Abigail Slater’s face. ‘Surely,’ she glowered at her lover sitting opposite, ‘I have discretion – total discretion – when it comes to deciding on the clients that I choose to take on.’
‘Well, yes,’ Christian Holyrod stammered, ‘but come on. On the one hand I’m trying to clean things up, and here you are, getting in the way.’
Slater placed her knife and fork carefully on her plate and looked slowly round the restaurant. For an evening early in the week, The Triangle was doing more than brisk business. There was not an empty table in sight and a growing crowd at the bar, waiting to be seated. You would hardly think they were in the middle of the worst recession since the Second World War. Then again, economic austerity was for the little people. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of Christian’s more lame-brained colleagues, famously said, ‘We’re all in it together’; what he meant was, ‘You’re on your own, losers’. The little berk had last been seen on the slopes of some swish Swiss resort, enjoying a ten-grand skiing break, while his minions were busy trying to cut all the social services they could. Politicians, Slater thought contemptuously, they were such useless cretins. For a moment, she tried to remember why she was having a relationship with one. Nothing came to mind.
‘What’s so funny?’ Christian asked, a sour look upon his face as he played with his glass of Vega Sicilia Unico 1996.
‘Nothing.’ Slater cut a large slice off her mound of beef tartare. Popping it into her mouth, she chewed lasciviously, licking her lips as she swallowed. The look on Christian’s face signalled the rush of blood to his crotch, amusing her even more.
‘He’s a very interesting and articulate guy.’ Slater washed down the steak with a mouthful of wine.
‘Who – Martin?’
Slater nodded. ‘He talks well about the grotesque sexualization of our society.’ Slipping off one of her pumps, she inserted her foot between Holyrod’s legs and began gently massaging his groin with her toes.
The Mayor’s eyes widened. After a moment, his mouth opened slightly but no sound came out.
‘The way he explains it,’ Slater continued, feeling him stiffen under the arch of her foot, ‘we’re all in the sex industry, one way or another. Sex is used to sell everything – films, music, cars . . . even Entomophagous Industries.’
‘What do you mean?’
Slater put her cutlery back on the plate and pushed the half-finished meal away. ‘Have you seen the latest corporate advertising?’
Holyrod, rapidly losing interest in the conversation, shook his head.
‘There was a full-page ad for Entomophagous in the Economist, the Journal and the Herald Tribune. It was a picture of a naked woman,’ Slater explained, ‘or I should say “girl”, she looked about fifteen at best, sitting on a horse in a field with a slogan that said something like “beauty and strength”, something like that.’
Pulling her foot away from him, she slipped it back into her shoe. ‘So don’t come all high and mighty with me. And don’t try and tell me who I should choose as my clients.’
Slater dropped her napkin on her plate and sprang to her feet. Leaning over the table, she patted the Mayor on the cheek.
‘You never know,’ she smiled maliciously. ‘Maybe if you go home, your wife will let you fuck her tonight.’
Not very likely, Holyrod mused, trying to recall the last time they’d had sex.
‘Or,’ Slater continued, ‘maybe you could just wank off to one of your ads . . . if you like that sort of thing.’ Stepping away from the table, she headed off to get her coat.
Holyrod quickly pulled himself together as a hovering waitress approached the table.
‘Was the meal all right, sir?’
‘Fine, fine,’ said Holyrod brusquely as he watched his mistress disappear into the night. Maybe he would go home and fuck his wife, just to spite her. ‘Just get me the bill and a large glass of the twenty-year-old Pittyvaich.’
TWENTY
Carlyle wondered how long it might be before he could slink off and get a cup of coffee. He thought about the dozens of different cafés within a five-minute walk of the crime scene. As he went through the list, most of them were immediately ruled out on quality grounds. This was not the kind of morning when any old rubbish would do. He definitely was not in the mood for flavourless generic offerings doled out by some grumpy East European who hadn’t yet realized she should have stayed at home, rather than running off to a city that even he, a resident here all his life, found dirty, expensive and unforgiving.
The working day had started as he was brushing his teeth. Standing naked in the bathroom, he was wondering whether his gut was expanding as the desk sergeant phoned and informed him of the homicide. An unidentified tramp had been kicked to death in a doorway at the back of the London Coliseum, home of the English National Opera, not much more than fifty yards from the police station at Charing Cross.
‘Not so good for the crime statistics,’ the sergeant reflected.
Not so good for the poor bugger who is dead, Carlyle replied silently, holding his mobile to his ear while he continued brushing his teeth.
‘And just round the corner from where I’m standing,’ the sergeant sighed. ‘Doesn’t look too clever, does it?’