Her smile assumed the motions of a deflating balloon, as she looked down at her computer screen and tapped on her keyboard. ‘Mr Brian Bishop?’
‘Yes.’
‘One moment, gentlemen.’ She picked up a phone and pressed a couple of buttons. After half a minute or so, she replaced the receiver. ‘I’m sorry, he doesn’t seem to be picking up.’
‘We are concerned about this person. Could we go up to his room?’
Looking totally thrown now, she said, ‘I need to speak to the manager.’
‘That’s fine,’ Grace replied.
And five minutes later, for the second time in the past hour, he found himself entering an empty hotel bedroom.
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36
Skunk was always in his office on Friday nights, when the richest pickings of the week were up for grabs. People out for a good time were carefree – and careless. By eight o’clock, the city centre car parks were filling to near capacity. Locals and visitors jostled along Brighton’s old, narrow streets, packing the pubs, bars and restaurants, and later on, the younger ones, high and drunk, would be starting to queue outside the clubs.
A large Tesco carrier bag swung from his arm as he progressed slowly through the teeming throng, squeezing his way at times past packed outdoor tables. The warm downtown air was laced with a thousand scents. Colognes, perfumes, cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, olive oil and spices searing on cooking pans, and always the tang of salt in the air. His mind elsewhere, he tuned out the chatter, the laughter, the clack-clack-clack of high heels tripping along on paving stones, the boom of music from open doors and windows. Tonight he only vaguely clocked the Rolex watches on tanned wrists, the diamond brooches, necklaces and rings, the tell-tale bulges in men’s jackets where a plump wallet sat for the taking.
Tonight he had bigger fish to fry.
Heading down East Street, he felt like he was pushing through an incoming tide. Forking right, past the Latin in the Lane restaurant, behind the Thistle Hotel, he then turned right along the seafront, stepping around a teenage girl having a screaming, tearful row with a spiky-haired boy, and made his way past the Old Ship, the Brighton Centre, the smart Grand and Metropole hotels – neither of which he had ever been inside. Finally, sticky with sweat, he reached Regency Square.
Avoiding the exit/entrance, where an NCP attendant sat, he walked up to the top of the square, then down concrete steps which stank of urine, into the centre of the second level of the car park. With the cash he was going to get from this job, he would buy himself another bag of brown, and then anything else that might come his way later on tonight at one of the clubs. All he had to do was find a car that matched the one on the shopping list folded in his trouser pocket.
Inside his carrier bag was a set of number plates, copied from the model he had seen earlier. When he found the right car, a new-shape Audi A4 convertible, automatic, low mileage, metallic blue, silver or black, he would simply put those plates on it. That way, if the owner reported it stolen, the police would be looking for a car with different plates.
There was almost bound to be something suitable here. If not, he’d try another car park. And if the worst came to the worst, he’d find one on the street. It was a rich bitch’s car, and there was no shortage of rich, peroxided, nip-and-tucked bitches in this city. He wouldn’t mind an Audi convertible himself. He could see himself, in some parallel universe, driving Bethany along the seafront, on a warm Friday night, the music up loud, the heater on his feet and the smell of new leather all around him.
One day.
One day, things would be different.
He found a car within minutes, at the back of the third level. A dark shade of opalescent blue or green – it was hard to tell in the shitty light down here – with a black roof and cream leather seats. Its licence plate indicated it was less than six months old, but when he reached the car and noticed the smell of freshly burnt oil rising from it, he realized, to his joy, it was brand new. Not a mark on it!
And the owner had very conveniently parked it nose in, close to a pillar.
Checking carefully there was no one around, he walked up the side of the car and put his hand on the bonnet. It felt hot. Good. That meant it must have just recently been driven in here; so, with luck, it would be some hours before its owner returned. But just as a precaution he still removed the two sets of licence plates from his carrier bag and stuck them, with double-sided tape, over the originals.
Then from his bag he removed what would look, to any police officer who stopped him, like a Sky TV remote control. He aimed it, through the driver’s window, at the dash panel, punched in the code he had been given and then the green button.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. The red light showed on the remote but nothing else happened.
Shit. He looked around again, more nervously now, then went up to the front of the car and knelt by the right headlamp. Shielded by the car and the pillar, he relaxed a little. It was easy. He’d done this before; at least a dozen Audis. A five-minute job, max.
Removing a screwdriver from the plastic bag, he began unscrewing the front right headlight-restraining rim. When he had finished, he eased out the sealed headlamp unit and let it dangle on its flex. Then, taking a pair of pliers, he reached his arm through the empty headlight socket, felt around until he found the wire to the horn and cut it. Next he groped about, cursing suddenly as he accidentally touched the hot engine casing, burning his knuckles, until he located the auto locking mechanism. Then he cut through the wires, disabling it.
He replaced the headlamp, then opened the driver’s door, setting off the headlamp flashers – all that the crippled alarm system now had left in its armoury. Moments later he plucked the fuse for the flashers out of the box and dropped it into his bag. Then he popped the bonnet and bridged the solenoid and the starter motor. Instantly, the engine roared sweetly into life.
He slipped into the driver’s seat and gave the steering wheel a hard wrench, snapping the lock. Then he saw to his joy that he was going to make himself a little bonus tonight. The owner had graciously left the car-park ticket on the passenger seat. And Barry Spiker, the tight bastard he did these jobs for, who had given him twenty-seven quid to cover the all-day parking charge penalty to get the car out of the NCP, would be none the wiser!
Two minutes later, having forked out just two pounds to the attendant, he drove the car gleefully up the ramp, already twenty-five pounds in profit. He was in such a good mood that he stopped at the top of the ramp, turned the music up loud, and lowered the roof.
It was not a smart move.
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37
‘How are you?’ Sophie asked imploringly. ‘What’s happened? How—?’
‘Try it on,’ he said sharply, putting the package on the tray, ignoring her questions.
Out in the falling dusk, a siren wailed, momentarily drowning out the faint, low, four-beat boom-boom-boom-boom of dance music that was getting increasingly tiresome.
Sophie, astonished – and uneasy at his behaviour – meekly untied the bow, then peered into the gift box. All she could see for the moment was tissue paper.
Out of the corner of her eye, on the television screen, she saw Chris Tarrant mouth the words, ‘Final answer?’
The geeky-looking guy in big glasses nodded.
A yellow flashing light encircled the name Morocco.
Moments later, on the screen, a flashing green light encircled Tunisia.
Chris Tarrant’s eyebrows shot several inches up his forehead.
The lady in the wheelchair, who had looked earlier as if she was about to be hit by a cricket bat, now looked as if she had been hit by a sledgehammer. Meanwhile, her husband seemed to shrink in his seat.
Sophie lipread Tarrant saying, ‘John, you had sixty-four thousand pounds . . .’
‘You want to watch television or open the gift I’ve bought you?’ he said.
Swinging her tray of food on to her bedside tabl
e, she said, ‘The gift, of course! But I want to know how you are. I want to know about—’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. Open it!’ he said in a tone suddenly so aggressive it startled her.
‘OK,’ she said.
‘What are you watching that crap for?’
Her eyes still flicked back to the screen. ‘I like it,’ she said, trying to calm him. ‘Poor guy. His wife’s in a wheelchair. He’s just blown the hundred and twenty-five thousand pound question.’
‘The whole show’s a con,’ he said.
‘No, it isn’t!’
‘Life’s a con. Haven’t you figured that one out yet?’
‘A con?’
Now it was his turn to point at the screen. ‘I don’t know who he is, nor did the rest of the world. A few minutes ago he sat in that chair and had nothing. Now he’s going to walk away with thirty-two thousand pounds and feel dissatisfied, when he should be rip-roaring with joy. You’re going to tell me that’s not a con?’
‘It’s a matter of perspective. I mean – from his point—’ ‘Turn the fucking thing off!’
Sophie was still shocked by the aggression in his voice, but at the same time a defiant streak made her reply, ‘No. I’m enjoying it.’
‘Want me to go, so you can watch your fucking sad little programme?’
She was already regretting what she had said. Despite her earlier resolve to end it with Brian, seeing him in the flesh made her realize she would a million times rather that he was here, with her, tonight than watch this show – or any show. And God, what the poor man must be going through . . . She punched the remote, turning it off. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
He was staring at her in a way she’d never seen before. As if blinds had come down behind his eyes.
‘I’m really sorry, OK? I’m just surprised you’re here.’
‘So you’re not pleased to see me?’
She sat up and threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. His breath was rancid and he smelled sweaty, but she didn’t care. They were manly smells, his smells. She breathed them in as though they were the most intoxicating scents on the planet. ‘I’m more than pleased,’ she said. ‘I’m just . . .’ She looked into those hazel eyes she adored so much. ‘I’m just so surprised, you know – after what you said earlier when we spoke. Tell me. Please tell me what’s happened. Please tell me everything.’
‘Open it!’ he said, his voice rising.
She pulled away some of the tissue, but, like a Chinese box, there was another layer beneath, and then another again. Trying to bring him back down from whatever was angering him, she said, ‘OK, I’m trying to guess what this is. And I’m guessing that it’s a—’
Suddenly his face was inches in front of hers, so close their noses were almost touching.
‘Open it!’ he screeched. ‘Open it, you fucking bitch.’
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38
Skunk, driving along in falling, purple-tinted darkness, clocked the bright headlights again in his mirror. They had appeared from nowhere moments after he left the Regency Square car park. Now they were accelerating past the line of traffic and cutting in behind a blacked-out BMW that was right on his tail.
It wasn’t necessarily anything to worry about, he thought. But as he reached the two solid lines of vehicles backed up at the roundabout in front of Brighton Pier, in his mirror he caught a fleeting glimpse of the face of the man in the passenger seat, flashlit under the neon glare of the street lighting, and began to panic.
He couldn’t be completely sure, but it looked too fucking much like that young plain-clothes cop called Paul Packer, whose finger he’d bitten off after a run-in over a stolen car, for which he had been banged up in a young offenders’ institute.
At full volume on the car’s radio, Lindsay Lohan was singing ‘Confessions of a Broken Heart’, but he barely heard the words; he was looking at the traffic flow in and out of the roundabout, trying to decide which exit to take. The car behind hooted. Skunk gave him the bird. There was a choice of four exits. One would take him towards the town centre and clogged-up traffic. Too risky, he could easily get trapped there. The second was Marine Parade, a wide street with plenty of side roads, plus fast open road beyond it. The third would take him along the seafront, but the danger there was, with just one exit at either end, he could get blocked in easily. The fourth would take him back in the direction he had just come from. But there were roadworks and heavy traffic.
He made his decision, pressing the pedal all the way down to the metal. The Audi shot forward, across the bows of a white van. Fiercely concentrating, Skunk continued accelerating along Marine Parade, past shops, then the flash Van Alen building. He checked in the mirror. No sign of the Vectra. Good. Must be stuck at the roundabout.
Traffic lights ahead were red. He braked, then cursed. In his mirrors he saw the Vectra again, overtaking on the wrong side, making up ground, driving like a maniac. The car pulled up behind him. Right behind him. Like, one inch from his rear bumper. All shiny clean. Radio aerial on the roof. Two men in the front seats. And now, lit up in the glare of his own brake lights, there really was no mistaking one of them.
Shit.
In the mirror he saw Packer’s eyes, remembered them from before, big, calm eyes, that sort of locked on you like lasers. He remembered even when he’d bitten the fucker’s finger off, his eyes kept fixed on him, no surprise, no look of pain. Sort of weird, smiley eyes – almost like the man had been mocking him. And it was as if he was doing that again now, sitting there, neither cop making any move to get out of their car.
Why the fuck aren’t you arresting me?
His nerves were jumping about inside him, like there was some crazed animal on a trampoline inside his stomach. He nodded his head to the music. But he was jangling. Needed something. Needed another hit. The mean amount he’d taken was wearing off fast. Tried to think of the best route.
Tried to think why the cops weren’t getting out of their car.
The lights changed to green. He stamped on the pedal, accelerated halfway across the junction, then jerked the wheel hard left and slewed into Lower Rock Gardens, narrowly missing an oncoming taxi. In his mirror he saw, to his relief, the Vectra shoot over the junction.
He accelerated flat out up the Victorian terraced street, which was lined on both sides with cheap bed and breakfasts and bedsits. As he halted at another red light at the top, he saw the Vectra approaching quickly. And any last shred of doubt he might have had that he was being followed was now gone.
Checking both directions, he saw two buses were coming from his left, nose to tail. Waiting until the last possible moment, he accelerated, shooting across the front of the first bus, driving like the wind. He raced up Egremont Place, through a sharp S-bend, overtaking a dawdling Nissan on the wrong side, on a blind corner, but fortune was with him and nothing was coming from the other direction.
Then he waited anxiously at the junction with busy Elm Grove for a gap in the traffic. Two headlights suddenly pricked the darkness a long way back. Forgetting about a break in the traffic, he turned right, across it, ignoring squeals of brakes, blaring horns and flashing lights, laying a trail of rubber, up past Brighton racecourse, then down through the suburb of Woodingdean.
He debated about stopping to change the licence plate and revert back to the car’s original ones, as it almost certainly had not yet been reported stolen, but he didn’t want to take the risk of the Vectra catching him up again. So he pressed on, ignoring the flash of a speed camera with a wry smile.
Ten minutes later on a country road two miles inland from the Channel port of Newhaven, with his mirrors black and empty, and his windscreen spattered with dead insects, he slowed down and made a right turn at a sign which read Meades Farm.
He drove through a gap in a tall, ragged hedgerow on to a metalled, single-track farm road, following it through fields of corn overdue for harvesting, for half a mile, several kamikaze rabbits darting in and out of
his path. He passed the massive derelict sheds that once housed battery hens, and an open-sided barn on his right contained a few shadowy pieces of long-disused and rusting farm machinery. Then, directly ahead, his headlights picked up the wall of a vast, steel-sided, enclosed barn.
He stopped the car. No light came from the building and there were no vehicles parked outside. Nothing at all to reveal that an active business was being carried on in here at this moment.
Pulling his mobile phone from his pocket, he called a number he knew by heart. ‘Outside,’ he said when it was answered.
Electronic doors slid open just wide enough to allow him to drive in, revealing a brightly lit, cavernous space, then began closing behind him instantly. Inside he saw about twenty cars, most of them the latest model, top-end luxury machines. He clocked two Ferraris, an Aston Martin DB9, a Bentley Continental, two Range Rovers, a Cayenne, as well as some less exotic cars, including a Golf GTI, a Mazda XR2, a classic yellow Triumph Stag and a new-looking MG TF. Some of the cars appeared to be intact, while others were in various stages of dismemberment. Despite the lateness of the hour, four boiler-suited mechanics were working on vehicles – two beneath open bonnets, one on his back under a jacked-up Lexus sports car, the fourth fitting a body panel to a Range Rover Sport.
Skunk switched off the engine and with that his music fell silent. Instead some cheesy old Gene Pitney song crackled out from a cheap radio somewhere in the building. A drill whined.
Barry Spiker stepped out of his glass-windowed office over on the far side, talking into a mobile, and walked towards him. A short, wiry, former regional champion flyweight boxer with close-cropped hair, he had a face hard enough to carve ice with. He was dressed in a blue boiler suit over a string vest, and flip-flops, and he reeked of a sickly sweet aftershave. A medallion hung from a gold chain around his neck. Without acknowledging Skunk, he walked all the way around the car, still talking on his phone, arguing, looking in a foul mood.