The Vanity Game (24 page)

"Well could we have a photo anyway?"

I put my hands up over my face. These people could be agents for
them
. What if the camera is really a gun?

"No!" I shout, and am running back towards Marble Arch, darting onto the road and just missing a double-decker bus, to get past the hordes on the pavements. I don't stop running until I've got some way along the main road, turned up a random side street and am in a small, deserted square of expensive looking terraces. I put the holdall on the floor and lean on my knees, getting my breath back for a minute or so.

After the chaos of Oxford Street, the silence of the square is disturbing in itself. Maybe I'm fucking paranoid but it feels like there are people inside the houses watching me through their blinds and net curtains.

In the centre of the square there's a small garden with a couple of trees and some bushes. I go over to it and see there's also an old bench with peeling paint. Probably full of all kinds of germs and bacteria, but I feel so tired I just need to sit down for a while. Now, not only am I totally alone but I don't have a fucking clue where I am, have no money and realise I'm ravenously hungry and thirsty as well.

It's almost 3pm, I've not eaten since breakfast. It's also starting to get cold and I think I just felt a drop of rain. I pull my thin Calvin Klein jacket tighter round my body but it don't make much difference. This is misery, no lie, worse than being stuck in the police cell because at least that was warm, worse than living with Dean because at least I was at home. Well it seems worse right now.

I need to get to a fucking cashpoint, but there's no way I can go back to Oxford Street. I pull my mobile out of my pocket and stare at the blank screen. If I turn it on they'll probably track the signal, but at least I'd be able to look up where I could get cash. Hard choice, but it's made easier by the appearance of an old geezer with a small, scruffy dog on a lead. He's entered the garden and is walking towards me, looks like he's heading right to me, like he's going to say something, so I get up, grab the holdall and start walking quickly towards the garden's other exit. Now I'm really panicking. I don't know which way I came into the square, all the houses look the same. I take a quick look behind me and the old guy is standing there in the square letting his dog take a shit. Okay so maybe he wasn't an agent of The Substitutors after all but still, this place is giving me the creeps. I start heading for the road I think I came in on, but when I get there I realise it's not the road at all. It's another street of well-to-do terraces. So I walk back through the square and take another street. This still doesn't look like the road I came down but now I can't remember what that road was like.

As I pass one of the houses I look through the window and see into an illuminated lounge. There are children running around with paper hats on; it's a children's birthday party. As the rain begins to fall in steady, heavy drops I stand there a little while watching them, feeling like the loneliest person in the whole world.

The hotel stands in front of me: the Holy Fucking Grail. I've been walking around in the rain for at least an hour. I eventually found a cashpoint, but it seemed as if I walked down street after street stuck in some kind of maze. I began to wonder if I would ever find my way out when I suddenly hit Bayswater Road. So here I am, damp, cold and weak with hunger.

The doorman gives me a snooty look as I walk through the door, but I am beyond caring.

The guy on reception gives me the same look as the doorman. Fuck them, if they knew who I was they'd be lining up to kiss my ass, guaranteed, but right now I'm Mr Nobody and I've got to put up with it.

"I'd like a double room, just for a couple of nights," I say, still putting on the yank accent, "you take cash?"

The man stares at me for a second before replying: "I'll have to look at what we have available."

He's got one of those bland European accents that seem to be the default for staff in the service industry. I wait, the anxiety rising, as the stuck-up prick taps away into his computer. Yes, he tells me, they have a room for two nights, and yes, I can pay in cash. But it's at this point that I realise I have absolutely no plan beyond tonight.

Then he asks for a name.

"Er, Alex… Alex Crystal," I say, the first two names that come into my head. Alex Crystal… It sounds like a film director's name or something, maybe that's what I'll pretend to be. I like it.

The receptionist pushes a piece of paper over the counter and asks me to complete it. I make up an address – one apartment above my tattooist/ dealer, Kiro, in New York, and I scrawl a scruffy signature and hand over the money.

The receptionist slides the plastic key card over the counter. I scoop it up with relief, this is the key to some sanctuary at last; and I hurry towards the lift.

I get out at the third floor and the smell of hotel – clean carpets and dry air – fills my nostrils. I slide my card into the door and listen for the blissful click as it opens.

I close the hotel room door behind me, lean back against it and sigh with relief. The room is pretty big and light but the atmosphere is heavy with that silent, hotel-anonymity. For a moment I'm overcome with that sense of boredom that I usually get in hotel rooms. I've waited in too many, the nervy boredom of the nights before big games, the sickening boredom of waiting for the drugs or the girls. But then the exhaustion hits me so I put the chain on the door and fling myself onto the bed. I turn over on my side, pull the pillow over my head and listen to the quick beat of the blood chugging round my skull. The reality of the situation hits me. What are they doing in my house now, I wonder? That fucker Serge, and this new woman, and whoever else was behind this. But the thoughts start to merge into each other and begin to make no sense at all as I slowly slide into sleep.

A loud banging noise. I'm startled and confused as I sit up and wonder where the hell I am, and then I remember and realise there's someone at the door. Fuck, who could it be? I sit there breathing heavily, wondering what to do. What if it's them? Have they hunted me down? Fucking hell ... but the knocking seems to have stopped; the soft buzz of the London rush hour, muffled by the triple glazing, is the only sound. It seems to hang in the space between me and whoever is on the other side of the door. But then the knock comes again. The chain's still on and there's a spy-hole that I could look through before opening it. Slightly reassuring, but what will I see? The knock again. I get up slowly, then move towards the door as quickly as I can.

I don't dare to breathe as I put my eye to the spy-hole. Jesus-fucking-Christ… I'm totally shocked because there through the spy-hole I see, not Serge or a strange looking gangster as I expected, but the distorted head of the original hunter, DI fucking Dante! I stand back, away from the door. Dante. What the hell is he doing here? And how has he found me? Another rap at the door, and then:

"Come on, Beaumont, I know you're in there. Open the door, I just want to talk to you." That thick northern accent.

So this is it, the final scene played out in a hotel room, how tacky, how clichéd. I'm out of options now. There's no escape. I'm three floors up and the windows don't open anyway. I'll have to open the door before Dante knocks it down. There's probably a team of policemen in bullet-proof jackets, poised with a battering ram behind him, out of the vision of the spy-hole. I go back over to the door and turn the handle, leaving the chain on so it only opens a few inches. I peer round and meet Dante's face, old Owlface. Is that a glint of relief that flashes across his eyes, below those thick grey eye brows?

"Can I come in? Please? I'm here on my own."

Mellow, almost pleading … is this actually happening? DI Dante, begging to be let in. He takes his hands out of his pockets and raises them, palms upwards, and shrugs.

"What do you want?" I whisper back, leaning my head on the door. I feel like some maniac serial killer in an American motel.

"I need to talk to you, I've got an offer for you."

"How did you find me here?"

"I…oh Christ, Beaumont, just open the flipping door, this isn't a bloody Quentin Tarantino film."

Dante looks up and down the corridor, he obviously doesn't want anyone else to see him. So I let the chain off the door and slowly open it. Whatever he's got to say, at least he's inside the law unlike Serge and the gangsters. Dante walks quickly in and shuts the door behind him. We stand there staring at each other, not sure what to do, like a father and son who meet again for the first time in years.

"Mind if I sit down then?" he says, after a few seconds.

I shake my head and gesture towards the armchair near the window. I go back to sit on the bed, facing him. He pulls the curtains closed, flashing me a look that says I should have known to keep them closed myself. Now the room is cave-like with no light on. I feel like that dude in
Apocalypse Now
waiting for the lecture from Colonel Kurtz. Thinking about it, Dante does have a look of fat old Marlon Brando about him.

"Right well …There ain't any whisky in that mini-bar is there?"

What can I say? I go over to the mini-bar and take out a miniature bottle of JD.

It's the first time I've opened it, and here I am giving old Owlface, of all fucking people, the first bottle.

I don't have one myself. I want to keep my mind as clear as possible because I still don't feel totally comfortable with this bastard in my hotel room. Strange though, because when I first met him I thought of him as the lion looking for its kill and now here he is, like a big, fluffy pet cat asking for a drink. He takes a sip of the whisky and then starts talking again.

"How did you find me here?" I ask again.

"You think we weren't keeping tabs on you? I've had my guys trailing you as you faffed around in London. It was a piece of piss. Anyway, as I said, I've come to make you an offer. Now, I know two things. I know firstly, that you killed Krystal McQueen."

I'm about to protest but he waves his hand.

"Let's not get into that now. Just listen to what I've got to say. I also know that you didn't kill your agent Serge…"

"What?"

Kill Serge…what's he on about?

"Ah… You don't know?" says Dante slowly.

I shake my head. What the fuck…

"Serge Kilkenny was found dead today, in his office. He'd been murdered." Dante pauses, and stares at me.

The blood is rushing through my head now, in torrents, a loud roaring sound like an ocean crashing around high walls. Serge. Dead. Murdered.

"He was found by the office cleaner, in a bit of a state."

"What … what happened to him?" I stammer, the words won't come out. Serge. Murdered?

Dante exhales the air through his mouth, making a kind of whistling sound.

"He was shot in the head, pretty much point blank range, still at his desk … he'd been tied up, tortured. Wasn't very pretty."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

We seem to sit in silence for ages. I try to picture the scene: Serge, gun shot to the head at point blank range, the expression that would be on his face. I just can't believe it. I can't process it.

"Yeah… I'm sorry Beaumont, I know you'd worked with him a long time."

"He was trying to set me up," I say, adding quickly, "I mean he was involved in something really dodgy."

"Aye, we've gathered that," Dante says. "We found something in his office which referred to an organisation called The Substitutors. You know anything about that?"

"I just know they were going to kill Stella… I mean Krystal—"

"Stella's the girl who replaced Krystal, yeah? One of Dean's girls?"

"Yeah…" I say slowly, trying to figure out what information I should give away and what he already knows.

"Don't worry Beaumont," he says, like he can tell what I'm thinking, "I know all about that fucker. He's the one who put us on the scent. He was bribing one of my officers. What happened to the bastard anyway?"

He asks this casually, but I'm starting to panic now. What the hell does Dante want? Sitting there swirling the whisky around his glass. Is this an interrogation? He's virtually got a confession out of me for Krystal and now he's after one for Dean.

He's probably taping the whole thing. I can't say anything else, I decide, I've got to compose myself and think carefully about what I'm telling the bastard.

"Oh, erm, I dunno. He just disappeared one day, thank God. We never heard from him again."

"Yeah, well, maybe he fell out of favour with his bosses. But that fucker deserved everything coming to him."

Nice try, Owlface, but it's probably just a ploy to get me to let down my guard.

"And now they want to get at you. Listen, Beaumont, we think this is a massive crime ring, agents everywhere. There are some dangerous people involved. You don't go round doing things like that to people on a Thursday night in central London. Whoever did that to Serge was insane, daft or just sick in the head … or possibly all three.

"You went on the run today, didn't you? Because you knew they were gonna move, replace Stella with another Krystal look-alike? But it's more dangerous for you here. It's not you they were trying to get, but if you don't play their game they'll come and find you. You don't wanna end up like Serge or worse. Believe me, some of the lines we're investigating suggest death would be a mercy. Stella Garvey boarded a plane last night to Sydney didn't she? They thought Serge had tipped her off, that's why they had to kill him."