Human Conditioning (33 page)

Aiden smirked. “You’ll have to
watch, ’cos you’ll be doing this for yourself soon.”

She nodded obediently and
closed one eye tight, the other remaining on the arm that Aiden was now holding
out in front of her. Tapping the blue vein that had appeared in the crease of
her elbow, he carefully injected into it. She watched in morbid fascination as a
little of her own blood appeared in the syringe, but once she had taken the
shot, it didn’t take long before she felt the effects. She lay back on the
couch and closed her eyes, feeling the rush, feeling herself flush, her mouth
running dry. Oblivion at last.

“Was it you?” Aiden seethed as he strode into the centre
of Kamal Kakar’s living room.

“Me what?” Kamal asked calmly,
as he stepped casually into the room from the hallway where Aiden had barged in
and proceeded to question him about what he assumed was Reggie’s murder. He
could understand why the man thought it would be him. “Drink?” he added,
glancing at Aiden as he made his way to the kitchen and began his usual routine
of pouring out a neat vodka over ice for his associate.

“No, I don’t want a fucking
drink!” Aiden replied.

Kamal smiled subtly to himself
and, leaving the kitchen, he placed the drink on the coffee table and sat in an
armchair, crossed his legs and stared placidly up at Aiden, who looked so
overwhelmed with emotion that, for the first time ever in front of Kamal, he
actually looked confused and vulnerable. “So, am I right in thinking you are
accusing me of murdering Reggie Driscoll?” Kamal announced.

Aiden glared down at him and
didn’t fail to notice that Kamal thought his accusation utterly ridiculous.
“Well, who then?” he replied touchily.

He hadn’t really thought it
had been Kamal. He knew Reggie was merely a drop in the ocean in terms of the
threat he posed to Kamal’s businesses. But he’d at least wanted to broach the
subject, if just to eradicate one person from the list of suspects he’d formed
in his mind.

“I have no idea,” Kamal
replied.

Aiden whipped the glass up
from the coffee table and drained it. “Can I ask about?” he asked cagily,
knowing that Kamal would have to give him the go-ahead for potentially causing
what he would think was unnecessary trouble. Trouble captured people’s
attention and attention brought the law sniffing.

Kamal took a deep breath and
composed himself, because he knew his answer was about to cause World War III.
“No,” he simply replied. There was no need for explanation; Aiden knew the
score.

Aiden stormed over to the
kitchen and, whipping the bottle of vodka up from the counter, he filled his
glass and downed it in one. When he was done, he slammed the glass and the
bottle onto the counter simultaneously and glowered at them, his eyes wide and
ferocious. His hands were shaking as they remained clasped around the objects
of his scrutiny. He wanted nothing more than to lob them across the room,
preferably in the direction of Kamal.

Kamal stood. “Aiden, I know he
was a close friend...”

“A close friend!” Aiden
bellowed, directing his glower at his boss. “He was the best fucking friend I’d
ever had, the best and most trusted friend I’ll
ever
have!”

Aiden’s glacial blue eyes were
gleaming with his rage and his turmoil over the loss of his friend, the man who
had been like a father to him; his guide; his mentor; his counsel. He felt sick
at the thought that he’d not wanted to go into partnership with Reggie, that
he’d wanted to practically oust him from his life. The guilt he felt over such
things hurt like a knife twisting in his gut. How could he have been so
ungrateful?

He put his head in his hands
and sighed. “Well,” he muttered after a prolonged silence. “He’s gone now, and
there’s nothing I can do about it.” He sniffed and wiped his running nose with
the back of his hand.

He turned back to Kamal and,
running a hand over his face, he walked over to the couch and slumped down on
it. “Right, these flats I was telling you about.”

Kamal eyed him for a moment
then sat back on his armchair. Crossing his legs once more, he said, “OK, what
kind of money are we talking?”

“£300K a month, easy. If we
buy up the whole block, we’d have enough flats to house fifty girls.”

Kamal nodded, his mind ticking
over, shrewdly calculating the great benefit of Aiden’s proposal from a few
days ago. “You’d have to run things. I can only be a sleeping partner. No shit
leads back to me...” he replied.

“I’d take care of everything
as normal. You’ll get your money back from the purchase of the flats within
four months tops.”

“Alright... you got a site in
mind?”

“They’re selling off a large
block of one-bed flats on the Kingsland estate. They want it going to someone
who will restore it, but the local council executive is a current client of
mine... he won’t want his little secret being made public, so he won’t have a
choice but to sell it to me. I’ll make sure all the paperwork doesn’t lead back
to any of us... you don’t have any worries on that front.”

“You’ve gathered a lot of comrades
along the way, Aiden,” Kamal added.

“Yeah, well, I knew what I
wanted a long time ago... it only made sense to make sure people were on my
side, whether they liked it or not.”

Kamal brushed his hands over
his knees and stood. Aiden followed suit. “Tell me when you need the money.
Kyle will sort the financials. Speak to him directly,” said Kamal.

Aiden was expected to make his
own way out, as usual. Even the trauma of a dead friend didn’t persuade Kamal
to become doorman in his own apartment. When Aiden got to the door of the
living area, he turned to Kamal and said, “This will be big... we’ll be very
rich men, you and I.”

“I’m already rich, Mr Foster,”
Kamal replied, displaying a shrewd grin. It was an unsaid affirmation that
Aiden needed the KKKs more than they needed him, and he took it as such. He
nodded in reluctant resignation then left.

Despite what had initially gone down at Kamal’s earlier
that day, Aiden couldn’t contain his excitement now as he walked swiftly up
Victoria Park Road. Kamal agreeing to put up the money for the Kingsland flats
meant he was finally on the road to establishing himself as
the
escort
agency in East London. All his hard work and determination had counted for something
and, for the first time in his life, he could realistically start thinking
about buying a large family home, only made complete by the girl who lived
behind the front door he now stood at.

Pressing the brass doorbell,
he waited anxiously on the doorstep of Lily Summers’s home, nervously biting
the side of his thumb. When the door swung open, it was Mrs Summers who stood
staring at him. Lily had inherited all her looks from her mother. Mrs Summers was
tall and slim with a heart-shaped face, bright blue eyes and a small puckered
mouth, and her hair was bright blonde and cut into an immaculate, silky bob. She
looked
like Old Bill.

Her mouth popped open when she
realised who it was standing before her. “Aiden, isn’t it?” she said, frowning
and pursing her pink lips. “You look... different...” she added, clearly bewildered
by the expensive suit and winkle-pickers he was wearing.

“Hello, Mrs Summers.” Aiden
smiled smugly, basking in her bemusement. The last time she had seen him, he had
been much slighter and probably had been wearing his school uniform.

“We haven’t seen you for a
while...” she muttered, and it was clear that she had hoped they would never
see the likes of him again.

He replied, “Lily came to see
me the other day,” and treated her to his best smile, making it absolutely clear
that
her
daughter had come looking for
him
first.

She raised a blonde eyebrow, poorly attempting to
disguise her surprise, and disappointment in her daughter.

“Oh... well, I’ll just go and
get her,” she announced grudgingly.

She disappeared. Aiden smirked
to himself and noted that she hadn’t invited him in – not that he had expected
her to. She had never approved of him. She had made that clear on several
occasions, when he used to walk Lily home after school. She would peer out of
the window with the look of a school teacher about to discipline a pupil, and
Lily was never allowed to invite him in. Aiden didn’t much like Mrs Summers
either, or her husband, who he recalled looked like Postman Pat. They were Old
Bill. There wasn’t much more to say than that.

Despite his triumph over Mrs ‘Stickler’
Summers, he was extremely nervous coming to see Lily, for fear that she would reject
him. It was an uncomfortable sensation, to feel so vulnerable, and it was a sensation
he resented. No one had ever made him feel the way he felt about Lily Summers. He’d
only ever had the desire to make one person happy other than himself, and Lily
was that person. And now that he was going to earn an incredible amount of
money, he could finally provide her with the things she’d been accustomed to
all her life. But would it be enough?

He stepped back to look up at
the three-storey town house before him, and he swelled with pride at the
thought that he would soon potentially be able to purchase something twice its
size. And at just twenty years of age!

He hadn’t realised that Lily
had come to the door, and only her voice distracted him from his reverie. “Admiring
the view?” she said, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed
defensively across her chest.

He gazed at her. She looked
stunning, in a knee-length, navy tea dress, grey tights and black ankle boots.
“Now I am,” he replied, a smile creeping to the corner of his mouth.

Lily’s light blue eyes
searched his handsome face. She couldn’t deny that every inch of her body
longed for him to take her in his arms. She could see in her mind’s eye the
images of them lying together, and she longed for his flesh to be against hers
again. She desired to touch every inch of him. No man had ever made her feel
the way Aiden had. No man would ever match his allure. He was totally and
unequivocally inescapable.

Beneath her steely glare, she took in his dark ruffled
hair, his square jaw and straight nose, his full lips, his kissable neck, his
large shoulders hidden beneath his expensive suit jacket, and his eyes... those
beautiful piercing blue eyes that she could get lost in forever.

Her desire was certainly palpable,
yet seeing Gina again, knowing for sure that Aiden had not severed his
relationship with her, and having been informed about their baby, had hurt her
badly. She had not thought of anything else since, and seeing him now, as much
as she basked in his presence, it inflamed the resentment and anger she felt
from her recent discovery and the suffering it had caused her.

“What do you want, Aiden? I
told you, I’m seeing someone,” she said, narrowing her eyes to convey her
dissatisfaction.

Aiden fought all his instincts
not to retort with something derogative about
Tristan
, and instead he
stepped up to her and took her cheek. He felt her freeze beneath his touch, but
that she did not pull away gave him the confidence to move closer. “Aiden, what
are you doing?” she sighed hopelessly, as if this single touch had already
sealed her fate.

“I love you, Lily...
so
much. I always have and I always will,” he whispered, and he sounded so
earnest.

“Aiden...”

“I mean it... there’s never
been anyone else.”

Her eyes glistened with the
threat of tears. “That’s not true...” she whispered.

He took her hand and placed it
on the breast of his jacket, over his heart. “There’s never been anyone else...
in here.”

She gulped and slowly pulled
her hand away. “What happened to your baby, Aiden? Did you make Gina have an
abortion?”

He shook his head. “No, Lily. She
had a miscarriage. At the time, I’d already called it off with her. I didn’t
even know she was pregnant... she didn’t tell me.”

“Would
you
tell you?”

The recollection of the late Mr
Baker’s identical words came back to haunt him and he stepped back, gulping
down the urge to retort. “Will you take a walk with me?” he asked.

She eyed him warily for a long
moment then, finally, she nodded her agreement.

Calling out to her mother, she
quickly grabbed her coat and stepped out of the house to join Aiden before she
changed her mind. He opened out his hand and she took it. Taking the footpath,
they headed in the direction of Victoria Park in silence. It was a rarity, but Aiden
felt entirely relaxed all of a sudden. It was a cold but bright day, and he
breathed in the cool air and exhaled a quiet sigh of contentment.

“What are you so happy about?”
Lily murmured.  

He gave her a shy smile. “I
feel content when I’m with you.”

Lily concentrated on the
street ahead, yet her whole body was affected by Aiden’s hand as it tightened
around hers. Despite herself, she had to think straight. Something had really concerned
her on New Year’s Day.
What had been wrong with Gina?
She had been a
mess – a shadow of the girl she had once been. To her, Gina had always been the
strong one, the girl who wouldn’t take shit from anyone.

An unwelcome thought crept
into the back of her mind. Aiden.... was
he
the cause of Gina’s disintegration?
Whether he knew or not, they had been expecting a child and Gina had
miscarried. It must have been devastating for her to go through something like
that alone. Yet Aiden had treated her with such contempt.

“Did you love Gina?”

Aiden took a deep breath. He had
been expecting this topic of conversation and he answered, “No,” with no
elaboration.