The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

SERVED COLD by Zoë Sharp

Layla’s curse, as she saw it, was that she had an utterly fabulous body attached to an instantly forgettable face. It wasn’t that she was ugly. Ugliness in itself stuck in the mind. It was simply that, from the neck upwards, she was plain. A bland plainness that encouraged male and female eyes alike to slide on past without pausing. Most failed to recall her easily at a second meeting.

From the neck down, though, that was a different story, and had been right from when she’d begun to blossom in eighth grade. Things had started burgeoning over the winter, when nobody noticed the unexpected explosion of curves. But when summer came, with its bathing suits and skinny tops and tight skirts, Layla suddenly became the most whispered-about girl in her class.

A pack of the kind of boys her mother was usually too drunk to warn her about took to following her when she walked home from school. At first, Layla was flattered. But one simmering afternoon, under the banyan and the Spanish moss, she learned a brutal lesson about the kind of attention her new body attracted.

And when her mother’s latest boyfriend started looking at her with those same hot lustful eyes, Layla cut and run. One way or another, she’d been running ever since.

At least the work came easy. Depending on how much she covered up, she could get anything from selling lingerie or perfume in a high-class department store, to exotic dancing. She soon learned to slip on different personae the same way she slipped on a low-cut top or a demure blouse.

Tonight she was wearing a tailored white dress shirt with frills down the front and a dinky little clip-on bow tie. Classy joint. The last time she’d worn a bow-tie to wait tables, she’d worn no top at all.

The fat guy in charge of the wait staff was called Steve and had hands to match his roving eye. That he’d seen beyond Layla’s homely face was mainly because he rarely looked at his female employees above the neck. Layla had noted the way his eyes glazed and his mouth went slack and the sweat beaded at his receding hairline, and she wondered if this was another gig she was going to have to try out for on her back.

She didn’t, in the end, but only, she realized, because Steve thought of himself as sophisticated. The proposition would no doubt come after. Still, Steve only let his pants rule his head so far. Enough to let Layla – and the rest of the girls – know that he’d be taking half their tips tonight. Anyone who tried to hold anything back would be out on her ass.

Layla didn’t care about the tips. That wasn’t why she was here, anyhow.

Now, she stood meekly with the others while Steve walked the line, checking everybody over.

“Got to look sharp out there tonight, girls,” he said. “Mr Dyer, he’s a big man around here. Can’t afford to let him down.”

He seemed to have a thing for the name badges each girl wore pinned above her left breast. Hated it if they were crooked, and liked to straighten them out personally and take his time getting it just so. The girl next to Layla, whose name was Tammy, rolled her eyes while Steve pawed at her. Layla rolled her eyes right back.

Steve paused in front of her, frowning. “Where’s your badge, honey? This one here says your name is Cindy and I know that ain’t right.” And he made sure to nudge the offending item with clammy fingers.

Layla shrugged, surprised he picked up on the deliberate swap. Her face might not stick in the mind, but she couldn’t take the chance that her name might ring a bell.

“Oh, I guess it musta gotten lost,” she said, all breathless and innocent. “I figured seeing as Cindy called in sick and ain’t here – and none of the fancy folk out there is gonna remember my name anyhow – it don’t matter.”

Steve continued to frown and finger the badge for a moment, then met Layla’s brazen stare and realized he’d lingered too long, even for him. With a shifty little sideways glance, he let go and stepped back. “No, it don’t matter,” he muttered, moving on. Alongside her, Tammy rolled her eyes again.

Layla had the contents of her canapé tray hurriedly explained to her by one of the harassed chefs and then ducked out of the service door, along the short drab corridor, and into the main ballroom.

The glitter and the glamour set her heart racing, as it always did. For a few years, she’d dreamed of moving in these circles without a white cloth over her arm and an open bottle in her hand. And, for a time, she’d almost believed that it might be so.

Not any more.

Not since Bobby.

She reached the first cluster of dinner jackets and long dresses that probably cost more than she made in a year – just for the fabric, never mind the stitching – and waited to catch their attention. It took a while.

“Sir? Ma’am? Would you care for a canapé? Those darlin’ little round ones are smoked salmon and caviar, and the square ones are Kobe beef and ginger.”

She smiled, but their eyes were on the food, or they didn’t think it was worth it to smile back. Just stuffed their mouths and continued braying to each other like the stuck-up donkeys they were.

Layla had done this kind of gig many times before. She knew the right pace and frequency to circulate, how often to approach the same guests before attentive turned to irritating, how to slip through the crowd without getting jostled. How to keep her mouth shut and her ears open. Steve might hint that she had to put out to get signed on again, but Layla knew she was good and he was lucky to have her.

Well, after tonight, Stevie-boy, you might just change your mind about that.

She smiled and offered the caviar and the beef, reciting the same words over and over like someone kept pulling a string at the back of her neck. She didn’t need to think about it, so she thought about Bobby instead.

Bobby had been the bouncer in a roadhouse near Tallahassee. A huge guy with a lot of old scar tissue across his knuckles and around his eyes. Tale was he’d been a boxer, had a shot until he’d taken one punch too many in the ring. Then everything had gone into slow motion for Bobby and never speeded up again.

He wore a permanent scowl like he’d rip your head off and spit down your neck, as soon as look at you, but Layla quickly realized that was merely puzzlement. Bobby was slightly overmatched by the pace of life and couldn’t quite work out why. Still plenty fast enough to throw out drunks in a cheap joint, though. And once Bobby had laid his fists on you, you didn’t rush to get up again.

One night in the parking lot, Layla was jumped by a couple of guys who’d fallen foul of the “no touching” rule earlier in the evening and caught the rough side of Bobby’s iron-hard hands. They waited, tanking up on cheap whisky, until closing time. Waited for the lights to go out and the girls to straggle, yawning, from the back door. They grabbed Layla before she had a chance to scream, and were touching all they wanted when Bobby waded in out of nowhere. Layla had never been happier to hear the crack of skulls.

She’d been angry more than shocked and frightened – angry enough to stamp them a few times with those lethal heels once they were on the ground. Angry enough to take their overflowing billfolds, too. But it didn’t last. When Bobby got her back to her rented double-wide, she shook and cried as she clung to him and begged him to help her forget. That night she discovered that Bobby was big and slow in other ways, too. And sometimes that was a real good thing.

For a while, at least.

“Ma’am? Would you care for a canapé? Smoked salmon and caviar on that side, and this right here’s Kobe beef. No, thank you, ma’am.”

Layla worked the room in a pattern she’d laid out inside her head, weaving through the crowd with the nearest thing a person could get to invisibility. It was a big fancy do, that was for sure. Some charity she’d never heard of and would never benefit from. The crowd was circulating like hot dense air through a fan, edging their way up towards the host and hostess at the far end.

The Dyers were old money and gracious with it, but firmly distant towards the staff. They knew their place and made sure the little people, like Layla, were aware of theirs. Layla didn’t mind. She was used to being a nobody.

Mr Dyer was indeed a big man, as Steve had said. A mover and shaker. He didn’t need to mingle, he could just stand there, like royalty, with a glass in one hand and the other around the waist of his tall, elegant wife, looking relaxed and casual.

Well, maybe not so relaxed. Every now and again Layla noticed Dyer throw a little sideways look at their guest of honour and frown, as though he still wasn’t quite sure what the guy was doing there.

Guy called Venable. Another big guy. Another mover and shaker. The difference was that Venable had clawed his way up out of the gutter and had never forgotten it. He stood close to the Dyers in his perfectly tailored tux with a kind of secret smile on his face, like he knew they didn’t want him there but also knew they couldn’t afford to get rid of him. But, just in case anyone thought about trying, he’d surrounded himself with four bodyguards.

Layla eyed them surreptitiously, with some concern. They were huge – bigger than Bobby, even when he’d been still standing – each wearing a bulky suit and one of those little curly wires leading up from their collar to their ear, like they was guarding the president himself. But Venable was no statesman, Layla knew for a fact.

She hadn’t expected him to be invited to the Dyers’ annual charity ball, and had worked hard to get herself on the staff list when she’d found out he was. A lot of planning had gone into this, one way or another.

By contrast, the Dyers had no protection. Well, unless you counted that bossy secretary of Mrs Dyer’s. Mrs Dyer was society through and through. The type who wouldn’t remember to get out of bed in the morning without a social secretary to remind her. The type whose only job is looking good and saying the right thing and being seen in the right places. There must be some kind of a college for women like that.

Mrs Dyer had made a big show of inspecting the arrangements, though. She’d walked through the kitchen earlier that day, nodding serenely, just so her husband could toast her publicly tonight for her part in overseeing the organization of the event, and she could look all modest about it and it not quite be a lie.

She’d had the secretary with her then, a slim woman with cool eyes who’d frozen Steve off the first time he’d tried laying a proprietary hand on her shoulder. Layla and the rest of the girls hid their smiles behind bland faces when she’d done that. Even so, Steve took it out on Tammy – had her on her back in the storeroom almost before they were out the door.

The secretary was here tonight, Layla saw. Fussing around her employer, but it was Mr Dyer whose shoulder she stayed close to. Too close, Layla decided, for their relationship to be merely professional. An affair perhaps? She wouldn’t put it past any man to lose his sense and his pants when it came to an attractive woman. Still, she didn’t think the secretary looked the type. Maybe he liked ‘em cool. Maybe she was hoping he’d leave his wife.

At the moment, the secretary’s eyes were on their guest. Venable had been free with his hosts’ champagne all evening and his appetites were not concerned only with the food. Layla watched the way his body language grew predatory when he was introduced to the gauche teenage daughter of one of the guests, and she stepped in with her tray, ignoring the ominous looming of the bodyguards.

“Sir, can I interest you in a canapé? Smoked salmon and caviar or Kobe beef and ginger?”

Venable’s greed got the better of him and he let go of the girl’s hand, which he’d been grasping far too long. She snatched it back, red-faced, and fled. The secretary gave Layla a knowing, grateful smile.

Layla moved away quickly afterwards, a frown on her face, cursing inwardly and knowing he was watching her. She was here for a purpose. One that was too important to allow stupid mistakes like that to risk bringing her unwanted attention. And after she’d tried so hard to blend in.

To calm herself, to negate those shivers of doubt, she thought of Bobby again. They’d moved in together, found a little apartment. Not much, but the first place Layla had lived in years that didn’t need the wheels taken off before you could call it home.

He’d been always gentle with Layla, but then one night he’d hit a guy who was hassling the girls too hard, hurt him real bad, and the management had to let Bobby go. Word got out and he couldn’t get another job. Layla had walked out, too, but she went through a dry spell as far as work was concerned, and now there were two of them to feed and care for.

Eventually, she was forced to go lower than she’d had to go before, taking her clothes off to bad music in a cheap dive that didn’t even bother to have a guy like Bobby to protect the girls. As long as the customers put their money down before they left, the management didn’t care.

Layla soon discovered that some of the girls took to supplementing their income by inviting the occasional guy out into the alley at the back of the club. When the landlord came by twice in the same week threatening to evict her and Bobby, she’d swallowed her pride. By the end of that first night, that wasn’t all she’d had to swallow.

Even Bobby, slow though he might be, soon realized what she was doing. How could he not question where the extra money was coming from when he’d been in the business long enough to know how much the girls made in tips – and what they had to do to earn them? At first, when she’d explained it to him, Layla thought he was cool with it. Until the next night when she was out in the alley between sets, her back hard up against the rough stucco wall with some guy from out of town huffing sweat and beer into her unremarkable face.

One minute she was standing with her eyes tight shut, wondering how much longer the guy was going to last, and the next he was yanked away and she heard that dreadful crack of skulls.

Bobby hadn’t meant to kill him, she was sure of that. He just didn’t know his own strength, was all. Then it was his turn to panic and tremble, but Layla stayed ice cool. They wrapped the body in plastic and put it into the trunk of a borrowed car before driving it down to the Everglades. Bobby carried it out to a pool where the ‘gators gathered, and left it there for them to hide. Layla even went back a week later, just to check, but there was nothing left to find.

They stripped the guy before they dumped him, and struck lucky. He had a decent watch and a bulging wallet. It was a month before Layla had to put out against the stucco in the alley again.

How were they supposed to know he was connected to Venable? That the watch Bobby had pawned would lead Venable’s bone-breakers straight to them?

A month after the killing, Venable’s boys picked Bobby and Layla up from the bar and drove them out to some place by the docks. Bobby swore that Layla wasn’t in on it, that they should leave her alone, let her go. Swore blind that it was so. And eventually, they blinded him, just to make sure.

Layla thought she’d never get the sound of Bobby’s screaming out of her head as they’d tortured him into a confession of sorts. But even when they’d snapped his spine, left him broken and bleeding on that filthy concrete floor, Bobby had not said a word against Layla. And she, to her eternal shame, had been too terrified to confess her part in it all, as though that would make mockery of everything he’d gone through.

So, they’d left her. She was a waitress, a dancer, a hooker. A no-account nobody. Not worth the effort of a beating. Not worth the cost of a bullet.

Helpless as a baby, damaged beyond repair, Bobby went into some institution just north of Tampa and Layla took the bus up to see him every week for the first couple of months. But, gradually, getting on that bus got harder to do. It broke her heart to see him like that, to force the cheerful note into her voice.

Eventually, the bus left the terminal one morning and Layla wasn’t on it.

She’d cried for days. When she’d gotten word that Bobby had snuck a knife out of the dining hall, waited until it was quiet then slit his wrists under the blankets and quietly bled out into his mattress during the night, there had been no more tears left to fall.

Layla’s heart hardened to a shell. She’d let Bobby down while he was alive, but she could seek justice for him after he was dead. She heard things. That was one of the beauties of being invisible. People talked while she served them drinks, like she wasn’t there. Once Layla had longed to be noticeable, to be accepted. Now she made it her business simply to listen.

Of course, she knew she couldn’t go after Venable alone, so Layla had found another bruiser with no qualms about burying the bodies. And, once he’d had a taste of that spectacular body, he was hers.

Thad was younger than Bobby, sharper, neater, and when it came to killing he had the strike and the morals of a rattlesnake. Layla knew he’d do anything for her, right up until the time she tried to move on, and then he was likely to do anything to her instead.

Well, after tonight, she wouldn’t care.

She slipped out of the ballroom but instead of turning into the kitchen, this time she took the extra few strides to the French windows at the end of the corridor, furtively opened them a crack, then closed them again carefully so they didn’t latch.

By the time Layla returned to the ballroom, the canapés were not all she was holding. She’d detoured via the little cloakroom the girls had been given to change and store their bags. What she’d collected from hers she was holding flat in her right hand, hidden by the tray. A Beretta nine millimeter, hot most likely. As long as it worked, Layla didn’t care.

A few moments later someone stopped by her elbow and leaned close to examine the contents of the tray.

“Well hello, Cindy.” A man’s voice, a smile curving the sound of it. “And just what you got there, little lady?”

Thad, looking pretty nifty in the tux she’d made him rent. He bent over her tray while she explained the contents, making a big play over choosing between the caviar or the beef. And underneath, his other hand touched hers, and she slipped the Beretta into it.

“Well, thank you, sugar,” he said, taking a canapé with a flourish and slipping the gun inside his jacket with his other hand, like a magician. When the hand came out again, it was holding a snowy handkerchief, which he used to wipe his fingers and dab his mouth.

Layla had made him practise the move until it seemed so natural. Shame this was a one-time show. He would have made such a partner, someone she might just have been able to live her dreams with. If only he hadn’t had that cruel streak. If only he’d touched her heart the way Bobby had.

Poor crippled, blinded Bobby. Poor dead Bobby…

Ah well. Too late for regrets. Too late for much of anything, now.

Layla caught Thad’s eye as she made another round and he nodded, almost imperceptibly. She nodded back, the slightest inclination of her head, and turned away. As she did so she bumped deliberately into the arm of a man who’d been recounting some fishing tale and spread his hands broadly to lie about the size of his catch. He caught Layla’s tray and sent it flipping upwards. Layla caught it with the fast reflexes that came from years of waiting crowded tables amid careless diners. She managed to stop the contents crashing to the floor, but most of it ended up down the front of her blouse instead.

“Oh, I am so sorry, sir,” she said immediately, clutching the tray to her chest to prevent further spillage.

“No problem,” the man said, annoyed at having his story interrupted and oblivious to the fact it had been entirely his fault. He checked his own clothing. “No harm done.”

Layla managed to raise a smile and hurried out. Steve caught her halfway.

“What happened, honey?” he demanded. “Not like you to be so clumsy.”

Layla shrugged as best she could, still trying not to shed debris.

“Sorry, boss,” she said. “I’ve got a spare blouse in my bag. I’ll go change.”

“Okay, sweetheart, but make it snappy.” He let her move away a few strides, then called after her, “And if that’s caviar you’re wearing, it’ll come out of your pay, y’hear?”

Layla threw him a chastised glance over her shoulder that didn’t go deep enough to change her eyes, and hurried back to the little cloakroom.

She scraped the gunge off the front of her chest into the nearest trash, took off the blouse and threw that away, too, then rummaged through her bag for a clean one. This one was calculatedly lower cut and more revealing, but she didn’t think Steve would object too hard, even if he caught her wearing it.

She pulled out another skirt, too, even though there was nothing wrong with her old one. This was shorter than the last, showing several inches of long smooth thigh below the hem and, without undue vanity, she knew it would drag male eyes downwards, even as her newly exposed cleavage would drag them up again. With any luck, they’d go cross-eyed trying to look both places at once.

She swapped her false name badge over and took the cheap Makarov nine millimeter and a roll of duct tape out of her bag. She lifted one remarkable leg up onto the wooden bench and ran the duct tape around the top of her thigh, twice, to hold the nine in position, just out of sight. The pistol grip pointed downwards and she knew from hours in front of the mirror that she could yank the gun loose in a second.

She’d bought both pistols from a crooked military surplus dealer down near Miramar. Thad insisted on coming with her for the Beretta, had made a big thing about checking the gun over like he knew what he was doing, sighting along the barrel with one eye closed.

Layla had gone back later for the Makarov. She didn’t have enough money for the two, but she’d been dressed to thrill and she and the dealer had come to an arrangement that hadn’t cost Layla anything at all. Only pride, and she’d been way overdrawn on that account for years.

Now, Layla checked in the cracked mirror that the gun didn’t show beneath her skirt. Her face was even more bland in its pallor and, just for once, she wished she’d been born pretty. Not beautiful, just pretty enough to have been cherished.

The way she’d cherished Bobby. The way he’d cherished her.

She left the locker room and collected a fresh tray from the kitchen. The chefs were under pressure, the activity frantic, but when she walked in on those long dancer’s legs there was a moment of silence that was almost reverent.

“You changed your clothes,” one of the chefs said, mesmerized.

She smiled at him, saw the fog lift a little as the disappointment of her face cut through the haze of lust created by her body.

“I spilled,” she said, collecting a fresh tray. She felt every eye on her as she walked out, smiled when she heard the collective sigh as the door swung closed behind her.

It was a short-lived smile.

Back in the ballroom, it was all she could do not to go marching straight up to Venable, but she knew she had to play it cool. The four bodyguards were too experienced not to spot her sudden surge of guilt and anger. They’d pick her out of the crowd the way a shark cuts out a weakling seal pup. And she couldn’t afford that. Not yet.

Instead, she forced herself to think bland thoughts as she circled the room towards him. Saw out of the corner of her eye Thad casually moving up on the other side. The relief flooded her, sending her limbs almost lax with it. For a second, she’d been afraid he wouldn’t go through with it. That he’d realize what her real plan was, and back out at the last minute.

For the moment, though, Thad must think it was all going according to plan. She stepped up to the Dyers, offered them something from her tray. The secretary still hadn’t left his side, she saw. The girl must be desperate.

Layla took another step, sideways towards Venable, ducking around the cordon of bodyguards. Offered him something from her tray. And this time, as he leaned forwards, so did she, pressing her arms together to accentuate what nature had so generously given her.

She watched Venable’s eyes go glassy, saw the way the eyes of the nearest two bodyguards bulged the same way. There was another just behind her, she knew, and she bent a little further from the waist, knowing she was giving him a prime view of her ass and the back of her newly-exposed thighs. She could almost feel that hot little gaze slavering up the backs of her knees.

Come on, Thad…

He came pushing through the crowd nearest to Venable, moving too fast. If he’d been slower, he might have made it. As it was, he was the only guy for twenty feet in any direction who didn’t have his eyes full of Layla’s divine body. Venable’s eyes snapped round at the last moment, jerky, panicking as he realized the rapidly approaching threat. He flailed, sending Layla’s tray crashing to the ground, showering canapés.

The bodyguards were slower off the mark. Thad already had the gun out before two of them grabbed him. Not so much grabbed as piled in on top of him, driving him off his legs and down, using fists and feet to keep him there.

Thad was no easy meat, though. He kept in shape and had come up from the streets, where unfair fights were part of the game. Even on the floor, he lashed out, aiming for knees and shins, hitting more than he was missing. A third bodyguard joined in to keep him down, a leather sap appearing like magic in his hand.

There was that familiar crack of skulls. Just like Bobby…

Layla winced, but she couldn’t let that distract her now. Her mind strangely cool and calm, Layla stepped in, ignored. The fourth bodyguard had stayed at his post, but Layla was shielded from his view by his own principal, and everyone’s attention was on the fight. Carefully, she reached under her skirt and yanked the Makarov free, unaware of the brief burn as the tape ripped from her thigh.

The safety was already off, the hammer back. The Army surplus guy down in Miramar had thrown in a little instruction as well. Gave him more of a chance to stand up real close behind her as he demonstrated how to hold the unfamiliar gun, how to aim and fire.

She brought the nine up the way he’d shown her, both hands clasped round the pistol grip, starting to take up the pressure on the trigger, she bent her knees and crouched a little, so the recoil wouldn’t send the barrel rising, just in case she had to take a second shot. But, this close, she knew she wouldn’t need one, even if she got the chance.

One thing Layla hadn’t been ready for was the noise. The report was monstrously loud in the high-ceilinged ballroom. And though she thought she’d been prepared, she staggered back and to the side. And the pain. The pain was a gigantic fist around her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe.

She looked up, vision starting to shimmer, and saw Venable was still standing, shocked but apparently unharmed. How had she missed? The bodyguard had come out of his lethargy to throw himself on top of his employer, but there was still an open window. There was still time…

Layla tried to lift the gun but her arms were leaden. Something hit her, hard, in the centre of her voluptuous chest, but she didn’t see what it was, or who threw it. She frowned, took a step back and her legs folded, and suddenly she was staring up at the chandeliers on the ceiling and she had to hold on to the polished wooden dance floor beneath her hands to stay there. Her vision was starting to blacken at the edges, like burning paper, the sound blurring down.

The last thing she saw was the slim woman she’d taken for a secretary, leaning over her with a wisp of smoke rising from the muzzle of the nine millimeter she was holding.

Then the bright lights, and the glitter, all faded to black.

The woman Layla had mistaken for a secretary placed two fingers against the pulse point in the waitress’s throat and felt nothing. She knew better than to touch the body more than she had to now, even to close the dead woman’s eyes.

Cindy, the name tag read, even under the trickle of the blood. She doubted that would match the woman’s driver’s licence.

She rose, sliding the SIG semi-automatic back into the concealed-carry rig on her belt. Two of Venable’s meaty goons wrestled the woman’s accomplice, bellowing, out of the room. She turned to her employer.

“I don’t think you were the target, Mr Dyer, but I couldn’t take the chance,” she said calmly. She jerked her head towards the bodyguards. “If this lot had been halfway capable, I wouldn’t have had to get involved. As it was…”

Dyer nodded. He still had his arms wrapped round his wife, who was sobbing, and his eyes were sad and tired.

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

The woman shrugged. “It’s my job,” she said.

“Who the hell are you?” It was Venable himself who spoke, elbowing his way out from the protective shield that his remaining bodyguards had belatedly thrown around him.

“This is Charlie Fox,” Dyer answered for her, the faintest smile in his voice. “She’s my personal protection. A little more subtle than your own choice. She’s good, isn’t she?”

Venable stared at him blankly, then at the dead woman, lying crumpled on the polished planks. At the unfired gun that had fallen from her hand.

“You saved my life,” he murmured, his face pale.

Charlie stared back at him. “Yes,” she said, sounding almost regretful. “Whether it was worth saving is quite another point. What had you done to her that she was prepared to kill you for it?”

Venable seemed not to hear. He couldn’t take his eyes off Layla’s body. Something about her was familiar, but he just couldn’t remember her face.

“I don’t know – nothing,” he said, cleared his throat of its hoarseness and tried again. “She’s a nobody. Just a waitress.” He took another look, just to be sure. “Just a woman.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dyer said, and his eyes were on Charlie Fox. “From where I’m standing, she’s a hell of a woman, wouldn’t you say?”