Bang: Memoirs of a Relationship Assassin (28 page)

I was getting that comedown now. Sitting on the sofa, eating chicken teriyaki and watching Billy Elliot.

Was it hours or months since I led an army of sex-bombs on the warpath? Maybe that was a dream I’d once had. Or maybe I was remembering another movie from Blockbusters I’d watched with Becky, with the lights low and boxes of Indian takeaway balanced on our laps.

Another evening in, and a Friday night as well. Watching telly, eating, chatting. That’s all we ever did, once the sex was out of the way.

That’s what couples do.

I fidgeted like the sofa was covered in porcupine hide. How did I get here so quickly? From my world of relationship assassins, and gorgeous girls, and detective agencies, and secret deals, to… doing nothing.

And for Christ’s sake, we weren’t even watching a Bond movie or something like that, something with girls and gadgets and explosions and excitement, no we were watching the life story of a fucking
ballet dancer!

“Isn’t this good?” said Becky, curled up against me. “Been meaning to watch this for years.”

That old comedown again. Nerves twitching, convinced I was still on the dancefloor.

“Shall we go clubbing?” I asked.

Becky laughed. “What, now?”

“After the film, yeah.”

She turned to look at me, to see if I was being serious. “You really want to go clubbing? Tonight?”

“Or just go out for a drink? I don’t mind, we could just head into town for a few beers if you like. D’you fancy it?”

“Um… well… I’m kind of comfy now, though.”

I told her that was fine, settled back, stared at the telly. But after a minute she asked again if I really wanted to go out. That tone people use when they want to sound like they really don’t mind one way or the other, no really honestly, we can do that if you like.

“No, it’s fine,” I said, doing the same thing to her.

“Billy not grabbing you, then.”

Grabbing? My arse. “It’s all right.”

Another minute passed, the movie still running. I should have known Becky wouldn’t want to go anywhere. She was still a good-time-girl who looked for her keys in blokes’ trouser pockets, but things were different now. We were a couple, and this was what couples did.

This is what any girl expects from her partner, I thought. Night in + takeout + DVD = quality time.

= Comedown.

= Torture.

“Listen,” she said, “if you really fancy going out…”

“Forget it.”

Another minute.

“I’ll go, if you want me to – ”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Another minute.

“John… am I too boring for you?”

= Truth.

I hugged her a little and told her that of course she wasn’t too boring. I threw in a small kiss to her forehead.

She tensed up like I’d said
“Of course I killed and ate my last girlfriend.”

The rest of the movie rolled by, neither of us watching it. Both rigid, like we expected a grenade to get lobbed through the window at any time. Something that would blow us apart.

I wanted to move. I wanted to get on with my mission. I’d never felt the need to pull a mask off so quickly, but being John Holmes that evening was just wrong. John’s life had taken me somewhere I’d never been before. I thought I loved being him, but now…

I found myself wondering if I could get rid of Becky tonight, maybe tell her I wasn’t feeling well. No, that would sound pathetic. And I doubted she’d ever come back. Maybe I could just sneak off for a bit, give Emma a quick call. Talk about today, discuss our strategy, go over my plan… but that was risky, with Becky still in the flat.

So I sat there, with my girlfriend, all night.

= Hell.

Eventually, the director’s cut specially extended seven-disc version of Billy Elliot came to an end, about three weeks later. Becky and I got ready for bed in near-silence. It felt like we’d been married for twenty years, going through the nightly routine without a word. My comedown got even lower.

When I walked back into my bedroom after a quick shower, towelling my hair, she was lying in bed. Flipping through a paperback novel.

My bedside cabinet was open.

“I didn’t really see you as much of a book reader,” she said, turning the pages. “Is this the sort of thing you usually – ”

“Give me that NOW!”

I snatched the book out of Becky’s hands, making her jump.

“How much did you read?”

She gaped at me. “What?“

“How much of it did you fucking read?!”

“I didn’t… I hardly read anything, I just flipped through it! John – ”

“Don’t touch this again!” I shouted. My voice, my whole body, was trembling. “Don’t think you can go rummaging through my stuff when my back’s turned, just… just
don’t!”

Becky stared at me in shock. God knows what I looked like standing there, naked, furious. Gripping the novel in both hands.

“John, I’m sorry, I didn’t…”

But I was gone, whirling out of my room. If I hadn’t been stark naked, I’d have burst out the door and into the street. Instead I stomped around my kitchen, bouncing off the walls, bumping into cooker, sink, cabinets. Caged animal.

I couldn’t believe it! I’d left it right there, right next to her! All this time!

= Stupid.

= Suicidal.

I couldn’t believe it, I was so angry, and suddenly so scared as well, blood pounding, knuckles white around the dog-eared novel in my hands, panicking, wondering where I could put it, where to hide it, where was safe, where could I bury it so she’d never find it again,
where!

After a while I stopped myself. Scott.
Scott
. Get a grip. It’s all right, she didn’t read much, she didn’t… it’s okay. Just calm down. You’re all right. You’re still safe. How were you meant to know she’d go looking…

Unlucky
, mate.

I stood shivering, turning the book over and over in my hands. The last remaining copy of my Dad’s novel in the whole world.

Dad had been twenty years older than Mum. Used to be a teacher. More brains than the top three floors of our council estate put together. And he was fully aware of this. “Thick as shit, they are,” he used to say. About everyone else.

Nothing ever mattered to him as much as his writing. It had been an obsession since his youth, to contribute to the thriller genre he adored so much. He had two dozen unpublished novels, all on dot matrix printer paper, stored in lever arch files on a dusty shelf in his study. His back catalogue, he called it. The fire hazard, Mum called it, but never to Dad’s face. I think that was a lesson she’d learnt before I came along.

When it came to his own books, Dad was obsessed with characterisation. “That’s the key to a great novel,” he’d often say, “realistic characters! Get that right and everything else falls into place.” And so when he started writing a new novel, he would actually write himself into it. In order to talk to the characters and get an insight into their personalities, my Dad would write scenes where he himself chatted to them, lived their lives alongside them, and asked them questions. Then once he had understood them, he would write himself out of it again and get on with the story.

But then he started forgetting to do that last part.

When his publishing contract was ended following poor sales of his only book, Dad’s writing just carried on, an unending stream of pages. It was composed of him talking and interacting with a variety of characters he’d made up. Take it from me, you haven’t read anything until you’ve read about your own father chatting to an MI5 undercover agent as he infiltrates a Columbian drug baron’s operation. And the drug baron offering the agent and your Dad nubile young girls – bitches, he always called them bitches – if he’ll overlook the cocaine drop. And the MI5 agent declining, because he was the hero, but your Dad accepting. And the bitches telling him that he’s wasting his time on that foul council estate with his clapped-out slag of a wife and his cocky, disrespectful, thick-as-shit son…

Eventually, he lost contact with the real world altogether, existing purely within his own books. That’s what Mum told me, anyway. That was a weird time. I tried to be out of the flat as much as possible. Spent a lot of time on the streets, riding my bike around with my mates. I wasn’t even there when he was sectioned. It was a few days before I even noticed he was gone.

Mum never told me exactly what happened, or where they took him. But there were no visits. She wanted to start her life again, after years of putting up with my Dad’s rages, years of protecting me from the worst of it. She cleared out every trace of him. Binned every copy of his published book.

Except the one I hid from her. The same one I was now hiding from Becky.

I pulled open the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, and buried the book in the cobwebby darkness behind the Domestos and the Flash and the Pledge. Closed the cupboard door softly, so she wouldn’t hear. Scrubbed my hands clean like a man with OCD. Or like I was expecting a forensics team to start dabbing my kitchen for prints. Muttering “Stupid stupid
stupid!”

I guess you could say I wasn’t myself right then.

When I came back into the bedroom a few minutes later, Becky was in the middle of getting dressed, on the verge of leaving. I had to stop her, apologise, virtually get down on my knees and beg her not to go. I can’t remember exactly what I said, other than some stuff about how I still wasn’t used to sharing my home with someone, that I was too set in my ways after years of single life and had some adjusting to do. I do remember saying “You’re the last person in the world I should be snapping at,” and watching the scowl on Becky’s face soften. I brought some water to my eyes, just a fraction… it came very easily… as I told her I’d understand if she wanted to go home and I’d call her a cab.

“Let’s just go to bed,” she eventually said. But I could tell that she wouldn’t be forgetting this so easily.

Lights off. Both wide awake for hours, not talking or moving. Sharing my bed but not in the same place. There was a gap between our bodies wide enough for a whole person.

A whole different person.

“Hiya!” said Megan MacLeod as she flew into the room. “You guys are from our security company, yeah? Nice to meet you, everything all right?”

Emma and I nodded.

“I’m Megan,” she added. Like we might not know.

The funny thing is, for half a second I wasn’t sure. I mean,
obviously
it was her. Obviously, one of the most famous television actresses in the country had just popped her head round the door and said hiya. No doubt about it. But she wasn’t the Megan MacLeod I was expecting.

After days of solid research, I knew her well. Her face was branded onto my mind. Shoulder-length red hair, wide green eyes, pale lightly-freckled skin, thousand-watt smile. But this girl bouncing into the room was… well, kind of ordinary. Young, pretty, wearing jeans and black strappy top. Lilting Scottish accent. But short – she was shockingly short, not much over five feet tall. Was this Megan’s midget sister or what?

She didn’t look like any of the pictures that I’d seen. Bit of a disappointment. The magazines made her look larger than life, but when I stood up to shake her hand, she barely came up to my nipples. Was it really her?

“Sorry I’m running late, my helicopter got diverted to Stanstead so they had to send a new limo. Anyway, hi!”

Fuck. It was her.

“heLLO!” I said, my balls choosing that moment to finally drop.

Suddenly I was nervous. My voice had cracked like a spotty teenager on his first date. But if Megan noticed, she hid it well. I opened my mouth to introduce myself: “I’m Sc…”

Shit! I almost said I was Scott. I’d forgotten who I was!

Shaking Megan’s hand, grinning, trying desperately to remember who I was meant to be, my mind just went blank! I should know my lines off by heart, I should be prepared for anything, but it had all gone. My name, my mask, all gone! What do I say? Christing bollocks, think!

You’d never believe Emma and I had spent the past three days planning this.

“Okay Scott, we need to start coming up with names. Larry will need some time to work up identity cards and paperwork for us as his client liaisons, so the sooner we provide him with names the better.”

“I’m going to be Jason King.”

“Jason King?! What, from that cheesy old show in the Seventies? Are you serious?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“What will you wear, velvet flares and a paisley shirt, collars out to here? They’ll spot you as a fake a mile off!”

“Nah, nobody remembers Jason King. Meg and Dec are far too young, it’s fine.”

“It’s bloody childish!”

“…Isn’t.”

“Please God tell me you won’t have a big droopy moustache.”

“That’s not a bad idea, actually…”

“Just pick a bland name, it’s safer. We don’t want to make anyone suspect we’re not real. We should always be using normal, forgettable names.”

“What, like Julie Andrews from the BBC?”

“That was… for you. So you’d know it was me.”

“Oh right, sure.”

“It was!”

“Wasn’t.”

“Was!”

“Jason King!” I bellowed into Megan’s face as it all came flooding back. I pumped her hand like a barman pulling a pint. “Global Investigations!” I added.

Emma took my place, smoothly shaking Megan’s hand and introducing herself, about twenty decibels quieter. “Jane Shields, client liaison officer. Thanks for taking the time to see us, Ms MacLeod, we know how busy you are.”

“Oh call me Meg, no worries. Have a seat, I think there’s tea and coffee and all that over there if you want anything.”

We all sat down, Emma and I on a brown leather sofa and Megan on a matching chair. Finally, I’d made it through the door of Meg ‘n’ Dec’s Luxury Love-Nest, their massive Kensington home. We were up on the third floor, in a kind of reception room. Comfy low chairs, glass coffee table, framed prints on white walls, all spotlessly clean in the sunlight.