Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (16 page)

“Look, it’s okay – ”

“It’s not okay!”
She steepled her hands across her mouth, as if in prayer. “Oh God, what have I… what was I
doing!”

“Becky – ”

“GET OUT!” Her eyes filled again, glancing down at the pictures. “God I’m sick of the
sight
of you, just, please just… go!”

I stepped back from the desk. Teri’s sad eyes. Nicola’s hands plastered over her face like she was watching a horror movie. Laura – Laura who’d go to the ends of the earth for a shag, Laura the Explorer – staring at me with disgust. And now over a dozen other office girls filling reception, all watching the commotion, with another dozen people peering from behind the glass double doors in the main office. Total silence except for Becky crying. Their eyes burning into me.

You know how I love an audience.

I turned and walked to the door. Even then, a part of my mind was saying: It’s all right. This is your exit window, Scott. You came here to say goodbye anyway, just walk away. Case closed. Job done. Bang.

I stopped (shouldn’t stop, just keep walking) and turned back round. Teri was behind the desk now, her arms around Becky. I couldn’t see her face through her hands. Engagement ring on her finger. Her shoulders rocking. It looked so wrong, I just wanted to walk straight up to her and … I don’t know, make it better somehow… tell her it would be all right, say something to…

Laura shouted “Will you just fuck off, you bastard! You’ve caused enough damage!”

I left.

Just keep walking. I pulled on the helmet as I strode out, snapped the visor down, not wanting the security guard to see the tears in my eyes. I needed the helmet’s protection. Needed to save my face.

Bang. Case closed, I told myself. Just keep walking. Just keep on walking.

I reached up and gripped the drainpipe, first with one hand then the other, slowly hauling myself upwards. Another painful few inches along the outside of the building.

“What am I doing!” I shouted.

The wind whipped my voice away, into the night. Nobody around to hear it anyway. You don’t bump into many people thirty feet above ground.

I pushed my knees together around the drainpipe. It was a flaky old ceramic one, bolted to a hundred-year-old brick wall, smearing grime and birdshit across my clothes. But I squeezed myself round it, holding on for dear life. My whole body ached. Straining muscles in my thighs and arms and hands and, well, just about everywhere, except possibly the muscle between my ears which hadn’t been getting much exercise recently, and if you want proof then just lift your head and take a good look at me, dangling from a drainpipe two storeys up.

Trying to break into my own office.

“I’m out of my bloody mind!”

I could probably have broken in through the building’s main entrance. Yale locks aren’t too much trouble if you know what you’re doing. But Barry had some proper security on his office door. Alarms and everything. So this was the only way.

“Shit shit shit
shit!”

I kept going, hugging the wall, dragging myself up inch by inch. At least nobody could see me toying with death. I’d made sure the building was deserted, all the black-iron printing machines on the ground floor still silent, the upper windows all dark. And that part of Hackney’s radioactive wasteland hardly got any visitors during the day, let alone that time of night.

Still, I made the numbnuts mistake of glancing down to check.

“Oh God…” The street span beneath me. You know those vertigo nightmares? The ones where you yank yourself out of sleep just as your dream-self goes tumbling over the edge? Felt just like that. The pavement was miles below. Nothing but a massive amount of open, empty air between me and the ground.

I closed my eyes for a minute, feeling sick.

“Come on you dickhead, just do it!”

Funny. I hadn’t realised how much I talk to myself when I’m doing something stupid.

I crawled upwards, slow and awkward. My fingers closed on a second-floor window ledge. At the window’s centre was a large jagged gap, cardboarded up from inside. I couldn’t remember how big the hole in Barry’s window was, the one that I’d made when I chucked the Samantha Fox ashtray at him. Big enough to climb through? Not quite, I now saw for myself. But there was no going back now.

Queasy moment when I took one hand off the drainpipe to punch the cardboard aside. But then the adrenalin really kicked in and I was dragging myself up to the ledge and cracking glass off with my elbow. Just enough to reach through, grab the inside of the window frame and heave myself in. Cut my hands, arms and shoulders to ribbons doing it, but there was no stopping me by that point. I rolled through and collapsed onto the worn carpet of Barry’s office. Gasping like a fish on the boat deck.

I lay in the dark for a minute, then brushed off all the glass splinters, got up and switched the lights on. My t-shirt was smeared with dirt, ripped and bloody in several places. I examined my bleeding hands and arms. Great. More scars.

Shouldn’t complain. Scars were nothing. By that point in the day, I’d expected to be residing in the ‘Shit, Kicked Out Of’ ward.

Jake had been waiting for me.

Yesterday morning, I rode like a demon from Asquith and Bream’s offices to his council estate. Should have seen his face – eyes like saucers, staring at the gleaming new Honda. Before the bike had come to a stop, I opened my mouth and puked the story at him:

“…it was the sound of the engine that woke me up, I came running down and saw the two of them, they had bolt cutters, got through the chain and were making off with it, I pulled one bloke off it and started sorting him out, reckon I broke a few teeth but the other hit me with the bolt cutters, that’s why my face looks like this, then they just kicked the crap out of me while I was on the ground, tried to get up and stop ‘em but just nothing I could do, last I saw they made off with the bike and that was that, couldn’t even move let alone chase after them, anyway no excuse, I promised to look after it so that’s what I’ve done, I mean your bike’s gone but I’ve got this one instead, same make, this year’s model, all bought and paid for, the gear and helmet as well, it’s all yours mate, least I could do, just wish I could have got my hands on those bastards but there were two of them and they caught me by surprise, anyway, this one’s all yours so um… well that’s about it really, I’m sorry about what happened but…”

Cool as a cucumber, me.

You’d have been bricking it too, if you’d seen Jake’s mad eyes, drinking in the bike. How could I ever have gone down the pub with this guy and not realised how scary he was? The dragon tattoo on the side of his neck seemed alive, jumping as his pulse throbbed.

He stared at the bike. Then at my face (still bruised and scarred on one side, thanks Emma). Back at the bike. Face. Bike. Face.

Then he waded into me and started beating me up.

It was a good five seconds before I realised that the pounding blow to my spine was actually nothing more than Jake slapping my back. And he wasn’t baring his teeth. That was a grin. Absolutely hideous, but still a grin.

“Mate!” he said. “Darren was right about you! Fuck me, he said you was a top geezer and he was right! You
fucker
, mate!” he added – again, took a second to realise this was Jake’s highest accolade. “You absolute fucker!”

Phew.

I had to stand there and smile (God my back hurt) while Jake went on and on about what an amazing bloke I was for actually buying him a new bike. I could tell, though, that what really impressed him was my story about taking on two men with my bare fists. The scars across my face were worth a thousand words, as I’d hoped. Nothing Jake valued more than a man dishing out GBH on his behalf.

I should have been relieved and happy, as I got the bus home. (Slow, hot, crowded, lurching about like a tractor… damn, I was missing the bike already.) But I just felt bitter about the whole thing. And talk about expense! The new bike, helmet and leathers had come to well over seven grand. Good thing I’d had the money, sitting there in my account for all of five minutes. Credited to me that day by Londonwide Associates.

Every single penny of my fee for the Hargreaves case… gone. I hadn’t earned a thing. Nothing to show for it but scars.

And now some nice new ones. Sucking my cut fingers, I sat in Barry’s swivel chair (which felt weird – not just because the seat was indented by the slabs of his buttocks, but because it felt like trespassing, more so than breaking in through his window) and opened the desk drawer. Quick rummage through papers and pens and Scotch eggs. There it was, the manila envelope he’d chucked in there last time I saw him.

Just like the one on Becky’s reception desk.

I tipped out the photographs. About two dozen 8 x 6 glossies. They were the last things in the world I wanted to look at. But I had to make sure.

There she was. Talking to Sajjan in a corridor, clutching books like a student.

There she was. In a coffee bar with him, smiling, hands gesturing.

There she was. Sitting opposite Sajjan in the Glasshouse restaurant, holding her spoon across the table to his mouth.

There she was. On tiptoe outside Sajjan’s flat, kissing him. And then again, through the living room windows, astride Sajjan on his sofa, both completely naked.

There she was. The female me.

“Christ…” I couldn’t believe those last few pictures. Wasn’t sure whether to throw up or get a hard on. The glimpses of Emma’s nude body were incredible, as were the things she was doing to Sajjan, who from the look on his face couldn’t believe it was really happening to him… but I felt dirty. Seeing two people have sex via telephoto lens made me feel like a right perv.

Or maybe it was watching another relationship assassin at work that really turned my stomach. Look at her, doing the business on Sajjan. Flirting, laughing, eye contact. She played him along like a puppy. He never stood a chance.

Oh and top marks, Emma, shagging the target in the living room with the lights on and the curtains open. Making sure the detective got a clear view of you at work. Yes, that’s a nice touch, throwing your head back as you ride him, hair flying loose like a shampoo advert. Well planned, Emma. Very professional.

“She did a damn good job,”
Barry had said.
“Er, for a beginner.”

Beginner, my arse.

I stuffed the photos back into the envelope, careful not to get bloody fingerprints on them. They’d be with Becky first thing tomorrow morning. Hand-delivered by courier. A courier on a shiny new motorbike. Jake had already said he’d be happy to do it for a top bloke like me.

I knew the effect these pictures would have on Becky. I knew they’d make her cry. I knew that she’d feel like throwing up even more than I did right then. I knew the whole thing was seedy and dirty and wrong. I
knew
all that. But I didn’t have a clue what else to do. I’d wracked my brains for the past day and half, trying to come up with some way of making it better for Becky… this was the only idea I’d had.

Hopefully, she’d realise that these pictures were her way of levelling the playing field. Knock Sajjan down off the moral high ground. While she was having a fling with a courier, her fiancé was getting his rocks off with a ‘psychology student’. He was just as much a cheating scumbag as…

Well, as she was.

Might help. Might make things worse. I didn’t know. But I had to do something. And a quick shimmy up the drainpipe to break into my agent’s office was a small price to pay. It was my goodbye present to her.

And yes, I do remember my Rules, thanks very much! I know I’d sworn never to do this again. Rule Four was there for a reason. But I couldn’t just walk away like that, leaving Becky crying.

Even though she’d said she was sick of the sight of me… I just couldn’t leave it.

I stood up to go. But those images of Emma at work, Emma on the job, set my mind ticking. Barry had told me a little about how he’d hired her, what his plans were. But only after I’d discovered the truth for myself, when he had no choice, otherwise I probably still wouldn’t know.

What else hadn’t he told me? How much more was there to Emma?

I looked around his office. Were the answers here?

There was no point firing up Barry’s computer. I knew that he’d asked Q to install special security programs onto it. Try to hack in? Don’t make me laugh. Instead I ripped open each of the desk drawers, rummaged through them, sprang up and went round the office, looking for something… I wasn’t sure what. I was on a mission, a different kind of mission. Call it reconnaissance. Call it industrial espionage. I needed to find out more about Emma. I had to get rid of her. I had to eliminate the Mark II before Barry decided he didn’t need the Mark I anymore. And to do that, I needed information. I needed to find out as much about that blonde bitch as I could.

Know your enemy.

I got to the dented old filing cabinet, yanked open the top drawer and went through the folders. I snatched quick looks at everything, looking for something with Emma’s name on it. Or maybe something from her old agency, VenusVisions, giving me some dirt about her past. But all I found were official documents, invoices, bank statements, Barry’s usual… hang on.

Infidelity Ltd Business Plan 2010 – 2012.

I stopped. Read it again. A three year business plan? Was Barry for real? I didn’t know what I was doing three days from now, let alone three years! I opened the spiral-bound document, skimming through it. All properly printed and laid out, very professional.

It was all about me.

“The core component of our service menu is centred around Personal Relationship Intervention (PRI). PRI activity has a wide variety of configurations but is typically focused on the direct interaction with a client’s extant personal relationship, without the foreknowledge of the secondary component of said relationship … what the
hell!”

I laughed. This was me! This was what I did! I flipped through the pages, spotting my own name.