Revenger

61

Celina Novak was wearing a short, black, fringed wig and an enormous pair of dark glasses when she arrived at Soho Gold. Between them they hid both her natural hair and almost all her face, so that the only thing visible was her mouth, which was painted a rich, glossy scarlet. Everything else was black: the fur-trimmed jacket, open to reveal a miniskirted dress; the stockings; the knee-length, high-heeled boots; and the evening bag. She had been flown into Biggin Hill and driven away in another ambulance. Ten minutes later, the ambulance had driven into an empty office car park and Novak, now freed from all the bandages, had been transferred to the London taxi that had taken her to a discreet hotel in St James’s, just off Piccadilly. The equipment she had requested had been waiting for her in her room. She’d collected it and gone straight back out again. Now she was picking her way along the litter-and dogshit-strewn pavement, straight past the short line of damp, shivering punters waiting for the security check. She went up to one of the two thick-necked bouncers standing by the door with identical black suits and Bluetooth earpieces.

‘You on the list, hey?’ he asked her in a guttural South African accent.

‘No.’

‘Then fuck off to the back of the queue.’

‘I am here to see Mr Cropper,’ Novak said with a blank, almost robotic assurance that surprised the bouncer. ‘He is not expecting me. Tell him I have a message. It relates to the event he organized earlier this evening. He will know what I mean.’

The bouncer gave her a hard, intimidating stare but she stood her ground, saying nothing, showing no fear or unease whatever. So he put a finger to his earpiece, waited for his call to be picked up and then said, ‘Got some fuckin’ fresh here wants to speak to Cropper. Says she’s got a message for him… some shit to do with an event this evening, something he organized… Ja, all right, I’ll send her through.’ He jerked his head towards the door of the club and said, ‘Mr Cropper’s by the bar. He’s expecting you.’

Novak walked through, her expression still as fixed as an Easter Island statue’s. Inside, the club was decorated to match its name. Around the sides of the room, gold swag curtains were draped around booths whose furniture consisted of gold-upholstered banquettes wrapped around circular tables, each with its own set of golden steps. In the middle, facing the stage, there were more tables, partly surrounded by black and gold chairs arranged so that there was always a clear view of the stage. One dancer was doing her routine around the pole that rose from the middle of the stage and others, in various shades of undress, were entertaining the men gathered around the tables. These were the Golden Girls, the club’s principal attraction, and the garters they all wore on their right thighs were stuffed with ten-, twenty- and fifty-pound notes. Even in the midst of a depression sex, at least, was still selling.

Without slowing her pace, Novak discreetly opened her little evening bag and removed a small, clear, plastic phial, no more than 4cm long and roughly the thickness of a pencil. It was filled with a colourless, virtually tasteless dose of digoxin, the poison derived from the digitalis, or foxglove. At this extreme concentration it would induce an acute, and almost certainly fatal, bout of cardiac arrhythmia. Novak slipped the phial under her watch strap and cast a cold, dispassionate eye over the men all around her. She wondered if they knew how pathetic, how desperate, how impotent they looked as they were ripped-off and prick-teased by strippers who so obviously despised them. Some were sweaty, red-faced and over-eager. Others tried to sit back with a seen-it-all-before sophistication. Not one had managed to establish any degree of command over the woman who was supposedly performing for their gratification.

Cropper wasn’t hard to spot: a big man in a tightly buttoned suit sitting on his gold leather stool with his back to the bar and his arms round two topless bottle-blondes. He was running his hands around the insides of their lacy knickers while they stood there passively, letting themselves be fondled. Novak had met men like him in clubs like this all the way from Boston to Bangkok, and though she held him in as little regard as any of the other men there, she did at least admire the fact that he alone made it plain that these women were his possessions, to do with as he pleased. All relationships, in Novak’s view, were fundamentally about power. And she was always on the side of the person who wielded it, particularly if that person was her.

The moment Cropper noticed her presence she saw his attitude change. There was a nervous, uncertain falseness in the smile that he beamed in her direction, a desperation in the way he dragged his groping fingers away from the girls’ underpants, got to his feet and held out his right hand for her to shake. She ignored it, and as he withdrew it he started blathering, ‘So, yeah, yeah… great to see you, er…’

‘Magda.’

‘Magda… yeah, right… well, run along, girls…’ He gave the two blondes a pat on each rump. ‘Me and Magda are going to talk a little business. Can I get you a drink, Magda? Vintage champagne, a cocktail, anything you like… on the house.’

‘Iced water is all I require,’ she said, sounding as though that was what ran in her veins, too. She took the stool next to Cropper. His half-empty glass of vodka was sitting on the bar between them.

‘Water, right… with ice, lemon, all the trimmings, eh?’ he said.

He waited for a second, expecting her to manage a please or thank-you at that point, and even some sort of fractional smile. Most women would do that just to be polite, no matter what they thought of the man in front of them, but Novak’s face remained frozen and she said nothing.

Cropper was getting a little angry now. She could tell. As terrified as he might be by the prospect of the message she was bringing from his anonymous masters, he still didn’t like anyone taking the piss quite so blatantly. He turned around, not giving a damn that he was turning his back on her, and called out to the girl behind the bar, ‘Oi, Shelley, get us a mineral water, flat, lots of ice.’

‘Nice and cold, yeah?’ Shelley called back.

‘Frigid,’ said Cropper, tersely. ‘And another double Goose with a twist. I’m gonna need it.’

As he stood watching Shelley prepare the drinks, Cropper reached for his old drink and downed it in one. Novak had her bag open on the bar. She was fiddling around inside it, the way women do when they’re trying to find something. Cropper didn’t pay her any attention. He didn’t see that she was actually putting a thing back, rather than taking it out: the little plastic phial. It was empty.

Cropper collected the two drinks and Shelley took away the drained glass. Novak sipped at her water as she watched Cropper down half the fresh vodka. Now that his arrogance had gone, now that he was so obviously trying to summon up his courage, she had no respect for him at all.

He ran a finger round the inside of his shirt-collar, loosening it from his neck, and said, ‘So, right, what’s your message then?’

‘I was asked to tell you not to be concerned.’

Cropper visibly deflated in front of her as the tension that had held him taut and pumped-up poured from his body. ‘Fuck me… that’s a relief.’ He gave her a grateful smile. ‘I thought… well, I’ll be honest with you, love, I thought I was in the shit.’

‘The rest of the message is that they understand that it is not always possible to control events, and that sometimes things happen that were not planned for.’

‘Exactly! Exactly! Fuck, anyone who’s been in the army knows that. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and that—’

‘You are instructed to do nothing and say nothing to anyone…’

‘Fuck no! I’m staying proper schtum, don’t you worry about that!’

‘The mess will all be cleaned up.’

Novak sipped a bit more of the water and then got to her feet. ‘That is the end of my message. Thank you for the drink,’ she said and then walked away without bothering to acknowledge Cropper further in any way at all.

He leaned back against the bar and finished his drink as he watched her make her imperious way between the tables. ‘Fuck me.’ He sighed to himself. ‘That is one cold fucking bitch.’ Then he pulled himself together and waved at the two blondes who were still standing a few paces away, talking to one another with bored, exhausted looks on their faces.

‘Oi, you two little sluts!’ Cropper shouted. ‘Get your dirty arses over here!’

The girls trotted towards him, giggling at his brilliant wit. That was better, Cropper thought. They knew what was good for them.

A few minutes later, with Novak already on her way back to her hotel, Cropper started feeling unwell. Sweat was pouring off him. His heart was pounding like a madman’s drum kit. He clutched his hands to his chest. His legs gave way beneath him. And the last thing he heard was one of the blondes desperately screaming for a doctor.