My guess is that Van der Lupin told Moukie to sort it. I was hit by that car outside the Payless. I knew it was too dangerous to go back to my flat. They had me really scared and that made me drink more, which made it worse.
I was really nervous on the night of Van der Lupin’s Christmas party, so nervous I had to drink just to get through it, to brazen it out. D’you know what it’s like to bluff your way into a party you’re not invited to? Then add to that, a party being held by people who’d quite like it if you were dead. Dutch courage doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Van der Lupin’s place was like a giant doll’s house; white stucco and double-fronted, with pompom-shaped trees on either side of its front door. There were white pin lights everywhere – in the trees, in a canopy over the path. It was like a Hollywood film set. It made total sense. Van der Lupin is all about veneer – respectability, Englishness, propriety. Underneath he’s a gangster.
I took a deep breath and slid into the party in a huddle of guests, banking on everyone being too genteel to challenge me. Even so, I started getting some looks. It was probably the Goth makeup – I thought I’d toned it down, gone more ‘smoky eye’ – but the heavy kohl eyeliner helped me, as if it masked me. Stupid, huh – like a toddler putting its hands over its face and saying, ‘Can’t see me!’
Anyway, I hadn’t toned it down enough because I started getting looks from people.
There was a Christmas tree at the centre of the hall that reached up three storeys, with the staircase behind it and garlands up the banisters. I spotted a couple of the Xi Ping delegation and could see this party was all for them. You know what the City’s like – it rests on confidence.
Then Markus van der Lupin saw me – the look of horror on his face! He was greeting new arrivals. He quickly excused himself and came over to me. Just his look made me feel like a tramp.
He ushered me into a side room which turned out to be a library and which closed with a very heavy door – double thickness because it was panelled with books and this must’ve sound-proofed it.
He asked what the hell I was doing there. I was trying to be cool, running a finger along a shelf of books, as if I was some kind of Bond villain. I felt as if I was going to vomit.
He was furious, his face pink with it. I wondered if Valerie knew what he got up to with Titans girls, but I figured she probably didn’t care, so long as the gardener was paid for. She might even have been an escort, once upon a time.
I told him I wanted to be paid off. I couldn’t look at him while I said this, couldn’t believe I had the balls. I told him Dunlop & Finch had plenty of money and they’d have to pay me to keep quiet about what had happened to Jade at the Carlton Mayfair.
And then I said, and I was really winging it at this point, high on adrenalin and vodka Red Bulls, ‘Maybe your Chinese billionaire is going to think twice about signing with you when you’re all over the front page of The Times in a sex scandal.’
I looked at him then.
Normally, there was no trace of Latvian in van der Lupin’s accent, but it came out when he spat in my face.
‘Don’t fuck with me.’
The door opened and Jon-Oliver came in.
‘Saskia, what the hell are you doing here?’ he asked.
Van der Lupin picked up the phone and started speaking very fast in Latvian, then two big guys came in and they escorted me out.
They beat me up.
So what? They beat me up; it’s nothing.
But they killed him. It must be the reason why Jon-Oliver’s dead. Oh and I thought he was nice, an OK guy. It’s my fault. They thought he was in on it with me, or that his connection with me brought them trouble.
Manon
She has clung to the office like an environmentalist to an endangered tree, unwilling to let go of the place where Fly is being held. When she is forced to leave, late in the evening, she loiters around his cell door, around the custody sergeant.
‘Anything he needs? I can always pop back …’
She must wrench herself away, so alien is it to sleep in a building away from him. She wants him down the hall. She wants to fold his clothes while he sleeps. Cut him up an apple to eat after supper. She misses tending to him.
The energy she cannot use for this, she directs instead towards gaining information by subtle and ingenious means.
‘C’mon Kim,’ she whispers. She has cornered Kim in the third-floor toilets, having checked the cubicles first to make sure Harriet isn’t lurking. ‘I need this. I wouldn’t ask, I’m not asking for, y’know, actual material.’ She catches sight of herself in the mirror, puffy-eyed from crying and lack of sleep. She’s trying to keep it light but notices, in her reflection, that she’s leaning in somewhat menacingly. ‘Just a quick look at the file …’
Kim is washing her hands, looking at Manon in the mirror. She pulls at the paper hand towels and a great wad comes out of the dispenser, which she balances on the side of the sink.
If only Manon had rubbed along better in the past. If only she was the type to confide, to hold people close. The only person she confides in is Bryony – someone she’s known for twenty-odd years. When people demand of her an intimacy that she doesn’t feel, she must force her face into calm, suppressing the urge to flee. But at this moment, she regrets her reserve. At this moment, in the cold echo of the toilets bright with daylight, she wishes she were a different type of person entirely. False, sugary, whatever it takes.
‘Love your top, by the way,’ she says. And Kim looks at her like she might be deranged.
Oh, and she was never a generous colleague or friend – never one to remember someone’s hospital appointment or stressful meeting and call to say ‘good luck’. Not the sort to offer childcare (Christ – she’d recoil) or help in a crisis. Some people pride themselves on these touches, seem to advertise them as an emblem of their goodness. Manon is not one of those.
How she regrets her mean-spiritedness now, when generosities could be recalled and paid back. She cannot pressure Kim, because she’s never done anything for her.
‘You just need what?’ Kim is saying now, arms folded across her chest. ‘Just need me to risk a gross misconduct report? You think I should lay my job on the line for you? You can fuck right off, Manon. And if you ask me again, I’ll tell Harriet.’
She is more at ease sidling up to Colin, on a different tack this time, pedalling a swivel chair up to his.
‘So, Col,’ she says. ‘Got a minute?’
‘Mmm,’ he murmurs, without taking his eyes off the screen where he is examining TripAdvisor’s top ten hotels in Croatia.
‘So I’ve got this new iPhone, right.’
He finds this irresistible and glances her way.
‘But it won’t back up onto the Cloud. Can’t make head nor tail of it myself. Would you take a look for me? To be honest, I don’t think I’m using half the features I could be—’
‘The answer’s no.’
‘Why?’
‘You must think I was born yesterday. Now hop it. I don’t want to be seen talking to you.’
Harriet looks up from her computer as Manon closes the door to the boss’s office.