A Passion So Deadly

Six

Mrs Pattinson was a creature of habit. She had a regular booking with Avon Escorts from which it was highly unusual for her to deviate. She was also quite meticulous about her arrangements. She routinely called Paolo at Avon to confirm her appointment as soon as she arrived at the Crescent Hotel, even though she must always know that the agency would already have her in the diary.

It was therefore a surprise to hear from her at any other time than her usual day. She wanted Charlie — fast, she said.

‘I’ll do my best, Mrs Pattinson,’ said Paolo in his broad Bristol drawl — he was of Italian descent but West Country born and bred.

As he spoke he consulted the computer. Avon Escorts was a business just like any other and kept proper records — when it suited, of course. The situation was just as Paolo had thought.

‘Thing is, Mrs Pattinson, Charlie’s on a day off today. Wouldn’t you like a nice change? I’ve got this new lad on the books, lovely boy ’e is, only nineteen, but you should see the build on ’im...’ Paolo paused as if making it clear that his last remark was open to all kinds of interpretation.

Mrs Pattinson’s voice on the other end of the line was cool and firm.

‘It’s Charlie I want,’ she said, and it may have been Paolo’s imagination but he reckoned there was already a slight sexy huskiness in the way she spoke. ‘I’m sure he will come to me.’

Paolo wasn’t so sure, but he knew that Charlie regarded Mrs Pattinson as a very special customer, as did he. She regularly coughed up £200 — an extra £150 if she asked for a second boy — without a murmur. The agency took half the fee, that was the arrangement, and half of that went through the business for the tax man. After all, this was a reputable escort agency. The other half went into the back pockets of Paolo and his partner — the man who had put up the money to start Avon in the first place, although he had little direct involvement nowadays.

Paolo also suspected that Mrs Pattinson tipped Charlie generously. The handsome West Indian was a favourite with a lot of the ladies. He was also considerably brighter than most of the lads and lasses who ended up in this game, Paolo thought. On reflection he reckoned there was a good chance that Charlie would break into his day off for Mrs Pattinson. Charlie understood about business, about looking after the customers.

‘I’ll try and track Charlie down,’ he said.

‘I’ll be waiting,’ said Mrs Pattinson. And now Paolo was quite sure of the note of sexiness in her voice.

He quickly dialled Charlie’s home number.

Charlie answered cheerily and then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

‘I’ve got me mum here,’ he hissed down the line. ‘It was me little sister’s wedding this afternoon. There’s no way I can get away.’

‘She asked for you special, Charlie, like she always does,’ said Paolo. ‘I don’t want to let her down.’

He could have been talking about a regular customer in a restaurant who wanted a favourite table that wasn’t available.

‘Neither do I,’ said Charlie, his voice still low. ‘She’s all right is Mrs P. Look, we’ve just sent ’em off on their honeymoon and tonight we’re having a family knees-up down at The Abbey Arms. I can’t get out of that, Paolo. Me mum would know there was something up, and I’m not having her upset.’

Charlie was a very loving son. Paolo knew that.

‘You’ll just have to send someone else this time, mate,’ said Charlie. ‘You know these middle-class honky bitches. One black arse is the same as any other. Send Marty.’

Charlie put the phone down quickly. He knew that his last remark wasn’t true, not of Mrs Pattinson. She had not taken a particular interest in Charlie because he was black — colour genuinely meant little to her one way or the other, Charlie was sure — but because of what he could provide. Charlie knew he was the best she had ever had. She had told him so, hadn’t she — and at times when he had been damn sure she hadn’t been fibbing. But at least Charlie had got himself off the hook. Nonetheless he found his thoughts turning towards Mrs Pattinson, as they did quite often nowadays. Of all his clients over the years she was the only one who had got under his skin.

He was still standing in the hallway by the phone — he kept it there, a black one hanging on the wall almost like a piece of sculpture, so that he could take calls in some privacy even when he had guests. There was something so honestly responsive about Mrs Pattinson. Charlie had never known a woman quite like her and, goodness knows, there had been enough of them in his life already.

The voice of his mother calling from among the hubbub in the living-room brought him abruptly back to the present.

‘Charlie, son, what are you doing out there? Are we going to have this party tonight or not?’

Miriam Collins still had the sing-song voice of her native Jamaica. She had been born and raised there until she was ten years old when her parents, along with so many in the years following the war, had emigrated to the UK, to the land of promise.

Through most of her life that promise had never been fulfilled. Her parents had died young, of disappointment and cold, Miriam always said, and it had not been far from the truth probably. Miriam had made a wonderfully happy marriage, but that had been cut short by the premature death of Charlie’s father. Home throughout Miriam’s entire life in England had been a slum of some kind or other in St Paul’s. She still lived in the same terraced house in a little street off the Ashley Road in which Charlie had been brought up, but much of that area of St Paul’s had been given a face-lift recently, and Charlie did his best to make sure that his mother was not short of home comforts nowadays. She had had a hard life and he adored her. It was his greatest wish that he could make the rest of her days happy and comfortable.

Certainly he loved giving his family treats and he loved entertaining them in his flat, showing off a home of a style and quality that none of them had so far aspired to — nor, with the exception of his kid sister Daisy, were ever likely to.

Smiling broadly, he walked down the passageway over the beautiful wooden flooring and into the living-room. His mother, slim and somehow elegant still, a far cry from the stereotype of a middle-aged black woman, stood by the big picture window with his elder brothers, Jack and Winston, whose wives were sitting close together at one end of the big sofa. They were firm friends, those two. Elder sister Mary Anne and her husband Lewis were somehow managing to share an armchair, giggling over the champagne Charlie had provided. Only brother Bart was missing — he had been at the church earlier, looking, thankfully, in reasonable shape, and had promised to meet them later at the Abbey. Charlie hoped for his mother’s sake that Bart would keep his promise.

Children seemed to be everywhere. Lewis and Mary Anne’s twin two-year-old boys were mercifully asleep in their double pushchair, but two of Jack’s three girls were waltzing each other around the room, their shoes making disturbing squeaking noises on Charlie’s immaculate floor, while the third competed with Winston’s little boy and girl to see who could bounce highest on the springy sofa. Their mothers, deep in conversation at the other end, were oblivious. And nobody but Charlie noticed when Winston’s son decided to toss one of the cushions at his father, missing him by several feet.

Not for the first time, Charlie congratulated himself on having decided against his original choice of yet more cream and going for black leather furniture in his living room. He would allow nobody but his family to behave so cavalierly in his home, but family was different. That was what Charlie had been brought up to believe and he did so, with all his heart.

Charlie had never had a girlfriend, really. He didn’t want one. He couldn’t quite face the idea of more sex on a regular basis at the end of a stint of being paid for it. And he felt no need for any emotional ties other than his family. Charlie’s family were everything to him.

‘Oh, there you are,’ said his mother as he picked up the last bottle of Moet. The words were nothing, but her voice was warm with pride and affection. It always was when she spoke to Charlie. She had been laughing when he entered the room, a great belly-shaking laugh which was stereotyped West Indian and which totally belied her size. She was wearing a royal-blue linen suit, the skirt just short enough to show off her still shapely legs but not too short for her years, Charlie thought. The hat of matching colour which she had earlier worn at a rakish angle for the church service was on the glass coffee table in the middle of the room. Miriam Collins had several nice outfits now, and Charlie had insisted on buying something new for her to wear on this special day. He thought his mother — and all his family come to that, they were a good looking bunch, the Collinses, dressed in their best for the occasion — looked absolutely splendid.

Charlie’s eyes were admiring as he put an arm around his mother and attempted to refill her glass. The bottle was almost empty.

‘That’s it then, the end of the champagne,’ he said. ‘Let’s go down the Abbey and show ’em how the Collinses can party.’

Paolo put the phone down, resigned to having to find Mrs Pattinson an acceptable alternative after all. He wondered whether he should try to call her at the Crescent Hotel. But he had never done so before. She might not like it. In any case, Charlie was probably right, he reasoned. When the crunch came, one black arse might well be just the same to her as another. And he really didn’t want to lose the booking. Two hundred quid was a lot of dosh to turn your back on for no good reason.

He took Charlie’s advice. Charlie would know better than anyone, surely.

Paolo sent Marty Morris — another young West Indian from St Paul’s, slightly shorter than Charlie but around the same build.

Marty arrived by cab, alighting a hundred yards or so before the hotel. Be discreet, Paolo had reminded him. He approached chalet ten through the garden, also according to instructions.

It was 7.00 p.m. by the time Marty got there, wet and dark on a particularly nasty October evening. The rain was back with a vengeance again, turning the little-used path he had to follow into something of a hazard. But Marty had been to the Crescent Hotel before and he was able to find his way to chalet ten easily enough, even though the gardens were only poorly lit away from the central buildings.

He entered the hotel’s grounds through the small pedestrian gate set in the brick wall which backed on to a lane off the main street around the corner from the principal entrance. Then he followed the path until he reached a stone fountain, which, even in the bad light, he could see was covered in moss and looked as if it had not operated in years. He remembered that he must turn right there.

The path was quite overgrown after that. Rhododendron bushes lined it on either side, their tips virtually touching above his head, forming a kind of tunnel. Marty had the collar of his leather jacket turned up against the rain, although it was now little more than a light drizzle, and was walking with his head slightly bowed. Within the rhododendron tunnel water fell steadily from the glossy leaves of the big bushes and several icy droplets trickled down his neck, inside his shirt, causing him to shiver. His feet, shod in unsuitable leather-soled loafers, slipped occasionally on the path’s muddy surface. Once he nearly fell.

Straight ahead he could see a brighter light. That should be chalet ten, he reckoned, unless he had turned the wrong way in the dark. And he would be quite glad to be inside out of the cold and wet, there was no doubt about that, whatever might lie in store for him.

There was a rustling in the bushes to his left, which he registered to be moving closer to him, but automatically assumed it must be a cat out on a spot of nocturnal hunting. Marty didn’t have a nervous disposition nor a vivid imagination. It didn’t go with the territory really, for people in his line of work. And he never did find out what was causing the rustling noise.

Neither did Marty ever reach chalet ten.

The knife slid easily between his shoulder blades. It was driven straight into the soft fleshy core of his body, the point scoring a direct hit on his spinal cord.

The shock was total. The blow lethal. Marty did not even have time to scream. One searing flash of unspeakable agony. One tearing burst of pure white-hot pain. Then nothing.

He died virtually at once. And even had he lived he would have been of no use to the police who were to investigate his murder. The attack on Marty Morris was swift and efficient. Marty did not even see his assailant.