Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (2 page)

Amanda babbled as she pulled me into the quiet hallway. “Look Simon, I’m sorry, I just wasn’t expecting you… don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I don’t want to see you, you know I do, I just, all my friends are here, and Bob’s invited just about everybody he knows, all the members of the board and – ”

“Amanda.” Low and calm. “My dear sweet thing. I didn’t come here to say happy birthday to Bob. I came to see you.”

I slid my fingertips up her bare arm, feeling it goosebump. I was giving her my killer smile that always seemed to get a smile back. We stood there, alone in the hallway of Abbey Orchard Manor, silently looking into each other’s eyes. Thanks to the blue contact lenses I was wearing, I knew my eyes would contrast against my face, piercing into hers. That always seemed to get a reaction too.

Before things went any further, there was something I had to know. “Listen… it doesn’t bother you, does it, what we’re doing?”

“Bother me?”

“I mean, if it’s causing you any problems… I know you must still love Bob, so I hope I’m not – ”

“Oh please.” Snort. “The only thing Bob loves is his company. We got past all that years ago. Don’t you worry about him, Simon,” she smiled.

“So you won’t be kept awake by any terrible guilt pangs or anything if I keep courting you?”

“Of course not! What’s to feel guilty about?”

There was my green light. The thing I needed to know. There wasn’t any love here. It was just business after all.

Lock and load. Cheeky grin. “Actually, if one is being honest, I was hoping to do more tonight than just
see
you.”

Bing! Pinball lights flashed in her eyes. New game.

“We can’t do it here!”
Convince me we can do it here
.

“Nonsense. We can do it wherever we like.”

“But I live here!” She giggled, voice hushed. “You want to do it at my own husband’s birthday party?”

“Can you think of anywhere better?”

Flushed cheeks. Wide eyes. The signs were all present and correct. “Now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

Amanda smiled a dirty, twenty-one year old smile.

But then a new couple came in through the front door, rushing up to Amanda and telling her how much they had been looking forward to her husband’s birthday bash. Some more guests came down from upstairs, having been given the tour, gushing about how marvellous her home was. She chatted to them all smoothly, while I stood by and sipped my drink, invisible, unimportant.

Amanda finally managed to herd everyone out into the garden, but I could tell from the look on her face that the moment had passed.

“We can’t,” she whispered to me. “Simon, I’m sorry. There’s just too many people…”

I glanced at my watch. Damn it. “All right, maybe next time. Perhaps I should – ”

“Let’s do it in your car.”

“What?”

“Like last time.” Her hand gripped my bicep. “Let’s do it in your car.”

“Er…”

Shit! What could I say? Was she serious? “Are you serious?”

“Oh God, yes! I don’t think I’ll ever want to do it in a bedroom again now.”

All I could think to say was “I came by cab.”

“Okay, let’s do it in
my
car,” and suddenly I was dragged out the front door, spilling gin and tonic down my shirt. Amanda grabbed a set of keys off a hook and then we were outside.

The sun was sinking properly now, so Amanda and I stumbled through near-darkness round the side of Abbey Orchard Manor. On the other side of the fence came party sounds, oohs and aahs when Bob turned on the lights around the fountain. Amanda shot wary looks everywhere, like a thief in the night, never letting go of my hand.

At the rear of the house was a large patch of open land, sloping gently up towards a nearby hill. The whole area was being used as a car park, with over two dozen posh-mobiles sitting there.

Amanda led me up the slope, jangling the keys, then bleeped open a silver Mercedes. She shoved me in, wiggled round the car and let herself in the driver’s door. The sound of the countryside and the distant party were silenced as she eased it shut.

It all went quiet. And dark.

Clang of keys on the dashboard.

Slither of cocktail skirt on leather seat.

Her breathing.

I swallowed, wondering how the hell I’d ended up here…

It had only been two weeks since Mr Robert Bentley-Foster (known to everyone as Bob) had hired me as a freelance management consultant for the financial services company he owned. Suited and booted, clipboard under one arm, I had wandered from office to office, floor to floor. Friendly, well-spoken and terribly charming. I talked to people about my ‘informal programme of information gathering’. I started holding little interviews with staff members, whenever they were free. Just to find out what they thought of the company, what their roles and responsibilities were, what they’d like to see being done by management.

Pity Bob never saw any of it – he might have made a few changes. A quarter of his staff were on the verge of walking out. One poor woman was so over-worked and stressed, she burst into tears telling me about it. I spent half an hour consoling her, promising that I’d be able to help – lying through my teeth, but it made her feel better anyway. Well, I couldn’t just leave her crying, could I? Did you think I was a bastard?

And that was me. Simon Templar the management consultant. Smiler. Charmer. Smoothie. Bounder.

Oh, the name? Yeah well, what can I say, I love the Seventies, even though I’m too young to have caught them. There’s just something about that decade that always comes across as fun. So when I go undercover, I always use names from old Seventies TV shows or movies, or sometimes famous people from that era. Just to get a private kick out of it. Not the names everyone knows, obviously, but most people don’t remember ‘Return Of The Saint’ (or even ‘The Saint’, which I think was back in the Sixties, a decade that bores me), and Simon Templar was too cool a name not to use. Names are important. His rhymed with ‘suave’. Just like I needed to be.

Bob’s wife was his Human Resources Manager (which I suspected was a role he gave her just to make her feel useful), so eventually my information-gathering led to her door. She had lit up with recognition as I walked in. She’d seen me around. I’d laid the groundwork.

It hadn’t gone too well to begin with. Amanda was friendly but didn’t take the bait. I met her eyes directly, my gaze flicking back and forth, scanning her face. I smiled loads. I leaned forwards in my chair with one hand halfway across the desk, as if I was subconsciously reaching to touch her. I acted like she distracted me so much that I forgot to write something down. You know – the standard stuff. But no joy.

So when one of the younger girls walked in, I played the jealousy card. I broke off from Amanda to grin up at the girl and share a joke about the brief interview I’d done with her the day before. She giggled, joked back with me. I made a show of watching her walk to her desk.

When I turned back to Amanda, she touched my hand briefly and asked if I’d like to get a coffee. Maybe do the interview in Starbucks, away from the noise of the office.

And so I interviewed Amanda perched on stools. There were lots of laughs. She touched my hand again. And then my leg. Flipping off my safety catch.

Next day, I interviewed her in the toilets on the third floor.

And then one night, after everyone else in the building had gone home, I gave her a good hard interviewing out in the car park.

That had been a couple of days ago, and now there we were – repeating the trick in her own car. But this wasn’t part of the plan. We weren’t supposed to be all the way out there! We were supposed to be upstairs in her bedroom. Why did I let her drag me out there? Why didn’t I stop her?

Now I had to pay the price. I had to go through with it. No choice.

Her hand slid along my thigh. I sensed her weight shifting my way. Soon there would be tongues. What was I going to do? I glanced through the front windscreen as if I might spot a quick way out.

And damned if that isn’t exactly what happened. I squinted at the high garden fence, backlit from the party lights. That’s all I could see, but it was enough.

Amanda whirled round. “What? Is someone there?”

“No, it’s okay. Nobody can see us.” Yet.

It was time to get it on.

Amanda let out a muffled noise of surprise as I pressed my lips against hers, throwing my whole body forward. Octopus in a Saville Row suit, hands all over her. At the same time I yanked at my tie, tearing off my jacket with one hand, trying to clamber between my seat and hers as if in a wild frenzy to get at her.

She responded perfectly – kissing me hungrily, trying to unbutton my shirt and slip her cocktail dress off her shoulders. In the dark we were absolutely everywhere, clothes pulled off, loud sloppy kisses, lots of moaning and panting. I imagined the view from the outside, the whole car rocking slightly like in all the Carry On movies, and my laugh was stifled by Amanda’s tongue in my mouth.

In the kerfuffle, I eased the handbrake down.

For a minute or so, there was just the two of us going at it like teenagers (and that’s precisely what she wanted, that feeling of being young, so desperate for a shag that you’ll do it anywhere, even in the car). I couldn’t feel the sensation I was looking for. Plenty of others, but not the one I wanted.

So I grabbed Amanda and half-pulled her onto my seat, sliding her leg across my lap so she was astride me. She let out a funny little noise. I pushed forwards and kissed her hard, forcing our combined weight onto the dashboard, her back against the glass.

“Oh God, Simon…”

I started to feel it.

“God, yes…”

It was happening.

“Yes…”

It was definitely happening.

I kept her that way, pinned up against the front of the car, as if I just couldn’t stop myself. I buried my face in her cleavage. Woah, lots of gasping and moaning now. She reached backwards and unzipped, her clothing falling away, and then the bra beneath.

“Simon…?”

I could really feel it now, and so could she.

“Simon! I think… can you feel something?”

“Uh cuhn, ut fuhls wunduhful…”

“Simon, get out of there!”

I came up for air. “What?”

“Oh God, we’re moving! The car’s… oh my God!”

Both of us froze, feeling the same thing. The slow, sinking motion as the Mercedes rolled down the hill.

Amanda twisted round, tits banging my face. Then she looked out of the windscreen and shouted “Oh my GOD!”

I grinned as the wooden fence rushed up towards us.

Amanda let out an ear-splitting scream as the car slammed into the fence. My ears were ringing afterwards for days – honestly, you’d think we were falling into a shark tank. But I suppose it was a bit of a shock, if you didn’t know it was coming. There was a splintering crash, the fence flattened by the impact of the Mercedes, then a second jolt as the car’s undercarriage lodged in the jagged wood, stopping it dead. All done with in a second:
boom-bang-crunch!

So, second time around in the garden party, picture this:

A lovely silver Mercedes, jammed halfway through the fence, front wheels up off the ground.

Nearly a hundred guests scattering in shock. Screams. Stares. Spilled drinks.

And there in the front of the car, clearly visible to the whole party, the host’s wife with her boobs hanging out, wrapped around a young guy trying really, really hard not to smile.

I couldn’t help it. This was far better than Plan A! It’s very rare that I get an audience for the kill. I mean, there’s always some kind of audience, since that’s the whole point – to be discovered. But I’d never planned on anything as public as this. Fantastic!

Having said that, even as Amanda struggled to pull her clothes back on and the guests began closing in around the car, I felt it could have been better… I’m never satisfied with my own performance. I’d sort of hoped the car would go right through the fence and crash into the ornamental fountain. That’s how it would have happened in the movies, that would have looked great. And also, where was Bob? He should have been there to see the whole thing!

Ah, but then I saw him, rushing out through the patio doors. Of course – he had been upstairs in the house, no doubt wondering why he couldn’t hear squelchy sex noise from behind his bedroom door. The crowd did a Red Sea and parted magically, allowing him to see the car.

And his wife.

And me.

Bang. That was it – the moment when everyone heard the same thing in their heads, the sound of a relationship hitting the ground and shattering. Or to my mind, the sound of a gunshot through its heart at point blank range. Taking it out.

Amanda clambered off me and staggered out onto the grass, pushing her breasts back in. She started calling her husband’s name and stuttering about it being a mistake, an accident, it wasn’t… she didn’t… this wasn’t… but then she gave in and simply stared at him. What could she say?

I stepped smoothly out of the car, knotted my tie back into place and said “What a crashing bore your lady wife is, Bob,” before strolling off.

Actually that’s a complete lie. Although Simon Templar on TV might have done that, I still had to stay in character. So instead I came bumbling out of the Mercedes, trying to zip up my trousers and button my shirt. Car crash victim, all wide-eyed and shocked but still with that silver spoon in my mouth.

“Bob! Oh goodness, Bob listen, it’s not what it looks like… we were just…”

Bob glared. Really glared, with every muscle in his body. He looked so furious that for a second I wondered if he might charge me for damages. It was a Mercedes, after all.

I gestured at Amanda, on the other side of the car. “It’s not her fault! She didn’t want to do anything, it was my idea, don’t blame her, Bob, it’s not her fault. Look, I’m sorry, I’m so terribly, terribly sorry, I don’t know what to say…”

I was milking it now, but so what. I love an audience.

Eventually, Bob composed himself enough to shout “Get him out of here!” Two suited men sprang forward and grabbed an arm each. I looked back and forth in sheer disbelief. Like this couldn’t possibly be happening. Not to me, Simon Templar, successful management consultant, this was simply not happening!