Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (20 page)

Oh, say it again!

“Well, I am kind of involved…”

“Yeah you’re involved, but you’re not to blame, though. I cheated on my fiancé with you, but that was my decision. Sajjan cheated on me with this… slapper,” she spat at the pictures. “So we’re both as bad as each other, we’re both crap. But you kind of got caught in the crossfire. At the end of the day, you never lied to me, or pretended to be anything you weren’t.”

“Wouldn’t know how,” said John.

She added “You never promised me anything other than a good time, that’s all, and you were really upfront about that. I think that’s what made me say yes to you. You were just so honest about what we were doing.”

“So it wasn’t my humungous willy or anything.”

“God, no. Do you even know what humungous means? It’s a kind of fungal infection, you know.”

“That explains a lot. There was a time I thought it was that green stuff you eat with bread.”

“That’s humous!” she laughed. “Look, shut up, I’m trying to say I’m sorry here, you’re not helping.”

“Just admit I’ve got a humous willy and we’ll say no more about it.”

Becky grinned at me, arms folded on the table. We’d been speaking quietly, leaning forwards over the photos. My forearm brushed against hers and suddenly I had goosebumps. She glanced down, noticing. The fine hairs on her arm rose up against mine.

Spark.

“So I’m sorry,” she said.

“That’s all right,” I smiled.

Bzzz. Crackle.

Becky looked me up and down, wrinkling her nose. “You stink of puke, you know.”

“God’s sake, women and their nitpicking.”

“You can’t go home like that. If you, um…”

“What?”

“You know, if you want a shower, or whatever, I’m just up the road.”

Zap.

“Well… that sounds good, actually.” Sudden excitement in my belly. My mobile rang again. I caught my breath and heard myself say “As long as, you know… you’re okay with that?”

“Look, John, after everything that’s happened, there’s no reason we can’t stay friends, right? You can do that, can’t you? Have a girl as a mate?”

“Sure, of course.”

My arm brushed against hers again. Tingling skin.

She took a breath too. “Well cool, then. So we’re mates.”

“Mates it is.”

“Mates.”

Thirty minutes later we were fucking hard and fast on her bed, both dripping wet from the shower.

And much later that night, after the sun had gone down, the lights in her flat off, curtains and windows open, we were still on her bed, still kissing, still touching, slowly working up to a third time… only then did I break off to answer my constantly-ringing mobile.

“What!” I snapped into it, not even checking the display.

“Scott?”

Barry!

“Where are you? I need to see you right away, it’s an emergency!”

Half-leaning off the bed with Becky kneading my shoulders, giving me those massages I’d never had before, my whole body went rigid. Jesus, had it really taken him this long to realise his office had been broken into? Did he suspect me? What was I going to say? “Um… what’s wrong?”

“It’s come in, hasn’t it! I thought we’d lost it, but Larry’s got his act together and he’s landed it. Where have you been, I’ve been calling all bloody day! We need to get moving on this, no time to waste. There’s quarter of a million quid going begging!”

Oh my God.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for, Scott. I don’t give a shit what you’re doing, drop everything, absolutely everything, this is the most important thing in both our lives as of right now, you got that?”

I froze: agent in one ear, girlfriend kissing the other.

“This is it. Game on.”

“Pay attention,” said Barry. “Briefing in progress.”

It was first thing Sunday morning. The mission had landed.

Barry fussed around with a briefcase full of papers and documents. When I say papers, I mean that day’s papers. Two of the Sunday tabloids. He opened one up, and an avalanche of colour supplements, listings magazines and book club adverts poured to the ground in a glossy pile.

I watched him scramble around picking them up and stuffing them back into his briefcase. Then he spent a minute tying himself in knots trying to fold the newspaper to the page he wanted. I’ve seen people wrestle with crocodiles more gracefully.

For this, I got out of bed early?

I thought about whose bed I’d hauled myself out of. She was still back there, under the covers. I’d slowly eased the door shut as I left, not wanting to wake her. It wasn’t the first time I’d crept out of her flat like a thief, but at least this time I intended to go back. I’d glanced down at her as I left. Eyes closed, mouth slightly open, auburn hair half-covering her face, one arm outside the covers – the arm I’d had to slowly unwind from around my waist without waking her. She looked so cute. Too small for her king-size bed. I’d left a big empty space next to her.

The sooner this was over, the sooner I could get on the tube to Finchley and –

“This is your target.” That was Barry, ruining my daydream. He rattled the newspaper open on the page he wanted. The celebrity gossip page.

“Megan MacLeod. Actress. Age twenty-four. Currently appearing in the BBC1 soap series EastEnders. Originally from Scotland, currently living in London, and now better known as – ”

“Hahahahahahahahaha!”

That was me, laughing my tits off.

Barry scowled, crumpling the paper. “What!”

“And I thought Larry didn’t have a sense of humour,” I snorted.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He’s having you on, Barry! He’s taking the piss! Megan MacLeod is the target?
Megan MacLeod?
This is a wind-up, mate, he’s been having you on all this time! Can you imagine? Megan Mac – ”

“It’s not a joke, Scott.”

“Of course it bloody is!”

“See me laughing then, do you?” Face like thunder.

“Oh come on. You’ve got to be kidding.”

“The target’s name,” said Barry slowly, “is Megan MacLeod. Target has been confirmed.”

He wasn’t kidding. “But… but she’s – ”

“Briefing in progress. There’ll be a Q and A session at the end if you’ve got any questions.
All right?
”

I nodded, dumbstruck.

“Megan MacLeod,” he resumed. “Better known to most people as Danielle Ferguson, the character she plays in EastEnders. She’s had that role for over a year now and is generally considered to be a household name as a result. She’s also had several other parts in various dramas and regularly appears in promotional adverts for the Save The Children Fund. Probably fair to say just about everybody’s heard of Ms MacLeod.”

No kidding. I stared at the photograph in the newspaper. Yes, we’d all seen her before. Bright red hair, green eyes, round face, beaming smile. The perfect Celtic beauty. Or, if you were Laura the Explorer, nothing but a Scotch tart who’d had plastic surgery, the slag.

Megan had been ‘The Face of Scotland’ for a while now, thanks to her sexy accent and bubbly personality. Not to mention her looks, her TV roles, that thing she did for Comic Relief and her habit of turning up in photographs with other celebs. Throw a charity gala dinner or an award ceremony and you’d be guaranteed to get Megan’s face in there somewhere.

The Face of Scotland. The face of my target.

This had to be a wind-up, surely.

“Currently, Megan is involved with Declan Shea, who is also very well-known as a pop star, and a member of um… oh bollocks, hang on.” Barry fumbled with his notes again. I realised that he was just reciting the information Larry had provided. Barry wouldn’t know a pop star if he found one snorting coke off his keyboard.

“Declan Shea, singer with the group Flag. Originally from County Antrim in Northern Ireland – ah, lovely place, my sister’s out there, you know – but now lives in London, with Megan MacLeod. The two of them have been an item for approximately six months. Very high profile relationship. The media have been referring to them as
Posh and Becks: The Next Generation
, which has obviously brought them both even further into the public eye. Um, Declan, Declan, hang on…”

Barry flipped through the pages of the tabloid’s colour supplement until he found a picture of Declan, posing alongside the rest of his bandmates. I’d heard of Flag, of course. Hard to ignore the biggest boy band in the country. Three number one hits in less than a year. Syrupy ballads and cheesy cover versions of disco hits (something that got right under my skin – they were perfect first time around, damn it, you can’t lay a modern house beat over Boogie Wonderland, might as well have the Mona Lisa wearing a hoodie and smoking a fag, just leave the classics alone!). In a nutshell: shite. But to teenage girls, they were gods.

Flag’s gimmick was that each member was from a different part of the UK. The English lad was a mixed-race wide boy, streetwise and cocky. From Scotland came a trendy spiky-haired kid, all piercings and tattoos. You could take the Welsh boy home to your mum, with his sensible haircut and guileless face. And finally, the blonde, floppy-haired, wise-cracking Irish heart-throb. Declan grinned out of the photograph at me. And from another photo, taken at one of Elton John’s shindigs, hand in hand with his gorgeous, equally-famous girlfriend, Megan MacLeod.

Oh Christ, this
had
to be a wind-up…

“Megan and Declan are your joint targets,” said Barry. “The mission objective is to provide irrefutable evidence that one or both of them are SHIT!”

Barry jumped as a pigeon landed right next to him.

Clutching his chest like he could hold back the coronary, Barry laughed at himself, until the pigeon started pecking at his briefcase. He thrashed at it with the tabloid. “Get out of it! Piss off you frigging bird! Jesus!”

I sighed, watching the kerfuffle of paper and feathers, and leaned back on the bench. I looked around at the greenery of St James’s Park, at the people strolling along the paths, and feeding the ducks on the banks of the river.

Sun on my face. A gorgeous, clear Sunday morning, and there Barry and I sat on adjoining benches holding a mission briefing, like we were planning on stealing the Crown Jewels. I waved cheerily at a woman with a pram as she trotted past, head turned by the noise of Barry vs the pigeon. She hurried on. Couldn’t blame her. Didn’t want to get drawn into our seedy, sinister plotting. Scary master criminals that we were.

Barry finally shooed the pigeon away, collected his papers and soldiered on. “Right. The mission objective is to provide irrefutable evidence that one or both of these two are conducting an illicit affair. The evidence should be visual in nature, either photographic or video, with a strong aspect of clandestine activity about it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

Barry checked his notes, frowning. “Well, you know what I mean, it has to look dodgy, all right? It has to look legit as well obviously, like it’s really happening, but it should also be kind of… outrageous. Think scandal. Set things up so it looks as scandalous as possible. Just try and imagine it on the front page right here,” he added, flapping the Sunday tabloid.

“So I wonder who’s the client on this case then, Barry?”

He looked sheepish for a second, hastily folding over the newspaper and stuffing it in his briefcase. “Never you mind.” Red face. Red as the newspaper logo. “It’s confidential. Larry’s orders. Couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to.”

“Just as long as it looks good in the papers.”

“Yes. I mean… just make sure it looks genuine, all right?”

I shook my head. This wasn’t a wind-up, but it was definitely a bloody joke.

“Right. Timescale. We have less than three weeks to complete this case. After that, Declan’s out of the country when Flag start the first leg of their European tour, and around the same time Megan’s taking a break from EastEnders to film a drama for Channel 4, shooting on location in Edinburgh. So we’ve got this short window of opportunity before – ”

“Excuse me, is this the way to Buckingham Palace?”

“What!”

An American lady leaned right into Barry’s face. She wore an identical pair of tartan shorts as her white-haired husband, standing nearby. “Buckingham Palace, is this the right way?”

“I’m trying to conduct a frigging business meeting here, if you don’t mind!” snapped Barry.

She jumped back, shocked. “Just follow that path there,” I told her kindly. “Straight down that way, first building you come to, big gates, blokes with giant furry hats on, can’t miss it.”

They waddled away, nonplussed. I heard the American man drawl “’Frigging’?”

“So you’ve got three weeks!” said Barry testily. “Right. You know the targets. You understand what the mission objective is. Terminate the relationship between Megan MacLeod and Declan Shea in as public a way as possible, by making it look like there’s some cheating going on, and provide visual evidence to that effect. Any questions?”

I raised my hand like a schoolboy. Barry sighed. “Yes, Scott.”

“What’s
she
doing here?” I asked.

Emma looked up, arching an eyebrow above her shades.

Barry glanced round as if only just noticing the beautiful woman next to him on the bench. She had sat quietly throughout his briefing, typing notes on an ultra-slim laptop. Her red fingernails were dancing lightly over the keys while she looked at me. As if writing down
Scott asked what I was doing here, like the complete retard he is.

“Well, she’s attending the mission briefing, of course,” said Barry-state-the-sodding-obvious-O’Nion.

“So who’s actually taking this case, then?”

“You both are! Christ, it’s worth two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, Scott, in case you’d forgotten. You think I’m going to have one of you working on this and the other wasting time on some pissy little case for a few grand? Like hell.”

“How’s that going to work then, we can’t both do the same job!”

“Look, there’s two targets, remember? Megan MacLeod and Declan Shea. Doesn’t matter which one of them is caught cheating, as long as one of them is. Two targets, two relationship assassins, one big fat payoff if we land it, it’s as simple as that. We get two bites of the cherry this time.”