Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (17 page)

“…Scott Rowley, as a primary exemplar of the PRI-based strategy. This period can be considered something of a pilot scheme in the sense that the central tenets of PRI have already been implemented and tested by the exemplar…”

This was crazy! Barry was writing about me, but it might have been about an international corporation or something. So I’m an exemplar, am I, Barry? What’s that when it’s at home!

Turning the page, I found a large table of data. Names. Dates. Man-hours. Gross earnings. It was a selection of my past cases over five years. The footnotes made it clear this wasn’t all of them, just the fifty highest-earning cases.

Jesus,
fifty!
I hadn’t realised there’d even been that many. Reading down the column of names was a bit of a shock. I’d forgotten most of them. Each one leapt off the page, dragging memories behind them.

Mrs Judd. Frizzy perm, bad skin, Dame Edna glasses, married to a lottery winner.

Mrs O’Neill, the vicar’s wife. Grazing our elbows in the confession booth.

Mrs Trussler. Breath like eggy farts.

Ms Chilcote. Sweet girl, but desperate for her goody-goody boyfriend to dump her. Paraded me in front of the poor sod for weeks till the penny dropped.

Ms Green. All piercings and tattoos. So many rings and studs in her that it felt like Christmas every time we shagged. Jingle all the way!

Mrs Buchanan. Editor at a publishing company. I’d had fun with that one, pretending to be a flamboyant young writer, exciting her with my energetic ideas. Let’s get those creative juices flowing, she used to say.

Too many memories.

The table was pretty up to date. The bottom row had all the details for the Bentley-Foster case, which was only a couple of weeks ago. No mention of the Hargreaves case, though. Too recent. Or maybe not worth including. Small beer.

I was leaving grimy fingerprints on the pages, and specks of blood from the cuts on my hands. But I kept going, shaking my head and muttering to myself. To read about my life like it was some kind of project… I noticed that phrase in the text again, ‘pilot scheme’. What the hell did that mean? Pilot scheme for what?

And ‘shareholders’! I started to realise this wasn’t just a fantasy business case by a washed-up old ex-detective who couldn’t cut it. It was a proposal document. Barry was trying to get other businesses to
invest
in his poxy little one-man company!

If you could have heard me, though, you might have noticed my laughter getting a bit strained. Because the more I read, the more uneasy I got. I flipped on and found myself reading about the projected market for PRI activity.

“How
much?!”

Barry had estimated the total annual value of what he called the ‘separation market’. It was an insane number. In the millions. He then justified it with a list of statistics. The divorce rate for married couples in the UK over the past twenty years, a graph like the north face of Everest. Infidelity stats, compiled from anonymous questionnaires, that made us look like a country of cheating scumbags. Data from detective agencies – including Global Investigations and Londonwide Associates – on cases that involved marriages or partners. He even mentioned the Japanese market, based on the success of my fellow breaker-uppers on the other side of the world, the wakaresaseya. This was fascinating stuff. I could imagine Barry drawing this together from his network of old colleagues.

Millions of pounds to be made, from getting involved in other people’s break-ups.

“Bollocks!” I said to the document. It
had
to be bollocks. Okay, I hadn’t done badly for myself over the past few years. But Barry was sugar-coating it for his potential investors. If there was really that much money to be made, I’d be rolling in it by now…

My fingers smeared blood across the numbers as I turned the page. Section 5: Expansion Timetable.

“Two operatives by end 3Q10?” Another me working for Barry by September. He was already ahead of schedule. Number two had hit the ground running. But then four in 4Q10… two more by the end of the year! That was crazy, where the hell was Barry going to find two more people like me? I didn’t grow on trees!

Maybe I did. The expansion plans were exponential. By the end of 2012, Infidelity Ltd would be employing no less than twenty-four operatives.

“Bloody hell…”

I leaned against the filing cabinet. Twenty-four relationship assassins. Twenty-four men and women, out there doing what I do.
Twenty-four
.

There was a paragraph on finances that I very nearly skipped. Glad I didn’t. Barry was projecting a gross income of nearly half a million pounds per annum by the end of 2012. About six per cent of the potential market. The financial model was due to have changed by that point, from a percentage-based approach to a more conventional system. Which meant that Barry’s twenty-four relationship assassins would all be on…

Salary.

Salary with a fucking
pension plan
.

I gripped the document tight. Blood soaked through the paper. I felt like I’d just been robbed. That hollow nausea when you walk into your home, see the wreckage and realise someone’s broken in. That they’ve been in your most private places and taken your things. They’ve taken pieces of
you
.

Scott Rowley the pilot scheme. Prototype. Exemplar. Sucker. Pawn.

“You’ve been using me, Barry.”

I’d been doing a lot of this, lately. Talking to myself. But I was aiming my voice at his empty chair. “How long you been planning this? Huh? Right from the beginning? Does it go back that far?”

Most of the time, my thoughts swerved like a drunk driver to avoid the Old Days. But now those memories came crashing into my head, bang, airbag, cracked glass. The beginning of me and Barry, five years ago.

The Old Days.

Subtitles: The Dodgiest Pub in East London, March 2005.

You could tell, from the second she walked in, that she didn’t belong there. She stank of money.

I watched her from the back of the pub, tucked away beside the cigarette machine. I didn’t belong there either. But I looked like I did. It looked like that smoky, foul-smelling, run-down dive was where I was born.

Who was I? Andy Holloway, twenty-four year old building site brickie. (This was before I started nicking names from the Seventies, so I’d just made him up. Sounded about right though. Names were important even in the Old Days.) You know him. You’ll have seen him on the high street, with a pack of scallies just like him, or a buxom, mini-skirted girl on his arm. Andy Holloway the lad. Pubber. Clubber. Scrapper. Shagger.

I dressed the part. White Adidas tracksuit bottoms with a double blue stripe. Trainers. Tight blue t-shirt. Dark hair cropped evenly to a number two. Earring. Sovereign rings. Blue contact lenses, contrasting sharply against my face. Fake tattoos up one arm and round both biceps. I was designer rough. Common as muck but sexy too – if you were into that sort of thing. If you were Mrs Raine.

I’d kind of based Andy on myself, back when I was a kid. Memories of hanging around the estate with all the other hoodie-wearing, tracksuited teenage boys. I had to really dredge up the memories because frankly I’d done my best to forget those days, from back before I learned how to reinvent myself. But I’d managed to remember the attitude I used to be full of. The cockiness. And most of all, the overwhelming hormonal urge to shag someone, anyone, anywhere, anytime. If I’m honest, there was a lot of Darren mixed in there as well, who hadn’t changed much since we were kids. I never mentioned this mission to him though, not sure whether he’d be offended or honoured by me nicking his swagger, his cheeky grin, his constant horniness.

I remember enjoying it more than most of my undercover characters. It was great being Andy. Life was a piece of piss for that lad, he didn’t care about much. Just having a laugh, beer, footie, cigs, getting his end away. Sweet as a nut. Stay lucky, mate, stay lucky! Yeah, wearing that mask wasn’t bad at all. No wonder Darren was always so happy.

It was always easier being somebody else, I’d found. Everything came quickly – I always knew how to act and react, could always make snap decisions. Like I had a script to follow. I loved my masks. Maybe a bit too much.

I lit a cigarette, watching Mrs Raine walk in. She stank of money. It wafted through the pub like perfume: Money, by Calvin Klein. The clothes, the hair, the jewellery, the snappy little walk. She was class. Late thirties, what you might call a handsome woman, but so far out of her depth that she should have been wearing a lifebelt. Looking like that in this part of town, she was setting herself up as a big juicy target.

My
target. Tonight, I make the kill.

Her husband was an architect, a successful one. Out of the country a lot that year, designing a sports stadium in the Netherlands. And convinced that his wife was playing around while he was abroad. Class act she might have been, but with a weakness for working-class boys. Liked it rough, did Mrs Raine. Her husband didn’t know this little detail yet, only that he didn’t trust his wife, and he was right not to. But he’d discover it later, if everything went to plan. When he received the photos of Andy the brickie pinning his wife to the bonnet of a transit van in the NCP car park.

Mrs Raine lit up with recognition when I wandered across the pub to meet her. I grabbed her round the waist, pulled her against me for a sudden, hard snog – just the way she liked it. Cheers from the blokes round the pool table, whistles, nice one my son, lucky bastard, go for it mate. Mrs Raine was flushed as she pulled away, but smiling, breathing hard. Embarrassed but getting off on the attention. She didn’t get this sort of excitement from hubbie.

I bought us a drink from the bar, letting her babble on nervously about this and that. She still wasn’t used to coming to the rough part of town. We sat at a table in the far corner of the pub, draped in shadows. The lady and the lad.

At the next table, Barry stumbled into his chair and dropped his camera with a loud clunk and an even louder “Bollocks!”

Enter: Barry O’Nion, ninja detective.

I asked a question to pull Mrs Raine’s attention away from him. Out of the corner of my eye, Barry fumbled with his camera like it was covered in butter. Scraped his chair, shifted his table, tried to take off his coat and open a newspaper at the same time, muttering under his breath. I say muttering, but it was louder than Mrs Raine’s voice right in front of me.
“Shite!”
he snapped, spilling Guinness onto his trousers.

She looked up at him again. Gave me a look as if to say
What’s wrong with this guy!
She was twitchy, on edge, and the weirdo at the next table wasn’t helping. I smiled reassuringly, dragging on my cigarette. Threw Barry a quick glare.

Christ, he actually waved at me.

Mrs Raine asked if I knew him and my stomach rolled. Shit no, I assured her. I turned on Andy’s brutal charm, telling her I’d been looking forward to ‘going up in the world’ again. Our little private euphemism. Her eyes sparkled, laughing along. Honestly, we were Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’ right there. Just like the song… we usually only lasted three minutes sixteen seconds as well.

I pulled her to me for another snog. Slid a hand along her thigh. This’ll make a great picture, I remember thinking. I also remember thinking, as I noticed Barry struggling with the lens cap on his ancient camera, that I was gonna kill that fat useless bastard.

I’d been hiring private detectives for a while now. My clients had started requesting some proper evidence, as opposed to just getting caught in the act – sometimes that didn’t work, it ended up being his word against hers. They needed proof. For one second, I’d considered asking Darren to come along and snap a few pictures for me… madness! Can you imagine? I’d have ended up with fifty close-ups of tits. No, it had to be a professional. So I’d started bringing small investigation agencies onboard, since they were used to performing discreet, covert surveillance on people. They recorded me at work and that gave the client the proof their divorce lawyers needed.

And that’s why Barry O’Nion was sitting at the very next table, right bloody next to me, fumbling with a camera and swearing loud enough for half the pub to hear.

Discreet and covert, like.

Mrs Raine started saying how creepy that guy was. She suggested moving to another table, which I quickly dismissed, I was comfortable right there, I said, moving my fingers up further. That distracted her nicely. Her hand was shaking as she sipped her Babycham, nervous as hell but still excited.

Another snog – and suddenly a flare of light. We both jumped, staring at Barry, who hurriedly raised his newspaper. Thump of a dropped camera.

God’s sake, he’d had the flash on!

Too much for Mrs Raine. She sprang up, spooked, and said she’d better not have a late night, things to do, best get going. I tried to stop her but she was already out from behind the table, heels clicking across the pub floor, perfume in her wake. The stink of money. Gone.

I sat there, abandoned. No kill. She’d escaped.

The look I gave Barry could have boiled a kettle. He started trying to apologise to me but I was already on my feet, knocking over the table and sending lager and Babycham tumbling. My fists were clenched as I stormed off, every muscle rigid with fury.

My arm caught a pool cue as I strode out, just as the player was taking a shot. “Oi,” he shouted, “watch it!”

And without hesitation, Andy Holloway whirled and spat right in his face:
“Or what! What the fuck you gonna do about it!”

Ready to go for it, ready to take him out, one punch and he’d be going down, bang!
Unlucky
, mate!

The pool player recoiled. He was a hefty bloke, beer belly, taller than me, but with the eyes of someone looking down a gun barrel. He stuttered that it was all right, no problem mate, take it easy. Scared.

I sneered at him like he was shit on my shoe. Turned and slammed out of the pub.

Later, looking back on it, I wondered what the hell happened there. For a second it was as if I really was Andy! I can remember how taut my whole body was. I scared myself a bit, actually. Sure, I was angry and frustrated, but that violent urge… that was more than just being in character. Losing Mrs Raine like that had tipped me over the edge.