Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (26 page)

I allowed a few droplets of blood from my nose to patter onto the mat. Dark red against the blue. There was a hiss from the seductresses.

“And while they’re down,” I heard Emma say, “a kick to the guts or the head will keep them that way…”

“I think that’s enough, Emma,” said the Asian girl. The others made noises of agreement.

I stood up, knuckling the blood away. “No, I’m okay. Let’s carry on.” But some of the girls came forward now, fussing over me. Fingertips on my face. Worried looks. “It’s cool, I’m fine. It’s worth it. Better me getting hurt than any of you.”

Ahhhhh.

And they were mine.

“No, they’re right, that’s enough for today.” Emma shooed them away from me. “Thank you for your time, Mr Rowley.”

“Sure I can’t help out any more?” I asked, innocently.

“Time for you to leave.” Emma snatched my wrist and bent my arm up behind my back. I winced in pain as she pushed me towards the door.

I’d been here before – frogmarched out of the Glasshouse. But once was enough.

I twisted my whole body, the way I’d seen her demonstrate earlier, shoving backwards and making a fast roundhouse kick. It worked brilliantly, breaking her armlock and sending her tumbling – with me after her. We crashed onto the mat hard, me on top, winding her heavily.

The girls gasped. And then applauded, whooping and cheering. Hooray for the underdog!

Emma stared up into my eyes. “Fast learner.”

“Good teacher,” I smiled, lips almost brushing hers.

Then I leant lower, to whisper in her ear: “We need to talk,
assassin.”

“Take five, girls,” she called. “Mr Rowley and I have some business to discuss.”

As we got up from the mat, half of the VenusVisions girls started chatting animatedly, lighting cigarettes and swigging bottles of water. The other half eyed me speculatively. Different kind of lion’s den. I’d just beaten up their instructor – you’d think they’d be wary of me. But instead that made me flavour of the month.

Women. I love ‘em.

Emma and I stood in the dark corridor just outside the gym. “Nice girls,” I smiled. “I think some of them liked me.”

“If they knew what you really were, they’d rip you limb from limb.”

“What am I then, Emma? Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m the same thing you are. Except I’m just an
amateur
,” I hissed. “You’re the professional. So would they hate you more than me?”

She looked away. I’d got past her defences, and it felt bloody good. The T-1000 melted in the end, didn’t it?

“Thought you’d be too busy for all this self-defence stuff,” I said. “Won’t need to be moonlighting when you get your two hundred and fifty grand.”

“I don’t get paid for this.”

“Really?”

Emma tightened her ponytail angrily. “Seen too many black eyes on my friends’ faces to charge them money. I just want them to be safe, that’s all.”

Got to admit, I was surprised at that. I’d assumed this was a nice little earner for her. I thought about how keen she had been to knock the hell out of me. There was real anger there, I realised. Rage. Maybe nothing to do with me at all, but something inside her that just had to come out.

“Has… has anything like that ever happened to you?”

It was there on her face for a second, then gone. Like she was about to be sick. “Not since I was younger. And stupid,” she said quietly. Then glared at me. “Why are you here?”

“Ever shagged anyone famous?” I asked. “Me neither. Kind of hard to get to, these celeb types, aren’t they? I bet even the BBC Advance Scheduling Office would have trouble getting hold of them.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let’s cut the crap, Emma. I can’t get anywhere near Megan MacLeod. And I’m guessing you can’t get anywhere near Declan. We’re stumped.”

Emma folded her arms and gave me a frosty smile, as if to say:
You might think that. I couldn’t possibly comment
.

“Don’t give me that look. You haven’t had any more success than I have. You’ve tried everything but you still can’t get close to Meg and Dec.”

“If you’ve just come here to whine, I’ve got better things to – ”

“Barry won’t help you, will he?”

She kept her expression neutral. I smiled. “Thought not. You asked him for something and he said you’re on your own, right? Haven’t you wondered why? Fifteen per cent of quarter of a million and he can’t lift a finger to help?”

Emma glanced away, troubled, and I knew I was on the right track.

“You know, for a while I thought it was because Barry wanted me to fail. I thought his plan was for me to balls it up and you to succeed, so he had a reason to get rid of me and take you on board instead. You and your lady friends.” I nodded back towards the gym. “He’s got plans for that lot, you know. Big plans.”

“I know,” she said. “Salary with a pension plan.”

What?
Shit!

It was her turn to smile triumphantly. “I’ve read his business proposal. I thought twenty-four of us within two years was ambitious, though.”

I snapped my flapping jaw shut. “You… you read it? He showed it to you?”

“No. I had to go looking for it. Took pictures of it on my phone while he was out buying lunch, that day you called the office. He had no idea.” Emma arched an eyebrow. “Why
are
you here, Scott?”

“I wanted you to know. Global Investigations won’t provide Barry with any support on the case. Even all the little stuff they usually do for him as a favour, the fake IDs and background research and all that, they won’t do any of it. My guess is they’ve told Barry not to ask for assistance from any of the other detective agencies either.”

Emma shrugged. “So what? It doesn’t make any difference. The security around Megan and Declan is the best. There’s no way even Global Investigations could get past it.”

“But it
is
Global Investigations.”

“What?”

“It’s Global Investigations that’s
providing
their security!”

It was her turn for a spot of jaw-flapping. “But… are you sure?”

“I’ve looked into it. Megan and Declan are both managed by the Golden Screen Theatrical Agency, and they’ve contracted the security arrangements out to Global Investigations’ Security Division. They look after a couple of dozen of Golden Screen’s clients – surveillance, bodyguards, communications, the lot.”

“So… the organisation keeping them safe is the same organisation that’s given us the job to break them up!”

“Don’t you just love coincidences?”

Emma paced up and down thoughtfully. “Something’s going on,” she said. “Why would they hire Barry to set up their biggest clients like this? I mean, if this ruins Megan and Declan and messes up their careers, then Global Investigations will lose out too. At the very least, if we did manage to get past their security, it’ll make them look bad. Why would they give us this job?”

“I don’t think they have.” Just imagine me smoking a pipe and wearing a deerstalker at this point. “I doubt very much Global Investigations know anything about it. I think this job came straight from Larry.”

“Larry who?”

“Larry the lamb, you stupid bitch!” is what I might have said only a few minutes ago. But things had changed. This was business.

“Larry Jones, the director of Global Investigations. He’s Barry’s old boss – that’s why we get so many cases out of them, and usually loads of tech support. He came into the office to see Barry personally about this case, which he never does. I reckon he’s set this whole thing up himself. Without his people knowing about it.”

“What does he have to gain from that, though? Our success might damage his company. Unless that’s exactly what he wants, for some reason… to make his company look bad? Otherwise that makes no sense.”

“I know,” I nodded. “But one way or the other, I don’t think Larry’s telling Barry the whole story. I think he’s using him. Using
us.”

Emma scowled, but this time I wasn’t her target. She obviously didn’t like being kept in the dark any more than I did. “So what are we going to do?”

“We need to find out what Larry’s playing at. If he’s got Barry involved in some private little scheme, then I wanna know what it is. We’re the ones in the firing line, we have a right to know what’s going on.”

“So we need to get to Larry.”

“Yes.”

At which point, I went blank. The head of Global Investigations might be almost as hard to get to as Megan MacLeod. “Um. Any ideas?”

Emma glanced through the door of the gym, at the beautiful girls from VenusVisions.

“Yeah,” she smiled, “nine or ten.”

Bang!
Emma and I slammed open the double doors and strode into Global Investigations UK Ltd.

And seventeen beautiful girls came pouring in behind us.

It was a huge open-plan office with a wonderful view of Docklands through the windows. Cubicles, computers, headsets, telephones. Forty or fifty smartly dressed people working away at their desks. This was the agency’s corporate headquarters, the nerve centre of a nationwide organisation. Calm, orderly and professional.

Until now. “Go,” said Emma, and the girls walked into the office.

That’s all they did – just walk. That’s all they had to do.

Claire’s long, bare legs scissored down the main aisle between desks. Angelique’s PVC-clad bottom shimmered under the neon lights. Tamsin swept her waist-length honey-blonde hair over her shoulder, a shampoo advert in the flesh. Anna-Louise, the ex-Page 3 girl, arched her back so that those 38DDs of hers could be seen by everyone, even people behind her. Janey and Catriona prowled slowly in their matching leopard-print skirts. Little ponytailed Karen’s open white blouse and undone tie would have earned her a detention if she’d been a real schoolgirl. Sumitra, the petite Asian girl I’d had a soft spot for ever since she stopped Emma from kicking my head in, smiled her perfect white smile, shaking her perky ass with the rest of them.

And Global Investigations just stopped dead.

Each of the girls walked off in a different direction, smiling, not speaking or touching anything, just smiling. In return they got rabbit-eyes from most people, plus a few delighted grins, I noticed, from the younger blokes. Who could blame them, when their boring old office was transformed into a top-shelf magazine?

The VenusVisions girls did what VenusVisons girls do: catch the eye. Every head turned, every person stared, every woman scowled unhappily, every red-blooded male wiped the drool off his chin, and effectively the entire office became paralysed, allowing Emma and I to just walk on in there, as if we were invisible.

This was a distraction – nothing more. For the girls, this was just a large-scale version of what they usually did, strolling oh-so-casually past their client’s husband or boyfriend. Offering him the bait and seeing if he’d bite. Rather than just one pretty girl, Global Investigations’ bait was seventeen of the most gorgeous women in London.

Bite. Gulp.

Before long, there were shouts of “What’s going on?” and “Stop right there!” and “Get these people out of here!” Rushing up behind us from the main entrance came the building’s security men. They tried to grab hold of our girls and haul them out, as did a few of the more senior office staff. I saw Samantha, Gillian and Janey smirk as they were caught, allowing themselves to be taken away – they had instructions not to resist. It didn’t matter. There were so many of them it would take a while to get everyone out. And until then, all was chaos!

“Any sign?” murmured Emma. She was carrying a light satchel, which worried the hell out of me. When I’d asked what was in it, she said it was her secret weapon. She wouldn’t have an actual gun in there, would she? Did she think we’d have to shoot our way out…?

“Not yet.” I scanned the office, and suddenly spotted Q. He sat at a desk with four monitors on it, surrounded by computers and equipment. For once, his placid face wasn’t so placid, tongue to his knees, gaping at the girls like he’d never seen one before. On my planet these are called ‘females’.

I walked over, smiling my killer smile. “Hi there! Sorry to disturb you, but I’m looking for Larry Jones.”

“W?” said Q.

“Larry Jones. The director. Where is he?”

Q’s normal professionalism abandoned him, his sensible gland drowned out by the sudden flood of testosterone. “Um… he’s in a board meeting… back there.” He pointed to a door at the far end of the main office.

Emma barked “Blue team, with me!” Instantly, six girls came jogging to join us.

I came oh-so-close to kicking the door down – that was the mood I was in – but instead turned the handle and thumped it open. There sat Larry and four other men in their fifties, at a small round table covered with laptops and papers. Looking up like startled teenage boys caught cock-handed.

“Meeting’s cancelled,” I said. “We have an appointment with the boss.”

“Get the rest out,” Emma told her girls. And they surged into the small office, coming onto the four executives like they were the last men on earth. They kissed them, cajoled them, pulled them up from their seats, shunted them out the door with hands all over them. And if they resisted, then a quick armlock and they were being hauled out forcefully.

Larry stood up. I pushed him back down into his seat.

“Need us here?” asked Sumitra. The man she was escorting tried to complain, and she pinched his backside hard enough for him to actually scream and leap out.

Emma shook her head. “Just keep the rest occupied as long as you can. We’ll need at least ten minutes here with nobody bothering us.”

“No problem.” Sumitra blew me a kiss as she left. The cutie.

Emma closed the door. With the muffled sounds of complete anarchy outside, we sat on either side of Larry. His long, bespectacled face was showing more emotion than I’d ever seen from him before. About the same as a normal bloke being told something mildly surprising. Larry’s version of gobsmacked.

“So!” I smiled. “Item one on the agenda!”