Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (14 page)

She took it with a smile. Stepped closer. I felt her hand slide up my arm.

“Scott… I think we need some time together, don’t we? Have a chat and discuss things. I was kind of hoping to bump into you again actually, after, you know, our little stairway encounter!” Deep laughter.

I looked down into her dark eyes and just didn’t have a clue what to think. Her thumb rubbed against my bicep.

God, she was absolutely gorgeous.

“Look, let’s go for a drink, maybe tomorrow night, how about it? We can go somewhere quiet and talk things over properly…”

Yes. Yes, all right, that seemed reasonable. Civilised. A drink with her sounded pretty good. Just her and me…

I felt my mobile go off in my jacket pocket. Two buzzes. Another text message from Becky.

Cold water in my face.

I grabbed her shoulders hard, shaking her whole body. “Who the fuck are you!” I snarled. “You ain’t Barry’s niece at all! What are you – ”

Whoosh – she flung her hands up, dislodging mine, then grabbed one arm and yanked hard. I went spinning 180 degrees. The alley wall hit me in the face as she slammed me against the bricks.

TILT.

The world span, suddenly all wrong. My stomach dropped with panic. Complete loss of control. Game over. My fault.

I gasped, pinned with her weight against my arm, wrenched up my back. The dirty brick wall grinding against the side of my face. Her voice close behind me.

“Let me put it another way, Scott. If you ever try and interfere again, I’ll put you down like a dog, you got that?”

She yanked my arm up higher.
“Ahhh!”

“I’m going to make something of this opportunity. I’m going to make it work. And I’m not letting anybody get in my way.”

Her lips brushed my ear.

“Especially not an
amateur
,” she hissed.

She let go. I collapsed onto the pavement. Gingerly, I brought my arm back round the right way – it was agony. Then I looked up to watch her stride back down the alley to the fire exit door. Sweeping blonde hair away from her face, with a bolognese handprint on the shoulder of her white blouse, hips swinging in a tight red skirt, heels clicking on stone.

She didn’t even look back as she yanked the door open and vanished inside the Glasshouse. It boomed shut.

What just happened?

I touched the side of my face. There was blood on my fingertips. My face. Damn it, she’d scarred my face. She’d damaged me. She’d kicked the crap out of me!

Who the hell was she?

“She’s a relationship assassin, isn’t she?”

Barry squirmed in his chair, looking away.

We were back in the office. First thing Monday morning – that nice little reporting ritual that I’d wanted to start. Reporting with white knuckles.

“ISN’T SHE?!”

Barry glanced down at the floor and nodded.

I reached for the nearest thing to hand – the keyboard to Barry’s PC. Wrenched it out the back of his machine and flung it against the wall. It shattered, little plastic keys bursting everywhere.

Barry jerked back as I grabbed a stapler off his desk, threw it viciously, denting his filing cabinet. I swiped his whole desk and sent papers flying, then kicked a revolving chair right across the office. I stormed round the room, picking up and throwing whatever I could lay my hands on, while Barry shouted at me to stop, for God’s sake Scott,
stop it!

He got out of his chair towards me, as I snatched up his old Samantha Fox novelty ashtray and threw it at his head.

Barry ducked, surprisingly swift. Sam Fox crashed right through the window, sending glass flying. Then a loud metal thump from down below and suddenly a car alarm filled the office with noise:

WHEEEEEEOOOO-WHEEEEEEOOOO-WHEEEEEEOOOO-

“Jesus!” he bellowed. “Stop this right now!”

“What are you playing at, Barry!” I yelled back, right into his face. Barry’s eyes went huge and he backed off. “Who the fuck is this girl?”

WHEEEEEEOOOO-WHEEEEEEOOOO-WHEEEEEEOOOO-

“Look, just calm down and I’ll – ”

“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down! She’s doing what I do! She’s doing my job, man, she’s working for you! Why didn’t you tell me about her!”

WHEEEEEEOOOO-WHEEEEEEOOOO-WHEEEEEEOOOO-

“Scott, just – ”

“What’s going on, Barry! What the hell are you playing at!”

WHEEEE-bipbip!

In the sudden silence, Barry seemed to remember that he was twice my body weight. He grabbed my upper arms firmly. “If you just get a bloody hold of yourself and calm down… I’ll explain everything, all right?”

I met his glare, listening my own breathing. Harsh, fast. Through bared teeth.

All right. All right. I forced myself to relax a little, until he finally let go of me. I turned and paced round the office, picked up the chair that I’d kicked and sat astride it, arms folded on the back.

“Well?”

Barry slowly sat back down. He glanced at the gaping hole in the window, cracks spidering out. Through it we could hear the wind and traffic, and someone bitching loudly about the dent in his car. He heaved a classic O’Nion sigh. “Look… I was going to tell you about Emma today anyway. It’s not like – ”

“Emma,”
I said acidly. Bad taste in my mouth. “Your sweet little niece, Emma.”

“I know. I know. I had to come up with something, for the short term. She – ”

CRASH! We both jumped as a window burst inwards. Sam Fox came spinning through in a shower of glass, thumping across the floor.

Barry looked at the matching pair of jagged holes in his windows and heaved an even more O’Nion-y sigh.

“So when exactly where you going to tell me who she really was?” I asked. “Before or after she mucked up my case for me?”

“She didn’t do any such thing.”

“Excuse me?! She was right there in the same bloody restaurant, with the same detective! She was working my target’s fiancé, for God’s sake!”

He flashed both podgy hands at me. “Newsflash, Scott! The Hargreaves case is over! It’s done, you finished it last week, remember! We’ve already been paid for it, Londonwide Associates confirmed payment for me this morning. That’s why I sent Emma after the fiancé. Londonwide Associates already had all the details on him and they were happy to monitor him for us, for a small fee. It was just a field test, that’s all.”

“A field test!”

“Last thing I expected was for you to go blundering in there. Thought you’d be long gone by then.”

I thought about that. Barry was right. The Hargreaves case had been over since Friday evening. I’d done the business. Normally, that would be the end of it. I’d be out of there, whoosh, cloud of dust, who was that masked man, gone.

Rule Four: Walk away the instant the job’s done.

Another one broken. But this was different, I told myself. Too many loose threads to tie up.

“So where has this bitch come from then?”

Barry looked down at his hands. “Well… I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. You know, expanding. Making more money. I’ve been trying to come up with ways to increase our income, not just for me but for you too, for the whole company. So I – ”

“What company?” I pointed at the fake organisation chart at the wall, then flashed my own hands. “Newsflash, Barry! This company is you and me! Infidelity Ltd isn’t real!”

He raised his bullet head. “Scott. Infidelity Ltd
is
a company. And I’m the director.”

“Director, bollocks! You’re just my agent, Barry!”

“I’m the director,” he repeated, ”it’s a registered limited company, it’s my business. And it’s my job to make it profitable. You said it yourself, the other day – there’s only so much you can do at one time. You were right, you were dead right. And it makes good business sense to expand upon a successful operational strategy when you’ve got one. Which we do have, obviously, with you. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m expanding.” He looked almost proud. “Infidelity Ltd is expanding.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but felt suddenly dry.

I’d got it wrong. I was wrong the whole time. I thought Barry worked for me.

Barry was my
boss
.

“The demand’s there. That’s what a successful business is all about – filling a need. So I started putting the word out on the grapevine, that I was looking for another… well, somebody who might have your talents. Who could, you know, follow in your footsteps.”

I sat there, listening. I could tell that Barry had been wanting to tell this story to someone for a while.

“So anyway, someone put me in touch with this agency called VenusVisions. Ever heard of them? Well, no, me neither, sounded like an opticians to me. They’re what’s known as a honeytrap operation. Basically, women hire them to put their other halves to the test, see if they’re likely to play away from home. So what you get is all these beautiful young girls, all really top stuff, trying it on with the husbands and boyfriends of their clients. They go up to them in bars and in the supermarket and what have you and start flirting, see if the bloke is keen, see if they try to take it any further… and if they do, then the lady knows her bloke’s likely to cheat on her. So that’s his balls handed to him for breakfast. Funny really, to think these poor sods don’t realise they’re signing their divorce papers just by chatting up some nice bit of stuff by the freezer section. Just goes to show, eh? Anyway, so that’s where I found – ”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Er, well no – ”

“That’s bullshit, Barry!” I shouted. “That’s such bullshit, that’s
nothing
like what I do!”

“Well, it’s in the same ballpark…”

“It’s so
not
in the same ballpark! Anyone can do that, anyone can go up to someone in a bar and just flirt, especially if you’re a pretty girl, that’s a piece of piss! Oh, newsflash! Blokes fancy cute girls, hold the front page! Course that’s going to happen, unless the guy’s an absolute saint. I bet this VenusVisions place has a hit rate of about 90%, don’t they?”

“Um, I’ve no idea. They’re doing well for themselves, though.”

“Of course they are. If they’re selling a flirt and a smile and a bimbo in a high skirt, I’m sure sales are through the roof. What I do is
totally
different! I provide an entire relationship, there to be discovered, not just a quick ships-passing-in-the-night thing! I have to get to know the target, adapt to her, get into her life – ”

“Woah woah, okay!” Barry held his palms out. “You’re right, Scott, no argument, all right? I’m not saying these girls do what you do, no contest, okay?”

“…Okay.” I sat back down again. Didn’t realise I’d stood up.

“The point being… that’s where I found Emma. And Emma’s a bit different to the other girls on their books.”

“What, does she beat the blokes unconscious first?”

“Some of those girls are more than just a pretty face, Scott. They’re smart as well. Cracking little actresses, some of them, have to be to do what they do. Emma’s the best. It’s not just that she’s sexy as anything – you’ve seen her, you know what I’m talking about…”

“Shame on you Barry, this is your little niece, remember.”

“…She’s clever with it. She’s seriously switched on. And she’s used to changing herself to be whatever she has to be. She’s a bit of a chameleon, is Emma. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the surveillance videos of her with some of these poor married buggers. They don’t stand a chance, she has them eating out of her hand in minutes. Amazing.”

I remembered her spooning ice cream into Sajjan’s smiling mouth. And also, shamefully, how she’d almost hypnotised me just by suggesting we go for a drink. It had been like that snake from Jungle Book with the twirly eyes.
Trusssst in meeee…

“So when I explained to her what we do, what a relationship assassin does… well, she ripped my arm off. She said it sounded perfect. I warned her though, said how hard it was, that there were risks in pretending to be someone you weren’t. She just laughed, said she was always up for a challenge. She was keen as mustard. Hungry for it. And that’s what I’d been looking for, I suppose. Someone as hungry for it as you were.

“Are,” he added quickly.

Barry and I sat there for a minute. Listening to the wind whistling through our holes.

Sorry, that didn’t come out the way I meant. The holes in the windows, obviously. A breeze wafted through them across the office. It was definitely getting chillier.

I asked “Why didn’t you tell me any of this?”

“Well, if I’m honest, I suppose I knew you weren’t likely to take it too well. Too much pride in you, there is. Not a bad thing, just… I knew you’d hate the idea.”

Like that stopped you, I thought.

“But the other reason was, well, it might not have worked out. Emma might not have been as good as she said she was, you know. Or, like you say, she might have been pretty hot at fluttering her eyelashes and getting the married fellas all falling over themselves, sure. But when it came down to the real deal, well, she might not have been able to hack it. That’s why I wanted to put her to the test, you see. I thought, the Hargreaves case is done, we’re not going to lose any money if she makes a pig’s ear of it, let’s see how well she does against the target’s other half.”

“And?”

Barry’s grin spread across his chops. “Passed with flying colours.”

I scowled. “So… what, she manages to go for dinner with some engaged bloke and that makes her the same as me, does it?”

“Oh, she did a lot more than have dinner with your man there. Although there was some eating involved.” Barry sniggered, stomach-turningly.

“She shagged Sajjan?”

“Did she ever.” Still smirking, Barry reached towards his desk, frowned, then started hunting around amongst all the papers I’d scattered across the floor. He grabbed a manila envelope, held it out to me. “The camera never lies!”

I felt my hand jerk, unsure whether to take the envelope or not. My imagination kicked in at the thought of candid photos of Barry’s ‘niece’ having sex. Man, they had to be worth seeing. But I was still feeling winded by this whole thing. Gut-punched at what Barry had done. And the thought of looking at another relationship assassin at work, doing what I do, tightened my whole body.